By Natsun

My name is Natsun. My friend’s name is Lee [Ed's note: name has been changed to protect his identity]. Anthony Tao recently published a blog post about our chance meeting at El Nido, a Beijing bar (with an absolutely impressive beer selection — you should check it out). I liked Tao’s article, but was very disappointed to read some of the reactions to it in the comments section. It’s not my habit to respond to rabble-rousers, but I think I’d be doing the Internet a disservice to turn down Tao’s very reasonable offer to respond to the visceral nature of many of the comments posted about my friend.

If you’ve already read Tao’s piece and are in the process of forming an opinion, there are a couple of facts worth considering. Neither Lee nor I make a habit of revealing everything about our lives to every journalist we meet moments after initially exchanging names, especially if they work for a publication that we have never actually heard of. Neither he nor I have an obligation to make every detail of our lives public. It’s also safe to assume that we, like many people being interviewed, tend to simplify information that is not relevant and focus on the information that is.

I’m not going to go into detail about our actual lives, but there is no reason to assume that Lee has done anything illegal in China or anywhere else. I will say that we’ve both done some teaching here (who hasn’t?) and continue to volunteer our efforts from time to time to help motivated learners. It doesn’t matter whether we’re currently teachers, because that information is irrelevant in an article about a guy who is attempting to acquire Chinese citizenship. Lee and I frequently introduce ourselves as teachers for simplicity’s sake. And the fact that Lee earns about 20,000 RMB each month doesn’t mean he works illegally – as the commenter “D” pointed out, legality really is a non-issue here. Lee is allowed to stay in China and work to support his family. Also, I won’t even mention the dozens of ways one can earn a decent wage without an official visa – read 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss if you need examples.

Ed’s note: Article 7 of the National Law of the People’s Republic of China states:

Foreign nationals or stateless persons who are willing to abide by China’s Constitution and laws and who meet one of the following conditions may be naturalised upon approval of their applications:

1. they are near relatives of Chinese nationals;
2. they have settled in China; or
3. they have other legitimate reasons.

But in case you’re wondering, Lee and his wife share the responsibility of caring for their son, and both bring in money in addition to pursuing academic interests. And Lee isn’t in any way lying when he says he’s a teacher. Like most people, he’s actually a lot of things, including — yes — a brew master and math whiz.

The original article by Tao poked some fun at Chinese-based expats and their tendencies toward excessive alcohol consumption. It also presented an opportunity to learn something new about one person’s decisions regarding his nationality and efforts to make China his home for life.

I’m disappointed by the fact that a half-dozen commentators’ first reaction was to assume that Lee could be pigeonholed into the “bad laowai” stereotype we all know. Tao’s article was funny because it alluded to this stereotype, but the nature of profiles – especially those written off-the-cuff – makes it impossible to not be reductive to some degree. The Lee I know is not the caricature that appears in the story. Also, for the record, I’ve never used the F-word in my life, but if you extrapolate from Tao’s write-up, I’m a foul-mouthed foreigner who disrespects other people’s infant child as a lifestyle.

Instead of attacking Lee and making assumptions about who he really is or what his life actually consists of, we should use an article like this as a reminder that we all, at one time or another (if not regularly), fit the idiot foreigner stereotype in some way, and that we should to be willing to accept each other’s imperfections.

I met Lee half a year ago professionally, but we enjoyed each others company enough that our friendship continued after we were no longer working together. As for who he really is, here’s what I’ll say: I don’t know many foreigners who have met a girl they like when she was working a low-paying job at an Internet cafe, single-handedly taught her English from scratch, married her and committed to being a devoted husband for the rest of his life.

What I do see a lot of are foreigners who come to China after they’re completely washed up back home and marry the first girl desperate for a green card, or – and I’ve personally encountered this type of lowlife – people who take a local girl’s virginity, live together for a few years, then break up and return to their home country when they decide that the fun and excitement of living abroad has worn off.

I don’t see how being a dedicated husband and father who happens to want to spend the rest of his life in China even remotely makes Lee fit this bill of lousy expat. Even when he does have time to hang with me, which isn’t more than once a week because he tends to prioritize his family needs, we are much more likely to take his kid for a walk in the park than to go out for drinks — in fact, the first time I met him, in a cafe to interview for a job, his son came with.

