As a foreigner in China, perhaps the one thing I stumble upon most when I head out of my apartment door (although bashful hellos would be a close second) is questions. Colleagues, students, complete strangers-they all want to know where I come from and what it's like there. For some of the people I meet, I'm a mere curiosity that may or may not warrant a lingering visual appraisal, but for others, I exude an aura somewhere between a rock star and a botched science experiment.

So why the disparity? Why is it that one person is content to simply know my nationality, while the next is driven to interrogate me as to why I don't own a handgun? The key to this mystery, I believe, is not so different from understanding how to make a satisfying sandwich. When you have enough bread, you want cheese, when you have enough cheese, you want mayo, and when you don't know what the hell goes into a sandwich at all, you may end up asking for pineapple ice cream somewhere along the way.

It is my privilege to live in a very friendly but somewhat backwater municipality of Chongqing City. Many of the people here have never seen a living, breathing foreigner in their lives and, for them, establishing even the most rudimentary communication can be very rewarding. Those souls brave enough to initiate sometimes only the briefest of dialogues have just learned the cultural equivalent of the fact that a sandwich is the phenomenon that occurs when something is placed between two slices of bread.

That kind of encounter leaves you with the warm glow that comes from a positive intercultural exchange, however, this experience is not nearly as common as being addressed by people who know what a sandwich is, and expect each one to be a towering Dagwood-style monstrosity. As an American, I have the misfortune of being of a nationality often considered to be universally rich, overweight, tall, violent, and poorly designed to functionally use chopsticks. The fact that I am a short, skinny, shy man who was raised as part of a low-income family, and who may in fact be consuming food with chopsticks at the time of the interaction, often fails to penetrate the alluring but terribly distorting illusion of who I necessarily am that is created by television and film. For people with expectations born of Prison Break and The Bourne Identity, it is simply inconceivable that I might just be a peanut butter and jelly on day-old bread, and they will keep digging through the ingredients in the vain search of who they think I must be, sometimes with a reckless lack of concern for my privacy and general sense of self-respect.

So what is a person to do when faced with unrealistic and possibly harmful preconceived notions of whom and what a foreigner is? The answer starts with a healthy glob of patience and works its way through many steps toward real (and hopefully lasting) understanding.

That first part, patience, means that you accept your own ignorance about the Chinese people, but not use that as a measure against which to judge the misconceptions they have of you. Also keep in mind that it is you living in their country, so of course you have a more realistic (though still limited) view of who the Chinese people are, than they might have of you. What this also means is that you don't throw up your hands in disgust when you meet the same questions day after day. Remember, each person is making his or her own sandwich, completely oblivious to the sandwiches being made by those around them. You are providing them with the ingredients, so do your best to cut back on the bitter sarcasm and focus on the quality of what you are providing.

The next thing to remember is persistence. Don't let them forget who you really are and what it is really like where you come from, whenever some difference seems relevant. When you eat together, talk about what you eat at home, and when you go to the store, talk about the kinds of things you would find there. You don't need to claim that one is better than the other, but when you praise one culture, point out strength in the other and don't be shy about doing so with the negatives as well. Simple comments like, "We don't eat very much meat in my family" or "I often ride my bike to work when the weather is nice," can be surprisingly illuminating to someone who assumes that everyone from your country eats half a cow for dinner or drives an SUV across the street just to borrow a cup of sugar from the neighbors.

I doubt these observations are particularly earth shaking, but they are easy to forget in the frustration of the moment. Any of us who are foreigners in this country have an obligation to understand the Chinese in a fair and open-minded way and we have the same obligation to represent our own cultures with similar respect and accuracy. None of us can be here teaching, doing business, or studying without touching the lives of the people around us and it is irresponsible to dismiss our impact as insignificant. We are all different sandwiches whose ingredients are the stuff of our lives. Ignorance is our natural state, all of us, and perhaps the greatest thing we can do as individuals is to help relieve our fellow human beings of a little of that burden. Perhaps it will lead to a finer selection of quality sandwiches for everyone to enjoy.

The author is an American who lives and works in Chongqing