Passing


Does this woman look Chinese?



When I was in Hekou recently, China's border crossing with Vietnam, a Vietnamese snack vendor with whom I had been speaking Mandarin looked at me closely and asked if I was Chinese. I thought this was hilarious.

When I told this story to my Chinese class, Teacher Zhang said, "Well, more and more Chinese women are dying and curling their hair. You aren't any taller than Chinese people, and you were probably wearing traditional Chinese clothing, right?"

I then added that ZXY, who had been present, had said, "Of course she doesn't think you're Han. She must think you are a Uygur from Xinjiang." (The Uygurs are ethnically Turkic Moslems who often do look more like me than my own brother does. I had seen a few in Hekou who could have been my cousins.)

My Vietnamese classmates exclaimed, "That's right! She does speak Chinese exactly like the Uygur students in our dorm do!"

Teacher Zhang pointed out that the Uygur students learn Mandarin as a second language and since their mother tongue lacks tones, they have just as much trouble as westerners do mastering a tonal language like Chinese. The interesting thing is that Uygurs tend to have excellent pronunciation of English--thousands of times better than that of native Chinese speakers.

I was thrilled to think I could pass as a Uygur, at least until I remembered that the Han tend to view the Uygurs with a combination of fear and loathing. Of course, there's also a certain amount of fear and loathing in their view of Americans, but at least there's a large dose of envy in that mix as well. For now, I'm probably better off maintaining my true identity as a foreigner.

Posted: Thu - March 25, 2004 at 09:39 PM    

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