“I thought you wanted to be here”
July 29, 2010
The responses that I’ve received to my own reactions of living in China, via this blog or otherwise, have quite surprised me. Every person who has read this blog and talked with me or left a comment has expressed a degree of concern that I…I dunno, I don’t really feel is warranted.
I guess I want to say something like “we all deal with these things in our own way”, by which I am dealing with it through negatively critiquing the surface level observations of a culture with my untrained foreigner eyes. I guess I’m look for an affirmation, a good answer, a justification to fend off the fear of alienation. When life is too complicated and the brain cannot understand everything, we fall back on safe assumptions and I guess I’m just doing that.
Talking to Xi Wei and some of the foreign teachers here I feel pretty terrible about saying that I’ve spent the past 3 years studying culture, because I’m clearly the most disgruntled of the bunch. But then again, these teachers rarely expose themselves to much culture at all. In a sense, they live their lives in safety capsules and only by living here for several years do they slowly develop a base of survival Mandarin, make friends in a foreign language, leave the city they work in, move house by themselves and survive in part without the handrail assistance of the school. I’m surprised that they’re surprised when I tell them what I’ve been doing, because the way I see it, I’m just doing what needs to be done.
So my reaction is undoubtedly different because I have effectively thrown myself in the deep end a little. Perhaps it’s a stronger reaction because not only am I taking in more, but I’m also trying madly to figure it all out at the same time.
When you’re overseas you just want comfort, last time I found this refuge in language which I practiced all day, every day. This time, I feel my Chinese slipping away from me. It’s not so much digressing (I do need to accept that my language won’t improve right away and that it will be slower this time), but rather the added exhaustion in practicing the language and the fact that everyone around me doesn’t want me to speak Chinese (will write this up later), crushes my faith in myself as a second language learner and my ideals towards living in this country. I yearn for that comfortable feeling of speaking decent Chinese again, particularly to 女神(moniker), but I am probably too preemptive and dogmatic in my wants. I just need to realise that this takes time and already it’s getting better.
I guess the last point is rather common sense: I’m here as a slave to a CEO who runs a monopoly. I am plainly exchanging my humanity for their yuan and I don’t like that one iota. Growing up is hard, particularly in a world of accepted subordination under a pretence of democracy. In any case, the school is mostly kind enough.
And lastly, it has been an exhausting and often emotional few weeks and that can only compound the chaos. One part of my soul is shelling out for “the man”, the other part unsettled that I am so far away from the person who feeds my humanity.
It’s also all about getting settled too. I’m still not quite comfortable with my routine here. I haven’t found a regular eatery, still don’t have good internet, haven’t really started work properly and once training is over it’s “summer fun”, working 6 days a week. Fortunately the teachers have made aware that the peak season periods are usually much shorter than what was stated in the contract being mid-June through to August and 2-3 weeks in Jan/Feb. So basically after “summer fun” I should be okay, by the time it ends 女神‘s situation will be different too and maybe things will start to work out. I’m getting comfortable now and I’m pleased that I’m finally stuck in the one place and I hope that future articles will reflect this change (given I have the time to write them >_<). For now though, September is my goal. By then the worst of it will be over and life can normalise. I am sorry for bitching.
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