Aye I Longwhite: An American-Chinese teenager’s adventure in the Middle Kingdom and beyond
Authors: Alan Tien
Aye I Longwhite
By Alan Tien
Written July, 2014
Contents
Chapter 3: Journey to the West
“Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language.”
―
Robert A. Heinlein
,
Stranger in a Strange Land
Austin Longwhite. Why, God, why was I cursed with such an awful name? It was bad enough to enter high school sophomore year, when everyone else had been together for an eternity. But then to be from the US, half white, and with an “American” accent in my Mandarin, I was doomed to be teased by the alpha males. “Bullied” might be the better word; teasing is done in elementary school, where we learned “Sticks and stones might break my bones, but words don’t hurt me” as our flimsy defense. The reality is, though, hurtful words cut right through to the bone, and mocking words against your name strike at your identity, your soul.
“Austin. What kind of name is that?” one of the boy leaders spat at me, as if just saying the words tainted his mouth.
“It’s the name of a city in the US. In Texas,” I answered neutrally, factually, hoping that they would bore of me and go on their way.
“City?
Bah. It’s barely a town. There’s what? Less than 1 million people? In China, we have over 200 cities over 1 million people! There are 10 mega-cities with over 10 million people!” bragged a follower, now that the leader had opened up the attack. As if he had somehow created those cities himself, I thought. “Now those are cities worth being named after. Why would you name yourself after something at the bottom of the list?”
As if I chose my own name, I thought bitterly. You think I would choose such a stupid name? I don’t want to stick out any more than you do
; there’s probably some Chinese proverb about the “tallest bamboo is the first to be cut.” Why couldn’t I have some normal name, like “Zhang Wei?” 100 million people named Zhang can’t be wrong.
Luckily I was saved from coming up with a witty retort by a third boy who jumped into the fun. “And what’s up with your family name?
White. Huh! Everyone can see you’re white. That’s almost as embarrassing as being named after a fishing village!”
I
was
embarrassed by being named White after my Caucasian father. My face burned at the indignity of being associated with that loser. I didn’t have the energy to defend Austin, the US city that was the high tech center of the South.
The leader of the group, sensing that he was losing control of the conversation, swept in for the kill.
“And adding Long in for good measure. Maybe you mean you have a very, very…” - he dragged out the third “very” for effect – “very long nose!” That was the cue to his posse to break out into uncontrollable laughter, drawing unwanted attention from the other students passing by. They smiled and nodded, whether because they agreed or because they didn’t want to offend the bullies and draw attention to themselves, it wasn’t clear.
Hot tears burned at th
e corner of my eyes. My heart’s pounding sounded like surf crashing in my ears. Sweat rings expanded under my armpits.
They had gone too far. Long was my
mom’s maiden name, and Long-White was the misguided practice of concatenating last names together in deference to something called “Women’s Lib.” I didn’t know what “lib” was, but that’s how my mom had explained it to me. We dropped the hyphen in Long-White and made the “W” lower case when we got our Chinese visa, to avoid confusion with immigration control.
My mom was the breadwinner. She was my idol. She slaved away every day to support my father and me. I don’t know what she ever saw in him. He “let himself go” and became fat, never exercising. I frankly had no idea what he had done all day while I was at school, except to spend Mom’s hard-earned cash.
And then, the ingrate, as if life wasn’t good enough for him to be pampered like a stud bull, he ran off with an African woman. Not even someone from one of the rich African countries like Nigeria or Kenya. She was from somewhere like South Sudan, or North Sudan, or for all I know, the newly-liberated Central Sudan.
“Long” is Chinese, I wanted to shout. I’m just like you!
Almost. Ok, half. But don’t you see? I have mostly black hair.
But the boys didn’t want to see the similarities; they only wanted to pick on the differences, to show their superiority as if the
y chose their own names, selected their own birth country, and decided on their own Chinese blood.
Instead of a smart comeback, I swung into action. My limbs had a mind of their own. My
martial arts training took over, all reaction, as if the words had been physical blows. My right leg swept out, taking down two of the surprised boys, and tactically, reducing my number of opponents. Using the circular momentum of my sweep, I unslung my backpack in one smooth motion and observed unemotionally as my book-laden bag smacked into the side of the head of one of the other boys.
That left the leader, still sporting the grin from his coup de grace.
My brain finally got control of my body and checked my arm swing before it broke his nose. I pulled my right arm punch to the left, causing it to miss, then opened my hand and reversed my swing to backhand-slap his face. It was just enough to stun him and to let all the anger seep out of me. My martial arts master would not be happy with me, defiling my training with this anger-strike, but he was all the way back in the US. If I couldn’t use my training at a time like this, then what was the point of all those hours honing my moves?
--------------
My mother sided with my master.
“Austin! Your first week in school, and you get into a fight? What’s wrong with you? I let you take kung fu training to defend yourself, not to beat up defenseless kids!”
I figured correcting her that my training was in mixed martial arts and not kung fu was a little academic. “But Mom,” I said, realizing I sounded like a 6 year old as I said it, “I was defending myself! They were making fun of me. They were making fun of you!”
My mother took the high road that all Chinese mothers take in arguments –
she used guilt. “I had to leave an important meeting to come get you! Do you know how many strings we had to pull just to get you into this school? You know that this is a very competitive school, especially for foreigners such as us! And now, you have a red card already!”
I know my mom was trying to use a soccer – sorry, it’s now called football here – analogy to make it more accessible to me, so I didn’t correct her that a yellow card
, not the red card, was the warning one. Her argument worked. I dropped my head in shame.
