The Cost of Face

A few months ago, my husband and I became embroiled in a near-stranger’s suicide attempt. My husband was conflicted when I suggested we call an ambulance. It was one in the morning and my husband looked at me bewildered, and said, “…but the neighbor’s will see her if the ambulance comes…”

For a moment, I was speechless. I didn’t know how to respond to my husband’s fear that involving paramedics would cause a scene and the woman would lose ‘face’ when she returned home. Until that moment I hadn’t realized just how much people in China were willing to sacrifice to save ‘face.’

How Much is that Penis in the Window?

…The one with the…erm…yeah.

So you married a sexist chauvinist…Now what?

As defined by my handy dandy free dictionary app, chauvinism isn’t solely used to describe men who are disgustingly sexist—ok the app didn’t say ‘disgusting,’ that bit was all me. Chauvinism, in fact, is defined as “zealous and aggressive patriotism” as well as “the denigration, disparagement, and patronization of either sex based on the belief that one sex is inferior to the other…”

The main entry for sexism on the other hand, is “attitudes or behavior based on traditional stereotypes of gender roles.” So for those of you eyeballing that title and thinking it redundant, I tell you it is possible to use both terms and not have it mean “woman hater, woman beater.”

Ta shi yige waiguo ren!

I started this blog back before I left the United States in some hope that it would a) allow me to connect with family members despite the Great Firewall of China which blocks facebook and b) possibly entertain somebody with fantastic tails of travel and adventures.

Ok, so maybe my second hope was a bit misplaced considering that everybody and their mother writes a blog these days. Also, when you live in a small town like I do, adventure is pretty thin on the ground. For a bit of clarification, I live in Dandong, China. It is a port city that serves as a main entry point for North Korean trade. Dandong is separated from the Pyongyang province capital Sinuiju by the Yalu river, which anyone strolling along the Chinese boardwalk can take a gawp at.

But other than our curious connections to one of the most reclusive countries in the world, there is not much that goes on in Dandong. So nothing exciting on the adventure front. I even forgot to post routine pictures of travels to Thailand, and other cities in Southern China.

So what, then, prompted me to start again? The pinyin in this title, and my blog’s new title means “She is a foreigner!” This is the number one sentence I am greeted with no matter where I go. These are usually followed by or substituted with “She’s a Russian—Oh my Fuck, she can understand me!” or “Pretty Lady, how much?”

Today during my…

Today during my Adult class we were talking about families and weddings, and this turned into a conversation about holidays. I charge everyone to explain Easter to someone unfamiliar with Jesus or the Bible and not think “Ok, so a man suffered terribly and died for our sins, then rose from the dead, and a giant rabbit sneaks into our houses and hides tie-dyed eggs and chocolate for our children to find…wait–what?”

The Chinese are fucking giants!

There’s nothing like a six hour delay on your midnight flight to really give an adventure a smashing good kick off. Especially when that six hour delay makes you miss your connecting flight in Shanghai, and all you can say in Chinese is pork, chicken, mango, and handbag.

Ok in all fairness, I could actually say, “Do you speak English?” and “I don’t speak Mandarin.” Useful phrases in their own right, but not overly helpful when you ask “Do you speak English?” and the answer is a stream of Chinese consciousness and all you’re trying to figure out is how to get on a plane. Any plane, really. You’re not picky about where you go as long as you go.

My trip from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to my current location in China, which is Dandong, was a three part epic. I was lucky enough to be on the same flight to Shanghai as Jesse, another Language Corps (LC) student. The flight was scheduled to leave for Seoul, Korea at 23:55. Boarding time came and went however, and the entire flight was in line to get on the plane. Jesse and I happened to be first in line, and subsequently it was to us the airport staff directed their tentative suggestions that perhaps…just maybe…we could possibly sit down because the plane was not ready yet. Cheerfully but firmly we said we declined. Standing—*thumbs up, ridiculous grin*. And so an hour passed before a staff member whispered to the room that due to heavy fog in Seoul, the flight was delayed until 06:00. Enter rioting Chinese people. A few people have said that because Chinese is a tonal language, it can be difficult to tell when they’re angry. Let me assure you with absolute certainty, these people have never been around an actual angry Chinese person.

