Two years ago, after twenty years of resistance, I finally gave into my parents' wish for me to visit China. It was June and I arrived in Beijing wearing black sweatpants, clearly unprepared for the 100 degree weather.
I was looking forward to the trip, partially because I was excited to speak my first language. My father couldn't speak fluent English, even after he became an American citizen, so we spoke Shanghainese at home. (Shanghainese is a dialect spoken in Shanghai. It's very different from Mandarin, despite some people's assumption that it's the "same thing.")
After changing into shorts in the the airport restroom, I boarded my second flight in 18 hours and headed for Shanghai. Both my parents were born and raised there so I had already felt a connection with the place even before I arrived. Maybe it was because of all the childhood memories my father shared or the framed pictures my mother kept on top of her dresser.
It was an hour past noon when I arrived in my final destination. There was a Burger King and KFC at the airport. It gave me the unsettling feeling that I haven't really left America. I remembered being younger and thinking how great it was that the fast food I'd come to know so well had reached the other side of the world. But seeing the large burger and soda sign above the escalator leading up to the streets of Shanghai made me wonder where the city my parents grew up in had gone.
My mother took me to a dim sum restaurant by the hotel for lunch. She said it was very different from what we were used to in New York. The waitress greeted us in Mandarin. I spoke back in Shanghainese. She looked confused until my mother explained I was from America. The waitress smiled, " Where-come to Chi-na." I didn't want to speak English, but for the rest of the trip I had no choice. The Mandarin I knew so well sounded foreign when spoken to me and the language I learned growing up had become extinct.
Pearl,
ReplyDeleteYou've done a good job here of appropriating Batuman's style — this piece (brief as it is) is likable and witty, relaying some useful facts while remaining clearly narrativized. The sense of alienation that you felt upon realizing how China has been Americanized is nicely articulated, and the brief images that you use of your mother's framed pictures and the burger and soda sign reinforce that theme. One of the things that I like most about Batuman's prose, which I've tried to adopt in my own writing, is her use of nimble, hyperliterate sentences. As you continue work on this or other projects, I'd encourage you to take more risks with your sentence fluency. Let them ramble, or get them short and clipped, and see how it changes your writing.
Good work!
SCL
Pearl, I think Sam's comment is on the money -- I agree with all his points. A couple of specific notes: Good lede -- you set the scene quickly, packed lots of info into a short space pretty elegantly and, crucially, it made me want to read more. I also liked that you included real details -- exactly which kind of fast food chains they were -- and told us how seeing them made you feel. Very Batuman, in seeing all and recording and also reflecting as you go. It would be interesting to see you take a few more chances -- perhaps by injecting some humor or with sentence variation or even a surprising word choice or metaphor here and there. Part of what I find so delightful about The Possessed are the constant surprises she has in store for the reader: an unlikely description or phrase or moment. That, I think, come in part because of what she decides to include or omit and in part it is her being open to and keen on new ideas as a writer. Nice work, Pearl, keep it up.
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