Plenty of expats do fit the bad laowai stereotype — but don’t be so quick to assume they all do. You have a part of Lee story – to assume anything else about him without getting to know him would be an incredibly shortsighted thing to do.

Boredom drove Natsun to visit China for the first time six years ago. Competitively priced Tsingdao has brought him back five more times. 

We were playing liar’s dice at El Nido when a pair of loud, demonstrably buzzed expats plopped down next to us on the wooden outdoor table. We made fast acquaintances. “Whoa, your English is really good,” said the man pictured above, to me. “You sound American.”

And we were off. We learned that the man — who introduced himself to us with his Chinese name, though we’ll just call him Lee [Ed's note: we've changed his name and his son's by request; see update, below] — was, despite all appearances, not American. And unlike his friend, Natsun, he was not Canadian, either. He tried to convince us he was Chinese. We expressed our doubts, and that’s when he admitted, OK, he wasn’t Chinese… yet. He was merely on his way toward Chinese citizenship.

I wondered aloud, “Don’t you have to spend a certain number of years here before you can apply for that?”

“Not if you’re stateless,” he replied.

For you see, Lee recently renounced his American citizenship, and it wasn’t for tax reasons. It was for his family.

When his Chinese wife was pregnant nearly two years ago, “I was in a difficult situation,” he said. “I was facing three choices: being visa-less, leaving China, or being stateless. My wife didn’t have the money, she didn’t have a passport, she didn’t have any way of going to any other country. If I was going to leave China, I was going to put them in a difficult situation.”

He tried hiring an agent to obtain a business visa for him, but that plan fell through (after he’d relocated to Yunnan thinking it would work, exhausting his funds in the process; in case you were wondering, he moved to Yunnan from Guangzhou, which his wife thought was a dirty place, bad to give birth in; and before that, they were in Xiamen, because “I’m a southerner,” Lee said, “so when the first winter came in Tianjin, I said, This is far too cold for me, let’s get out of here”). He and his wife made their way back to Tianjin, where she gave birth to a son (Lee: “Fuck if I know” what his Chinese name means). And then the American — quite reasonably, in his opinion, but against his friends’ and wife’s wishes — renounced his citizenship.

“It feels like a burden off my shoulder, to be honest,” he said. “Being visa-less is much worse. Basically, there’s no line of deportation, no path of deportation ahead of me at this point. I feel relieved. My family is the most important thing to me.”

The eugenicist

Lee came to China in 2009 because, in his words, “I wanted to marry a Chinese girl and have a kid.”

Natsun, sitting across from him, interjected, “His understanding was Chinese people are the smartest people.”

“Besides Caucasians,” Lee said.

“So it would only make sense that he would marry a Chinese person and improve his gene pool.”

Lee called himself a eugenicist. And being one, why wouldn’t he pick the best place (the best race?) to ensure he self-propagates to the best of his ability?

“I came to China because I believe China has a good future,” he said. “In 40, 50 years, the upper class of China will be comparable to the upper class in the US. And my ability to excel in the US is limited. I’m run-of-the-mill there, nothing extraordinary. But once I come here, I’m automatically middle-upper class. I have the means to give my son a better education and ensure he’s part of the upper echelon.”

He readily acknowledged that he made this decision before he had his son, even before he met his wife (at a computer bar where she was employed and which he frequented to make calls), but he always had this nebulous “future child” in mind.

“There’s logic,” he said. “I’m not crazy, but I’m crazy. I’m a crazy fucker, but it’s logical.”

As logical as a man with his background could be, anyway.

An interesting life story

Lee was wronged in the US — not by the country itself, but the circumstances of living there. An Illinois native who grew up in Florida, he battled hardship all his life, and experienced the sort of tragicomic calamities that only befall people you don’t know — stories that, once you hear, make you think, “Well fuck, that’s more trauma than I’ve endured in my lifetime.” The appropriate metaphor is less “poorly dealt hand” than “cheating dealer”: and it was a game he was forced to play with a constantly escalating ante.

Yet somehow, Lee survived, possibly because of a preternatural acumen. He claimed he scored a 180 on a psychologist-administered IQ test when he was in grade school. He attended middle school for just two months — due to delinquency, mostly — and high school for just one day, but eventually passed the GED without even studying. “And now I’m making 20,000 RMB a month,” he noted.

