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The Rabbit Hole: Reverse Culture Shock - Part 1
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posted Monday, 12 September 2005
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of the things that every foreigner who comes to China is warned about
is culture shock; the experience that comes from venturing into a
foreign land and finding that everything is, for want of a better word,
foreign. Fortunately for most travelers in China, culture shock is a well know, and overly documented, phenomena. If fact there are reams and reams of self help books telling you how to prepare for culture shock before you come to China, hundreds of web pages telling you what to expect in terms of culture shock when you actually arrive in China, and millions of blogs where foreigners like myself whinge about exactly how shocking we have found the culture to be when we came to China (for example, the mains electricity in my office was very shocking indeed. It shocked me twice daily for three and a half years until I called an electrician in. It then shocked him all the way to the Shanghai crematorium to which the building’s leaseholder responded by turning off the electricity for the rest of the week, doing nothing, then telling us that it was safe again). There is however almost nothing that discusses ‘Reverse Culture Shock’. “What is Reverse culture shock?”, I hear you ask. Well, put simply, reverse culture shock is the experience of leaving China after an extended period and discovering exactly how hard it can be to reintegrate into your own culture. While reverse culture shock isn’t usually that bad, particularly as many foreigners in China stay for less than a year, I ask you to spare a thought now for those poor foreigners among us (and by that I mean whingers like myself) who sometimes spend two or three years straight in China with only the odd trip back home for a few days at New Year and お盆, during which there isn’t enough time to feel any real reverse culture shock, who can face ‘challenges’ when it comes to reintegrating with their mother culture when they find themselves ‘back home’ for any length of time longer than a long weekend. Strangely enough, reverse culture shock can actually be far worse than culture shock itself. For your reading pleasure, here is part one of my new multi part series on ‘Reverse Culture Shock’. Here can be found many of the different aspects of reverse culture shock, all neatly packaged and categorized. Today we are going to hear all about elements of reverse culture shock found in ‘Pirate Goods’ and ‘Environmental Matters’. Enjoy and, as ever, feel free to add your own. More of my own additions will follow soon. Pirate Goods You buy a DVD and are pleased to find that it comes in a box, at no extra cost. You buy a new DVD and are shocked to find that it cost more than the bus ride to the shop. When you ask the clerk “When will this movie be out in theatres?” you are equally shocked when he replies “Six months ago”. You have to remember that you choose DVDs based on the actual film, and not the number of spelling mistakes on the sleeve. You notice that Warner Brothers and Disney use different security holograms on their DVD boxes, and that neither of them say ‘Wish you true happy friend day’. You ask the clerk in the Video store to play each DVD before you pay for it to make sure that it is the same as the one on the box. You bring a DVD home and are excited to find that you can turn the subtitles ‘off’. You are equally excited when the DVD light comes on instead of the VCD light. Upon discovering that the CD that you just brought contains ALL of the tracks advertised on the sleeve, you think to yourself, ‘Man, they take the surprise out of everything’. Environmental matters You go for a walk in the countryside and accidentally stray from the path because it isn’t nicely picked out by a trail of used plastic bags. You realize that the man who roots through your garbage at night is more likely to be an alimony detective sent by your ex-husband, than a man looking for empty plastic soda bottles. You have to remember that “Burnable trash day” doesn’t mean that you burn your garbage in a pile on the sidewalk. You get shirty when the man in the recycling truck doesn’t want to pay for your used toilet paper. A local chemical factory catches fire and belches thick black smoke over your home, your neighbors either evacuate or choke to death and die in writhing agony. Strangely enough the only impact that the fire has on you is to makes you homesick for Shanghai. If you have never lived in Shanghai, it makes you long for Chinese cigarettes. Suddenly the EPA doesn’t look quite so useless. |
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