London Confusion

by Chen Sheuang
alias Shawn Chen

It was a typical day in London; it was cold and moist, but the sights and sounds of a new country was more than enough distraction away from the unpleasantness of an early Spring morning. When the adrenalin wore off,all I wanted was a warm bed and a few hours to sleep. Upon arrival in the boarding house, I was a confused mess of cross culture and crossed again--A Chinese-American in London.
The room was not ready, and I struggled to stay awake, too tired to even let go of the massive luggage strapped all over me. At the corner of my eye, I caught a man staring at me with a slight grin. I smiled at the gentleman; he nodded and puffed a few rings of tobacco smoke from his pipe.
“What - is - your - name?” he said to me, clearly pronouncing each word.
“My name is Shawn, sir, “ I replied with an absolute lack of desire to continue with this conversation any longer than I had to. Then I realized I did not have the strength to move my heavily strapped body of bags and other things I considered necessities. In my mind, I cursed the man who sold me the giant hair blower with electric current adaptors.
“Oh Shawn...”
“Yes sir?”
“Are you Irish?” he asked with all seriousness.
I paused for a minute, considering how I would respond to his question. Since I was in his country, and since I didn't think it would be diplomatic to use colorful language one hour after entering a new country, I decided to reply with “No sir. I am Chinese.”
During high school and college, I spent years in Speech classes learning to speak English without an accent; to my horror, I suddenly discovered I was a Jeff Foxworthy redneck joke. Rather than to explain my Midwest American accent, I decided to move away by tilting my body from left to right with a slight torque forward. After a few minutes of struggling, the overwhelming weight caused an over correction of the forward momentum. In other words, I fell flat on my face...And I couldn’t get up. The English gentleman kindly unbuckled the oversized luggage from my back and lifted it away from me. When I swiftly climbed to my feet, acting as normal as I could, I noticed the entire lobby filled with those same grins.

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