Past border control, the next hurdle is security - and a group of European travellers is already gathering beside the gate. Ahead, a Chinese security guard wearing a neon vest raises her hand and calls, ‘Hello! Hello!’, gesturing to come towards her. I look her way and begin to step forward, when the two Germans from before step in front of me without a glance.

Wow. The nerve. Even on this side of the world.

Then I realize the guard is calling ‘Hello’ to them. Not to me. Why would she?

In this context, nothing about my appearance would suggest that I spend 99% of my days speaking English. It is a mirror image of this moment, ten years ago with Natasha Steer.

I recalibrate.

The realization arrives slowly: I can blend in here. I am no longer a visible minority. Here, I am easily legible to the system, which at this moment only needs to read my face.

Beijing Airport: Luggage Carousel

While waiting for my bag, I catch up on voicemails. Force of habit, or the condition of the chronically connected - but that’s another story. In a crowd of returning Chinese citizens, I speak English audibly into a WhatsApp message.

And now a familiar feeling returns - not particularly enjoyable. I have compromised my camouflage. Heads slightly turn; gazes briefly alight on me. Subtle but certain - and from all directions. The system is turning its collective eye upon me.

Part of me wants to stop my dictation and recede into the background.

Fitting in - how restful it is, after so many years exposed in the open.

People with distinguishing physical characteristics can relate to this experience: being constantly perceived costs energy. You cannot help but notice the noticing of others. And when it happens in every space you pass through, a kind of inner shield develops to protect you from the quiet intrusion of others’ curiosity.

And curiosity always finds the gaps.

Beijing: Airport Restaurant

I stop for a small pick-me-up. The attendant at the door announces my presence to the restaurant and guides me to my table. The warmth of the welcome exceeds the stature of this modest airport bistro.

I start to relax and lean into my local persona. The server arrives and takes me quickly through the menu. I follow halfway along, but I can feel my cover slipping already. I can’t recall the names of the dishes she showed me. When I mention my pork and beef allergy, I reach for an everyday phrase and land on the wrong word entirely.

I’m coming across as an adult with a ten-year-old’s speaking ability and a glitched linguistic centre. Her uncanny valley kicks in, and she gives me a look.

Alien Detected.

I expect there will be more of these moments over the next three weeks.

There is no free lunch

Living in Germany for over ten years, I have learned to move through the daily friction of being othered. My skin has toughened accordingly, and a low-grade protective numbness has developed.

In China, despite these same-same-but-different experiences, I am moving with more ease than in years. Instead of needing to push through every door, I glide through the system because it is made for people like me.

But don’t worry about me moving back just yet. China and I are meeting again after a long hiatus. In these first days, it is presenting its best side to me, and I to it.

But when things feel too easy, too convenient, I cannot help but feel uneasy, like there’s something just under the surface.

Developer friends remind me: When the product is free, you are the product.

So, alongside its beautiful landscapes, technological advances, and social cohesion, here are a just few stark realities in China that cannot be ignored:

• I need to bypass the Great Firewall to post this piece. The Chinese government does not want its residents connected to the same sources of information as the rest of the world. If my eSIM from out of China stops working, or if my VPN drops, I lose access to all my regular comms channels

• China has a database of two billion people’s faces and employs what is considered the most extensive and fastest civilian facial recognition system in the world. There are cameras everywhere, and in urban areas, you can be identified and located in a matter of seconds to minutes. Talk about the Eye of Sauron.

• Censorship of public discourse is very real, and citizens face real consequences for criticizing the government - job loss, detention, threats to their families, disappearance

There are many more knots and nuances to navigate in these next weeks, not least of which is a wedding and family reunion. It will be the first time I see my immediate family in three years. The first time in over twenty years that we have not all been in China together.

I’m sure everything will go fine.

My soft re-entry into China begins as soon as I set foot on the plane. The two passengers ahead of me are greeted in English. The flight attendant glances at me and in Chinese, warmly sends me down my aisle. I feel surprised that the words land so naturally in my system - there is not the micromoment of processing I expected from not having used it much for over a decade.

Airbound: In English, the attendant asks the two Spaniards in my row what they want to drink. She switches fluidly to Chinese when it comes to me, seated by the window. In Chinese, I ask her if the carton in the corner of her cart is coconut water, and she says yes, do I want some? I give a quick nod.

She replies with 来一杯 (lái yí bēi / here comes a glass) - a colloquial phrase I’ve always heard in my family growing up, but that I didn’t know could be used in this more professional context. The casualness of this phrase carries a disarming feeling of assumed welcome.

Moments of Double Privilege

Let’s rewind a little bit. While departing Frankfurt for Beijing, you need to leave the EU, which requires a passport check. My flight was delayed arriving, and I see the long, snaking line for non-EU passport holders - a queue of highly stressed folks, all presumably with urgent connecting flights. 40-50 people - likely another half hour to get them all through.

They are understandably frustrated, and some try negotiating with the security guard to get the folks with tighter transfers to move to the front. The guard unhelpfully comments, “You should have arrived earlier.” I want to grab him and shake him until he understands that airline delays are not the passengers’ responsibility.

But I also have a tight transfer. And the line for EU passport holders is completely clear. No waiting whatsoever. I have a brand new German passport. I am suddenly both empowered and ashamed that I have this ticket, as only a few months ago, I would have been in the same situation as the non-EU travellers.

But today I’m going to use this passport. Beyond the automatic scanning machine lies a German border control booth. It is the first time I’m crossing as a German citizen. As I approach the booth, I ask in German, rather stupidly, if there’s something else I’m supposed to do, and the border guard waves me by without even looking at me. It is pure elation - and I walk through unhindered.

So this is what European privilege feels like.

I love it. I hate it.

12 hours later, a Mirror Universe

Arriving in Beijing, waiting for passport control. Two Germans are ahead of me, and they are already frustrated because at every transfer, they are asked the same questions and made to take the same pictures. They have a flight to catch in seven minutes. One of them asks redundantly, “Do we have to do this every time?” then catches himself and adds, “I just want to know for next time,” as though he knows this question will not help him move through any faster.

Behind them, I allow myself an inner smile. The part of me that saw myself in the long snaking line of non-EU passport holders feels some cosmic justice for these two Germans to be given a hard time (in fairness, still less of a hard time than the EU border control), and for them to feel the smallness of their situations compared to the looming regulations of the Chinese government. Part of me wants to help them. But I refrain, and with some grim satisfaction, watch them struggle with their discomfort.

I am next in line, and mildly concerned about my re-entry into China as a former citizen, now entering on a Canadian Passport. But as I continue to experience, language is the real door opener. As with others before him, the border control guard addresses me in Chinese. When asking my intention for visiting, he preempts himself by answering his own question: “Visiting relatives?”

To which I simply had to reply yes. After more than a decade away, and even with a renounced Chinese citizenship, the border control barely even needs me to speak. I am through in a matter of seconds.

These two crossings have been the easiest I have experienced in many years. I viscerally understand now that language is a kind of passport, and a passport is a kind of language. What power it is to wield these keys of status and communication. Coming to Germany over a decade ago, I had neither. On this journey, I feel what it is to have both.

What does it mean now to hold the keys, while remembering that for many, the door remains locked, with a long, snaking line stretched out in front?