“The following incident stands unique among all my Yale-China experiences. It involves an interaction with a stranger. A stranger who did not approach me to practice speaking English. A stranger who did not stare at me, jaw hanging, because of my foreign face. A stranger who asked an everyday question, and taught me a lesson for a lifetime. One day in Changsha, I was going about my business on a city street. An older woman approached me, and asked if I knew where a certain street was. “Ha, ha,” I said to myself, “I’m lucky I know where I am and where I am going, much less where anything outside my normal routine might be.” “No,” I replied out loud, “I am not from here, and I am sorry I cannot help.” She looked puzzled. She asked me where I was from. I told her I was from America. Instead of eliciting the usual wide eyes, or the knowing look of someone who expected as much, she went on as if I’d said I were from Wuhan. “Oh, America, so did you travel here by train?” Why is this a lifelong memory? She possessed a complete ignorance of geography. At first, and for many years, I laughed. How could someone not know about the ocean that separates China and North America? Yet that laughter has always felt uncomfortable. I am privileged to have an education, to have had parents who had access to travel, to have been born in a country and to a family where both were possible. I am lucky to have been born when I was, so the opportunity to live in China was even available, after more than 30 years of isolation. This woman had a very different education and was born in a place and to a family and at a time where and when my opportunities were not available to her. Thus, she did not know, and she knew that she did not know, and was curious. She treated me like another human. She was lost. I was a fellow human who did not seem lost. Therefore, maybe I could help orient her. She ignored my foreignness. Indeed, she did not seem to notice my foreignness. Since that hardly seems plausible, I presume she chose to overlook it. Maybe, since she was lost yet I was not, I knew something she could learn. She, alone among the hundreds of people I met in China, behaved in this way. She educated me. She showed me that every person knows something I do not know. Therefore, I ought to approach each individual with an open mind, and be available to learn from him/her. She had the wisdom to suppress her assumptions, and so should I. Despite seeing with her own eyes that I did not look like most people she knew, she allowed room in our conversation for me to prove her right or wrong. She reminded me not to take my good fortune for granted and to appreciate each individual for their own unique experiences. Though I never ran into this woman again, she lives forever in my memory. I am forever grateful to her.”
— Jan Kleinman, Yale-China Fellow (Hunan Medical University 1983-'85)
