Alien

Well, so much for the one a day postings. I've been pretty wrapped up in work. You know, publish or perish, right? Also, I have been reading a book called "The Alienist" which inspired the title of this post and seems appropriate, given my status here.

Life is up and down. I have definitely been looking at this trip in a new light, after the initial excitement died down. It sucks to see characters everywhere that I know I have learned and forgotten. I'm kicking myself for not studying Chinese harder. I'm an alien here. People stare. I don't think it is even analogous to the position of minorities in the US, who, to be sure, are the brunt of all sorts of prejudices and bigotry, as a result suffering in a much more tangible way. No, in a place like China, there is certainly a degree of prejudice, but it is of a more benign variety. I occasionally get charged more for things, but unless it's really significant (which only happened to me once, several years ago, and will NOT happen again), it's more work for me to argue than to pay an extra fifty cents or whatever. But I admit the curiosity is somehow oppressive. People watch me eat. People watch me do all kinds of things. Sometimes, I catch them whispering, pointing, or laughing. I can feel it happening. If I'm irritable, I stare back until they are shamed into looking away. I frequently practice my Chinese in situations where a group of people forms to listen to me struggle, bursting out laughing at my pathetic attempts at communication. I am generally able to laugh these things off, but after a while, it becomes exhausting.

My attempts at making friends are not going well. I've already been dumped twice and I've only been here a couple weeks!! It's hard for me to convey intelligence or really anything about my personality when I have the vocabulary of a three year old and the manners of a buffoon. Things are different here in so many ways I still don't understand. I think I loose face on a fairly regular basis. Although, come to think of it, that's not so different from my life in the US ;)

There is no sailing, surfing, biking, or any of the other "recreational" (ahem) activities I enjoy in the US. Which was, of course, the idea: no distractions. Just do my work, practice Chinese, and that's pretty much it. But once you start down that path, you look longingly back down the way you came, back at the fork in the road, now receding into the distance and wonder, "What if I *hadn't* taken the road less traveled?" Ah well. Too late for that. Now it's time to seize life by the horns. This is all about me confronting my fears. Ideas like trying to make my way to the wild part of the great wall (where it is rumored you can sleep on the ruins, with no one around), or taking a train to Nanjing, I am ashamed to say, are terrifying propositions. Which means I must make a supreme effort to accomplish these things, or things like them. Living here is like skiing off a cliff. You can't think before you go. You have to just aim at the precipice, hope for the best... and jump.