The culture shock coming back was always more jolting to me too.
I concur in being struck at how how petty and trivially materialistic Americans seem after spending a couple of years in the third world.
That, at least, seems unlikely.
One of my big “me and China just don’t get along” moments was when one of my best friends decided that she was 27 and she had to get married by the end of the year. After dating literally three men a night audition style, she decided on one.
She is a college professor who is fluent in English and has studied abroad (a real rarity in my rather backwater town, but 27 is pretty much old maid age.) He was a illiterate gangster working a fake job that his influential brother bought him at the local big-deal factory. He could not even speak standard Chinese, and could not read a newspaper.
She kept bitching to me about how they had nothing in common and how they never had anything to talk about. I was always like “Uh, yeah, dude has never read a book. Ever. Not even once.” She would always counter with “Yeah, but he said if we get married he will buy me a car.” It took her six months to realize that the lure of a car was not worth getting in a lifelong union with a guy she pretty much actively despised. It was a wrenching decision for her.
I’m unbelievably excited to return to a place where women can buy their own damn car if it’s so damn important to them.
It’s no secret that China and I have basically butted heads at every available moment. If you set out to design a culture that was as exactly opposite of my morals, values and lifestyle, you really couldn’t do better than China. I’m not saying China is wrong. It’s just so entirely not for me that it’s almost hilarious. And that’s a part of why these small triumphs seem so triumphant.
I’m not being a baby here. There is stuff I can’t repeat. Picture rape, children watching their newborn siblings murdered, beatings, kidnapping and more rape. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a foreigner and I’m somehow “safe”, but people have poured out the most fucked up shit to me. I’m not at all a councilor and lord knows I’ve done the best I can to help people through, which is often no more than lending a non-judgmental ear. Why people don’t have a better outlet than some random foreign teacher, I’ll never know. I hope one day my students can find actual trained professional help to help them through the stuff they deal with every day.
Of course, none of this stuff is specific to China. But something about the frequency and how close to home some of this stuff hits has made it a bit of a struggle to maintain my own balance. It’s been hard to keep track of what I believe in when it seems like pretty much everyone else believes something completely different. And although people tell me different, it seems like few people are really happy. One of our students- who should inherit the richest and most hopeful China ever- jumped off his dorm room yesterday. It’s a depressingly common occurrence. In some schools they don’t even bother to remove the bodies of the suicides.
I guess this is why I think it’s so damn important that my message gets through. I hope before my students surrender their autonomy for a possession they think long and hard about it. I hope they don’t jump off a building because they don’t have enough sense of self to make it through a break up intact. I hope they do not kill their daughters. I hope they do not teach their daughters to hate themselves for being born women. I hope they stand up when they are hit. I hope they take the assholes who rape them to jail. I hope they take the assholes who rape their daughters and nieces to jail. I hope their daughters don’t have a “the day my mom killed herself” story like so many of my students do. And hope beyond hopes- I hope some of them can make their dreams come true. Some of them can own the new and hopeful China that is supposed to be theirs for the taking, rather than become some cast-aside accessory to someone else’s vision. I hope they have themselves, can be themselves, and can believe in themselves. If that makes me a cultural imperialist, so be it. No American has ever stood up in front of a class room of people and said “My greatest regret in life is that I was born a woman.”
And I think I did it. I think I took a small step towards that. May god do the rest!
Heheheh.
Sorry, I had consumed a few parting shots of baijiu (China’s super-strong liquor- my town’s specialty) with my supervisors before I wrote that post, and I’m a little upset with the recent suicide. For the record, it’s a lake at my friends’ school in Chongqing where they don’t remove the bodies. We’ve had a few other high-profile suicides in town lately, and it gets to you.
I just hope the best for my students. I hope that most of them can find a dream that is bigger than “I hope one day maybe some dude will buy me a car.” Now that so many material things have changed, the only thing that should be limiting them is the scope of their dreams. Unfortunately, it’s often their parents, their boyfriends, and most importantly themselves that are telling them that they are not worth enough to give it a shot, that their biggest accomplishment will be their husbands’.
Of course, none of this is unique to China, but it’s where I am right now and these are the problems I have faced. I’m sure in an American inner-city I’d face something different and have an equal amount to say. I think it just happens that the stuff I deal with here hits me hard, being a woman and all. I haven’t been exempt from the social pressures and ways that women get a raw deal. It wears on you.
