Spanking the Horse's Farts
By Win-sie Tow, Special Contributor from Northwestern University

My aunts had warned me about the bathrooms: “Always bring packs of tissues unless you want to wipe with your palm!”

They had given me the heads-up on pickpockets: “If you don’t treat your purse like a newborn, you’ll never get to see its first birthday!”

They had clued me in on the weather: “Forget your SPF, and risk looking like a tomato!”

They insisted I had nothing to worry about during my two-week stay in China if I followed their simple guidelines. Meanwhile, Fodor’s travel guides, World Journal newspapers, and my impending solitary journey swayed me otherwise. I mentally braced myself for the worst — typhoons, communist censorship, and alienation from my relatives. Preoccupied with unfounded fears, I was ill equipped to deal with my encounter with Heidi and Ken.

It happened when I was on the tour bus headed to Guangzhou province, sharing a conversation in English with Tim, a Singaporean born Chinese. Everyone on the bus shared a common thread: We were all ethnic Chinese college students from around the world whose paths had intersected for two all-expense-paid weeks to deepen our appreciation for our parents’ homeland. Though only four days into the trip, I was already exchanging inside jokes with Tim and Ken, a Hong Kong native. A conversation about idioms exposed us to the idiocy of each other’s primary languages. For example, “spanking the horse’s farts” in Mandarin, “polishing the shoe” in Cantonese, and “brown-nosing” in English all translated to the same thing. My interaction with them was invaluable, because I knew I would not be able to share this dynamic with my American peers. For the 250 delegates, the 4th China Synergy Program for Outstanding Youth not only was a gateway to rediscover our roots, via trekking the Great Wall and visiting the terracotta warriors but it was also a window to dispel stereotypes about each other — not all mainland Chinese men are unruly misogynists, not all Taiwanese women are dainty waifs, and not all Chinese Americans are whitewashed. How else could I understand the effects of Westernization on contemporary Beijing shops, blasting the Backstreet Boys in lieu of mainstream Chinese pop? How else could I witness the stark contrast between the unsanitary undeveloped regions of Xi’an and the glitzy gorgeous streets of Shanghai? How else could I feel the swell of patriotism, watching the flag rising ceremony in Tiananmen Square at 6 AM?

My chatter with Tim on the bus ride to Guangzhou was cut off by persisting snickers from the seat behind me, followed by Cantonese spoken words: “Stupid ABC’s [American Born Chinese]. They think they’re hot shots, because they know English.”

I instantly stopped mid-sentence, baffled by what I had just heard. When I looked back, I caught Heidi’s blank gaze dead on. Next to her, Ken jabbed his elbow on her arm, muttering: “She understands Cantonese!” Meanwhile, I snapped back: “I know what you just said.”

Irritated, I quickly recalled my scant mental profile on her. Although we had never spoken, I knew of her — through Ken. She was a Hong Kong medical student who had participated in the 3rd China Synergy Program, returning the following year as a volunteer coordinator.

Interrupting my internal monologue, she continued— perfect Mandarin forming from her lips: “What a shame you can’t speak Mandarin, though.” Stunned, I feebly retorted in broken Mandarin, trailing off as Ken mumbled to Heidi, “Don’t worry. She can’t really speak in Mandarin.”

Until then, I had only been conscious of blatant racism from non-Asians. Validating myself as an American woman despite my Chinese appearance became an expected power struggle — with the white construction worker, telling me to return to Korea or the black taxi driver, hollering: “Give me some China vagina!” I grew accustomed to subtle denigrations, avoiding confrontation by cutting to the chase of ethnic identity instead of revealing my New York origin. “Gook,” “Nip,” and “Lisa Liu” infected my vocabulary intake until I stopped taking it personally. I stopped getting frustrated at other’s insecurities and close-mindedness. Instead, I hid behind laughter — scoffing at their senselessness, at cookie-cutter slurs, at my complacency. I blew them off because I knew I couldn’t win. My only real comfort was a close-knit network of Chinese American peers with mutual experiences.

Heidi and Ken introduced a different form of hatred to me. The worst part wasn’t even that she had disregarded her responsibilities as a coordinator. It wasn’t that she had kept pushing my patience. It wasn’t even that she had been ignorant and unapologetic. The worst part was seeing Ken’s true nature. I had wrongly expected he would understand me because we shared the same ancestral background and several thought-provoking conversations. Turns out he had just been spanking the horse’s farts.