But I am le tired...

Today while returning from the cafeteria with some delicious food to go I found myself repeatedly hearing “Frenchman! Frenchman!” This is not particularly compelling conversation, nor is it my name, so I continued walking ahead, thinking about the times I have had cab drivers tell me they thought I was French. One time I was with a Chinese girl, which the cabbie suggested meant I was romantic like a Frenchman, but another time I was alone. I asked him why he thought I was French and he gestured to my Carhartt jacket, which is about as American as a brand of clothing can be. It’s an American company worn predominantly by American farmboys. It’s rugged, functional, and I would say highly unfashionable, which collectively defeat the French stereotype, right? Right? Just then I hear someone yelling again, “he’s French!” I'm happy just to find my Chinese comprehension has grown increasingly disruptive of my thought bubbles, but given my proclivity for French airs, I thought I ought to turn around, just in case the yelling was regarding moi.

And it was. I proceed to chat a bit with a group of three French students with one of the girls refusing to believe I wasn’t really French. I explained that I had already met two of them last term at a party. To demonstrate I asked one, “your name is Lamia, right?” Unfortunately the proper pronunciation of her name cemented the suspicion. I must be French. No buts about it. Raised in America by sandwich makers. It’s just who I am.


Je suis français. You didn’t know it, nor did I. You just liked me for who I was, but as it turns out, you liked someone who was French. On the otherhand, this development presents a challenge since so many of my social interactions here in China are oriented toward presenting an American face to foreigners and Chinese. I live in an international nexus. Above me are four floors of Uzbeks, Russians, Kyrgyzstanis, Europeans, and below are floors of Japanese and Koreans (floor 8 and below are all squatty potties). I am likely to be only one American in the handful that any given person will meet in their life. This is a weighty burden for someone who understands how memes reproduce and die. Everything else they know will come from media, especially media generated in their own country, which predominantly provides the meat of the errors I must correct, stereotypes to break, or learning to do.

So let this be my motto, La souris est sous la table, le chat est sous la chaise, le singe est sur la branche.