The Purple Tablecloth

Just thought I'd add this quickly, a bit of my larger scale impressions in China from a journal contest

Visiting China for the first time is like being dropped off outside a house containing an immeasurable variety of experiences. The door to those experiences is locked not with deadbolts, but with secrecy and insecurity, with suspicion and inexperience, with shame and certainly with showmanship. The exterior, on the other hand, is ornate, beautiful, truly unique in the world and, in most cases, open to anyone who wants to visit. After all, who cares about going inside when out on the lawn you can look at the Forbidden City, Shanghai’s Bund or the Terracotta Warriors of Xi'An? The Chinese, whose pride is enormous are happy to accommodate and would rather you see the Great Wall than the dusty floors of a peasants home, yet in a country where sixty percent of the population are spread out over rural areas and most cannot afford to travel to see the Great Wall, it is the latter that is truly a greater part of China today. I came to China with the hope that teaching would provide a different opportunity. Certainly I was excited to travel and see the sights. Ever since my childhood bedroom was decorated with pandas, the traditional imagery of China had been lurking in the recesses of my mind. For the first few months I saw the sights and marveled at the novelty, but when the shine and gloss had faded from the newness of it all, I found it hard to see exactly where I fit in. No longer simply a traveler, I hoped to move beyond the tourist sights and into the world in which most of the Chinese people live. This has left me to confront the question, if I'm not a tourist, then what am I?
Wai – guo - ren /'waI gwכ rεn/ n 1 literal translation meaning “outside country person” 2 a term used by Chinese to describe anyone non-Chinese. The far more common slang form is ‘laowai’, a simple phrase repeated until it becomes burned into the mind. Any foreigner living in China outside the traditional big city foreigner enclaves of Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong knows this phrase, having no doubt heard it murmured, shouted, whispered, stated, cackled, and otherwise thrown in your direction just about every time you walk down the street. While the attitude of this statement is as varied as its intonation, the ultimate truth behind it is always the same. “You are not the same as us. You don't come from the same place. You are an outsider. You are irrevocably different.” How do you begin to go about breaking down this wall and finding acceptance? Living as a foreigner in China is to be forever seeking the indefinably vague concept of “fitting in”. For me, a white skinned, blue-eyed boy, living in rural Hunan province means standing out obviously as a part of the ‘them’ in the us and them mentality that is so central to the Chinese psyche. It is difficult to avoid this single aspect of who I am pervading and altering every other aspect of my identity. Not a teacher, but a foreign teacher. Never the friend, always the foreign friend.
In a sense, this role is a tremendous responsibility. While in power, one of Deng Xiao Ping's greatest achievements was the beginning of the reform and opening up movement of China. My Chinese name, Deng Xing Hai, shares the same family name and I have always tried to look at this as a symbol for the role I'm to play while I'm here. Deng Xiao Ping's vision for the future of China was one of interaction with the rest of the world, not of the isolation and self-dependence preached by his predecessors. WorldTeach is in part a symbol of the realization of this vision, a constant exchange of thoughts and ideas between Chinese and non-Chinese. A good deal of this takes place in the classroom. Everyday when I look out at sixty faces and they look back at me, we cannot help but to exchange aspects of our cultures and to learn about each other.
However, this characterization of my identity is predicated on the assumption that the foreigner is fundamentally different. A flash of color in a monochromatic world. In fact, for most Chinese, I am to be kept at a distance from anything that might disturb the international perceptions of this People's Republic. I am a guest to be treated with kindness and respect, but ultimately better to be held at arms length. Yet, there are times when the barrier falls away for a moment or two and I am no longer the foreigner, but simply Dan or even Teacher Deng. These are the moments I find myself living for while in China. For me, the challenge of living and teaching in Liuyang has become how to move beyond the glossy surface of the face China presents to the rest of the world and to delve into the marrow of the nation. It is an attempt to acknowledge what lies outside, but also to continue into the home, and to see and experience the place where a family truly lives and where it keeps its soul.
In a row of nondescript white tile buildings just five minutes walk down the dusty country road that leads to my school sits a restaurant that has become one of these places. The Purple Tablecloth, as we like to call it, is not the sort of restaurant to which my school would have ever taken me. There are no young xiaojies dressed finely in elegant, traditional qi pao waiting to open the door for me, in fact there are no doors at all. Five small tables sit in a single room open to the road. The floor is unfinished concrete, the walls whitewashed and unadorned except for a calendar advertising Chinese medicine wine. When I arrive, two fans hang from the ceiling, one motionless and the other whirring slowly at the other end of the room keeping a lazy watch over two shirtless men digging into a dish of dried fish and peppers. A fluorescent light buzzes in the opposite corner with a chorus of flies adding their harmony. As always, the smells wafting out from the kitchen reassure me I am in the right place.
I had stopped in for a quick dinner with my friend Matt, just some dan chao fan and maybe some of Matt's favorite eggplant dish, qiezi bao. Walking into the back room we began to survey the ingredients of the day and to order from ­­­­­­Liu Mei Hua, the woman who makes up half the ownership and always greets us with a toothy smile. Her husband and the other half is Old Li, a wiry man whose standard uniform is plastic yellow sandals, a pair of dark slacks rolled up to just below the knee and a thin, white undershirt and who is responsible for every dish cooked in the place. This time there would be no qiezi bao as Liu Mei Hua quietly asked if instead we might not like to eat with them that evening. We eagerly accepted and sat down listening to the sounds of Old Li’s knife from the kitchen. A few cups of slightly bitter green tea later he emerged from the kitchen smiling with the last of ten succulent dishes. Lotus root, eggs, cucumbers, peppers, carrots and pork silenced us for a few moments, before we relaxed to share our latest news.
It wasn’t long until a few strangers stopped by the restaurant to see just what was going on. They bided their time, waiting in the darkness outside and eyeing us carefully before coming in and beginning their interrogation.
“Who are the foreigners?” they asked.
“Teachers” replied Old Li quickly, “up the road at Tian Jiabing.”
“Where are they from?”
“This one” indicating me “from America, that one from England” Liu Mei Hua answered.
“How long have they been in China?”
“More than one year.”As the questions continued, I realized that Old Li and his wife knew the answers to every one of the standard questions that Chinese always ask of foreigners, but that they also knew more. We shared not only dinner with each other, but also when things weren't going well at work, when someone we all knew had died a few weeks earlier. That evening we had sat together as friends and talked about our days, our work and mutual friends; all the things people talk about as equals. Those few hours encapsulated nearly everything I have come to seek in this place that has become a home to me. As we were leaving Old Li took me aside, smiled and told me next time he would make sure to cook qiezi bao, but it really doesn't matter. I don't come to Old Li's Purple Tablecloth Restaurant for the food anymore.