Foreign Abject

I’ve lived in a few countries, travelled through some more, went to school, made friends, associated or worked with people from all over the world and have learned languages that were never spoken by any of my ancestors, but not before I crossed into the People’s Universe of China, had the concept of someone or something being foreign solidified in my mind.

The notion of foreigness is something that was completely absent from my upbringing or my education. I’m from Montreal, Canada, and I grew up in neighborhoods where Hasidic Jews and third generation Greek Canadians, Haitians with Port-au-Prince accents and Vietnamese kids with jagged haircuts crossed paths daily. My classmates were Lebanese, Romanian, Ivorian, French, Congolese, Yugoslavian (before the breakup), Polish, Chinese. Where I come from we do not distinguish between foreign and native, simply because the distinction can’t be made unless you ask everyone you meet for their passport. Big city Canada is too diverse for the concept of foreign to have any relevance on the street.

My family and I have lived in Europe as well, where history and homogeneity come thicker and more readily remembered. It doesn’t get much whiter than certain parts of Austria or Switzerland, but as a Caucasian in those countries, we didn’t stick out, we weren’t the ones that the locals labeled as foreign. In terms of my own evolving conception of the world and its inhabitants at that time, I was living in a Benetton’s ad, blissfully colorless and raceless in a world awash in color and race. My group of friends was so international that some didn’t even have a nationality: one classmate of mine was the son of a Tibetan refugee and another came from Zaire.

China is an entirely different story. For anyone whose visited or lived in this country, save for perhaps other far-easterners not of PRC stock, foreigness is an almost physical force, akin to gravity or menopause, a phenomenon of nature. Foreigness makes you a stare magnet, a 3d mystery so utterly recognisable as human that the humanity itself is perhaps thrown into doubt. Foreigness makes the pretty women giggle and the construction workers wince in silent appraisal. Foreigness makes you instant friends that you never meet again, it clears a path before you like the red sea parting, it keeps unknown dangers at bay. It’s also a little like wearing a social body condom at times. It sometimes feels like you’re really wearing your own skin.

I imagine everyone has different reactions to becoming foreign and different attitudes in dealing with the consequences thereof. A certain bitterness is what I have detected most commonly, a vibe like the egos of fallen royals, wounded by the fact that their former subjects do not judge them worthy of the guillotine, they must walk immune to retribution and yet powerless amongst those whom they once disdained.

I still struggle with being a foreigner. In situations where my foreigness is incandescent, on a crowded train for example, I wonder if this is racism, if this is prejudice, as it is felt in the gut of its target. It is not, for I have never felt any hatred attached to any stares, only a twitch in my character that sometimes makes me turn away from them, wanting to be unseen and in turn not to see my foreigness captured in so many eyes.