The Objectification of TG

Hey guys, 

Here’s another story from last year, which occurred during the first couple of weeks after I got to Dalian, right after I found my apartment. Enjoy!

…

When a foreigner gets an apartment in China, you have to go to the local police station to register. So when my roommate, Caitlin, and I finally found a place, our landlord took us to the police station. Caitlin and I stayed downstairs while my landlord went upstairs with one of the police officers. We chatted for a bit, but then Caitlin went to the bathroom. I stayed back and played with my iPod. When I looked up I saw the chief police officer staring at me suspiciously. He didn’t avert his gaze when he caught me staring at him, instead he called his over one of his subordinates.

My Chinese at this point was nonexistent, and my resident translator/roommate was in the bathroom, so I had no idea what they were saying. But, as I had come from America a couple weeks ago, it wasn’t too difficult to fill in the blanks. It was a case of Existing While Black. I must have fit a very specific profile, you know–brown. I knew what they were thinking, but I couldn’t protest because I didn’t know how to do so in Chinese.

Each officer called over another of officer until I was surrounded by 9 officers, all staring at me with the same dubious gaze. They kept saying to each other, “Ta tai mei le” and then shaking their heads in agreement. I knew that “ta” meant “he” but I couldn’t piece together the rest of the sentence. I figured I was implicated in some mess.

Finally, my roommate peered through the circle of policemen staring at me. The look on my face must have been priceless because as soon she saw me she started choking with laughter. Through the small pauses in her fits of laughter she was able to tell me what they were saying. “Ta tai mei le” means “He’s very beautiful.”

The head officer, who had not cracked a smile yet, approached me, pointed to my face and then gave me a thumbs up. But it was the same way that a car mechanic would give a thumbs up while looking under the hood at a carburetor. It really made me feel like some of object. Still, I knew his intention, so with an awkward smile, I simply replied, “Shie, shie” (“thank you” in Chinese.) But that didn’t make him, or any of the other officers avert their gaze. They continued to stare at me until finally our landlord came with our paperwork and we were able to get the hell out of there.

That was the first time that that happened, but it definitely wasn’t the last. Since then, a variation of this scene has occurred at least once a week with random people in the grocery store, street peddlers, restaurant employees, cab drivers, etc. It’s always people who are over 30 years old, and it always, always, makes me feel uncomfortable as hell. I mean, they’re crowd around me in a circle and start dissecting my physical appearance right to my face. Now that my Chinese is a bit better, I understand that they’re talking about my eyes a lot (having “big eyes” here is considered very beautiful. Oddly enough, every race defines beauty in terms that are uncharacteristic to their race: white people want to be darker; black people want to have straighter hair, Asians want bigger eyes. Self-acceptance, my people. Self-acceptance.).

The situation is so awkward: when they encircle me it’s always really sudden and so I can’t avoid it. I never know what to do: should push my way free? Should I be a good Negro ambassador and just smile and pose? Should I bark like a dog to scare them off? (I actually did that once–it works) No matter what I do, I really do feel like a piece of meat every time it happens. And no matter how long I’m here I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.