“My nephew speaks Chinese”

First off, allow me to apologize for not posting with the frequency that I promised in my Back to Blogging Post. I was overwhelmed by two assignments for one of my classes, had my 21st birthday, and returned to my home town (Houston) to celebrate it with my family.

While I was in Houston, I thought I had temporarily escaped the life of being a Chinese language student. I say “escaped” because I’ve been busily slaving away on my Chinese final project and fighting to memorize over 230 new characters a week. Moreover, my younger brother, the other Chinese speaker in my family, was off visiting a friend in North Carolina.

Well, as things turned out, I ended up speaking more Chinese this weekend than I do during an average week at University. My aunt, a biologist at Rice University, has just hired three Chinese post-docs, and one of them and his wife are temporarily staying with my aunt while he looks for an apartment. They had only been in America three days before I met them yesterday, and their (spoken) English was pretty bad.

My aunt brought them over to my house, informing them “my nephew speaks Chinese”–though I’m pretty sure she didn’t really believe that I can. I’ve always gotten the feeling that she doubts my ability to communicate in Chinese. Anyway, my family called me down from my room, and we had a fast, rather awkward exchange at my doorstep (they were just about to leave with my grandparents to go to dinner).

I felt really stupid because I wanted to make them feel welcome and not feel awkward, but the setting of the brief chat just wasn’t conducive to any meaningful conversation. After having my aunt hype up my Chinese speaking capability, I’d dissapointed the couple.

Luckily, we all ended up going to brunch together at this real southwestern place, and I sat opposite the Chinese couple.

It was really funny helping them order brunch. It’s pretty hard to explain grits in Chinese. After trying to explain French Toast, chicken enchiladas, and Eggs Benedict, they just told me that they’d like whatever I like best. It made me laugh because I remember saying the same thing to so many Chinese people when I went out with them in Beijing. We all ended up ordering Migas, which came with cheesy grits and refried beans. Like I did in Beijing, they spent a good amount of time poking about the food with their fork, smelling it, smiling, and promising me that they found it delicious.

I had a great time talking to them, and we chatted about Chinese literature, fun things to do in Beijing (where they went to grad school), China’s Internet and bloggers, and the immense pressure that students in China have to deal with. The husband’s accent was a little difficult for me at times, but his wife spoke quite precisely and didn’t mind rephrasing/repeating things if I didn’t fully understand.

I was struck by their enthusiasm and their bond with each other–they’ve never been outside of China and are going to be in Houston for two years.

As we parted, I felt very protective of them. I know they’re adults and everything, but after watching them struggle to communicate with everyone else, and after seeing how everyone perceived them–that is, as awkward non-English speaking Chinese, I felt that I was the first person that they’d met who could understand the depth of their true personas, the first person who didn’t only see the stumbling, awkward, false personas that are the result of the language barrier.