THE MAJORITY

A room in the Pullman Hotel in Guangzhou, several hours after arrival

“What is it like to be in the majority?”

My dad’s voice is cautious, curious, concerned. It’s the voice of a father trying to connect with his daughter, some ten thousand kilometers away, and whose impressions of China are framed against a background painted rosy by the adoption of his children. It’s the voice of a father doing his best to be empathic and assess, over the emotionally ambiguous static of a phone call, whether or not his daughter is okay.

The question itself is well-meaning and insensitive. I feel like someone has punched me in the gut. The hotel armchair is soft and beige, a second protective layer to the white bathrobe I’ve put on, and I curl into both in sudden defense. I have to pull the phone away from my face in order to compose myself, somehow afraid that the speaker will pick up my vulnerabilities. I feel like crying and so I scoff instead, choking slightly, and say loudly and more angrily than I need to—“I’m not in the majority, dad.” I scoff again. “Definitely not.”

“Well—” he begins, backtracking, and I feel terrible about taking out my uncertainty and fear and stress on him. But I am not in the majority. If these past few hours and three planes have taught me anything, then they have taught me that. The language barrier seems impossible to overcome. The heat is too oppressive, even painfully stifling. The customs and expectations are glaringly unfamiliar, and I’m so self-conscious that even breathing makes me feel like I am standing out in the crowd. I know I have my plans and my reservations, but right now I’m exhausted and overwhelmed by the enormity of what I have done. Of where I am. Maybe the Grants in Writing committee was right to be so wary of my proposal. Maybe I was wrong to be so cocky that everything would go well. I feel anchorless, like the only thing that is real is this hotel room. I am dreading the moment I have to leave its safety.

The doubt has grown slowly over the course of the trip here. I can pinpoint the exact moment when I began to feel uncomfortable, when I realized that maybe this was not going to be as simple as I hoped it would be. I was sitting in the San Jose airport after arriving from Portland, waiting for the plane that would take me from America to Beijing, and as I looked around my gate I realized that nearly every person there was a Chinese citizen. It was disconcerting. Compared to American styles the fashion was different. The postures were different. The murmuring sound of Mandarin around me, with the occasional word or phrase I could pick out, was different. None of it was entirely unfamiliar, but I had never seen so many Chinese citizens in one place before, and so wholly comfortable. There was no hesitance to the way they acted, no accommodation for American customs. There was no pressure to conform to the expectations of another culture: they were headed home. For all intents and purposes they were home already, if not in body then in mind. I didn’t think it was possible to be alienated when I was still in the States, and yet I was.

The feeling grew throughout the rest of the trip. Through the plane rides and the airports and, just a few hours ago, the confusion at the hotel front desk about my reservation. I’m tired and overwhelmed and daunted, for the first time, by the reality of what I said I would do. It’s pretty clear that I’m very underprepared. But I can’t explain all that to my dad. If I give in to all my second-guessing and doubts right now, I’ll end up going home. And I don’t want to do that. I can’t. So I get angry instead, and defensive. “No, I don’t want to explain it. You wouldn’t get it,” I say. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed.” And then, unconvincingly tacked on: “I’m fine.”

The conversation ends a few seconds later.

I think what upsets me most is that I thought I would be in the majority. I thought I would get here and it would be easy, like when I went to London and it was easy, or to Germany. I romanticized the hell out of the trip, thinking that I would feel right at home. I’ve been holding onto this idea that there’d be some kind of magical ‘click’ of belonging and validation that would occur right away when I arrived. And yet here I am now, holed up in a hotel room, fighting myself not to go home, feeling unwelcome and overwhelmed and scared, and angry at myself for feeling these things in the first place, and for being naïve. My dad’s question is ill-timed and insensitive, but even just a day ago, it would have been the kind of question I’d have asked my future self.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m jumping the gun. Three planes and multiple time zones is a lot. So far, everyone I’ve interacted with has been a little standoffish but very kind. I’m not in the majority. Like I said: definitely not. But maybe it’s a good thing that reality is nothing like my expectations.

Either way.

Five weeks is a long fucking time.