China through Linda's eyes -- Part 1
- Linda Chen
- Dec 4, 2018
- 9 min read
Homesick for Canada started in mid-October, when the leaves started to turn brown, when it was the time for Canadian Thanksgiving, and when Starbucks started to have pumpkin spice latte in North America. I cannot believe it is December already. You can barely feel the Christmas vibes in Beijing but I knew by counting the days on the calendar. Homesick got worse.
The start:
I arrived in Beijing on a lovely day, blue sky with warm sunshine. By the time I arrived Tsinghua, finished all the registrations and settled down at my dorm, it was closed to dusk already. Sun cast a golden filter to the Earth and the sound of boys playing basketball on the field, mixed with the sound of freshmen doing military training came through my window (military training is the orientation week for Chinese student starting in middle school, through high school and university).
There is something unique about Chinese campuses. I actually grew up at the campus of my parents’ university. Coming back to Chinese campus felt foreign and familiar at the same time.
Of all the sudden, I heard the melody of a song that I have not heard for a very long but knew it by heart from childhood. The melody filled the air inside the campus through speakers all around the campus. This felt so unreal because of my childhood, my memory about those days in China had seemed like a dream to me. A very far away world that I can never go back to.
When you study aboard and live as a foreigner in another country, you might be able to speak their language, you might fall in love with their food, you might get used to their lifestyle, but you know, childhood is something that you can never find someone to echo with. As time goes by, you just forget about it.
But the minute that I heard this song, I have this strange mix feeling. Wow… I am really back in China now. Back in my own country. Back to the people that look just like me. Back to the people that speak my language, that shared my childhood, that know that songs that I knew, that watched the cartoons that I watched.
Is this… where I belong?
The myth of multicultural:
My feeling for Beijing reminds me of the graph that we learned in Cross-cultural management, the graph of culture shock. You started with a honeymoon period, then you go into depression, if you get out of it, the graph will smooth it out, but it can be that you never get out of it. Then you fail your international mission.
Given the fact that China is supposed to be my home country and a country that every capable business person must deal with (people seem to believe that you cannot avoid China), I was freaking out about the fact that I felt so uncomfortable here.
One day, I decided to google: how to handle culture shock, because I remember Martha mentioned something about it in class, but I cannot remember them now. However, my webpage showed: The site cannot be reached. “Damn you VPN” I thought to myself.
The only thing I remember was I should get support from my family and friends. But my family…? Tell them that I am not comfortable coming back to my own country? A country where all of them belong to? I am already the weirdo in the family… I sigh. I do not want another fight.
Until one day, a thing that my professor said really made me think. My professor is a Chinese but currently live in the U.S. and have stayed in France for 10 years. He told me his daughters followed him, Chinese born but grew up in France until 14 and then moved to the U.S.. I said: wow that is good, they are very international.
He hesitated and said: “not entirely good. I realized that they have an identity crisis. They do not feel belong to any culture. I always told them: they should learn to see the upside of every culture. You look at me, I know I am Chinese, and everyone loves me. I understand both Chinese people and Western culture. I can get along anywhere.”
Learn to see the upside of every culture… hmm… I thought to myself.
What he said actually made me rethink what I wrote for my Cross-cultural Management paper. I studied multicultural individuals in my paper. In the current academic world, they divide multicultural individuals into 2 types. One type of individual has a primary identity, and they filter all other cultures through the primary one. Another type of individuals accepted all cultures and can switch between different cultures according to different social cues.
However, my professor identified himself as Chinese but can switch between different cultures with no problem. On the contrary, his daughters and I did not identify ourselves with a primary culture and paralyzed or find ourselves not fitted in many cultures. I realized this theory actually assumed that people can live without a primary cultural identity because if you can accept all cultures, it means you have no cultural identity, which I think is impossible.
I want to propose that if someone can respond to different social cues without problems, it must be because they already had a primary identity. They know who they are.
Will my proposal be valid? Should I do a Ph.D.? lol I don't know…
Life in China: bustling
I once made a post on Instagram saying that there is a word in Chinese that is called 烟火气. I think this word describes China the best and there is no direct translation to English (could be due to my lack of vocabulary) because I think such a thing just does not exist in North America. The closest translation I can find was bustling, somewhere very busy and has lots of people.
However, this is not just about the population and crowdedness. The direct translation for 烟火气 is “the smell of fireworks”. It describes a place where you can literally smell food everywhere as you walk down the street especially during mealtime, it is you can hear people yelling, singing, talking all around you, it is you felt like the night never ends, the sun never rises, and the people never go home; there is so much going on that you forget there are other places in this world.
Whenever I think of China, a scene in those Disney movies always come to my mind, movies that start with “a long time along…” and describes human’s early society. The scene of a bunch of villages beside a forest or the ocean and you see the smokes coming out of the village. People in the villages were warned never go outside of the village generation after generation
I do not mean China is underdeveloped at all. On the contrary, cities like Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai are far more developed than the developed countries on some scales. For example, literally, NO ONE brings cash. When you go out, ALL you need is your phone. You use your phone to take public transit or taxi, to pay, and to do basically everything you can think of. You don’t even need to bring your ID in China because Chinese clubs do not even check IDs…
What I meant was… the feeling that Chinese society gives me is very much similar to those scenes. People living closely together, like a big village, a community with a head and the head is like the parent of everyone in this village, the big father figure. Everyone in the village looks like and they all know the role that they should play in this web of human interaction.
