Paparazzi

Unlike so many Americans, I’ve never had any desire to be a celebrity.  Living your life in the public eye, unflattering photos on magazine covers, and of course, the dreaded paparazzi.  I wish I could convince people in China that I am someone of absolutely no importance.  It seems, however, that whenever I go to any type of tourist location, various people are always grabbing my arm and asking in broken English if they can take a photo with me.  Often a photo has already been snapped by the friend standing by even before a response can escape my lips.  I usually oblige anyway, smiling awkwardly, as a total stranger wraps his or her arms around me as if we were best friends.  There have only been a few times that I’ve felt the need to decline.  One such time was recently when I visited a nearby tourist location with some other Americans.   A group of Northwestern College students from Minnesota (recently renamed: The University of Northwestern, St. Paul), visited Nanjing.  We, and several of my students, were out together.  I guess the quadruple effect of having 4 American girls in the same place was just too much to handle because we were honestly being stopped every few steps we took that day.  At one point I think there were 10-15 people taking a picture of us at the same time.  Needless to say, it got to a point where we had to start declining requests.  (I’m still not sure whether the whole experience was more humorous or more irritating.)  In any case, it was really a fun day with the Northwestern students and my Chinese students.   The recent visit from the Minnesota group was a huge blessing.  Pairs of them came into my English classes for two weeks – assisting in leading discussions, sharing about their lives in the U.S., learning about my students’ lives in China, and sharing laughter.  My students enjoyed them so much that they invited them to do things outside of class, such as the event I just mentioned.  Many other sweet times with students have happened since then and are continuing to happen!  China is still a hard place for me to live and to adjust to, but the underlying peace I have about being here and the type of work that I get to be a part of make it so worth it.  
Love from China.

Posing with a stranger.