He’s tight. Unfinished skin usually is. I smooth him down and let him soften. I’m impatient, nervous, so I turn around to check for lumps on Thomas’s back. When I do, the flesh at his neck rips. I practice a look of pain in the mirror.
Then I stitch the gash together as well as I can. It fuses but leaves an ugly ridge across Thomas’s throat. I cover it with a scarf Tingting bought from a street vendor. It’s yellow, imitation silk with a recurring pattern that reads Liu Viuttor.
The next week I spend in study and practice: how to speak proper English, how to stand and sit like a man, how to drink without slurping, how to hold a fork, how to bring my brows together in an expression of concern, how to laugh, how to blink at semi-regular intervals.
It’s extraordinary how much one can learn when one doesn’t have to eat or sleep.
I check out on time carrying all of Thomas Majors’s possessions in a small bag: a fake passport, a hairbrush, a hand mirror, a wallet, a cell phone, and a single change of clothes.
It takes me under twenty-four hours to find a job. A woman approaches me on the sidewalk. She just opened an English school, she says. Would I like to teach there?
The school consists of an unmarked apartment in a gray complex. The students are between ten and twelve years of age, small and rowdy. I’m paid in cash. They don’t notice that my vowels are a bit off; Thomas’s new tongue can’t quite wrap itself around English diphthongs just yet.
On weekday mornings I take more rent-a-whitey gigs. A shipping company pays me to wear a suit, sit at board meetings, nod authoritatively, and pretend to be an executive. A restaurant pays me to don a chef’s hat and toss pizza dough in the air on its opening day. Another English training center, unable to legally hire foreigners in its first year of operation, pays me 6,000 RMB per month to wander through the halls and pretend to work there.
I model, too: for a travel brochure, for a boutique, for a university’s foreign language department. The photographer tells his clients that I was a finalist on America’s Next Top Model. They don’t question it.
China is a perfect place for an imitation human like myself. Everything is fake here. The clothes are designer knock-offs. The DVDs are bootlegs. The temples are replicas of sites destroyed during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The markets sell rice made from plastic bags, milk made from melamine, and lamb skewers made from rat meat. Even the internet is fake, a slow, stuttering, pornless thing whose search engines are programmed not to look in politically sensitive directions.
It was harder in the West. Westerners demand authenticity even though they don’t really want it. They cry out for meat without cruelty, war without casualties, thinness without hunger. But the Chinese don’t mind artifice.
* * *
I make friends in China quickly and easily. Many are thrilled to have a tall, blond Westerner to wave around as a status symbol.
I wait a few weeks before I associate with other waiguoren, terrified they’ll pick up on my fake accent or ask me a question about London that I can’t answer.
But none of that turns out to be a problem. Very few expats in China ask questions about what one did back home, likely because so few of them want to answer that question themselves. Generally, they are not successful, well-adjusted members of their native countries. But if they have fair skin and a marginal grasp of English, they can find an ESL job to pay for beer and a lost girl to tell them how clever and handsome they are.
I learn quickly that my Englishman costume is not lifelike. Most of the Brits I meet in China are fat and bald, with the same scraggly stubble growing on their faces, their necks, and the sides of their heads. They wear hoodies and jeans and ratty trainers. Thomas wears a suit every day. He’s thin, too thin for a Westerner. His accent is too aristocratic, nothing at all like the working-class mumbles coming from the real Brits’ mouths. And the scarf only highlights his strangeness.
I think for sure I will be exposed, until one day at a bar a real Englishman jabs a sausage-like finger into my chest and says, “You’re gay, aren’t you, mate?”
When I only stutter in reply, he says, “Ah, it’s all right. Don’t worry about it. You might want to tone it down, though. The scarf’s a bit much.”
And so Thomas Majors’s sexuality is decided. It proves useful. It hides me from the expats the way Thomas’s whiteness hides me from the Chinese.
