"Do you think he's handsome?" "YES!"

It was the first day of class and I was walking up the stairway of the local middle school.  “Handsome!  You are handsome!” screamed one of the boys who passed by.

When I meet people here, a lot of them tell me they think I’m handsome.  Yes, as in the example above, even the males say so.  Once, a college student said it, and my fellow foreign teacher, Sue, said, “Men aren’t supposed to tell other men they’re handsome!  It’s just not done.”  And the student just says, “But it’s true!”

When they say so, I tell them thanks, they’re very kind.  It’s out of the ordinary to hear people comment so much on my appearance, and especially to hear them say they think I’m handsome, or the Chinese word for “cool young man.”

The adults and college students sometimes say so when they meet me, and the college students who watch the American show Prison Break tell me that I look like Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller).  I don’t know, I have to take their word for it.  A couple times, I passed by a group of girls, (and usually, when people say something to me, they get a kick out of hollering “Hello!”) but on two occasions some giggly students waited until I was past and blurted out, “I think you are handsome!”

After awhile, it could become easy to believe.  Really, I knew coming in that people would notice me in a crowd and many Americans had already seen their stock rise after coming to Asia.  For most of these people, I’m the only foreigner they’ve ever met.  In an area of a couple million people, I’m one of a handful of white faces.  The only other white people I’ve seen are the Australian couple, Grant and Sue, who live across from me and also teach English at the university.

And even if they say I’m handsome, it’s more like I’m a curiosity- something to look at.  At the middle school, the students like to shout “Hello!” to me, or say my Chinese name “Li Da-Sen!”  At the university, they’ll sometimes do a double-take, and if they’re with a group of friends, they’ll probably say, “Hello” too.  Everything I do is conspicuous here, so occasionally I’ll hear from one of my students that her friend saw me eating noodles in the cafeteria.  Once, a student (not from one of my classes, someone I met on campus) said, “I heard someone say that Dustin has two kids.”  That was the only rumor I’d ever heard, and if they’re all that wild, then hopefully there aren't any more.