Almost Famous
AMINA DOCTROVE (retail management) writes:
Every day I wake up, go with my group, do my activities, and then I go to bed.
While I walk up and down the streets of Shanghai, go out to restaurants and eat, or go around shopping, I feel the gaze of something while I am walking. It’s the kind of gaze that causes the fresh faces of young girls in horror movies to turn their heads and gasp in horror as their fate is then sealed in the next scene. I experience this weird, ominous feeling of being watched every time I go outside.
Walking along the streets of Shanghai, which in the final days of our trip have become muddied with rain and dirt, I feel a presence so potent in the air that it presses against my shoulders. I look up to see what’s pressing against me, and I see them. I see them all, skinny bodies under the protection of umbrellas walking pass me.
Before losing sight of me they look into my eyes deeply, as if to look into my soul. Some of them look at me for a while then move along; others look at me and have a good laugh about something funny about me with their friends; and others even stop dead in their tracks to have a look at me. No matter who it is, if I walk by them or they walk by me, they’re likely to stare at me.
This was not a surprise to me, as I already knew it was not considered rude to stare at someone in most Asian countries, but to actually go and experience it, for me, nothing could prepare me for it. At first, I thought it was very cute and I felt like someone famous walking around Shanghai and my adoring fans looking closely at me to see if it was really me. But as the days went by, this feeling quickly left me and I became bitter. I felt that I was being treated as nothing more than a zoo animal, something weird, rare, strange, and amusing that is to be stared at for enjoyment. I even snapped at a group of men yesterday while they were staring at me and yelled at them, in English of course, so they didn’t understand and walked right pass me.
While I personally hated being the target of stares from everyone we passed by in Shanghai, I then realized something: In a place where only up to now individuality and uniqueness was frowned upon, the people of China struggle to make themselves unique from everyone else around them. For me, at least maybe to them, I am already unique. With a different skin color, I stand out from what seems to be a crowd of people all wearing the same masks.
Amina Doctrove is a sophomore retail management major.