* * *
It’s in a waiguoren bar that New Teach English finds me. A tiny woman not even five feet tall swims through a sea of beery pink bodies to find me sitting quietly in a corner, pretending to sip a gin and tonic. She offers me a job.
“I don’t have a TOEFL certification,” I tell her.
“We’ll get you one. No problem,” she says. And it’s true; a friend of hers owns a printshop that can produce such a document with ease.
“I’m not sure I’ll pass the medical exam required for a foreign expert certificate,” I tell her.
“My brother-in-law works at the hospital,” she says. “If you give him a bottle of cognac, you’ll pass the health exam.”
And that’s how I get my residence permit.
* * *
You arrive in my second year at New Teach in Changsha with your eyes downcast and your mouth shut. I recognize you. You’re a fellow impostor, but a more mundane sort than myself. Though hired as an ESL teacher, you can hardly say “Hello, how are you?”
We introduce ourselves by our English names. I am Thomas Majors and you are Daniel Liu. “Liu. Like my scarf,” I joke. I give you a smile copied from Pierce Brosnan.
I lie to you and tell you that I’m from London and my name is Thomas. Your lies are those of omission: you do not mention that you are the son of New Teach’s owner, and that you had the opportunity to study in the United States but flunked out immediately.
Somehow being the only child of rich parents hasn’t made you too spoiled. In your first year at New Teach you sit close to me, studying my counterfeit English as I talk to my students. Meanwhile, I sit close to Sarah, a heavyset Canadian girl, trying to glean real English from her as best I can.
Somehow, my waiguoren status doesn’t spoil me, either. Unlike most Western men in China, I bathe regularly and dress well and arrive to work on time without a hangover every morning, and I don’t try to sleep with my students. My humanity requires work to maintain. I don’t take it for granted.
For these reasons, I am declared the star foreign instructor at New Teach English. I stand out like a gleaming cubic zirconium in a rubbish heap. The students adore me. Parents request me for private lessons with their children. They dub me Da Huang (Big Yellow).
* * *
Every six to twelve months, the other foreign teachers leave and a new set takes their place. Only I remain with you. You stay close to me, seeking me out for grammar help and conversation practice. There’s more you want, I know, but you are too timid to ask for it outright, and I am unable to offer it.
We slowly create each other like a pair of half-rate Pygmalions. I fix the holes in your English, teach you how to look others in the eye, how to shake hands authoritatively, how to approach Western women, how to pose in photographs, how to project confidence (“fake it till you make it”), how to be the sort of man you see in movies.
Your questions prod me to quilt Thomas Majors together from little scraps stolen from overheard conversations in expat bars. Thomas Majors traveled a lot as a child, which is why his accent is a bit odd. (That came from an American girl who wore red-framed glasses.) Thomas Majors has an annoying younger brother and an eccentric older sister. (This I took from old television sitcoms.) His father owned a stationery shop (based on an ESL listening test), but his sister is set to inherit the business (from a BBC period piece), so Thomas moved to China to learn about calligraphy (that came from you, when I saw you carrying your ink brush).
Your questions and comments nudge me into playing the ideal Englishman: polite, a little silly at times, but sophisticated and coo
l. Somehow I become the sort of man that other men look up to. They ask Thomas for advice on dating and fashion and fitness and education. They tell him he’s tall and handsome and clever. I say “thank you” and smile, just as I practiced in the mirror.
* * *
I liked Thomas. I wish I could have kept on being him a little longer.
In Shenzhen, I nearly tell you the truth about myself. New Teach has just opened a center there and sends you out to manage it. You want to bring me to work there and help keep the foreign teachers in line.
“I don’t know if I can pass the medical examination,” I tell you.
“You look healthy,” you reply.
I choose my words carefully. “I have a medical condition. I manage it just fine, but I’m afraid the doctors will think I am too sick.”
“What condition? Is it di…” You struggle with the pronunciation.
“It’s not diabetes. The truth is”—and what follows is at least partially true—“I don’t know what it is, exactly.”
“You should see a doctor,” you tell me.
