The Tumbled Tower

La Tour de Babel

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel

I 'subconsciously' spoke Chinese to a Korean girl yesterday. Of course it's not a big deal, but it puzzles me for a while. I know she is Korean,  and I know she understands no Chinese language. Why the language switch in my head was turned on at that moment? 

Ever since I arrived here, I has been observing people, especially international students. It is interesting to see how people react to strange environment and people in the begging stage. Active people will throw out a few opening topics to see people's reaction, while passive (or shy?) people tends to wait for people's welcome. After a few moments or activities, people begin to groups, among which the language groups claim the largest members.

I remember in the first day of orientation, my focus was always shifted to faces sharing similar traits with my: dark hairs and dark pupils. It's silly to categorize people by colors, but it is the fastest way to identify the relationship between myself and the stranger. Racial affinity may indicate geographical and cultural similarities, and it's a handy way to find your target to make friends in a foreign land. 

Anyway, this is the eighth week, and I see something interesting. Besides people who has a colorful social life, people start to fall into groups. Basically, people all speak English here, so they basically hang out with people from the same country. When I was in Taiwan, I didn't pay attention to the enthnicity of my friends because I don't have to. There's only two groups to me: Taiwanese and foreigners. Since I am here, the subjectivity as the majority has been withdrawn from my daily life.

If I just make up my mind to be a nerd, stopping all the social nexus, I can still go back to Taiwan soundly. Besides having fun and knowing people, there may be a strong incentive driving me to move forward, to go to party, to go to gathering. It could be spontaneous reaction to heal the wound, to fill up a gap in the fractured identity. 

Was it the misrecognition, like the visage in mirror, or the sinister ideology practiced in my reformation of identity at the transience? I mumble to myself in Chinese or Taiwanese sometimes, is it a fallacious double or the reconsolidation of the self?