Anyway, I still think I made some progress. While it’s not fair of me to want to change all of society, it is fair of me to model a different way of living and encourage my students to think about their own choices. I’ve done a lot of work with career planning, goal setting and decision making. I had my students plan and carry out small community service projects- not just to promote voluntarism but to give them more of a sense of their own power. I did units on stress and family pressures. I worked on emotional intelligence, and held classes with themes like “What role does fear play in your life?” and “What does it really mean to be happy?” And it worked beautifully. The students responded with great enthusiasm.
The students are thirsty for this stuff. Nobody ever does this with them. Some told me it’s the first time they’ve ever articulated exactly what they hope for in the future. My classroom has evolved to be a bit like a more participatory set of Oprah. And sometimes it’s outright exhilarating.
I’ll stop rambling after one last remark. A student wrote to me the other day. The question she asked me was “What kind of person should I be?”
What a big question, but thank goodness that she is asking it!
You don’t know me at all even sven, but I’ve admired your adventures in China and Cameroon a great deal as a lurker. I’m glad that you had a good ending to your tough slog in rural China. I hope you’ll keep the boards posted on your future travels. Good luck with grad school and welcome back.
One thing I’m wondering about; you apparently loved Cameroon, but hated China - aren’t women as powerless in Cameroon as they are in China? (Serious question, not snark.) What makes the difference to you?
Wow, even sven, I wrote almost exactly the same thing when I left South America a few years ago- I even had to go back and read it because it read so much like yours. Some of it is a little cryptic but the sentiment is the same. Here it is!
I, too, was largely miserable the entire time I was there. Looking back, it was mostly because I was very young and homesick, not because I saw such suffering (though I did see things I wasn’t prepared for, it was nowhere near what you and many others on this board have seen.) I spent way too much time on the phone with my friends from home, or online. The week before I was supposed to leave, it suddenly hit me that I would never be there again to live- only to visit. It was one of the loneliest feelings I’ve ever had. I suddenly realized what wonderful people my friends there had been, and how much I would genuinely miss them. It’s such a strange feeling, to be so simultaneously happy and sad and excited and nervous.
So I hope you are surrounded by people who love you when you come home, and that their love distracts you from the sadness. You have made a difference in the lives of your students. Isn’t that the best thing we can do in this life- to try to make a difference in someone’s life? Congratulations and have a safe trip home.
It’d be wrong to say I hated China. I’m glad I came here, have met a lot of people I deeply respect, and am really grateful for this chance to learn more about what is a very complicated and interesting culture. There is a lot I like about China. I know I sound awfully negative, but the reality is a lot more complicated. That said, your question is one that I’ve thought about a lot.
On a selfish level, I think part of it is that in Cameroon I was treated as an honorary man. While I kept to local modesty standards I was pretty much free to do as I liked without social pressure. Nobody expected me to get into a forced marriage or have ten babies. People just accepted me for what I was, a sort of in-between-person. But in China, I personally experienced a lot of the stuff that Chinese women face- especially going in at 29, which is “OMG-you’ve-ruined-your-life” age for a unmarried woman. I get all the pressure about being thin, getting married as soon as possible- at this point to anyone, letting my parents down by not having a baby, etc. I also think I make a lot of women my age uncomfortable by choosing a different lifestyle, and sometimes women can be a bit hostile. Meanwhile, men did not take me seriously. I get passed up for the good classes while substandard (drunk, sleeping with students, missing multiple classes) male foreign teachers get the good stuff. I developed a lot of deep personal insecurities I didn’t even know I was capable of. Call it integration- I think China can be an extremely insecure place.
But I think a bigger factor is how the women themselves react to this pressure. In Cameroon, women were oppressed for sure, but they didn’t believe in it themselves. They’d say “My husband is so stupid and insecure he doesn’t let me out of the house. Isn’t he an idiot? Ha ha!” Everyone lived hard lives and had a lot of room in their huge families to develop themselves. Even the more locked-away women had big personalities, a strong sense of sense, a strong work ethic and a lot of personal dignity. They had to have these things to survive. Despite the oppression, there was still a lot of strength and independence.
