Mainlanders

The charter bus the school had rented for us pulled into the parking lot. It pulled up next to a bus that was full of Chinese people. One of my students took one glance out the window and with a certain edge to his voice, proffered his one-word verdict: Mainlanders.

“What?” I asked.

“Ah Mr. VanNoord, they’re Mainlanders,” he said dismissively.

Fascinated, I pushed the issue. “How do you know?” I asked as we got off the bus.

As we walked across the Disney parking lot, he said “Ah Mr. VanNoord, you can just tell.”

Unable to let it go, I pressed, “Is it their clothes? Their haircuts? What?”

I couldn’t get him to be more specific, so a minute later, I move on to another student. And then another. It was the same thing each time. “Ah, Mr. VanNoord, you can just tell.”

Well, my students might not have been able to break down the specifics of how they knew, but I was drawing the conclusion that the important thing was that they could tell.

I hesitate to read too much into a fourteen-year-old's tone of voice. But I think the one-word statement “Mainlanders” had packed into it the implication, “They’re mainlanders and I -most decidedly- am not.”

-Jack

By the way kids, get used to all those Mainlanders, because with the amount of money being made up north, you’re going to be seeing a lot more tourists from across the border. In fact, one day in the not-so-distant future, you may be working for one of those “Mainlanders.”