On traveling, teaching, learning and living in far western China.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

China's disaffected youth / My obscured identity

Sitting in a smoky KTV (karaoke) room on Saturday night, I was painfully aware of two things: I don't know how to talk to China's "lost generation", and it's awkward to look like a Uighur in a room full of Han Chinese people who don't know you're American.



















Why was I sitting on this sofa, watching as empty beer bottles collected on the table and waiting as my song kept being pushed to the end of the queue by eager singers?

I was in Urumqi to see my friends compete in a Chinese competition, but the night before I crashed with a couch surfer.  I accompanied my host to a party she had organized for 30-odd young Chinese people who had met on local QQ chat group, expecting to have a marginal amount fun.  It was a typically Chinese affair: twin screens showing music videos (and at times low-budget videos of sultry women in swimsuits, paired with a bad club mix), lots of people sitting on couches not talking to each other, and some group games that required these people, many of whom were strangers, to interact with each other at least minimally. 

Shortly after my nonchalant entrance, I grew tired of sitting silently on the couch, all too aware of the difficulty of breaking the ice.  I struck up a conversation with the guy next to me.  He was in his early twenties and bordered on surly. It went about like this:

Me: Hi, what's your name?
Him: (something I can't remember)
Me: Are you from Urumqi?
Him: Yeah.
Me: So what do you do?
Him: Sell houses.
Me: Oh, so like, real estate?
Him: No, second-hand.
Me: Ok. So...do you know these people?
Him: No.
Me: So you met them on the QQ group?
Him: Yeah.
Me: So...what do you usually do on the weekend?
Him: Nothing.
Me: How's that possible?  Don't you have any interests?
Him: No.
Me: How can you have no interests? 
Him: Nothing's interesting.
Me: But you're a human being, come on!
Him: I like to spend money.
Me: On what?
Him: Anything.
Me: Spending money isn't even an interest! It's a waste!
Him: Maybe.
Me: If nothing's interesting, then your life has no meaning.
Him: Yeah, I guess so.

I tried to engage him on the topic of music but it failed.  Finally, I couldn't control my exasperation:

Me: You know, if you want to have a conversation, you need to ask some questions.  This like an interview, and it's boring.
Him: This is my personality.
Me: You can change your personality.

At this point, I decided it was better to sit in silence.  On the way over to the KTV spot, my host had told me, "You know, a lot of young Chinese people are lost.  They don't know what they want or where they're going.  So this party is about getting people together to meet new friends, create a community."  My host seemed like a very motivated, energetic, social, smart young woman (she is a graduate student at Xinjiang University) -- not a member of the Lost Generation at all.  But many of the people there did seem lost. 

It must be hard to grow up in a country where the population is so large, you get lost in a school of anonymous fish, carried along by the current.  Unless you're truly outstanding, you're just another one of the masses, destined to mediocrity and a mundane life. 

My host finally introduced me to the rest of the room, safely ushering the white elephant out the door.  I was free to relax in my now public American identity.  A girl came over (one of the ones who was sitting next to me earlier, ignoring me) and introduced herself.  She ended up being the only person I actually had a real conversation with all night, and for her I was grateful.  She told me she thought I was a Uighur before I had been introduced, and that most Chinese people won't take the initiative to talk to a foreigner.  Great, so if I look like a Chinese citizen, albeit a minority, no one will talk to me.  If I am a foreigner, still no one will talk to me.

This issue of looking like a minority has bothered me a bit ever since coming to Xinjiang. 

On one hand I enjoy blending in.  But on the other, I have grown tired of the puzzled stares, and wish for clarity.  I feel most comfortable in public when I'm around my tall, white friends, speaking English, because this is when it's clear that I'm not a Uighur, or Uzbek (as my Uighur classmates mistook me), or something else both non-Han and non-foreign.  It's not that I feel some kind of foreign superior to Uighurs and therefore resent being mistaken for one, not at all -- it's just that I'm unsure how my obscured identity will influence my social interactions in this region of ethnic tension.  Did my appearance prevent people from talking me that night in Urumqi?  Maybe it was just lack of social skills on the part of all the people around me.  But I still felt very aware of being the only non-(full)-Han in the room.  Also, Uighurs often speak to me in Uighur, and it feels awkward to reply in Chinese, and possibly be mistaken for a minority who was brought up speaking Chinese and has lost their native language (a phenomenon that draws the disapproval of Uighur-speaking Uighurs, for obvious reasons).  I just want to scream, "I'm American!!! Some of us have black hair and Asiatic features just like you!!!"  Instead, I just pay for my nang (flatbread) and go on my way.  It's as if I'm veiled, even though I don't wear a veil over my hair the way many women do here. 

Maybe like those lost 20-somethings looking for themselves in KTV room, I'm looking for somewhere where I can fit in.

1 comment:

  1. Beautiful essay, Marg. I think you have such a unique perspective on social interaction in Chinese society because you can be mistaken for another ethnicity than you really are. Although it clearly gets frustrating sometimes, you get to bypass the instant and fairly consistent reaction to being identified as Chinese-speaking foreigner. There's some power in your confusing features.

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