But in China, it seems that women not only accept it, but go out of their way to find ways to make themselves seem even weaker. I watched a bunch of music videos the other day. and in fully half of them the woman either fell, passed out or died. Being incapable is sexy. And it seems like people pursue that “ideal” with gusto. My students like to stage elaborate fainting spells in class to show off how they don’t eat. When they walk with their boyfriends they do this thing where they pretend like they can’t walk straight. and rely on him to support them. When they do walk on their own, they favor shoes that they can only take tiny painful steps with. It’s always this big huge show of “Look how sexy I am, I can’t do ANYTHING.” And remember- I’m entirely expected to act this way, too. Simply walking seems subversive. And for lack of a better word, I see so many women who haven’t let their personality fully form. Too many bright young women are cripplingly timid and insecure, simply going through the motions of life while hoping that marriage will save them. For most of my students, that is their main goal. They don’t like the pressure of having to make decisions and take responsibility, and hope that they can lose themselves in a marriage. They want that oblivion. Indeed, the most common answer to “what is your hobby” is “sleeping.” Sometimes the only thing I could get my students excited about is unconsciousness.
Finally, I think community participation is a part of it. In Cameroon we were encouraged to go out in the community and work with people to solve problems. I did a lot of work with youth centers, running summer camps, women’s groups, etc. People were eager to work with me and we did a lot together.
In China, people are varying degrees of hostile about these things. My friend ran a cultural-sensitive women’s group. She went through all the right channels and got all the right permissions. All they did was talk about stuff like career planning. It’s stuff that would be acceptable anywhere outside of Taliban Afghanistan. No sex education. No leave-your-husband. Just university women talking about their careers. First her computer files in her office mysteriously disappeared. So she kept stuff on her home computer, which was subsequently stolen. a few weeks later, she came to her meeting room to find it locked and nobody knew where they key was. Her supervisors acted like they had no idea what happened. Then her students were all called and told not to come. Finally she got the hint and gave up.
It’s a common story. These things add up, and it gets to you after a while. When it seems like you are the only one who cares, eventually you want to stop caring.
Granted me and Even Sven see eye to eye on about 2 things but who else thinks a “Welcome back Sven CA Dopefest to end all dopefests” is in order?
That’s a really interesting comparison, Sven.
Even Sven, if you ever go back to China, try somewhere different and then report on the differences. I’d be interested to hear the result.
For me the culture shock has been pretty minimal. But then I’ve got 3 kids and a wife who have never lived in the US, we’re in a very international place (Seattle East Side), the Asian markets are pretty good, and we want to be in the 'burbs.
What an interesting thread, Sven. I studied Chinese in Beijing back in ancient times, when China had just opened up to the west. So my China experience is drastically different than yours. But my wife just spent a semester teaching graduate public policy at Dr. Sun Yat Sen University in Guangzhou. And her experience was vastly different than yours and mine, needless to say. It’s a huge, diverse amazing country. Your observations on the status and attitudes of women are right on, though, and materialism.
My parents were Peace Corps volunteers in Paraguay in 89-90. They had the most wonderful experience of their lives, running a health post in an agricultural/jungle area. We visited them there – it was fascinating. I met a man who made huge wooden wagon wheels by hand. I got amoebic dysentery from his well.
Good luck with your studies. We look forward to hearing more from you.
Seconded!
Even Sven, thank you for your service. Folks like you make the USA look damn good, and are probably worth legions of public-diplomacy wonks. Best of luck back in the States!
I think most of our experiences are different than hers. No snark here since sven and I have buried the hatchet, but it just seems to me that she has had an unusually negative experience here that is contrary to what most people experience. It’s rather odd.
I think being a woman, not making money, and being in a small industrial town is part of it. My experiences are pretty consistent with the other volunteers I know, and are indeed we have all noticed that our experiences are different than the paid foreign teachers.
The people I see having the most fun in China have hot girlfriends, are making money hand over fist, and spend their nights and weekends taking advantage of life with money in the big city. Of course it’s a great time. But take that stuff away, and how much fun would it be? I think China has a lot to offer, it just doesn’t have a lot to offer me at this point in my life.
And some of it is just personal bad timing. I’ll be the first to admit it. This has got to be the worst place for a woman to hit the “OMG I’m 30!” point. I’ve been on the road too long and the loneliness is getting to me. This is my thread, so I’ll go ahead and be honest.
I fell in love here, and it tore me apart when he left me and moved in with one of his very young students. Especially when he told me in graphic detail how she is so much cuter than me, how fun it was to deflower her, how much more devoted Chinese girls are, how much tighter their vaginas are, how he’ll never date a white girl again, etc. Several times he’d call me back, saying he loved me and missed me, only to get what he wanted and immediately tell me how much better his girlfriend is than me. Sadly, my self-esteem and judgment are poor enough that I kept falling for it and it kept getting to me.
