(LI SHIGONG)

"You're Chinese, and you don't know what this is?" the man selling Chinese yo-yos said to me, in the volume slightly louder than polite in Western countries. I winced. My friend—who is decidedly of European descent and speaks decidedly better Chinese than I do—came to my defense. "You can't expect someone to know both cultures without any effort just because of appearance," he said.

Although both of my parents are Chinese, I have spent my entire life in the United States. When I was younger, my parents, avid home filmmakers, documented the progression of my Chinese to the age of 4, then a rapid decline after beginning grade school. My parents similarly spoke progressively less Chinese and progressively more English, even to each other. There were Chinese schools, from the age of 5 to the age of 13, but the weekly classes did little except reinforce that Chinese was an extraordinarily difficult language to retain. As my parents pursued their careers, we lived in four different states with varying Chinese populations, and I switched from textbook to textbook, simplified to traditional and back again. Finally, I gave up, with only the vague hope that my Chinese would simmer quietly until more fortuitous times.

After starting college, I was determined that I would reclaim the language, the culture, the history of being Chinese, starting with memorizing enough characters to get me through a day in Beijing. A few months ago, I filled out forms, applied for a Chinese visa, and filled my suitcases with the items I thought I'd need for four months in Beijing: summer clothing, hand sanitizer, and many packs of note cards for learning new vocabulary. Two months later, my Chinese has notably improved, but it is nowhere enough to pass off as a native for long. "Where to?" asks the taxi driver. "So-and-so place," I reply, quickly and in the nagging and slightly petulant tone I've adopted from Beijingers wilting in the summer heat and dust. But between the particular Beijing pronunciation and the noisiness of the Beijing roads, any further conversation will betray my weak listening comprehension and weaker spoken ability.

Other times, my dress and hairstyle is enough to tip off that I am a foreigner, even before speaking a single word. "Excuse me, do you speak English by any chance?" asked the owner of a CD store, asking me to translate for a picky American couple. One of my Chinese teachers complimented me on my pronunciation, thinking I was Korean. Sometimes I wonder if people mistake me for someone from the countryside who has grown up speaking dialects of Mandarin, especially now with my summer tan. "Where are you from?" people ask me. "Not from here," I reply. "Where?" they press. When I tell them that I am from the United States, I typically receive quizzical stares. "You don't look American," they say, as if all Americans have blue eyes and blonde hair. Comprehension dawns when I tell them that my parents are Chinese.

I have these conversations every day, with taxi drivers, with shopkeepers, with new friends and acquaintances. Some politely compliment me on my limited Chinese. Most, however, berate me for not speaking better Chinese. "What's wrong with you? Why haven't you learned from your parents?" complete strangers ask me. "Chinese is so simple," people have told me. "It's English that's difficult." I am resentful toward these constant intrusions on my life; barbs sent my way every day simply because of my Chinese appearance. With the same level of Chinese, my Caucasian classmates astonish everyone from waitresses to security guards.

Behind this resentment, however, is a sadness: I know that no matter how hard I work, I will always carry a slight American accent with my Chinese; I will always carry a slight American inflection to my grammar and speaking; and somehow, this will make me a less valuable member of the Chinese politic. And despite growing up in the West, I do consider myself Chinese, as the Chinese in China and other people in the West consider me Chinese.

In the end, I am Chinese as well as American. I do not want to be Chinese, however, because I look Chinese—I want to be Chinese because I have chosen to be Chinese. I want to be Chinese because I have chosen to live in Beijing to learn Chinese, to submerge myself in the currents of contemporary Chinese affairs. In this sense, I am no different from my Caucasian-looking classmates who study the same subjects, who often speak better Chinese, who drop fewer dumplings with their chopsticks, whose characters are shapelier than mine. But I know that the standards will always be higher for me because of my outward appearance, and I know that in this world where Chinese nationality is still often denoted by outward appearance, the potential rewards will be greater for me.

The writer is an American student in Beijing