“Room number?” the attendant barked. Every day I’m interrogated at the front desk of the international students dormitory, that I rightfully reside in.

I sighed, “115″. She checks the book to see that my face matches up, grunting in satisfaction when it does.

She doesn’t ask the same of the two French girls I am chatting to, who also live in the dorm. When I rejoin them I yowl in a deliberately loud voice, “THEY think I’m some Chinese slut here servicing students in their dorm room!”

A few days ago I received a call from a local language school. “Your friend passed on your number. You’re an Australian? Would you like a part-time job teaching English? We’ll send someone over to speak to you.”

I agree, and organise to meet the guy just outside my dorm building. When he turns and sees me, his face drops. I immediately know why, and break out with apologies, “I’m sorry – I should have told you I’m Chinese. I mean I’m Australian … but yeah, I’m Chinese,” I finish lamely.

He replies, in thickly accented English, “I’m sorry, the Chinese parents, they’re crazy about blonde hair and blue eyes.” Translation: we’d rather hire a blonde Russian with terrible English, than a native English-speaking journalist who happens to also be Chinese.

I shrug, “no worries,” and go to leave. But, instead of offering me a job, he tries to ask me out.

Do you see the way I straddle two identities? Not quite one of them (the foreigners), not quite one of them (the Chinese.)

It’s Sunday morning, 3am. I’ve spent the last seven hours at a birthday dinner party with new friends. We blew up balloons, ate curry and birthday cake, drank whiskey, talked politics and culture and South Park, and then called it a night.

I hate traveling Beijing during the day – if you ever want to understand what it’s like living in a heaving city of 12 million, just gingerly step into the painfully crawling traffic that gridlocks the entirety of this city. But late at night the highways are empty, and turn into flowing rivers. You hail a taxi, and woosh, off you go, with highrise after highrise whipping past. And there’s barely a traffic light in this city, so it’s all smooth sailing.

In the back sat two Chinese Malaysians, who had lived the last few years in Hong Kong, with a Korean who was born and raised in Venezuela, and had lived the last few years in America. I’ve also become friends with a couple of Chinese Australians, an Chinese American and a couple of half Tibetan, half Germans who have lived the last few years in Hong Kong. They all speak impeccable English. They have a Western/ International sensibility – but they are Asian as well. They feel like home. Not home as in Sydney or Australia – but something familiar, and comfortable. A similar sense of humour and cultural references and outlook. Is this how migrants feel? It must be.

The other night, again, in a taxi at an insane hour with three, white, classically European-Europeans. Sunday’s predawn light was already wakening the city and the night’s magic was ebbing away. In the sobriety of day, or perhaps plain old sobriety I suddenly thought my Australian accent sounded horrible. Something about my voice seemed harsh and unsophisticated, not to mention my foreign look (I looked like one of Those Chinese – very different to Us Europeans).