I Can't Believe It's Not Texas: 2009

(Arrrr, I'm super behind on updating this blog, but I'll [maybe] get around to it later - and if not, updates are on Facebook Notes)

This entry really is dedicated more to my thoughts from China than to my slight celeb crush on the lead vocalist of Guns 'N' Roses, I promise. (Although he is/was pretty cute in the Sweet Child O' Mine MV, and exactly the kind of guy I would have gone for in my teens if I'd had the guts) However, the phrase always jumps out at me. Guns and roses.

I just got back from China.

I have so many thoughts that I honestly don't know how to voice. It's been crazy, and it's been intense, and honestly, it was much more career-focused than identity pursuit this year, in comparison to last - for which I'm intensely grateful. I hate thinking about who I am and what I am and where I'm going, although this blog may seem to tell otherwise. Why? Because honestly, I don't fit anywhere. And for the most part, that's OK. But sometimes, it gets insanely lonely. I start longing for a sense of home - especially now, after hitting up 10 different living locations in half as many weeks, preparing for another leg of travel in less than a week, and thinking ahead to all of the packing and planning and couch-surfing that's yet to come in my next two months.

This identity thing bubbles up to bite me in the ass every now and then... Sometimes more "now" than "then." I don't know. The innocent question "Where are you from?" can feel like a challenge to battle at times, depending on who asks it, and where and when and why.

I sort of grew up with a girl whose family has pursued [insert code word for faith-based outreach] in Xinjiang since the 1980s. She and I are about the same age - we fought a lot when we were little, when her family was on furlough, as is the case with me and many fantastic firstborn women who I'm honored to call "friend" today. I saw her again in Hong Kong again in 1996, right before the turnover took place. And then I met up with her in CA at a missionary kids' retreat in 2004, right before both of us began college alone in the U.S. for the first time. We haven't seen each other much at all since early childhood, and her upbringing has definitely been a lot more confusing than mine. But reading her blog, which I discovered today, brings me right smack-dab into this issue of identity.

Nature or nurture? Where does she belong - a Caucasian girl who grew up in a no-man's-land between China and the Middle East - or I, a Chinese-American girl who grew up in Texas-Taiwan-Texas? With her blonde hair and arresting blue eyes, she can walk down the street in Iowa and nobody will think beyond admiration for her looks because she "fits" the profile of the kind of person they expect to see walking there. And yet inside, she may be fighting to remember how to phrase her feelings in English, trying desperately not to remember how much she misses "home food," thinking about where she'll spend her holidays when she can't go back to her family 13,000 miles away. Alternatively, put her in the streets of rural China, though, and everyone will be falling over their own feet turning around to look at the foreigner... while she, on the other hand, maybe dancing around inside, not even noticing the lack of hot running water and electricity, thinking happily to herself, "There's no place like home."

Most of the time, I think "nurture prevails." I believe pretty strongly that a person is shaped primarily by his or her upbringing experience. But there's something to be said for nature as well. But I was rereading parts of the Fellowship of the Ring today in a waiting room and stopped short at the part where the Company are traveling through Lothlorien. When Gimli meets Galadriel and she speaks to him in his ancient dwarven tongue about his ancestral lands, she catches him off-guard and earns a friend for life - because she knew what it was to long for something he felt in his blood. Legolas is thrilled by the experience of walking through ancient Elven lands. I don't know why, but I feel this way about China and Taiwan. I know that many of my American-born Chinese peers don't feel like this, but I do, and did so even before there was ever any talk of me moving to Taiwan in 1995. China is in my blood. It might be all those unintentional racist comments I collected as a child, but I always longed to know where I fit, to understand what I came from, so that there would be some meaning to where I was going.

So yeah. I go to China, time and again hoping to skate by under the radar as a tourist, and maybe just an embryo journalist - and instead, get bombarded with a sense of identity clash and confusion. It's nothing that any one person does, any more than the cacophony of noise during rush hour is all the fault of one car. But it's all very confusing.

I just want a career of sorts. "I want to be a journalist when I grow up." In my self-absorption, I childishly think, "My classmates get to just look at what they want to see." I know it's not true - but in this particular context of China, under the particular situations that came together for the trip - it was and is true on occasion.

Here's an example of a situation that arose several times.

When you couple your miscalculations with the other person's misunderstandings, you get a wide margin of flat-out miscommunication. We walked away from briefings this past month at embassies, newsrooms, university halls, hotel conference rooms - and many times, came away more confused and annoyed than we started out. For one big example... We wanted answers about the Chinese media censorship situation, but we felt like we didn't get them. We would tell them that in the U.S., freedom of speech is upheld under the constitution, and journalism students are taught that their role in society is to hold the government to the law. So in China, what was the educational equivalent? What were students taught in lieu of my J310 curriculum?

We got a lot of mixed answers from a lot of people. Most of the Chinese-speakers had to go through the medium of translators, and most of those interpreters were Chinese-raised-and-educated English majors who had never heard of the U.S. first amendment, and certainly wouldn't know that it was important contextual information to translate prior to tossing out the question in Mandarin. And even if they did, would they use the correct terms for it all? Would the meaning get through? Judging by the responses we got, a lot of the time, my conclusion was "No, the speaker most certainly didn't understand what we wanted to ask."

