Stumbling to the Unknown

A couple of weeks ago, I was introduced to an older gentleman who's a retired but supposedly legendary journalist. He asked where I was from, and I said China. "Oh," he said, "When I was working for xxx News, we shared a floor with a Korean news service. Also, I hired this girl from Macau. She was just wonderful..."

"That's great!" I smiled and nodded. What I really wanted to say, however, was, "What the %^&*! So I'm supposed to feel some kinship between us, because you happen to know a couple of my yellow-skinned cousins?"

Try that to a white guy: "My college roommate was German. He loved beer."

On a second thought, the legendary journalist's statements weren't really that outrageous. It's just human nature, I figure, to ransack your knowledge for clues and references when you encounter something novel. You search your memory for things that bear some resemblance to the novelty in front. You mark down those things, like familiar landmarks on a map, and then chart a path towards the unknown. Some people just like to think aloud.

When I took Charlie—a six foot three white guy—home with me to a small town in China, he was ogled everywhere he went. People pointed him out, invited their friends to join the sightseeing, and yelled, "look, there's a foreigner!" My family embraced this foreigner, although they were still doing the charting and mapping for a path to understand the novelty. We went to a dinosaur fossil museum in the nearby city. Charlie felt rather at home among those giant dinosaur skeletons, because for the first time in days he wasn't the only big phenomenon. Suddenly, my parents pulled Charlie aside and excitedly told him: "Look, your countrymen over there." They were pointing to a white couple. When the couple walked by us, we listened. They were speaking German.

Charlie's one eighth German, so I guess my parents were not that off.