Last night I showed up at my old house in northwestern Beijing. At the foot of the apartment outside, I ran into my host cousin NanNan. I was walking past the guards and see him standing there staring at me. He thought I was Cuyler but wasn't sure. I waved and he knew. He said, you've gotten fat! I said, I know, American food isn't as good for you as Chinese food.
In China, unlike the states, it is common for someone, especially family to comment openly on your body. So, saying you've gotten fat or chubby is not a hurtful comment like it might be in the states. They would say "ni shou le" or "you're thin!" if I had lost weight since my last time in China (though that would have been impossible!).
Huang and Gao seemed happy to see me. Chen Chen, their daughter, was still at her class so I didn't see her. They said the same thing their nephew Nan Nan had said, "you've gotten fat." And after a delicious meal (yes I stormed their house just before dinner), we sat around and talked a bit and drank the two Spotted Cow beers I brought from Wisconsin, among some other small things. I talked about some of the things I wanted to do in China, internships, graduate school, and they offered to keep their eyes open to information. I offered to help them move, and they just might call me up sometime this week to help haul some things.
Today I'm going to call my host grandparents and see if I can go visit them! It's been so long since I've seen or talked to them, even, but I think it'll be a fun time. I want to reconnect with the families I had so much fun with last year. And if I do go there today, I'll probably again, hear the same refrain, "you've gotten fat!"
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I thought of you and this post today when I was at the airport and an older man who was (maybe?) Chinese (guilty as charged of lumping people together by looks) saw me reading a Time magazine article about McCain and Obama and asked me point blank who I was voting for. When I said Obama he asked why. Not wanting to get into any hot-button issues, I said that I liked that people were excited about him and he responded, "That's not really a reason to vote for him." Anyway, clearly, as an intern I'll need to hone my response, but anyway, it reminded me of this and served as an introduction to what being back in the midwest could be like. Hope things are going well!
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