Apsara photoshoot in Phnom Penh

Today I am a woman of the world. I took a packet of laundry detergent and washed my underwear in the sink. Huzzah!

The Killing Fields

Yesterday was my first official day in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I was woken at about 10 a.m. by the ridiculously loud, mechanical ringing of the phone. It turned out to be one of the other LanguageCorps participants who had arrived on Wednesday. He invited me to go out with him and another of the newly arrived girls to visit the Killing Fields. He had all of the arrangements made for transportation already, he said. Though I really did not want to get out of bed just yet, I realized that taking a trip with some of the other students was exactly what I needed in order to assuage my social anxiety about the start of the course on Monday. So I accepted.

The city is hazy with the heat and the dust kicked up by traffic. Though it is the “cool” season, it was already sticky outside. The first thing that struck me was the smell of the city. It is a bizarre mixture: one part incense, one part petrol, one part raw sewage, and one part garbage rotting in the heat. The streets are littered with bags of it, and the majority of locals navigating the roads wear blue hospital masks to avoid the exhaust fumes and dirt. Instantaneously, I loved all of it.

We took a Tuk Tuk, driven by one of the hotel’s regular employees named Smith, a Khmer man who is extremely friendly and has a great sense of humour despite his somewhat limited English. By the time we finished lunch at a local restaurant outside the gates of the Killing Fields, he was already joking with us about how much each of us would charge for a night of “Boom Boom” and how he would charge the most, because he was not “Cheap Cheap.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect at the Killing Fields. I’ll be honest, I was so focused on worrying about whether or not I would even make it this far, I didn’t do a lot of cultural research. We received our audio tour sets and wandered in the direction of the number 1 sign. The first thing you see is the tower monument with glass doors, displaying several stories of human skulls. Like something you would see at the Jeffersonian on an episode of Bones.

The first few audio numbers were clustered very close together around a series of wooden sign posts describing what the multitudes of Pol Pot’s victims would have experienced upon arrival at the execution camp. At first trucks carrying around 30 people came every few days. Then later, they came every day. Despite the sobering information being imparted upon us, I have to say at that point, it was all a little hum drum. The signs stood in place of the actual buildings which had been pulled down after the camp was abandoned by the needy villagers who were desperate for any resources they could find.

It is not until you reach the first pit that the reality of the situation starts to hit you. It’s not a particularly large pit, but the sign cautions you to be careful of bones and scraps of fabric protruding from the earth. Despite the excavation that occurred in 1980, each rainy season continues to bring fragments of the victims ever closer to the surface. Behind the small roped off section, you can see a long femur like bone. But then as you continue on, suddenly you see the multitude of grass covered pits stretching away on either side. There is a small lake at the back side of the field, with an uneven dirt path winding around, flanked by a fence with barbed-wire coiling across the top. A man, missing half of one leg is propped on stilt-like crutches on the opposite side of the fence stretching his hand through the wire. Four young children run along the fence after the tourists, murmuring “some money, some money.” A little further on, a man wades in the shallows of the lake, pulling fragments of bones from the weeds and placing them in the pouch he has made out of his t-shirt.

Rounding the other side of the lake, the path becomes more uneven, and with a jolt, you see the porous shaft of a bone peeking up through the dusty spot you were about to place your foot. A few feet further there is another. The signs now tell you that the men, women, and children that were brought to this camp as “enemies of the state” were not executed with rifles because bullets were expensive. Instead, they were hacked at with whatever farm implements were handy while the loud speakers blared patriotic music at night to cover the sounds of the victims dying.

This time as you return to the tower monument and it’s multitude of skulls, you fully appreciate what it means.

Welcome to Cambodia.

Fear.

There are multitudes of travel diaries, journals, and blogs to be found both on the internet and in print. Any country you can think of, the odds are, you’ll find something on traveling there. Generally, the run of the mill travel testimonial begins with something about how aimless the person felt. Then they might go into the ‘epiphany’ stage where the light bulb clicks on and they decide to embark on the chosen adventure. From there they might move on to the difficulties the writer faced while coping with the language and culture barriers in their host country. Usually, everything is neatly tied off with the ever vague “experience of a life time” and “they-all-lived-happily-ever-after” tacked on as conclusion.
From my experience so far, none of these stories seem to start at the beginning. And by beginning, I don’t mean the first moment you step on foreign soil and are hit by a tidal wave of alienation that leaves you both temporarily shell shocked and the homesickness starts to take root. I mean before all of that: the planning process and the period where you begin to adjust to the idea of moving. What none of these testimonials seem to cover is the fear. Because trust me when I say, the terror can hit you long before you get near an airport.

