"Yee bay cha"
The old woman working the tea cart gives me a blank stare.
Ah, shit. My accent is horrible.
I repeat myself. Still nothing. Dammit—I just want a cup of tea.
Then the Chinese woman next to me examines me up and down,
"You can't speak Mandarin?"
No. I can't.
But to the average onlooker, this is absurd.
I'm ethnically Chinese. Culturally Indonesian. Socially American.
So indeed—why the hell doesn't this Chinese face come with the language installed?