Angry Chinese Blogger
 |
 |
Angry Chinese Blogger:
The news and views about China that the big media can't, or won't, tell you The is no single truth Menu: Home |
|
Entries By Country
   |
The Rabbit Hole: Reverse Culture Shock - Part 2
«
H E
»
Off Topic :: Sino-American :: Sino-British :: Sino-Japanese :: Sino-Hong Kong :: Sino-N/SKorea :: News and Perspectives :: China: A journey Down the Rabbits hole ::
email
posted Saturday, 17 September 2005
|
 |
| Welcome to part 2 of the new thread of Down the Rabbit hole. Of the many different elements that make up reverse culture shock, two of the biggest are the come from readjusting to your home news media and to the political scene. More specifically these elements of reverse culture shock are the realization that there are inherent differences between the Government and the press in most countries (unless of course you only watch Fox), and that you no longer need to pretend to believe the million and one ‘polite fictions’ that are required to survive for more than a week in China without either being arrested as a Taiwanese separatist or stoned to death for being a Japanese tourist. Further Reader: Reverse culture shock – Part 1 News and Media You turn on the television to watch the news and are surprised to find that two different channels have two different opinions about the same event. You turn on the news and see that the newscaster is wearing a military uniform and telling you that nothing is wrong, and it takes you twenty minutes to realize that this means that there has been a coup. There is a fire in a local factory and when the news says that nobody was seriously injured you don’t believe them. You hear about a trial on the news and have to remember that you can’t guess the outcome just by hearing what the person is charged with. You hear about a train being bombed and your first through is ‘Xingjiang separatists’ and not Al- Qaeda terrorists. After watch three consecutive news stories about crime, poverty and the inadequacies of the welfare state you remember fondly how much happier you felt when you lived in a country where the Government simply covered all of them up. You know that fortune telling, reading essays on political reform, and eating too much fast food are all ‘unhealthy’, but you can’t explain why, or offer any coherent distinction between the three. You are surprised to see that there are more posters up advertising a J league game next week than there are for the Olympics in 2008. Political Shenanigans You try and book an airline ticket to Taipei over the telephone, when the lady on the other end answers you instinctively ask for a flight to ‘Overseas China’. When you board your flight to Taipei, you spend five minutes queuing at the China departure counter before that you remember that Taipei isn’t ‘in’ China. You pick up ‘White swans’ from your local bookstore and carry it home inside a brown paper bag. On the way you check repeatedly to see if you are being followed. When you get home you only read the book with the curtains drawn, and you hide it in the bottom of the laundry closet when you have finished. After experiencing China/Tibet China/Taiwan and China/Hong Kong you suddenly appreciate why the British don’t want to join Europe. You also appreciate Palestine’s situation a lot more and even start to feel funny about Okinawa too. You receive a draft notice and are more worried about being called up to fight in Taiwan than in Iraq. Depending on whom you are talking to, you can use China’s involvement in Xinjiang to either support or denounce British involvement in Northern Ireland. You pick up a history book about the California Republic/Okinawa and feel pangs of sympathy. You feel the pressing need to petition your own Government to bring in an ‘anti-succession’ law. On finding out that your Government is not going to draft an ‘anti-succession’ law, you draft one for each of your children and announce to them that you will invade if they declare their bedrooms to be sovereign states. You keep expecting Prime Minister Blair to call Australia ‘Australia Province’ and to call for America to be reunited with the mainland. Strangely enough, you also expect George Bush to do the same regarding Cuba, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. You read in a history book that your country once occupied part of somebody else’s country by force sometime before the last ice age. In your mind territory becomes an ‘irrevocable part of the motherland’. Depending on whom you are talking to, you can use Xinjiang in arguments for and against federalism. The idea of having an Empress suddenly seems a lot more like a refreshing change mandated by necessity than the destruction of sixteen hundred years of tradition. Suddenly, having a two party system where one candidate is a right wing fanatic, and the other is a liberal flip flopper, seems like a good deal. The British Conservative Party suddenly seems like an effective opposition. John Howard suddenly seems like a pillar of the process to integrate white communities and with native ethnic groups. |
|
View Comments/Add a Comment