This is a letter about smiling. Some of it is about China (we went for a visa run and had a wonderful time!) but lots of it is about living overseas and sharing smiles with people.
Dear Mom,
I smile when I'm walking around, or even when I'm on my motorbike and out in the town. I know that I'm weirdly tall and fair-haired and I have a giant nose--I'm something of a spectacle regardless of my facial expression. But over time I've trained my face that when I'm out and about, my facial "zero" expression should be uplifted eyebrows and a smile to my mouth.
Sometimes I'm just doing that and I get a smile in return, and I remember that I'm smiling by default but then I Really smile back to the person who's smiling at me, and then they know that they've been smiled at and then they Really smile back, and then sometimes we both even laugh. It's nice.
We did a visa run to China last week, and I had the darndest time getting people to smile at me. There wasn't any hostility (zero) toward my whiteness, even though we're not China's favorite nation right now. I was in a state of heightened awareness about all the shenanigans the USA has been doing internationally, and what that could mean for me as an expat citizen abroad, so each time I went out walking or interacting with people in China I very intentionally set my face in a cheerful countenance.
They didn't smile back! Actually they mostly never even made eye contact. The people I passed seemed ... I've tried to find the right word and it keeps eluding me. Solemn? Sullen? Definitely not all the way to Sad, but let me try Joyless? I'm not someone who thinks I can judge a person's heart or motives by what they do, but I think it might not be too far wrong to say that you'd have seen Joylessness, too, if you'd been with me in the big city.
It was a city of 8.5 million where I found it difficult, but not impossible, to meet people's eyes and share joy. It's a small city in the southwest--If you've lived in China you'd probably know it, but otherwise you've never heard of it. One time I went into a little hardware shop and the proprietor and his wife wanted to help me get supplies so I could repair a sink for our hosts (my pleasure), and they smiled at me. Well, she smiled at me while her husband used loud Chinese to compensate for my lack of understanding. (You've noticed, no doubt, that people all over the world talk louder at a foreigner who doesn't speak the local language?) But he smiled a couple of times before our interaction was done, and it was such a Relief to get a smile.
When we left that city and went to a neighboring small town, though, people behaved much more "normally" --in a way that I'd expect throughout Vietnam and like it was in previous times when I've been in China. People held their gaze upwards from the pavement directly in front of them, made eye contact, and smiled at me.
It's the old cleaning ladies who are always MOST likely to reflect my smile. I think maybe most people don't make eye contact with them. Eye contact that stays, lingers long enough for the smile to transmit and reflect and reflect again. I definitely can't communicate with them verbally (nor do I have the time to, as this happens all the time), but I am always on the lookout for someone to reflect my smile. I want to thank them for their service, tell them that I see them, acknowledge their humanity and loveliness.
Here are (almost all) our pics from China. Enjoy!
Love,
Tim/Janet
PS from Janet:
I have to tack on this little story: When we were on the street in the unsmiling city, and Tim was talking to our host about what he was noticing and asking her about it, I kid you not, a woman was walking toward him wearing a white sweatshirt with these words on it: Who's the funny looking kid with the big nose? (It's the title of a Peanuts cartoon book and is a reference to Snoopy, but man, was it funny as a backdrop to Tim's curiosity about why no one was smiling at him!)
