north vs. south

On the bus home today I found myself thinking about my stay in Beijing. Over the course of the last two months or so, I've become remarkably comfortable here. I actually find myself not only in comfortable enough to romp around the city by subway, bus and taxi (the last is actually remarkably challenging cuz you have to explain where you want to go and what route you want to take to get there) BUT also content in romping the city's many corners. Beijing has SO many musuems! If you know me at all, you know I love being able to explore musuems and galleries.

But it's not so simple. It was definitely a big adjustment. For the first two/three weeks, I was pretty unhappy with feeling like an outsider. Aside from the frequent repeating I had to do as people didn't understand my accent, I think just a general feeling of being neither here nor there often hit me.

My memory works in the most bizarre ways sometimes.

As I sat high up uptop the foremost tire, my mind flashed back to a scene from two years ago to another high view of black asphalt behind flat bus glass. Two years ago, I was in HK with my parents heading back to our hotel. Our relatives there advised us to take the double-decker bus (1) because I was so intrigued by it and (2) because from a seat on the upper deck, we could get a great view of the HK skyline (something else I adore!). From our seats in the upper deck, we overheard quite a clamor from below.

A group of 8 Mandarin-speaking, obviously mainlander tourists climbed on and proceeded to make a scene. You see, in traveling to HK, not one of them spoke Cantonese (having been told that Mandarin and English was enough to get by on. . . they don't call it "pu-tong-hua" for nothing). First attempting Mandarin, they received responses in Cantonese. Pushing forward, the travellers tried their luck with English, waving hands frantically while leaning against their luggage. Since, supposedly, all HK people speak English. Unfortunately, the English of the ticket agent and the travellers was mutually halting at best and one visitor finally gave Cantonese-accented Mandarin a shot. You know, the kind where you don't really speak the language but just try to add enough accents to sound like you do. The Chinese equivalent of adding a "la" or "los" to everything English word you say to turn it into Spanish.

Unfortunately, any Cantonese-speaking person will tell you that method will NOT get you through the numbers. They finally resorted to showing different HKD bills, settling how much their total fare should be and moved on into seats. At their moving backs, the ticket agent muttered angrily, "bok lau to!" or, roughly translated, uncouth northern-heads/mandarin speakers!

This recollection brought me to a couple revelations.

(1) For all my complaining that Beijing-rs are rather prejudiced, there is not a actual WORD to describe southerns or outsiders. Leave it to Canto people to figure out a way to refer mockingly to an entire language population (lau to). While I do occasionally see the smirk (lian she) or get rude remarks from bus attendants, small shop owners, and attendants, at least BJ has not managed to institutionalize their prejudice into the lexicon.

(2) It's a little case of pot calling the kettle black. As humans, we're all a little territorial about others taking our spoils. It was explained to me that old old Beijing people (not refering to age but lineage), often feel that individuals from other provinces and foreigners have gained advantage from the city of their birthright. Instead of seeing these individuals' contribution to economic progress as mutually beneficial, there is a sentiment that if outsiders weren't so goshdarn competitive and pushy, those spoils would naturally belong to "natives." So, many times it's not the very high-ups in society that give attitude, it's the lower middle class who view outsiders as the scrapegoat for their material lacks. Notice the striking similarity with the immigrant situation in the US as well.

(3) Strangers have been incredibly kind to me here in Beijing. For this I am very thankful. From an elderly lady literally leading my friend and I to the subway station 2 blocks away to the nice bus operators who have been patient explaining where I should get off to the awesome college students who've taken the time to chat with me, I've encountered much help.