So They Asked me, Do you Eat Cats?
It all started out innocently.
For me, it was a simple act out of faith when I boarded on the plane to Dominican Republic with a group of European Americans, heading on my first ever mission trip in an orphanage six months ago.
I had my very reason to do it. Just coming back from an independent volunteer trip to Costa Rica, (during which I had to spend 2 weeks without my suitcase after the airline messed it up, which also makes a great story that I’m saving to tell for later), I saved a special spot for Central America close to my heart.
For even though I never learned how to speak Spanish, (yet), I’ve felt in love with the sun-kissed land under my feet and the freshness of wind blowing my hair. I’ve felt in love with the warm hugs and lovely kisses on my cheek.
It was my first destination for self-discovery in a new culture ever since I came to the United States.
And this time, I thought I was prepared with prayers and support from people. I was excited to see God’s work in all nations (especially after been exposed to the gospel almost solely in a western context). And I was so happy to be a part of it.
That’s why I didn’t see it coming.
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“Chi-na!”
The boys flooded in front of me, staring at me with excitement and curiosity. For days that’s all I remembered they calling me, and it was overwhelming.
“Gato. Comer.”
One little boy started making some gestures of eating with his fingers. He smiled at me sneakily.
Two Spanish words that I clearly recognized.
And what a coincidence, I happened to be wearing my favorite pair of cats-shaped earrings.
“Jackie Chan. Bruce Lee.” They kungfu-ed as they shot out these names.
“No gato, no gato.” I panicked, trying to explain to them that I clearly don’t have any interests in eating cats at all which clearly ended up in vain.
Language is powerful. I remember myself thinking. My intellectual ability was probably equaling with a 2-year-old. With my limited Spanish, I couldn’t even back myself up. For the first time, in front of a group of kids with the average age of 8 or so, I felt totally unequipped and helpless. (It almost reminded me of bullying in elementary school.)
I was struggling for the next couple days. Especially when I realized people from my own team, who I could perfectly communicate in English with and share the same belief with, couldn’t seem to understand what I was going through neither.
I was left with no choice but to devote myself to physical labor, tasks that didn’t really make sense to me but the only option that could make myself feel a little bit more comforting and useful at the moment. (Just realized how easily I’m likely to fight against myself whenever feeling frustrated as I’m writing it down.)
One day at noon, my emotions were at peak. I didn’t feel like going to lunch and decided to stay and continue shoveling the wall. And it was at that very moment, an elder boy came to me.
He started shoveling the wall alongside with me.
“I don’t know why you got angry when they were calling you china,” he started speaking in English. “That’s the only thing we know about you. Just like how you could call us Dominicano, and we could call them Americano.”
It struck me instantly.
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For so long I’ve believed in the lies that my English is not good enough.
That’s the only explanation I could think of when I feel detached from lectures and conversations of other people, when I have to go back and forth a few times in order to finish one chapter of a book and still left feeling unfulfilled and failing to fully comprehend.
Until I randomly came across a book from MLK Library, the Lucky Ones, documenting one Chinese immigrant family’s journey in America.
When I was able to finish almost half of the book on a single metro ride, I realized something magical just happened. The same feeling when I first watched the Joy Luck Club was brought back.
Those have been so far the stories closest to mine that I’ve ever read in the English language.
And I immediately realized that for so long I’ve been forcing myself to adopt the narrative of someone else, and in many cases(especially formal settings), an American male of a European descent, while I am simply not living the same experience and couldn’t see the world through their lenses.
(with the original motive to immerse myself in a second language, as an individual who’s passionate about culture and studying humanity subjects in an American university)
My detachments from those environment came only from the irrelevancy those stories meant for me.
And even with the rare finding I’ve come across, (The Lucky Ones, Joy Luck Club, Fresh off the Boat), they were only to remind me more of the compromises and sacrifices that Eastern values had to make in order to be accepted and thrive under a west-dominated culture.
What about the rest of them?
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I had questioned myself constantly.
I felt extremely guilty whenever I was reluctant in talking to other about my own culture, as if being Chinese meant something unflattering to me. And I know it’s not true.
I was one of the most Chinese Chinese girls you could have ever met.
I love the depth of hundreds of philosophy schools in Chinese culture. I love the richness and diversity the culture has embodied transitioning through dynasties and centuries. I’ve read extensively through some of the greatest literature in Chinese, ancient and contemporary, urban and rural. I’ve fallen in love with all kinds of arts and musics that culture has produced. To this day, I still find it fascinating and often get chills from my newest findings.
I couldn’t be more proud of my culture. So what’s wrong?
I’ve simply haven’t found the vocabulary in English to carry the richness of what I learned from my culture. I simply couldn’t recognize how my country was still often perceived from the outside world and haven’t read enough stories to back myself up.
I wouldn’t have fallen in love with a dogs-and-cats-eating culture neither, if I were to have only read about it in this language. (I’m still amazed by how some things traveled further than the others.) After this long, I’ve failed to have a truly in-depth conversation about China with people from other countries.
I would rather choose to stay silent when I didn’t know what to say, even though my silence could have often been perceived as another confirmation of the stereotypes. It broke my heart whenever I heard my country was described in a stereotypical way especially by my peers (as I’m also navigating the western-glorification in Chinese contemporary culture). I’ve determined myself to not bring existing stereotypes any further to this country until I’m educated enough to replace them with fresher stories to tell (which inspired me for an action to be detailed in an upcoming post: How I decided to travel back to my own country with eyes of a tourist, after realizing that there’s so much more I would like to learn about my culture).