Remember how normally these stories go? There is one person, the main figure of the story, who is different from the rest and like to know what is out there. And that person creates a big fuss in the community.
This script captures the main character of such society: the strength of norm. No one tells you what to do but you are supposed to know. How can you not know? No one explicitly writes rules of what you cannot do, but you know by heart what is forbidden in this society. People do not look up, people do not look far, people do not think much, people live the same way generations after generations. And if someone is different? that is a big big trouble.
If you keep these feelings in mind, you shouldn’t be too surprised by the hardness to find English speakers here, or all the apps that people live by, including maps, are all in Chinese, or how they can be easily offended, quickly form a large alliance and give a fight back. You will also see why people say this country has massive potential, because if some key opinion leaders in this country like your product, your product can spread like a virus. A virus spreads the fastest in places where it is crowded and has lots of energy. That’s the power of norm.
How to live? How should we live?
“Linda you see, if you live in this society, there is something that you must comply with. For example, one of my friend’s son wanted to do something great. He tried so many methods but still fail to do it. However, his dad learned that and found a connection. Then the thing is done.” Mom was telling me these stories in a low voice as we were browsing at the ancient artifacts in the National Museum of China.
I did not speak.
She continued: “Remember when we were at the Shanghai Expo and we did not need to line up? While people wanted to pay extra to ride the cable cars that we have or pay extra to go pass line but cannot? That is the reality. And it is stupid to not take advantage of it.
“Then I just do not live in such a society. There are other societies out there that do not function this way or I can get around it by using the way I like. The Chinese society does not represent the entire world.” I said.
“Yes you are right but many people do not have a choice like you to go to another society.”
I did not say anything, but I knew she was right.
The other day I was thinking about all the books that I read in 2018 as the year is coming to an end. Surprisingly, I might say the book “Enlightenment Now” impacted me the most. I said surprisingly because it was not a very functional book like “Thinking Fast and Slow” nor a very good novel like “Restaurant at the End of the Universe”. However, this book changed the way that I looked at the era we are living in now.
I remember at the very beginning of the book, the author quoted Obama and said: if you asked me which era that I would like to live in if I had a choice, I would say now because this era, this moment is the best time of our history.
This sentence was what I had in my mind when I was listening to my mom. Thank God I am in the 21st century… and thank you mom, thank you dad, for giving me the opportunity to choose.
Another thing that I have been wondering in my mind was how two different societies construct their superheroes. Put religion aside, the superheroes in the Western societies are Superman, Batman, Spiderman and etc. Their mission is to help the world, change the world and save the world. I think back to the Chinese society. Firstly, I cannot recall we have ANY superhero figures in modern days. We do have something like the Monkey King from very ancient story books. However, Monkey King’s mission was not to change the world. His mission to protect a monk who was trying to get the books of ultimate wisdom.
You see the differences? In Chinese society, they do not encourage people to have the will to change society… society is not meant to be changed.
Another difference is that superheroes in Western society can a random poor journalist or some rich people’s son or a girl. In the Chinese context, our heroes are monkeys, pigs, cats（黑猫警长？）… some weird non-human things… Maybe this also tells you something about the society.
Ending:
“Linda, I agree with everything that you said but like many people said, if you do not think about these things, politics, philosophies and etc., life in China is great. Look how convenient it is to live in China and all the food selection we have.” My mom’s friend was telling me this as we were eating traditional Beijing lamb hot hop.
I kept eating. Thought for a moment, and said: but the society never got better because of those people.
I am not comparing Western society or Chinese society to say which one is better. All of the societies are far from perfect. The main difference, however, is that in the western society, we have lots of people look up to Mark Zuckerberg, who told his daughter: the world is not perfect but worth fighting for.
People encourage fighters, people help fighters and the education system foster fighters. But in China, you need to fight the people that loves you the most first to fight the dark side of the society.
Mama asked me one day: “Why can’t you just be normal? Why do you put yourself up so high? I only wanted to you to be a normal person, a daughter.”
I always felt there is so much burden or weights on everyone's shoulder in Chinese society. Parents sacrifice for their kids by taking up a job that they never liked but pay them well so that they can raise their kids well, or by sucking up a terrible marriage because apparently somehow it is good for the kids.
Kids need to live for their parents, for their families by living up to their expectations. Some need to study the major their parents want them to study, some need to marry the people that their parents want them to marry, and some need to stay in the city where their parents want them to stay.
And above all, everyone in this country lives for their country, China. Everyone in this society was educated to be responsible to revive China, to uphold China.
Sometimes I wonder why can't I just live for myself. Why can't everyone just live for themselves?
Should I fight the person that I love the most in this world for being who I am?
How can I still make her believe that I do love her?
-- Dec. 4th 2018
@Moleskine Café, Sanlitun Beijiing
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