“I have,” I say. “They did a lot of tests on me for a long time but they still couldn’t figure it out. I got sick of it. Lots of needles in my arms and painful surgeries.” I mime nurses and doctors jabbing and cutting me. “So now I don’t go to doctors anymore.”
“You should still have an examination,” you tell me.
“No,” I say.
Physicians are not difficult to fool, especially in China, overworked and sleep-deprived as they are. But their machines, their scanners, and their blood tests are things I cannot deceive. I do not want to know what they might find beneath Thomas Majors’s skin.
I tell you I won’t go with you if I have to submit to a medical exam, knowing full well how badly you want me to come. And so phone calls are made, red envelopes are stuffed, favors are cashed in, and banquets are arranged.
We feast with Shenzhen hospital administrators. They stare at me as I eat with chopsticks. “You’re very good with … ah…” The hospital director points at the utensils in my hand, unable to dig up the English word.
“Kuaizi,” I say. They applaud.
We go out to KTV afterward. The KTV bar has one David Bowie song and two dozen from the Backstreet Boys. The men like the way I sing. They order further snacks, more beer, and a pretty girl to sit on our laps and flirt with us. “So handsome,” she says, stroking my chin. By then I have mastered the art of blushing.
You present a bottle of liquor: “It’s very good baijiu,” you say, and everyone nods in agreement. We toast. They fill my glass with liquor over and over again. Each time they clink it and say, “Gan bei!” And to me they add, “For England!” Now I have no choice but to drain my glass to make my fake mother country proud.
For most foreigners, baijiu is a form of torture. I’ve heard them say it’s foul-tasting, that it gives monstrous hangovers, that you’ll find yourself burping it up two days later. But for me, it’s no more noxious than any other fluid. So I throw down enough liquor to show our guests that I am healthy and strong. We finish the bottle, then a second, and when I realize that the other men are putting themselves in agony to keep up with me I cover my mouth, run to the nearby lavatory, and loudly empty my stomach. Our guests love it. They cheer.
The winner of the drinking contest is a short, fat, toad-like man with a wide mouth. He’s the director of the hospital, which is easy to guess by his appearance; powerful men in Hunan often look a bit like toads. You tell me later that I made him very happy by drinking with him, and that he was extremely pleased to have defeated a Westerner.
And that is how I pass my health examination in Shenzhen.
Your grandmother recognizes me during the following Spring Festival.
Going home with you is a bad idea. I should spend those two weeks enjoying the relative quiet of the empty city, drinking myself into oblivion with the leftover handful of expats.
The idea starts as a lark, a jocular suggestion on your part, but once it seizes me it will not let me go. I can’t remember the last time I was in a home, with a family. I want to know what it’s like.
You are too embarrassed to try to talk me out of it, so home we go.
Your mother is surprised to see me. She takes you aside and scolds you. Tingting’s Changshahua has faded. Now my new English brain is still struggling to learn proper Mandarin, so I only get the gist of the conversation. I know meiyou (without) and nü pengyou (girlfriend), and my understanding of the culture fills in the rest. You’re supposed to have brought home a woman. You’re not getting any younger; you’re just a few years shy of turning thirty unmarried, a bare-branch man. Your parents can’t bear it. They don’t understand. You’re tall, rich, and handsome. Why don’t you have a girlfriend?
The question is repeated several times over the next ten days, by your mother, your father, your grandfather, and your aunt.
The only person who doesn’t denounce your bachelordom is your grandmother. She likes me. When she sees me, she smiles and says, “Cao didi.”
“Grass brother?” I ask.
“It’s a nickname for an actor she really likes,” you explain. “American.”
She asks me another question, but Tingting is too far gone. I’m a Westerner now. “Ting bu dong,” I say politely. I hear you, but I don’t understand.
I ask her to repeat herself, but something the old woman said has embarrassed your mother, for she escorts Nainai up to her room.
“She’s old,” you tell me.
