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Stranger in a Strange Land
By JEANNETTE FANG
Xian is bleak. It seems the most striking example of the urban juxtaposition of slum and ostentation. Directly bordering our ornate Grand New World Hotel, there are crumbling sidewalks and fermented peaches mashed into grates. The people here seem either to have scrunched, sour faces or beanbag cheeks of apathy. The men proudly hike their shirts up over their Buddha-like bellies, a pregnant mound of smooth, sepia skin, cooling off in the glistening of heat.
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| The author in front of the 10,000-year-old tree supposedly planted by Huang-Di, from whom all Chinese people descended. |
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This tale begins after a dumpling banquet, where a group of 30 young, American-born Chinese practiced gluttony in the middle of their so-called "journey to discover their roots." Invited here through the Chinese Overseas Exchange Association, we were a conglomeration of U.S. Presidential Scholars, Intel Science Talent Search winners, and International Olympiad U.S. Team members. I was an alien intruder on this world, the lone Presidential Scholar of the Arts—the weird person who did music and did not have smarts validated by numbers and letters. The rest consisted of squadrons from Harvard, M.I.T., or Stanford.We had congregated in the Beijing Friendship Hotel, a five-building, red-tiled behemoth, and were bused over a period of 12 days to the Forbidden City, Behai Park, the Acrobatic Macrocosm, Tiananmen Square, the People's Hall, and the Temple of Heaven. We had trekked the Great Wall, watched heavily hyped promotional videos of the 2008 Olympics, and fraternized with students from Tsinghua and Peking University (in my case, smiling vigorously to disguise the large hole in my brain that the language of Chinese should have filled). We were experiencing ultimate immersion, a chance to witness ancient Chinese music, art, dance, and theater, as well as imbibe the rich 10,000-year-old history begun by the great Yellow Emperor, Huang-Di. The C.O.E.A. was probably hoping to replant traditional Chinese values into our Americanized brains, afraid that, after a generation of A.B.C.'s (American-born Chinese), there'd be no more pure-breds left. Xian was next: two nights in a city which seemed to be blanketed in velvety smog.We had this night free from activities to roam the winding noise of China's old city. My docile friend Feng and I swung our arms in the gray winds of Xian that picked up odors of pickles and incense. Across from the restaurant we had just left, an assortment of dried mushrooms scattered in a booth made large, goblin-like formations. The restaurant cornered a large plaza, sunken from the main street through a series of wide planks, and as our eyes roamed over the masses of hunched, leather-skinned people, a sudden apparition swam into our vision."HUA!" Flowers were shoved into Feng's face—maroon-tinged roses in plastic cones. A woman's spectral wail dug in, as he shook his head gently and walked faster, instinctively trying to lose her. She obstinately pressed on, shaking her roses emphatically and bleating persistently, "Mai hua gei piao-liang de nui sheng" ("Buy flowers for the girl"). We walked still faster, having been lectured sternly by jaded leaders to cover our purses and not give in to "hawkers." Half a mile later, she was still there, hands glued to Feng's sleeves. She pressed the roses repeatedly into his hands, dropping them and counting on his reflexes to catch the falling flowers. He tried to give them back, but her hands were suddenly slack and unreceptive. He lay them on the ground near her feet, and she kept spooning them back into his hands. She was of indeterminate age, hair like a spiky bowl, bulkily clothed in tan. Her eyes were like vacant canisters, ages past youthful longing and enthusiasm. Please buy a rose, they seemed to say. Twelve cents won't save my life or give me much food but it might let me feel something more than this. After five minutes, Feng fished out his last three yuan and gave it to her. Her blank eyes stayed the same; she did a little bow, a monotonous thank-you—but she kept standing close, holding out more roses, as if he would now buy the whole bunch. Not even a hope—just a gesture she'd done forever.
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| A group of sun-beaten students in front of Huang-Di's tomb. |
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Feng handed me the rose and I'd barely eked out a shameful thank-you when he was accosted by a small head—a dead-eyed oval with a massive white cup in tiny hands. I didn't hear what he was saying, because his voice was ironed over; he seemed surrounded by a heavy quilt of melancholy. We had no more small bills and weaved our way faster around hundreds of people, but the little boy was still there, velcroed to Feng's benign face. It was shocking to see those eyes in such a small body: the eyes of a middle-aged prisoner deadened to his surroundings. By now we had exited the plaza and reached the rest of our group, standing next to our bus driver and the cameraman who was filming our group for a documentary. Feng had stopped moving, and the little boy was mutely knocking his cup against Feng's waist—tired, little persistent taps.The cameraman lifted his eyebrows. "What's the matter boy? Go away!"Mute tapping, a gaze into a splintery space."Go on. Older brother has to go. He doesn't have any money for you. What's the matter with you? Go on!"The cameraman spoke gruffly but without anger—the ruthless insistence of habit. He was used to this. But the little boy still tapped Feng; he looked like a shell held up by strings. He didn't ask any of us for money, but merely fixated on the beatific face of Feng, while we shuffled around uncomfortably. We started to take out our wallets when Feng unfolded a U.S. dollar for the boy to snatch."You got your money, now go," the cameraman clipped, and the little boy wordlessly sank back, absorbed into the snakelike mass of tiny beggars.We had all seen hawkers and beggars before, encountering the merciless aggression of the needy ever since day one. But I was shocked by the youth of this diminutive being, who could not stop—not for anticipation of a reward, but perhaps for some sort of melancholy knowledge that he would avoid one day's beating. There were some stories that said these children were actually human slaves, sold by impoverished parents or kidnapped, begging for money to give to brutal bosses.Perhaps it's true; after all, about 140 million people in China live on the equivalent of one U.S. dollar a day. The urban poor number around 14 million, with a reported 100,000 abandoned children and 150,000 street children, but researchers put the actual number closer to 300,000.
This is what I remember most from my trip—probably since guilt is one of the most powerful emotions a human can feel. I thought it might do some sort of good to research world aid and provide links, but the people I broached this idea with laughed at my naïveté, saying that these organizations were all corrupt and that there were millions of children in worse straits than the urban poor of China's booming economy. They shrugged with the pointlessness of it all. You can't save the world, they told me—but that wasn't my intention. No one can save the world; they just try to assuage their tremendous guilt in the face of suffering. But how do we determine who deserves what? So we cushion ourselves, point to the futility of the effort, and think we serve the world best by just going through life counting our blessings.But surely, doing some good is better than none. I know this is rather pink and bubbly idealism, and I shouldn't start warping into preachy mode when I have the least right to. But perhaps it is important to keep this shock alive, and why I felt impelled to spread what had struck me most in the foreignness of my supposed ancestry.Jeannette Fang is a second-year piano student.
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