When I was in Hong Kong, I thought that although I looked Chinese and I could speak Cantonese, my ways weren’t, and therefore I was excluded from the locals. That\’s a really simplistic view. Now I’m in France, and people still exclude me because of the ways, not because they are Eastern, but because they’re not Western enough.
Folks, I came here following my “French Dream”. Having been taught what I realized now was a mere illusion, about liberty, equality, and fraternity… who were just addressed to French people. Kind reminder, we might have not noticed that, but we have already stepped into the globalized era. Frontiers are no longer huge walls made of concrete. A country doesn’t mean one ethnicity anymore. Latin America is a clear example of that mix given during the colony, Toronto is a big Hong Kong and rarely an American citizen has one-country ancestors.
And still, some of my classmates still forget that some of their ancestors were once immigrants too. They keep on treating other ethnicities as once (and I say once because I hope it’s over) the Americans used to do with Afro-Americans, and Latinos. They forget that, they too, might be treated the same in Latin America (gringo), in China/Hong Kong/Macau (gweilo) or in English-speaking countries.
My Campus France interview was doing fine until they asked me a classic question: “Why France?” I did nothing but to reply with my heart. I regret my school gave me a one sided vision of this beautiful country of arts and culture, and I regret having generalized from the bunch of French I met in Hong Kong:
“I would love to reinforce the link that I already have with this country and the lovely people there.”
The interview advisor must have thought that I was either a shameless liar or a poor naïve creature:
“Uhuh… OK. You didn\’t know that we hold a nasty reputation of being proud and arrogant, right?”
Proud is a nice way to put it, I see hypocrisy-diplomacy. Always classy, always right, so fine, so cool, the French touch. What I saw among French youth in Hong Kong, I see it every day at a larger scale at school, and I was terrified. I can\’t become like them, where\’s the warmth, the friendliness?
Why didn’t I react like this in Hong Kong? What shocked me so much here? It was actually because they remind me painfully the spoiled brats at my private high school; fresh images of me being excluded until I started behaving “cool” come to mind. The difference is that back then we were all Peruvian; Spanish was our first language, we were in the same class. And… and… and… that I learned in three years how to act like them, in order to melt with them.
In every place I have lived in, there was a preconception, there were expectations, there were frustrations, and there were lessons. Lessons that are hard to digest, lessons that fall like a slap in the face, lessons that leave tears behind. My first lesson here is that I have to learn how to ignore people the way they do. And thus, the biggest lesson is that this rough and cold environment will no longer feel like it when I learn how to play it cool and mean like them, in other words, how to be nice at first with others and then forget about them (even if deep in my heart, I do really want to be your friend!).