And yet people grew angry - and I don't blame them. To the English-speakers, having their questions seemingly blatantly ignored must have come across as "so rude," while in the Chinese culture of saving face and hiding one's dirty laundry, the direct questions about some of the media education's weakest areas must have seemed "so rude." And there I was, caught in the middle, understanding where both parties were coming from, and not really knowing if I could say anything - or honestly, if my explanation would help anything.

In American journalism culture, it is your duty to society to get to the bottom of the matter - courteously, one hopes, but to probe even the painful spots nonetheless in the pursuit of truth. In Chinese culture, it is polite to put your best foot forward, to not put the burden of your struggles on other people's shoulders, to read body language and tone of voice and know when you've crossed certain lines. ...That's not something I can explain in 30 seconds in two languages. That's not even necessarily accurate in many situations... it's just my personal perspective, after 24 years spent nearly equally in each culture.

Every time after a session, the situation replayed itself ad nauseam for hours in my head. Did we ask the right questions? Did we know an answer when we heard one? Did we understand why people responded the way they did? Were they really trying to thwart us, or were they just as confused as we were? What did we want out of them anyway - the truth about the situation at the moment, or affirmation that they were doing their best to "make progress"... implying that progress would naturally be to follow the U.S. model? What kind of an image did we project, and were they reacting to that as much as we were reacting to their perceived evasion tactics?

So here are my feelings. I cannot pretend that I don't understand Chinese or English - at least, and most importantly, to my ears. I hear things I don't want to hear, understand translations gone awry that I cannot find the right words to set right, see people who look like me, hear people claim me to their various nationalities and ethnicities on both sides. Yet at the same time, I never know enough. I don't understand enough Chinese and English to explain everything to the world. I don't have a good enough grasp of historical, cultural, economical and political context to put it all in perspective.

And on top of my own confusion, I often overhead other people's conclusions about China, the U.S., AND Taiwan with which I disagree. I'm no expert on either place, but some people are so flat-out wrong. Not all Americans are blonde Hollywood stars. People in Taiwan do not agree on the political situation with China by any means. And China is not ablaze with Communistic fervor - not in the sense that most outsiders view it, anyway. Americans don't mean to come across as critical jackasses. Chinese people dont necessarily mean to sound evasive. But how do I explain this to people who cannot hear what I hear, see what I see, draw from the context I cannot remove from my psyche?

I will never fit in anywhere under the "nature vs. nurture" mold - if not in any of these three countries, then even less in any other place. If "Where are you from?" has to elicit a glib three-sentence response from me when a single word should suffice, I will never belong under the traditional model of identity. Fortunately enough for me, we live in times where identity is extremely fluid. I'm free to call myself what I want, identify myself how I like, and live where I choose. It's OK to say "I don't care what you want to think about me - this is who I am, and until you listen to me, and just me, you will never understand me." For the sake of my own self-perception, this is a much healthier statement than where I was last year, where I think I tried to please everyone and proverbially, pleased no-one instead. But what about all the other people I bring with me, encounter, and leave behind? What about the sense of identity I leave with them? Because, you see, each person you meet changes your world a little bit. (I'm going to write one of my pieces from this trip about that) And while I deal with my identity crisis, am I creating one for them? Am I being constructive or destructive? Do I have a responsibility to do what I can for them?

Guns, or roses. I feel like I can only choose one. I can choose to fight for the things I'm passionate about - human rights, the right to freedom and the pursuit of happiness - defined in each person's own way. I can live a life of battle, like King David, hoping to leave the legacy of peace and prosperity, justice and understanding, to my children and their children's children. I won't be able to pursue prosperity, comfort, or security as any of my top priorities. It doesn't mean that I can't have them, for sure - it just means that when push comes to shove, duty calls.

Or I can just cop out and do it the easy way. Take advantage of the privilege afforded me by birth, settle down to an "easy" life, and pursue a career that would be personally fulfilling, extremely ego-boosting, and ultimately, pretty superficial. I could live a cushy life (would "a bed of roses" be too corny to work into the sentence?)... and die knowing that I betrayed my soul.

Forgive me, but as a 24-year-old girl, roses look much more appealing than guns right now. War is a romantic fantasy until you witness a skirmish firsthand. Oh, I wouldn't go join the army, although I've toyed with the notion more than once in the last six years. But many of the world's battles are fought with words first, weapons second.

Guns 'N' Roses finally released Chinese Democracy in 2008 after many years of anticipation from their fans. (I only know this because of BV moderation - I'm a poser) In their words about the eponymous song,

The emotion in this next song, that's all that's about. It's not like an intelligent song. It doesn't have the answer to anything. And it's not necessarily pro or con about China. It's just that right now China symbolizes one of the strongest, yet most oppressive countries and governments in the world. And we [Americans] are fortunate to live in a free country. And so in thinking about that it just kinda upset me, and we wrote this little song called "Chinese Democracy."

I want to live in a world where everything isn't automatically right or wrong, good or bad, black or white. Skin color, ethnicity, appearance, class, language, education, wealth, religion, sexuality, movie preferences - none of these are a good basis upon which to judge people. Yet freedom is much more of a mental perception than a physical state, and so many people are in bondage to so much ignorance... myself definitely included. There is no freedom without struggle.

And so I fight.