Am I Chinese?

One of the assignments of our exchange is to describe the different stages we experience while being abroad. The first stage being the honeymoon period; arriving here everything is different and all experiences are new and exciting. This was very true for me in the beginning, having hardly slept on the plane I arrived at 7 am in the morning and stayed awake until the early hours of the following day! Mainly due because you arrive in an environment where you need to keep going. One needs to get registered, find your room, explore your surroundings and make new friends. This is especially difficult and exciting when you are in an environment where you do not speak the language and the culture is drastically different from what you are used to.

The negotiation phase for me took the longest, constantly debating why certain things are done the way they are here as opposed to how we do them back at home. For example fish are kept alive until they are sold, as are chickens and other live stock, while we prefer not to see the animal we are going to eat alive. Then there is the fake market; where every brand imaginable can be copied and sold without too much of a hassle. Films, music, books and other forms of art such as paintings can be bought around the city on the streets from the back of large bicycles. They cost a fraction of the price as to what we are summoned to pay in the Netherlands or Europe for that matter. A movie costs 1 euro and a book perhaps 2 or 3.

Products here are cheaper because they are not limited or restricted by as many laws and regulations. Tax is often not thought of because the majority of the sellers are too poor to distance themselves from a part of their income. These conditions provide the ideal melting pot for eager young men to try and sell different merchandise on all of the street corners, which in turn is ideal for students such as me, who want to quickly buy a movie for the night. In Holland we would ‘download’ it, but because internet is so slow here and a movie is so cheap we prefer to buy a lot at once and just watch whenever we feel like it.

I have now lived in China for nearly 4 months, and I’v began to feel right at home. I eat at the local Muslim restaurant around the corner, I have my daily portion of Sheng Jiao Bao and other dumplings. I order my groceries in Chinese and have a small conversation with my security guards. I have started to recognize the people I interact with at the stores outside of their usual surroundings. So when I meet one of the cooks of the Muslim at the supermarket, I am able to recognize him! Other people have also started to recognize me, for example, one of the delivery boys from the local supermarket offered to drive me to my gym!

I finally feel at home and that I am able to live my life here. This is the third stage, the adjustment phase, my daily routines are adapted to the environment and culture that I find myself. I feel at home but I am still treated as an outsider. Because I live in China, I look different and talk different, I am still not able to speak Chinese and therefore I will always be out of tone. I believe that for westerners it is impossible to truly fit in Chinese culture. Therefore it is to my opinion that for us ‘Westerners’ it is not possible to enter into the final mastery phase where one fully participate in the host culture without feeling like the ‘odd one out’.

We will never truly understand how the Chinese work, their spitting on the ground, their non existant personal space and the fact that they never queue for anything are just some examples of cultural differences I have trouble understanding. For me it is easy to make new friends because all exchange students stick together. Seeing as we do not speak the language of our fellow students, for their English is limited, we mainly seek out each other. We hang out together and rarely come in contact with Chinese we do not meet at the university. We meet several locals through Chinese friends we have acquired and are often invited to join them for activities. Even though these are a lot of fun we do as mentioned mainly stick together because we are all in the same situation and therefore better understand each other.

China is a great experience but it is difficult to fit into the community. Language and cultural barriers are great so therefore it is difficult to make new friends. We stick together with the other foreigners because we have no one else to turn to. It is however, easier to talk to other westerners! This is because they are in the same ship we are in. Not just the people in your class but others who are here for internships or work, everyone is open for conversation with fellow foreigners. This provides a great community and fun interactions seeing as you meet people from all over the world and ensures that conversations with strangers are never dull!!!