The first time I moved overseas by myself, I was studying abroad at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. But the two things I had going for me, were that I A) already spoke the language fluently, and B) my mother and little brother were coming along to help me move. When you’re just barely 20 years old, you’re still at the age where nothing is too daunting as long as your mother is with you. She did all the flight and hotel arrangements so I was really just along for the ride, so to speak. The reality of the situation didn’t sink in until the moment the taxi carrying my mom and disappeared around the corner for the last time. I wanted to run after the car, to catch them before they disappeared entirely. It was just nearing dusk, when the shadows creep into the final untouched corners of the room and all of a sudden it hits you that you’ve been sitting in the dark all that time. I stood in the gloom, chilled by the house’s derelict dampness, staring at my surroundings. My roommates wouldn’t be arriving from Spain for another two weeks and I was unaccustomed to the muted sound of British suburbs.
I cried a lot those first few weeks. I was sure I had made the wrong decision and I wanted my mother to come back and take me home. I had traveled before that and had even lived in Okinawa, Japan. But I had been with my family then.

This time around the fear and uncertainty started a lot sooner. It could have something to do with the fact that I plan to go for longer than just 10 months and some change. I’ve often said I see myself teaching like this for the next five years. And maybe it also has something to do with having to leave behind the two things I love most in the world which I didn’t have last time. The first is named Totoro and looks an awful lot like a baby seal. I’m fairly certain he weighs the same as one anyway. And yes, he is a cat. But no, that doesn’t change how much I love him. I could never love him any less than a mother loves her natural born child. The fact that he’s furry, made of blubber, and can’t say the words ‘I love you’ or even ‘I hate you’ makes no difference. I would still jump in front of a bus to save him. The second thing I am struggling with leaving behind is my best friend and older sister, Sarah. Yes for those of you who can count, I did have her the first time around, but it’s a long story and rather personal. She and Totoro mean more to me than anything in this world—though Sarah, I’m sorry, but I’m not jumping in front of a bus for you. It’s not that I don’t love you, it’s just that if you’re frolicking about the middle of the road, you probably deserve to break a leg and a few ribs–just sayin’. Still love you lots, though!

I have more to lose this time. Farther to fall. And it sounds a lot more permanent than going on a jaunt to England and France did. It’s the ‘Breaking of the Fellowship’ so to speak. My dad keeps going on about me leaving the nest for good, and I kept arguing this fact. It wasn’t until recently that I realized why. It’s a break from everything I have ever known. Growing up, being officially on my own, with no one to bail me out if I screw up. No mother to bandage my knee if I fall, and no father to preach at me about why scary movies shouldn’t be allowed in his house, but then still allowing me to sleep on the floor next to his side of the bed after a nightmare. Even at 24, the idea of being an adult—a real adult—terrifies me.

The last month in particular has been extremely difficult for me. It’s all the ‘what if’s’ and ‘what am I giving up’s’ that are making me hesitate. What if I didn’t go—would it make that guy want to be with me again? If I stayed, would this be the time that I finally felt like I belonged and had friends? Am I really ready to be on my own? Should I really give up this job when I’m starting to move up the ladder? Each question has made me doubt everything I thought I knew about myself and about what I wanted. Did I plan this trip just because I was bored and needed something to do? Do I really want to do this?

I don’t know the answer to any of those questions. The ‘what if’s’ will always be with me. It’s not too late; I don’t have to go if I don’t want to. But I will. The fear is natural. It’s a part of living and without it we’d be hollow—or worse, boring! I will cry a lot between now and the day I leave for Cambodia. I will probably also cry once I’m there, and then again when I move into my apartment in China. I will miss my Puss-Puss (yes I know it’s a bizarre nickname, but suck it up, he’s a cat!) and my best friend. I will miss my parents and my childhood. I might even miss the heartache I brought upon myself whilst in Kentucky. And that’s OK.