I give her credit. Seeing that she had won, she didn’t rub it in. “Oh come here Austin.” She opened her arms to me. I wanted to resist it, to show my independence and insolence, but the gravity was too strong, and I was sucked into her warm embrace. I did manage to hold back the sob though.
One minor victory.
“I know things have been tough with the move and everything.” Everything must’ve encompassed
Dad’s moving out, but she didn’t say it. “I’m sorry we uprooted you from your high school, but this was an offer we couldn’t refuse. I mean, how often does an American get an opportunity to work in the world capital, in China? My company covered our visa. Do you know how much the visa itself costs?”
I have to admit all the finances of expat living were as obscure as calculus to me. I heard my parents talk about it excitedly when the final offer came, but I was busy, probably replaying in my head the last episode of a
netshow comedy I had just watched. But I did know my mom got a real sweet deal. Housing, school, car, and a bunch of other stuff thrown in for good measure, it was all covered. But the visa, the permit to enter the Holy Land, the Forbidden Country, that was worth more than all the other stuff added together.
Suddenly concerned not just for myself but for my mom, I blurted out, “Our visa isn’t at risk is it?”
She smiled comfortingly, “No honey, the principal promised to smooth it out with the kids’ parents. He knew they were bullies, but there was no proof to it. But your violence proved it.”
I thought that logic was a bit flawed, but since I was the happy beneficiary of it, I let it go. I guess violence is so shocking that it risked the school’s immaculate image.
Rather than blaming the attacker, they rather hide the event itself.
“But Austin, that’s the last time. You
have to put a lid on it. I know you have testosterones coursing through your veins, but I expect you to be able to control it.”
Man, that’s an irritating line of argument, to blame my actions on hormones. I don’t point out your crankiness
during that time of month, do I Mom, I mentally shot back. But she had a point. I totally lost it. In retrospect, the incident seemed trivial. I wasn’t beyond a bit of self-pitying though.
“I wish I could just have a normal name.” Once the floodgates opened, all my rhetorical complaints poured out. “Why can’t I just have straight black hair, and small single-lid eyes, and a
cute small nose? Instead, I have ugly curly brown hair! Dumb cow eyes! A long, long nose!” I was really feeling sorry for myself, for looking like Frankenstein.
My mom’s eyes grew big. She isn’t usually at a loss for words, but this time, she gasped.
“Austin, really! Where I’m from, hapa kids are the most beautiful!” Hapa means mixed blood in Hawaiian. My mom’s not from Hawaii, but she likes it so much that she sometimes pretends she’s from there, shaka sign and all. For a moment, she sighed. I think she was thinking about the old screen actor Keanu Reeves, whom she adored. He was hapa, with some Chinese and Hawaiian blood mixed in with English, Irish and Portuguese. Pulling herself back to the present, she reminded me, “You have the best of both worlds!”
“I have the worst of both worlds! In fact, I’m not from any world!” I cried. I mean
, I said in a very emotional way. I didn’t
actually
cry.
“Oh honey.” She held me tight
.
I continued my
blubbering, “Why did he leave us?”
My mom was silent. My r
ock shed a tear, dropping hot on my forehead. Was it for me or for her, I don’t know, but it made me scared. My mom was always the strong one. She finally choked, “I don’t know. I’m sorry. Really I am.” She held me tighter and rocked back and forth like I was a baby. I didn’t complain.
--------------
Sometime after Dad had left, I had asked Mom what she saw in him to begin with. “I mean, you’re beautiful and smart and Chinese! Why the hell did you marry Dad?”
My mom frowned at my swearing, but she let it pass, seeing how distraught I was. “He was sweet, a real nice guy, and really smart too.”
“But he was Caucasian!” I thought I had raised the killer argument.
“He was really cute.
Big eyes, aristocratic nose, masculine jaw.” My mom almost got dreamy. I was stunned. No accounting for taste.
I tried again,
“But he was an engineer! From a nothing school!”
I had once asked my
dad why he went to Dalian University, of all the schools in China. He explained as a white kid applying from the US, the odds of getting in were terrible. Even though he had gone to Stanford, the best engineering school in the US, it was still considered a second rate school compared to the ones in China. “I applied for the Masters program from colleges in cities A to Z, and D accepted me with a full scholarship. Even a TA, teaching assistant, job with a stipend. For a poor boy from the Midwest, this was a dream come true.”
My mom weakly defended my
dad, “Dalian University has a decent engineering school… Anyway, that’s not the point. I loved your dad. He was different from all the other Chinese boys who chased me. He was shy, polite, humble. He didn’t expect to get me, which ironically I found attractive. When I started dating him, it was quite the scandal!” She smiled thinking about how she had shocked all the Chinese suitors who just couldn’t believe that she would spurn them, all with such great earning potential, for an engineer from a second rate school, and a white kid to add insult to injury.
She continued, “There was something about him. Something I couldn’t pinpoint or put in words. I guess we just had chemistry. The minute I saw him, I fell in love. I actually tried to avoid him, turn him down. I knew my parents and friends would disapprove, but that
something
kept me from entirely shutting the door. He felt that slight opening, and kept hanging around, always the ultimate gentleman, until I got tired of the preening Chinese boys and started going out with him.
“It was just simple things at first, like
a tea date. He was the one who first introduced me to coffee. I made a deal with him. I would try his bitter black drink if he would try my ‘baijiu.’ ”
Baijiu
directly translates to “white wine” but it’s really a Chinese clear liquor made from some grain like sorghum. It’s a traditional drink for the Chinese and a must for toasting government officials at banquets, but for the uninitiated, I’m told it tastes like horse piss and burns like moonshine. Who first drank horse piss to make that comparison, I wondered.