Big noses.

He Dan asked us the inevitable question during our first Chinese language lesson. "Where are you from?" Since we had just learned the Chinese equivalent of mother and father, simply said, ma ma and pa pa, she wanted to know where our parents were from also.

"Tamen shi meiguoren," I replied in mangled tones, but with an air that didn't suppress my over-achieving high school self. Nick scowled, he still didn't understand the definition of the word meiguoren, which I quickly explained meant beautiful (mei) + country (guo) + person (ren). Then I went silent, the Chinese classroom was not a place to show off, as I've learned, you will pay the consequences later on with confused looks as a result of assumed understanding. It was no accident that I also knew the phrase ting bu dong, or simply, I don't understand.

He Dan smiled. Ah yes, American. The first assumption of the Chinese. Stressed as the U.S. Chinese relations may increasingly be at the moment, Americans still dominate the foreign work force. Like it or leave it (USA no. 1? Maybe...not) As so, today after class, a timid student who I didn't know approached me asking, "Are you America?" Well, technically, I smiled and said yes, I am an American. Apparently I had a teacher voice and it was currently set to the on mode. "Wow," she exclaimed. Then I heard the ever common phrase again, I was the first foreigner she had ever talked to and I felt a little bad. Then she gestured to me, big noses. Was it a compliment or criticism? I needed a mirror to inspect the comparison.

After 2 months in Zhengzhou, my perspective had become skewed wildly. After all, today's reality revealed that a clean Western toilet was the opposite equivalent of finding bean paste hiding in your dumpling. You exalted the first and feared the second to equal extremes. Bean paste was the worst that could happen, like falling into a dirty pool of Chinese water at an ostrich farm or botching an American culture lecture about Harry Potter, some could say. As I exclaimed to Gillian at lunch, "Did you use the bathrooms on the speed train? You didn't?! They were so nice!" I continued silently to myself, I even used it twice. Then I paused. This was a bathroom I was talking about.

Perspective. Perspective. Perspective. Like Beetle Juice, I tried to repeat this word while we practiced our tones and syllables, zzzzz, szzzzz, czzzz, but it all sounded the same to me. More over, we just sounded ridiculous, like a hive of buzzing, deaf-toned bees about to meet their death. Again, our teacher intoned.

He Dan turned to Nick.

"Ni na?" (And you?)

"Well, I'd like to think my parents were from Hell," he said only somewhat jokingly. He Dan looked blankly, she didn't understand and Nick smiled in an apprehensive 'it's complicated' way. I'm from no where, he offered, trying to explain that he was retired, but had just ended a 25 year stint working the oil fields of Saudi Arabia as an engineer for Saudi ArabiCo.

"Meiguoren?" she asked, looking for simplicity. Born in Italy and raised there until his high school years, Nick only moved to America late in his teenage years. Sort of, he said.

Satisfied, she turned to Joe, the third and last student in our beginner's class.

"Meiguoren," he replied simply and succinctly.

"But," she raised a hand signaling her protest. "She is from America," pointing sharply at me. "You can't be from America also."

She persisted in English, "Where are your parents from?"

"Meiguo," Joe repeated, hinting at his growing annoyance.

We may not understand the rapid fire of Mandarin on the streets and especially not the Zhengzhou drawl, but we did know the word for our home country, after all, walking through the streets of Zhengzhou we usually overheard people muttering meiguoren, meiguoren. As for the other thousands of words, they were still tonal jibberish.

However, in He Dan's critical eye, Joe with his dark contrasting skin and long dreads looked nothing like me. So, compared to the Chinese standard of homogonity, how could we be from the same country? It was preposterous.

We tried to explain, that's the thing about America, we are very diverse, but stating "we're a melting pot of cultures" doesn't really translate.

She blinked twice. "China is diverse." I inferred from her lack of continuation that she was stating that America, in comparison, was not.

If America was a melting pot then China was the next best thing, a spicy hot pot brewing with variety. She pointed for us to reread the previous paragraph. Yes, we nodded in acknowledgment, China has 56 minorities, the official Chinese government line to feed the world with the idea that China is diverse, perhaps even more so than any other country, even if 95 percent of its population was Han Chinese, just like He Dan happened to be.

Very diverse, she repeated. "How many Indians does America have?"

We twitched. "American Indians or people from India?" Joe bit back as Nick started rattling off tribes, "Well, Cherokee, Blackfoot, the Sioux..."

Again, this was going nowhere.

He Dan turned back to Joe, asking relentlessly, "Where are your parents from?" She refused to accept Meiguo as an answer.

Joe finally lamented after a rambling struggle, my dad's dad, dad, dad is from Africa, I think?

Perspective. We were each learning from each other, our flat tones signaled to her just like her ignorance of America's diversity that we each had a distance to go before we could begin to understand the other.