Your mother and grandfather and aunt are not as accustomed to the sight of foreigners as you are. They, too, marvel at my chopstick ability as though I am a cat that has learned to play the piano. At all times I am a walking exhibition. In most places, I’m the waiguoren, the foreigner. In expat bars, I’m That Bloke with the Scarf, famed for his habit of always appearing well groomed. And around you, I’m Thomas Majors, though for some reason I don’t mind it when you look at me.
I have no trouble with chopsticks. But putting food in my mouth, chewing it, and swallowing it are not actions that come naturally to me. This tongue of mine does not have working taste buds. My teeth are not especially secure in their gums, having been inserted one by one with a few taps of a hammer. This stomach of mine is only a synthetic sack that dangles in the recesses of my body. It has no exit. It leads nowhere.
Eating, for me, is purely a ritual to convince others that I am in fact human. I take no pleasure in it and personally find the act distasteful, especially when observing the oil lingering on others’ lips, the squelching sounds of food being slurped and smacked between moist mucous membranes in the folds of fleshy human mouths.
I’m not entirely sure how I gain sustenance. I have found certain habits are necessary to keep me intact. As to each one’s precise physiological function, I am unclear.
Your mother thinks I don’t eat enough. “My stomach is a little weak,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“Is that why you’re not fat like most foreigners?” your aunt asks. Her English is surprisingly good.
“I guess so,” I tell her.
“My mother is from Hunan,” you tell me. “Her food is a little spicy for you, maybe.”
“It’s good,” I say.
“I’ll tell her less spicy next time,” you promise.
“You don’t have to,” I say. I hate making the woman inconvenience herself to please an artificial stomach.
After the feast, we watch the annual pageant on television. There’s Dashan the Canadian smiling and laughing as the other presenters tease him about the length of his nose. Your relatives point at my face and make unflattering comparisons.
At midnight, we watch the sky light up with fireworks.
Then it’s time for bed. I sleep in the guest room with your flatulent uncle. I suspect your mother placed me with him as some form of punishment.
I hadn’t anticipated sharing a room. I hadn’t even brought nightclothes. I don’t own any.
“I usually sleep naked,” is my excuse when I sheepishly ask you for a spare set of pajamas.
I wonder what it’s like to sleep. It strikes me as a strange way to pass the time.
I pull the covers up to my chin, ignoring your uncle when he scolds me for wearing a scarf to bed. I shut my eyes. I practice breathing slowly and loudly as I’ve seen real people do. Eventually, your uncle falls asleep. He snores like a chainsaw but sleeps like a stone. The hourly bursts of fireworks don’t waken him. Neither does the light from my smartphone when I turn it on to look up Cao Didi. That’s only his nickname in the Chinese press, of course. His English name is Maxwell Stone, but that’s not his real name, either. In his nation of origin, he was called Maksimilian Petrovsky.
Here is Maxwell Stone’s biography: born in Russia in 1920, he moved to the United States in the late ’30s, where he began working as an extra for Hammerhead Studios. He worked as a stuntman in adventure films, but he got his first speaking role as a torch-wielding villager in 1941’s The Jigsaw Man, a low-budget knock-off of Frankenstein made without the permission of Mary Shelley’s estate. Maxwell Stone never attained fame in the United States or in his native Russia, but his only starring role in 1948’s The White Witch of the Amazon somehow gained him a cult following in China, where audiences dubbed him “Cao Didi” (Grass Brother) after an iconic scene in which Stone evades a tribe of headhunters by hiding in the underbrush. The McCarthy era killed Stone’s career in Hollywood. In 1951, he left Los Angeles and never returned.
Thomas Majors does not resemble Maxwell Stone. Maxwell was dark and muscular with a moustache and a square jaw, the perfect early twentieth-century man: rugged yet refined.
I don’t know how your grandmother recognizes Maxwell Stone in Thomas Majors. I have mostly forgotten Stone. There’s hardly any of him left in me, just a few acting lessons and a couple of tips on grooming and posing for photographs.
The Very Best of the Best Page 106