It's finally happened

My friend Linda (one of the Chinese ESL teachers here at my school) and I were catching the bus back to my school's campus after going for dinner at a restaurant near the local university. As we sat down, the only other passenger on the bus started talking to Linda. I caught a piece of their conversation when Linda looked at me and told the woman that I was Canadian and a teacher at the Maple Leaf school. The bus driver piped up, they all started talking loudly and began smiling and laughing quite a bit. I don't understand enough Mandarin to have understood the rest of the conversation, but there was a lot of laughing and smiling. You may be wondering, "Why"? 

When Linda and the woman started talking, the woman asked if I was Linda's boyfriend. She explained that no, I wasn't, but we worked together. Then she asked the woman if I was from XinJiang province (a province in the NW of China)!!! Linda laughed and told her that no, I was Canadian and that I was one of the foreign teachers at the school. The bus driver then chimed in and agreed that I looked like I could be from the NW and that I wasn't even slightly Asian or had a Muslim background (XinJiang has a large Muslim population and is near Kyrgystan). 

So, for the first time since being in China, I was mistaken for a Chinese man! In a lot of ways, being associated with being from the NW still makes me quite the foreigner in the 97% Han Chinese region that I live in. But still, I never thought I'd see the day when people actually mistook me for a countryman! 

So, dad, I guess my speaking demos on the phone from a few weeks ago has seeped into my DNA and I'm now blending in to this place! :)

Linda explained later that because of the lack of light on the bus, the fact that I was wearing a hat and glasses, and that I am currently sporting a goatee and have a big nose that, under the circumstances, I was the perfect XinJiang man silhouette. And really, all I'd have to do to debunk such a case of mistaken identity is open my mouth and speak. Nothing separates the foreigners like language.

In other news, I'm heading to Beijing tomorrow night on the train to play in a fun men's volleyball tourney over the weekend with a couple of the teachers from the high school. It should be pretty epic... a number of former Chinese National Team players are apparently playing on some of the teams, so I think I'm getting in over my head. Oh well! Bring on the embarassment! Luckily two of the guys are former UBC Thunderbird players, so I'm just hoping they'll carry the team. I'm wearing my new 2010 Team Canada jersey for warm up... should be awesome.

Otherwise, the countdown to Canada remains... 7 more weeks and I'm back on Canuck soil!

T