The hardest transition for me so far in leaving the US is one that I never dreamt of, mostly because I didn’t even know it was a transition to make: the transition from comforting anonymity to …tabloid celebrity? Zoo animal?
One always hears about culture shock, and suffering from culture shock. So everytime that I’ve gone abroad, I’ve waited for the moment where I would flabberghasted and bewildered to the point of shock by some element of another country’s culture.
As of now, my culture shock experience has been more of a collection of “But why…?” moments. I have found, however, that as confused as I am by the Chinese mentality sometimes, it is nothing compared to their confusion about my existence in general. I am their culture shock. Anywhere I go, hundreds of Chinese eyes follow my movements. Anything I do, from getting on the bus to smiling at the people who are unabashedly staring at me to buying food, merits their shock and amazement. With eyes wide, open mouths, they watch me as one would watch a cat recite Shakespeare- as if it is too unbelievable to be reality.
I must have done 60 hours of thorough research on China before I arrived here. I gathered primary information from people who had lived in China, and secondary info from websites and books. I knew what not to eat, the intricacies of the train system and to bring a years supply of deoderant to China, the one item they don’t sell. Yet not once during all of my research was I ever warned about the one aspect of China that would affect me the most: the fact that I, by virtue of being a foreigner, would be as much as novelty as two-headed squid monster.
Americans aren’t really impressed or shocked by much- especially not ethnicticity- so when I went to Russia, I was shocked that not being Russian mattered- I was targeted more by the militzia, people always wanted to know where I was from. I thought that in China, it would be the much the same. But whereas in Russia, they watched me with an interested wariness, here everyone watches me all the time with baited breath, waiting for me to do something bizarre or unusual.
My first day here, I thought that I was being silly when I first noticed the pairs of Chinese eyes peered at me from around supermarket aisles. Later, I started to think I was paranoid when I noticed that a small group of people seemed to be ambling the exact same route through the grocery store as me. On my way home, I glanced up at a bus to see the every single person on that packed bus staring down at me. Noses and palms pressed against the glass, their curious eyes followed my movements in unison. I was stricken, convinced that the Cambodian heat had truly scrambled my mind. I walked home, carefully ignoring all the stares, trying to determine if I should tell someone that I was hallucinating or just hope that it would go away. It wasn’t later, until I discreetly mentioned my experience to another teacher, that I learned that was the norm here.
Sure enough, the next day in Jinan, as I was taking pictures of the giant bulldozers meandering down the main highway of Jinan as flimsy bicycles recklessly swirled around them, I noticed the cagey movements of Chinese teenagers behind us. Curious, I turned to see that we had attracted a large group of Chinese people, using their cellphones to take pictures of us taking pictures. The bravest of the crowd were, one by one, slowly edging themselves around us, so that they could pose in the background of the photo, making peace signs- the seemingly standardized pose for all Chinese people.
To be fair, we were a group of two tall African-American men, a blonde, a redhead, and a brunette- so, for China, we were an extremely diverse group.
No comments:
Post a Comment