“I love science, mathematics,” he said. “Theoretical mathematics. Number theory. Primality. My speciality is dealing with prime numbers and integer fractionalization. That’s my hobby, is fractioning integers.”

He explained that this entails figuring out a speedier way to break down numbers into their constituents.

“If someone found some way to do that, all computer, all bank encryption would be obsolete,” he said. “It’s not known how to do that at the moment. Once someone finds a way to do that, it’ll change the world. That’s my hobby right now.

“I’m an amateur of science – the original definition of amateur, ‘lover of.’”

His other hobby is brewing beers using a combination of traditional Chinese methods (inoculating with fungus) and Western methods.

“In a few months I’m hoping to be bottling my beer and trading it with other home brewers in Tianjin and Beijing,” he said. “I’d like to perfect it because right now it’s such an abstract idea — it’s not going to be good enough for resale in the immediate short term.”

His future, the son

At some point, they began to speak loudly, drunkenly, because their “last beer” kept leading to another “last one,” which led to another “last one”…

“The reality is, China is expected to surpass the US in economy by 2050,” Lee said. “The upper class in China by that time will be better than the US’s standard upper class. By coming to China, I can ensure I can send him” — his son, splayed around his neck — “to the best school. In China, I make 20,000 RMB (a month). That’s really high. I can send him to a great school. By doing this, I can send him to the best school in Tianjin, in Beijing. I’m going to send him to the Young Communist Party [League]. I can ensure he’s really successful. When he’s 30 or 40, he’s going to be in a really good position.

“His whiteness will add a flavor to his personality that’s also going to be beneficial. I want him to speak native English but also be able to speak Chinese fluently.”

This entire time, the boy in his arms was fast asleep and clinging to his dad with all his strength. When Lee tried to hand him to Natsun so he could use the bathroom, the boy began to whine

“You fucking asshole!” Natsun blurted as he handed the boy back.

The people at the other table who overheard this laughed. At least one of my companions, however, didn’t find it funny that Lee also called his boy an asshole (though it’s true — find me one two-year-old who isn’t), and he seemed genuinely concerned that the father let the toddler sip beer out of a glass.

But over the course of the evening, the bond between father and son was evident. His son was separated from his dad for maybe one minute, when a passing Chinese woman called to the child and gushed over his cuteness.

“My goal in life is to have children that are successful,” the 24-year-old father said, stating he wants five children. “And where I see myself in five years is paving the way to my future.”

Later that evening, Natsun, Lee and his son leave for Beijing South Railway Station to catch an 11 pm train back to Tianjin. They’ve consumed many, many beers, and are deliriously happy, and saying how they should move to Beijing. The child is still comfortably asleep.

UPDATE, 4/23: Natsun’s response.

UPDATE, 1/1/14: Lee emailed us on New Year’s Eve to say this post may be impeding his plans to “naturalize and build my identity.” He asked us to change the names in this post, which we have obliged. He also offered this update:

A few months after our encounter at the bar, the American embassy called me in for another meeting; they had a man from Homeland Security question me as to my motives. When I had answered all of their questions, they provided a stamped version of my renunciation affirmation.

I was using my wife’s I.D. to commute to Beijing and back at the time, but soon realized that I couldn’t depend on that being a viable option in the future. I researched for travel documents that could be provided for the stateless and refugees. Ultimately, I only found one viable option which was the “World Passport.” Submitting the required materials and information, my new passport arrived soon thereafter. It has been a blessing, allowing me to travel and survive while I exist in this gray limbo. Despite all of its uses, it is not part of their list of passports that they have to click on when you apply for a visa. Thus, I am ineligible for any type of legal documentation at the moment. The office of foreign affairs has been attempting to help me, or at least document my situation… though I can only imagine my application for naturalization sits buried in some large stack of papers on the desk of one with far more pressing concerns than what to do with me.

In the meantime, I have been fairly successful despite my disadvantage. Offering my efforts as a volunteer for my wife allows us to have a decent income without breaking any laws; I/she/we have even been promoted recently.

Only the long wait of bureaucracy limits us for now, but the wait isn’t too bad. In fact, there’s nowhere I’d rather be.