“Wàiguó rén shì huàirén”

“Wàiguó rén shì huàirén”

Prior to Peace Corps, I often my measured success in terms of big projects that took weeks or months to plan just to produce one successful event. While a Peace Corps Volunteer, I’ve discovered that some of the most impactful and groundbreaking successes happen in a single serendipitous moment. These moments, however, only happen after developing a supportive environment for success to occur within. I’ve come to see site integration as a process of developing these supportive circumstances so that I can do the work I’m here to do: help Chinese people better understand what it means to be American.

On an average day, with average, dry, sunny, summer weather, walking my regular route towards the cafeteria, I crossed paths with my foreign affairs officer, Shane. He was walking in the same direction as me, so I started walking next to him. He likes jokes, so I didn’t say hello. Instead, I shadowed him, six inches from his left shoulder. On his right, his seven-year-old daughter and her friend were shouting up a playful storm. His daughter was the first to notice me and shouted my name as a joke, “bèn!” My English name, Ben, when pronounced with a falling tone in Chinese means “stupid.” Kids love it.

Shane, surprised, turned and looked at me with a rumbling “wah.” He smiled and laughed, “I didn’t notice you,” he said. I just smiled back and told him I had been walking next to him for about a minute. Just beside him, I noticed the pale-white face of his daughter’s friend. He was staring at me with a horrified conviction that only an innocent five-year-old could produce. Suddenly, he extended his finger and yelled: “Wàiguó rén shì huàirén!” or, foreigners are bad people! Shane’s face clenched, sour, the way it always does when he is embarrassed. He turned to me, shaking his head. I turned to the child and asked him in Chinese, “how do you know if I’m good or bad?”

Mouth agape, he turned to Shane’s daughter and said: “He can speak Chinese?”

Shane’s daughter responded, full of innocence, “He’s a good person.”

“Then how do I know if he is a good person or a bad person?” He questioned her.

I said to him, making sure I spoke slowly and clearly, “You’re right. You don’t know if I’m a good person or a bad person. You have to get to know me first.”

“Oh,” he replied. He did not question further. Instead, he went back to playing with Shane’s daughter. As our paths forked, I said goodbye to Shane. They went into the convenience store and I went upstairs to eat lunch.

It was a moment of clarity, that the people I think I’ve impacted aren’t necessarily the ones I am impacting. Shane’s daughter sat in stark contrast with her friend. The child that knows me knows I’m not a bad person and no longer sees foreigners with a broad-brush stroke. In contrast, the child who never had an opportunity to speak to a foreigner seemed to look at me, not as an individual, but as a representation of all that is unfamiliar.

Yet, impact isn’t a one-to-one transmission. Rather, impact ripples out from a supportive environment; an environment I’ve slowly cultivated over the first and second semesters. And with the support of Shane’s daughter, I was able to have a frank conversation with a stranger and leave behind a lasting impression that shattered his stereotype. I only hope that in place of this stereotype that “all foreigners are bad people,” he develops a more nuanced and complex view of “I don’t know.”