The Bat Man
By: Bond Wang
Tags: Culture, Immigrants, Immigration, Christianity, Christian Living

A bat is wondering where it comes from. It flies to the bird camp. A bird says, “no you are not a bird. You are rat’s cousin. Go back to reptiles.” It flies to the reptile camp. Then he is told, “you have wings and you fly. You are not a reptile. Go back to your bird family.”

That’s why we never see a perched bat. It’s always flying. It never finds its station.

I am a bat man. Not the superhero — Batman. The bat man, with a space in between.

I was born a bat man. It was a Chinese city located at the southern foot of a mountain called Qinglin. Qinglin is huge, sprawling across the middle session of the country from east to west. But its name is not from the size, but a special role used by the central government. Officially, Qinglin mountain divides the country into two parts — the north and the south. The initial idea was probably to set up regional policies across the country, but one of the by-products is the label on everybody’s head. Born on the south side of Qinglin, we are labeled as “the southern people” upon birth. The mountain passes through a number of cities, including my hometown. Then here comes the funny part of the story. My hometown belongs to a province, or a state in the American term, which is widely considered as a northern province. Born or growing up in that province, we are squarely labeled as “the northern people”.

Born a bat or a human, childhood should be the same simple and carefree. I didn’t notice the problem until I grew up and left the city. First-year in the new city for college, first winter, then came along the first big snow. Boys and girls run out to the compass and shouted for a snowball fight. We started to split into two sides — the common way to split people in China is by north and south. When it came to me to pick the side, I stood there for a prolonged moment. I heard myself murmuring, “I am the south, I am the north. Where am I, then?” In the end, I stayed in the middle of the battlefield throwing snowballs randomly at both sides. Since then, I got myself a nickname — bat man.

My college time witnessed many bat man moments. The team competition, team experiments, group discussions, and so on. Whenever the teacher called out “let’s split by south and north”, I felt like a bat flying out of my head and wandering in the air. I was always flying. I never found my station.

It stuck around in my career life, too. I worked in Colon, Germany for 5 years. It was a European sales office affiliated to a Chinese factory. I was the only Chinese staff in the team to help the communication between China and Europe. The communication was as good as a multinational company could be. But not a single day passed that I didn’t hear my colleagues joke to me, “Hi, you are a Chinese, you won’t be able to understand this issue.” Meanwhile, my colleagues in the Chinese factory always told me over phones and emails, “you are a German or European, you can’t understand this story.” I was always flying. I never found my station.

I came back to China to work for a local factory. We had importing and exporting business. My job was to help the communication between the factory and overseas partners. The Chinese colleagues kept saying: “you are a foreigner; you won’t be able to understand this.” While foreign partners always reminded me: “you are a Chinese, you won’t be able to understand this”. I was always flying. I never found my station.

Then I joined a South Korean company to help set up its Chinese subsidiary in Shanghai. Now you can picture me working in the office. “You are Chinese.” “You are Korean.” I was always flying. I never found my station.

We moved to the U.S. in 2017. Before long, my family started to feel the pain that every newcomer would feel. When we met with fellow Chinese guys in the town, the topic was always about how hard it was to get to the local community. One day I jumped up and yelled to my family and Chinese friends, “Hi, you know what? It’s never a problem for me. I have lived with this shit since I was born. I don’t care I am a stranger or a local guy. I am a bat man!”

By accident, I joined a local Toastmasters club. An interesting session at the weekly meeting is the Table Topics Speech — — members are picked up to have an impromptus speech with a random topic. One day I was picked to talk about what’s hard in life at present. I brought up this prevalent bat man moments and confessed the fiasco of finding my station. A few weeks later at another Toastmasters meeting, my club member Marcus VanHala came to the podium and looked at me with a sense of seriousness. Marcus is a Toastmasters veteran and the lead singer of a church choir. He took out an item from his pocket and raised it high. It was a well-crafted wood cross, with some engravings on the central arm. He said, “Bond, I give this cross to you, with this verse on its arm. It reads ‘Ephesians 2:19’.” He didn’t read the verse. I came back home and opened my Bible. It says:

“Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of His household.”

Finally, the bat found its station.