My Youth In Asia # 2-"Pardon The Way That I Stare."

"Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it."-Confucius

“You have blue eye, big big nose, small small mouth,” observed one of my students this week. When you live in a place where the dominant racial make-up is different from your own, you have to be prepared for people to take notice, and Seoul, South Korea is no different. At least people here tend to limit themselves to stares or muted giggles. During the three years that I lived in rural South Africa, my every step out-of-doors was accompanied by pointed fingers and shouts of, “White Man! White Man!”-like I was a polar bear escaped from the zoo. These days, I get a little thrill every time a pretty girl looks at me on the subway before I notice that she’s not flirting, but giving me the kind of look people usually reserve for bearded ladies or a sweet potato resembling Richard Nixon. Being mostly solitary and not much of a bar hopper, I was in town for nearly a month before I spotted another white person-a slender woman in her mid-30’s reading a book on the subway. After seeing only Koreans for a while, my mind did a little double take to find her there, like a CD player hitting a scratch. I probably looked at her longer than should have and if I hadn’t been wearing my “Super-Bored Subway Face,” I might have let out a little snort of surprised laughter. It was a couple of minutes before I realized that that this is exactly the same reaction that Koreans have when they see me walking around loose. They don’t mean to be rude- I’m just not what they expected to see. Sometimes I go around a blind corner and people actually take a startled step back like they’ve seen a ghost. Little children cry and hide behind their mother’s skirts. In old British movies, great white hunters are always running into each other in dusty backstreets of B.F.E. They become fast friends, get pissed, and complain about the heat and “the natives.” I’m not sure what to do when I run into other foreigners here. Are we supposed to cling to each other like shipwreck survivors, or play it cool and pretend like we didn’t just see a reminder of home? In my case, shyness won out and left the woman to enjoy her book in peace. Next time though, I’ll be prepared. I’ll walk right up to her and say, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”