Recently my family in Beijing, who indulge in talking about politics everywhere, keep asking me about the current situation in Texas, specifically the standoff between the state of Texas and the federal government at the southern border.
I don't know how it will end. But the mention of Texas brought me back to 1984, 40 years ago, when I first arrived in the U.S. At that time, foreigners in Texas were as rare as Pandas in American zoos. Each foreign student was assigned a host family. My host family was Mrs. Robinson, a super nice Christian lady who took me to church every Sunday. After church, she took me to a restaurant, something to look forward to for a poor student.
Once she took me to her house, brought out some fruits, like apples and oranges, and asked me if I knew how to eat them. Bless her heart, she showed me how to peel the orange and eat it. I was tempted to tell her that I came from Beijing, a much bigger capital city than Waco, TX. But I didn't. I just played along with her. Next time I went to church with her, I kept thinking of words like parochial or provincial.
I don't know why I can't forget this incident. Perhaps it fits perfectly this Chinese phrase 井底之蛙 (jǐng dǐ zhī wā), the literal translation is "frog at the bottom of a well" who, as the story goes, is able to see only a tiny bit of the sky above and believes that the small patch of sky is the entire universe.
It is often used metaphorically to describe someone who has a very limited vision or perspective, having no idea of the larger world outside or unaware of different possibilities.
With the wave of globalization and the seismic human migrations like the one at our southern border, we now have less and less 井底之蛙.