I know I haven't blogged exactly as promised and it's not for lack of experiences that aren't worth sharing.
I woke up today with horrible depression overriding my body as undeniable waves of culture shock shook me to tears. Earlier, I had glanced over at my phone and entered an app called WeChat, an instant messenger service more popular with international countries. I had looked and saw notifications under a tab called Discover, where one can post pics of themselves. I saw several people from my program going through incredible experiences, sight-seeing in Hong Kong, hanging out in foreign clubs and temples posing for pictures with other people in our program.
I was stationed out in Wuxi, 40 min from Shanghai but mostly I've been alone with the exception of one girl in my program and even though we've reached out to each other several times, I found her circle of expat friends from Britain that worked within her school to be very focused on themselves and maintaining their western experiences and privilege rather than immersing themselves in the culture around them. I didn't want to focus on drinking in a foreign place when I could drink at home. Still, I tried to blend because having English-speaking friends could prove valuable.
It seemed better than being alone, but was it?
The Brits drink, in my opinion, considerably more than Americans. They were interested in pub-hopping and dancing on top of the bars drunk singing American pop songs (yes, Brits singing American pop songs).I'm turning 30 in 2 months. I don't even enjoy clubs or drinking anymore for that matter. I wanted to come out to China for a career opportunity, to gain knowledge of a foreign culture, to experience something outside my comfort zone, to learn another language and experience a different world. But I'm finding that my wanting those experiences is likely a lone venture and I was both prepared and unprepared for the toll it would take on my psyche. I considered myself quite a nomadic soul, easily able to detach from things for the sake of new experiences and able to adjust even in solitude. So I thought I would be able to handle this adjustment not without difficulty but easier than most, however, China has pushed me to my limits and I know that if I can just endure (and I fully intend to) I hope to find I won't be the same...and that that change will be for the better.
But truth is I'm still quite lonely out here.
I expressed this to my boyfriend, Charles, this morning via Skype after my crying fit had subsided and he offered words of encouragement.
"Rasheeda, I know you will argue this and refute it 10 different ways from Sunday but when I was in Korea, all I did was drink," he said, speaking of his experience of his semester abroad when he was in college, "And yeah I went sight-seeing with [Korean] friends but we drank. We drank even as we went sight-seeing. We even went to Buchan Temple, one of the only original temples still standing after the Korean war, and we drank there. We drank everywhere."
"Those people in your program, they're going to all those places and more than likely they're drinking and yeah the photos look fun," he said, "It's like this bottle of tabasco sauce." He picked up a bottle of the sauce that was on his desk. "You're looking at it from here," he pushed it up to the camera, "when really it's back here." He pulled it back. And I understood what he meant. He was inferring that things look better from one perspective but when you look at the whole picture it wasn't what it seemed.
"And you have to remember, you came out here for a career purpose," he said, "sight-seeing and all that is nice but it really comes second to what you're doing. People don't want to read, 'oh today was a lovely autumn day in China,' they want to read how you came to experience and understand a different culture."
"Like that story about how you witnessed that girl getting punched in Shanghai and no one did anything about it," he said, "That's the kind of stuff people want to read about."
He's referring to my first week in China when I had orientation and training with other prospective teachers at Shanghai for 2 weeks before my placement program, Ameson, dispersed our group to our respective schools. During one of my group's last free nights before the TEFL exam ( the Teaching English as Foreign Language exam which gives us our official teacher certifications) a few of us went to a club where they offered foreigners free bottle service.
Upon entering the subway station and buying our tickets, we were about to walk downstairs to the train platform when we saw a drunk man screaming at whom we presumed to be his wife, as she was holding the hand of a small girl probably no older than five years old. He was in the woman's face screaming loudly and we stopped at the top of the stairs to the platform and stared. He swung at her and hit her in the face, his fist making direct contact with her left cheek. She stood there in silence, stone-faced, unflinching. He swung at her again and she ducked. He kept screaming and swinging at her dropping the take out food he was holding in a plastic bag and she dodged his attacks with the deftness of a skilled boxer, never screaming back, saying anything or even so much raising her hands to defend herself. Her daughter stood nearby staring in silence.
The lady at the subway customer service stand and the guard at the bag check (they have a belt where they do random screenings on large bags in Chinese subways) just stood there and stared and passer-bys walked by without so much as glancing over. Finally, coming to our senses we yelled at the staff to help and they didn't move. A police officer walked by the scene. He was heading towards where the man and woman were fighting. We thought he'd stop them as the guy was still going at her even with the cop present and he continued to walk right by them to the other side of the station never looking back.
In China, saving face is the most important thing. Bringing to light someone's flaws or errors is a huge sign of disrespect and looked down upoon. So many Chinese will not confront people so not to embarrass them. It's a strange concept foreign to us westerners. For example, one of our trainers told usa true story about a woman in China was diagnosed with breast cancer and had both her breasts removed. The doctor told the family she had cancer and advised them not to tell her as it would likely embarrass and upset her. So the family kept their silence and the woman went through surgery without ever really knowing why her breasts were missing.
You stay out of people's business to say the least. So people who say that Chinese lie, they don't get it. It's not technically lying. It's that they think they're saving you from embarrassment if they just omit acknowledgement of the truth. That your mental well-being is more important than correction.
So when we saw the fight unfold at the train station, it really registered me what they meant when they were talking about the cultural differences and how saving face was important. A strange sensation overwhelmed me.
"Oh my god," I thought, "We can't do anything for this woman. We can't do anything at all."
I looked at the little girl.
"This will only perpetuate into a circle of domestic violence." I thought. I looked sadly at the girl, hoping she wouldn't find someone like her father thinking that was affection.
We couldn't meddle because we were told interfering would likely get us arrested and that the law would be against us as foreigners. And seeing as a police officer did nothing, that only reaffirmed that fact.
"Man," said one of the guys in our group, "This is bullshit. This would've never happened in America."
He wasn't talking about domestic violence. He was talking about the shock of this happening in a public place where a man was beating a woman without any reservation in front of a child and a police officer wouldn't even so much glance in their direction as he passed right next to them.
We walked down the stairs and boarded our train.
That was during my first week in China.
So, I got what Charles meant.
"You're right," I said.
It's the stories like that that unfold when you least expect it that are worth telling. Giving people an inside look into something they can't or don't fully understand even as I'm struggling to understand it myself. It's why I like writing. It's why I wanted to be a journalist. And up until now, I had lacked motivation and focus to do anything else but self-pity myself for not being able to do more.
But truth is there's plenty I've already seen and done that is worth sharing. From my interactions with my students, to just walking down the street, to just trying to communicate where I want to go with a taxi driver. Even my interactions with other expats. All of it has been new. All of it adding itself onto the culture shock that overwhelms me at times.
So instead of curling up in bed crying, I realized that the best way to deal with it was staring me right in the face. The very thing I didn't want to do because the emotions were so overbearing. And that was writing about it.
So here's to a fresh start. Let's start from the beginning. I'll tell you everything I know and all I've seen and at the end of this experience I hope we both are changed from the experience.
Thank you for reading.
