If my life in China were a movie, it would probably be Inception (2010). Not because I have the ability to travel into other people's dreams and plant ideas into their minds or steal their deepest thoughts, even though that would admittedly be pretty amazing, but for another, less obvious reason.
There is one particular scene in the movie that accurately describes how I feel about my experience in China. This scene shows the main character, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, taking his new "dream architect" inside his own dream, with the help of some dope futuristic technology, to show her the ins-and-outs of how the dream life works. Once she gets acclimated to the dream world and comes to the realization that the rules of physics do not apply there, she starts to manipulate the buildings, streets, and landscape in Leonardo's dream. Bad idea. The "extras" in his dream, which are actually projections of his subconscious mind, all begin to stare at the girl, showing signs of animosity and contempt. Immediately the girls asks, "Why are they all looking at me?" Leonardo explains this situation to her by saying, "my subconscious feels that someone else is changing this world...they sense the foreign nature of the dreamer. They attack like white blood cells fighting an infection."
That's pretty much a typical day for me in China. Walking down the street, eyes staring at me as I pretend I don't notice, and I'm left wondering "Why are they all looking at me?" I guess they can sense my foreign nature. No attacks have occurred as of yet, but I have had a few old men give me dirty looks and start yelling at me in Chinese. I'm doing a lot better than the girl in Inception, though, she actually gets stabbed.
- FBG