The Stories Of Others
January 7th, 2022
Friday
Sometimes the best way to remove yourself from you own misery is to engage with others and hear their stories.
I am a regular at this Chinese restaurant near where I live. Yesterday after I paid my bill, this waitress whom I had tipped well earlier in the week just started a conversation with me. It began with your typical “what do you do here” but very quickly she started to tell me how she came to Germany in 1992 when she was 5-years-old to this family owned restaurant shortly after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and how difficult it was for her to adjust. Only after she pointed out that she couldn’t read Chinese that I started to notice her accent, which according to her, was a sign that she could barely speak Mandarin well since she was so young when she came here. When the people at the immigration office asked her which China she came from, she was visibly confused and answered that she came from Peking. They nod in approval and gave her the stamp. I told her that I overheard her speaking German to the customers and she was really fluent. She laughed it off by saying that her 28-year-old daughter always corrects her German. I imagine behind this self-deprecating humour is a lot of hidden pain that she was not willing to share. I would love to hear more about her stories and asked her to sit next to me. She said she was on the clock and left shortly afterwards.
Living in Germany all these years really gave me a different perspective on the lives of immigrant families. You can argue that even if I stayed in the U.S I would still be a first generation immigrant, but the experience is vastly different. For starters, my English was essentially fluent when I first came to the U.S. Of course I make mistakes all the time, but it never prevented me from communication clearly with reasonable arguments. But when I first came to Germany in 2018, I spoke no German and had to start from scratch. The fact just a few months ago I was working as an intern replying to German emails in German was already something unimaginable to me. But the truth remains that I no longer has the same drive to blend in here, to perfect my accent and perfect my language. I am exhausted. And I am tired of always trying to blend in, which not only requires tremendous amount of effort and devotion, but also ensures that when you are doing a good job of blending in, nobody notices you. What even is the point then? I do all this work to reduce discrimination against my poor language skills, only to feel invisible anyways. I suppose the heart of it is to live a meaningful life doing things that you care about, which is what I felt in that waitress when she shared her story. She was mostly pining for the fact that she came here so young without knowing what she wanted to do, missed the chance to go to school and learn, and now she felt stuck working here because she had nowhere else to do. I would never have known that had she not told me, because she would always greet guests with such a genuine smile.
I read Christopher Isherwood’s book about his time travelling to Chine during the Sino-Japanese war. One thing he mentioned in the book are the mysterious smiles all over the country. It seems that no matter how damaged the town was, people would always smile at him, which unsettled and amused him greatly. I found it interesting and true how we the Chinese could use smiles to hide the deepest of sadness or loss. Who knows how much regrets hides behind the calm face of my new waitress friend. I shall find out soon in the future should I have the chance.
One thing is certain. I have a tendency to indulge in my own misery when I was given SO MUCH. Sometimes you can’t see yourself clearly if you spent all day working by yourself in the same room.
God bless all the hard working people of this world, the backbone of our economy, those who are left behind by time and those who will reinvent it.
