Bus Adventures With Chinese Grandma: Don't Forget Your Stockings!

Last night I was taking the bus to a friend's campus and sat down next to a grandma. Now, in the words of my friend Patrick, "Chinese grandmas are the sh*t." It's true: they can do anything and exude a quiet confidence I aspire to. (Also, they can totally snake all the good veggies at the market before anyone realizes what's happening.) They rule with a silk fist. You don't mess with a Chinese grandma.

And to a Chinese grandma, all the world's a grandchild, especially a lone foreign girl. I sat down next to grandma in my short skirt and knee-high boots, sans stockings, and she immediately began chastising me for being bare-legged. I explained I don't have stockings, and she started running her hands up and down the bare-showing parts of my thighs, trying to warm me up. After a year and a half here, this didn't faze me (haha, I first wrote "phase" me), but I still had to laugh at the image of a Chinese grandma feeling up a random foreign girl on the bus, all the while chuttering in rapid Chinese about my lack of stockings. (I know chuttering isn't a real word, but I mean something like 'muttering and chattering'. Is there a word that combines those two things? There should be.)

This week I also had a grandma slip ahead of me in the grocery store line as I was paying in order to inspect everything I bought and help me bag it up in my reusable bags. (My friend: "What's she doing?" Me: "Being a grandma, I guess.") Another grandma held a spot for me in the train station bathroom because she was under the impression a foreigner would never get a bathroom stall if she didn't guard one for her; she actually shooed people away! It was very sweet, and I was really touched by her kindness. She was so thrilled I could speak Chinese with her, I think she was ready take me all the way to Chengdu.

I treasure these little moments. I'm glad I live alone a regular Chinese neighborhood, not a foreigner enclave with a car and driver/translator, as many expats here do. Although it's tempting at times to segregate myself from a sometimes difficult cultural experience, I know I'd be missing out on a lot. This is one of the great things about Peace Corps service.