A few things had made me happy today but one of them is iffy (I’ve been knocking wood all day), so I won’t share that one yet just so I don’t jinx it. The others follow:
- Daniel had told his former Chinese teacher (who teaches English at Heida) that one of the foods he missed from home was cheese. So she had her husband bring back cheese from his most recent trip to France to share with her former student, who in turn shared the Laughing Cow cheese with me. It was teh yum.
- Today, when getting dinner in the cafeteria, the server asked me directly if I was Canadian. When I asked her how she knew, she smiled and said that the other servers told her. It felt nice. Sure, it’s kind of strange that the cafeteria staff talk about me (I would otherwise expect it to be that I order the same food all the time) but it’s a nice change from the taxi drivers who hear my not-so-Chinese voice and ask if I’m Korean or where I come from, just to be told I 显得 look Chinese. I don’t mind it, of course, obviously I look Chinese (I had been talking to Andy† and Seth about this yesterday and it proves to be more convenient getting around without sticking out like my white friends do), but it was nice not to have to explain the whole 华裔 ethnic-Chinese origin thing as if it’s something particularly exciting.‡ The last time I heard something so refreshing was when another server asked me if I was Russian, or when one of Seth’s Koreans (the one they now call Cher) told me I looked European (she meant to say Asian, but it was still funny to hear).
† Andy is the one who told me he thought I might be a Native Canadian (or First Nations or whatever is least awkward to say, I still have to learn how to express indigenous-ness in Chinese) when he first met me. Since then, he has suggested pretending I am, or also accepting the complement when Chinese tell me how good my English is (I’ve only been working on it for 22 years).
‡ Obviously I don’t find it particularly exciting at all, but it surprises me sometimes – I think it was Jose who asked me about it first – that there are no other students of 华裔 Chinese descent from the Americas or Britain or Australia here (there are of course similar people in continental Europe and Africa, but I know less about them). That said, there are something like four and a half Americans at this university…
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