Ok, I get it, I am exotic

From all that I had read and heard about China, I knew that staring at foreigners is a pretty common practice. It is not considered rude to even point and stare. However, I thought that by foreigners it mainly referred to the westerners, the white people. I had no idea that I would be a rare species in China.

There are so many Indians in Georgia Tech/Atlanta. I think there are 150-200 Indians in all of Beijing. Effectively, there are more Indians in the ECE and CS departments at Tech. It was really unusual for me to be the only brown person. Arkansas was better than Beijing !

I had to get used to being stared at pretty soon. Usually I hang out with Warren and I always thought that people are staring at him because he is white. But I soon found out that I was wrong. The first time I took the subway by myself, I could notice all the lingering stares. For the first few times I always thought if something is wrong with my hair or if I have something on my face.

Since then, there have been several amusing instances with this whole staring business.
I was on my bike, waiting at the intersection and there were a bunch of Chinese construction workers crossing the road. As they walked in front of me, every single person turned their neck by 90 degrees to stare at me. And a few pointed too. Awkward.
Another time, I was leaving the dining hall from my bike and this little girl was having dinner with her family. As I was getting my bike out she saw me through the glass door and started pointing at me and then poking her family members to look at me. I waved at her and she broke down into a fit of giggles.
The most interesting incident was in the gym. I joined this private gym because you have to pay even at the school gym. Everyone at the gym is Chinese. I usually go with headphones on, so that I have the "please don't talk to me" look going. I am used to people staring at me in the gym. But on my second day, I was working out and see this person staring at me a little more intently than others. And then he walks up to me and starts talking to me. I still have my headphones on, so I remove them and he says namaste. He spoke English and told me that he watches Bollywood movies. It was a short conversation. However, that was not the interesting part. The interesting part was that as soon as the guy started talking to me, everyone in the gym was staring at us. The decibel level fell down significantly, no creaking of machines or the chinese white noise. This one person who was doing shoulder presses, *stopped* mid-way with his arms up to observe our interaction. And after my short conversation was over, they all just went back to their own business as this was an everyday thing.

I asked one of my Chinese friends what is the whole reason behind the staring business. I was curious if it was my recently cropped hair. He just told me that I am exotic here. I guess I am ...

First evening in China = Bike + Grapes

I arrived in China on August 17. One of my labmates - Li Chao picked me up and we took a cab back to the University. After dealing with Beijing traffic, getting wrong directions about where to register for the dorm and lugging around 50 lb bags we finally found Warren/the front desk.

Warren, is my Beijing expert as he has been here the longest which is a whole 2.5 weeks. That may not seem long but he has helped me set up my internet, tried to figure out what was wrong with my AC, took me to his lab where I met Kristin and then took us for dinner. I don't know what we had for dinner that night - there was some fungus, tofu and some kind of meat. It was pretty good though.

After dinner, Warren wanted to get his bike back to the dorm but since I still don't have my two wheels, Warren now assumed the role of driver. He also decided to take some grapes which I was supposed to hold while sitting on the bike and not falling off. That bike ride was very interesting, to say the least. First of all, the seat is made of metal so it ends up poking your butt, then there are speed bumps/inclines which aggravate the said poking and finally, the bike not being tall enough causes your feet to touch the ground while you try and straddle the metal framed seat. We did make it back to the dorm though, without falling. The AC was still broken in my room when we got back. They sent a repair guy but all we said to each other was - wo ting bu dong i.e I don't understand. But the conclusion was that it couldn't be fixed that night and would be done the next day. I had to haul two giant comforters up to the 5th floor to sleep in Warren's air conditioned room on the tiled floor. But I have to say, that I slept like a baby because of all the flying, the food and the bike ride.

Speaking of the bike ride, the next morning we found evidence of our epic bike ride in the form of little green grapes scattered here and there on our path.