My city rests in the middle of a sand storm
Where three hundred and twelve students call me their teacher
And at night, I sit with Ned eating dumplings.
It seems like we are the only Americans in Inner Mongolia
And when we walk from home to the university
People stare, whisper and point: “foreigner, foreigner!”
All my life I have felt like a foreigner,
Like a fish heaved onto land by a storm
I was raised by my parents and teachers
To be a sweet, little dumpling
But my spirit goes wandering all through Mongolia
To test and try what I’ve learned at the university.
The diligent English majors at the university
Sit in the classroom of the foreigner
While the broken windows rattle from the dust storm.
Their dream is to be future English teachers
And have a child to whom they will feed dumplings
And teach them the customs of Inner Mongolians.
We learn to be Chinese, but our grandmothers are Mongolian.
We keep peace at the university
And despise opinions that are foreign.
To disagree with my peers is not worth the storm.
Tradition is our greatest teacher.
Forever we will love ping-pong, bicycles and dumplings.
My students invite me out for soup and dumplings
And I tell them I am part Mongolian.
I suppose all of us are in this vast universe
When Genghis Khan conquered the lands of foreigners
And galloped through, raped and pillaged through Europe like a storm.
My students are ecstatic that they are related to their teacher.
I do my best to be their teacher.
To serve them new vocabulary like tasty dumplings
But I learn more from these tamed Mongolians
Who shuffle from dormitory-canteen-university
And commit their lives to learning a language that is foreign
Who collect words piece by piece like fragments from a storm.
In storms the teacher!
Eyes round as dumplings as none in Mongolia.
In this university, she is the only thing that is foreign.
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