You Speak Chinese?

“My attention turns to the young white man with blue eyes and short-cropped hair
in the ubiquitous blue jeans and sweatshirt. I say, "You speak Cantonese
beautifully. Where did you learn it?" –Nellie Wong, Wintry Interlude

The other day, on my way home from school, I overheard a conversation. This conversation was like any other conversation except it was spoken all in Cantonese. I look around the bus quickly glancing over to see who was talking and to my surprise the conversation was between a Chinese woman and a Caucasian man. Being born and growing up in an Asian neighborhood when it comes to languages I forget that the world is not black and white. There is no rule saying if you’re this race you should speak this language and if you’re that race you should speak that language. We’re in America now and in this culture we are a mix of different ethnic cultures. We like to learn and experience different cultures and there is nothing wrong with that. We should be opening minded and we are. We are open to learning about different ethnic groups. I guess what surprised me was not the fact that he was a Caucasian man speaking Cantonese, but the fact that his Cantonese was a lot better than mine! I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be better than mine, but I guess I was kind of jealous (haha). It turned out that this man was actually a Chinese teacher and the woman he was talking to was one of his students. This incident reminded me of a quote from the poem Wintry Interlude by Nellie Wong because she also encountered a white man speaking Cantonese. It makes me wonder where he learned his Chinese from and how he speaks so perfectly because I know my Cantonese is not good at all and going to Chinese school did not help.

Thinking back on this situation this shouldn’t be foreign to me because a number of people speak different languages. I myself took German and Spanish for a foreign language class and I’m neither of them. For a couple summers now I go down to Mexico and try to speak Spanish. The Mexicans there probably have the same reactions I had when they hear and see a Chinese girl speak Spanish. So this shouldn’t be a surprised to me at all. I think it just caught me off guard as it would to anyone when they see or hear someone of another race speak their native tongue.