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The Rabbit Hole: Reverse Culture Shock - Part 3
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Off Topic :: Sino-American :: Sino-British :: Sino-Japanese :: News and Perspectives :: China: A journey Down the Rabbits hole ::
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posted Saturday, 1 October 2005
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| Welcome to part 3 of my indispensable guide to ‘Reverse Culture Shock’, the ultimate guide to finding out what surprises await you on your return home from China, and what troubles you may have when it comes to adapting back into your own culture after spending an extended tour of duty in the delightfully contrary world that those who have never been there call China, and those that have call ‘the twilight zone’. Food It takes you a minute to remember the inherent differences between bread and candyfloss. You find yourself hoarding things like butter, nato, and cheese ‘in case you never see them again’. You are shocked to find that, not only does your local Chinese takeout cost more than Macdonald’s, but that it also bears little or no resemblance to actual Chinese takeout. You are at a society function/social event of some kind and you see a dish if complimentary peanuts on the table and immediately look for some chopsticks to eat them with. If you have been in China for more than 3 years you don’t need to look for them, you have a pair in your purse already ‘just in case’. You wear a white blouse to the office ‘team building’ meal in a local Chinese restaurant, by the end of the meal your blouse is still spotlessly white. People and Culture You instinctively use your language skills to order your favourite dish in the local Chinese takeout only to find that the Asian guy behind the counter is actually second generation Vietnamese. It takes you three days before you stop instinctively pointing at white people and shouting 外国人. This applies double if you are a white. It takes you a week before you feel safe enough to use the words ‘democracy’ or ‘free elections’ on an unsecured phone line. It takes you three days to remember to write in Kanji and not in simplified Chinese, but only five minutes to figure out why using simplified Chinese is so much easier to. You are surprised to find that it costs more to bribe a tax collector that it does to pay your tax, you are also surprised to find that trying to bribe a tax collector is not only an arresteble offence, but that trying to bribe the arresting officer is only likely to make things worse. You call your Chinese-American colleague ‘overseas-Chinese’ so often that he biffs you on the nose. You start calling Okinawans ‘Overseas Japanese’, Hawaiians ‘Overseas Americans’ and Australians ‘Separatists’. Suddenly your own health care and law enforcement systems start to look good. Even if you are a Tutsi. (If you are a white) you see five Asians walking down the street and instinctively presume that they are Chinese, it never crosses your mind for one instant that they might actually come from five different Asian countries, or that they might be the same nationality as you. Your boyfriend proposes to you and the first thing that you do is to telephone your boss to ask his permission. You want to propose to your girlfriend so you call her boss; to ask his permission, her father; to tell him how much money you have and to ask his permission, the wedding planner and dress maker; to arrange the wedding, then your girlfriend to tell her that she’s getting married. You might ask her if she wants to marry you, but only if you’ve spent a lot of time around other foreigners, and were living in Hong Kong or Taiwan. You see a group of GIs driving down the street in a Hummer, forget where you are, and think ‘Man, Beijing’s censors must be good if they think that they can cover this up’. You see a group of GIs driving down the street in a Hummer and are more worried about what Beijing will do if they make an ‘unhealthy’ statement about Taiwan, than you are about them running you over, molesting you, or getting drunk and throwing up in your carp pond. You see a group of GIs driving down the street in a Hummer and suddenly feel a pang of solidarity with Xingjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. |
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View Comments/Add a Comment (3)
1. Sarah Smith left...
Friday, 14 October 2005 5:12 am :: http://www.journalscape.com/rhubarb/
Oooh, that last one is sharp!
2. The Angry Chinese Blogger left...
Wednesday, 19 October 2005 10:30 pm
My country has had US GIs in it since the end of WWII. It's obvious why
they were here 60 years ago, but apparently they are now here for our own
protection (read: they want to use us as an aircraft carier in case the
commies ever decide to get uppity).