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One often misperceived mystery: China is a country with no social media and limited freedom of press and expressions.
Not true.
Because honestly, it has the most expressive and active online forums that I’ve ever seen. I’m still amazed by the almost-spontaneous and in-depth news stories, comments, and observation about western world I could read from Chinese social media that’s evolving more rapidly than I ever imagined every single day.
(Even though I deactivated my “Chinese Facebook” account shortly after coming to college largely due to complications of high school culture that I think most people could relate, and still remained fairly inactive on the other ones simply due to my preference for face-to-face communication, they were just personal choices.)
Having been exposed to western cinema and literature at fairly young age, I’ve watched American movies and read American books in almost every genre. And like Adichie, I never had a single story of America.
And now that I think about it, it had never occurred to me as a young girl that I was watching stories of people who were exotic-looking and lived in a foreign land as distant as another planet in the universe(which is often what I feel that my culture was perceived in western cinema and literature).
I was sincerely trying to relate with people in those stories simply as other human-beings navigating life challenges just as I was, even though their stories are clearly dramatized and we are living under complete different circumstances (and let’s be honest, all of us are.)
Life is never what it’s described in novels and movies, that I know. But it was not until I arrived in America that I first realized, I was simply not in the picture.
I was trapped in a role with no lines and no voices. My face tells it all.
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America is a truly magic land.
People from all over the world, coming to this land bringing their own cultural values and determinations to form a greater American dream. It’s big salad bowl with a mixture of every ingredient possible.
I couldn’t imagine having a richer cultural-immersive experience in any other countries and wouldn’t treat some of the most amazing encounters for the world.
Anyone can be American. And anyone can play a part.
It indeed has the potential to allow every single culture to flourish and create the most beautiful diversity in the world, if only people could simply accept others the way they are without one being the dominance.
What if nobody needs to lose its taste?
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As I was struck by as simple as what the boy told me, I realized how deeply entangled I’ve been by the American culture I’ve been too much exposed to in day-to-day life.
It was a culture where it’s almost too easy for me to take things personally, that I almost forgot I could’ve stayed fresh with a perspective as a foreigner(whereas in other cultures, foreigners are harder to actually be integrated into the society and often treated very differently).
As I finally lifted the weight off my shoulder, I realized that I was never angry with the fact that I was called “china” and “cats-eater” by these boys.
Their reactions was so genuine and sincere. And they were simply saying it out loud based on everything they knew. Their curiosity was so real and it’s simply something I’ve never experienced before even having been abroad for a while.
I was more frustrated for the fact that I can’t speak Spanish for I know for sure how amazing the conversations we would have and how happy I would be to tell them everything they’d like to know.
What I was struggling with the most was that I simply couldn’t assimilate myself with the same rationale as a Western Christian missionary, even though we came with the same motives to be doing good.
When I started to allow myself to really befriend with those boys for the next couple days, I realized that actually, I felt much more relatable emotionally with them even we don’t speak the same language. They almost reminded so much of myself when I was little and I could totally see myself being one of their peers instead of a savior.
Each of them has such a unique and lovable personality that slowly came clearly to me. None of them were nameless boys of color that were waiting to be saved to me, who they often appeared as in western media.
I laughed with them as I pretended to do Kung-fu moves and make cats-eating gestures. “Bruce Lee, mi papa,” I shouted back to them with a serious face, struggling to hide the amusements rising up from my heart.
They crowded around me with excitements as I wrote down each of their names in Chinese on a cardboard. Their amazed expressions reminded me how wonderfully-shaped each of the characters of my language are and how beautiful my culture is, and how not nearly enough has been celebrated. And I had each one of them signed my pants.
Thanks God that they don’t know what stereotypes are, and hope they never have to.
And among them all, I found myself spend more time with the boys who’re new to the orphanage; the boys who’re Haitian; the boys who are not intelligently the brightest or having trouble in speech. For when God took everything that I could take pride in, I saw myself as no difference they who they were as brothers and sisters in Christ. (And it was so great to witness one boy who was especially quiet and shy gradually brightened up in the group, after I told him that he’s my favorite.)
I remember the name and face of each one of them so clearly as if it’s yesterday(but think it’s better to go anonymous here). Because our interactions were so genuine, it reminds of me how it used to be like before the age of overdose in technology and social media.
Comparing with the western culture, which was often perceived as more advanced by developing countries, (and many people would say I’m fortunate enough to get exposed to), I found myself more drawn to the simpleness, slowness, and happiness of the Dominican culture. For some, I was going to a less developed country to help the poor and vulnerable; but for me, I was receiving something that’s so much richer than what can be visually seen and physically touched.
(Matthew 5:3)
The joy I experienced was simple and real. And I praise God to allow me seeing such a great picture of His kingdom, where people could simply enjoy life as the way it is with less distractions the values defined by the world. And I pray they would never lose the richness they have for what’s praised elsewhere.
Through them my faith was made strong.
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As I’m continuing on the journey of finding my own narrative and as I’m still navigating in finding the balance between my faith and cultural identity(detailed in another upcoming post: A Personal Guide for being a Feminist, Chinese, and Christian girl with Strength and Vulnerability), I’m realizing more and more that how God has blessed each one of us with gifts and stories uniquely for ourselves. If only we could fully embrace and acknowledge the equal amazingness and perfectly-balanced differences of our identities, there wouldn’t be so much conflicts(both in and out of Christian community).
After all, love defines us all.