It’s not just him. I hear this often from both Chinese and foreign men. This is a big destination for sex tourists. It’s just a bad time in my life to be in a place where I am not really a candidate for intimacy. Especially in a society that is so obsessed with love. The first thing anyone asks me is “Do you have a boyfriend?” They have no idea how hard it is for me to spit out that “No.” How fake it is when I laugh “It’s too much work!” I can see their looks of sympathy. I know what they mean when they say “Don’t worry, you’ll find one soon!” I keep being told that I’ve failed, and unsurprisingly I feel like I’ve failed.
I wish I could just write it all off, but I can’t. I’m not steel, and I don’t have enough of a support network to get through it with grace. It’s just me here, you know? Just me watching everyone else have fun. The one thing I need- someone to talk me through the hard times, someone to hold me during the long nights- is the one thing I’m not gonna get. And I know I won’t get that until I can work through these issues, but it’s just not happening here. It’s all so recursive.
And we’d all be kidding ourselves if we didn’t say that’s one reason why foreign guys have such a good time here. Not the only reason, of course. And as a reason I’ll say it’s a pretty good one. Men who were undesirable back home find themselves adored by gorgeous young women. No doubt they can find a good one in the bunch if they want to get married. Unfortunately for each foreign guy who finds his confidence and has adventures here, there is a smart foreign woman who is having her confidence dismantled.
I’m afraid I have developed some negative views of male-female relations. Maybe some of it was harsh realities that I’ve had to learn. I’ve certainly got myself into amazing shape and learned to present myself at my best. But I never knew what it meant to be insecure before I came here. I had no idea. I was always just me, take it or leave it. Now I’m conscious of every move. I’ve mastered my facial expressions so that I no longer have my old lopsided grin. I bought the heels. I don’t think I’m special- I think most Chinese girls go through these exact feelings. But it’s all new to me.
One of my triumphs is that I’ve powered through some of the bitterness and hurt that caused me. I can’t tell you how hard it was some days to face my students- all quite cute young women- with some of that stuff running through my head. All the graphic assessments of their anatomy that my “friends” casually throw around- what the small mouth of my student earnestly answering my question is good for, how they’d like to manipulate the thin limbs of the girl giving a presentation, what a hand job from a tiny hand feels like. Sometimes I’d be walking around the classroom, grinning as I held back the tears, smiling as I tried to focus on the here and now. Giving what little I had. I set out to learn some more positive coping skills, and that has helped a lot. Maybe it was all worth it just for that. I hope that bitterness hasn’t become a part of me. And I hope it hasn’t completely colored my experiences. But it is what it is. I’m human. I try to focus on my work, get fulfillment where I can. But four years is a long time to be lonely in a strange place. The hurt I went through was too bad to get over on my own. My ego got a little too bruised for me to bounce back.
So there it is. As a volunteer and as a teacher you have to deny a large part of yourself. I’ve always got a big smile on my face, pretending like I have the answers, pretending like I’m having a great time. My students come up to me for relationship advice all the time, and it makes me want to laugh out loud. If only they knew how well I know the same loneliness and insecurity they feel. Like everyone in China I’ve learned to put on a good show and say the right words to put everyone at ease. I keep my game face on. But eventually no matter how late I stay out I have to return to my empty house and face myself.
So I’m damned proud that despite all this stuff I was going through, I kept it together enough to do my job. Not only do it, but succeed at it. In fact, the very stuff I was working so hard to teach my students was the stuff I needed most to learn myself.
I hope I come back to America smarter and stronger. I hope I can leave a lot of this behind, and that I’ll have learned enough not to make the same mistakes. I hope I can forget the insecurity and gain back some of the innocence I think I lost. I hope I can build up a real social support network that will make me less likely to come untethered during hard times. I hope I re-learn how to be comfortable in my own skin. And I hope when it is time for me to enter into a relationship, I can enter it the way I used to be- eager, unreserved, and hopeful. And I hope that the sharpness of the bad parts wears off in time, and I can look back at this point in my life with a smile, remembering the good parts.
Hope!
sven, you have written so eloquently in this thread – even compared to your previous Letters from China – and it has moistened my eyes as I remember the many past partings from my own life.
Your most recent post, however, kicks it up a notch – I know that it must be pretty raw for you to write what you did, but I am sure that your words resonate with anyone who has given up temporary security for a few years of adventure. Your peers back in the US are no doubt experiencing “normal” relationships, and – as you make clear – your male contemporaries in China are reaping local “benefits” that at the same time work against your own interests.
This will even out greatly when you start Grad School, I promise – although you will always find that some men are intimidated by your intelligence, experience, and assertiveness. The good news is that you don’t need that kind of guy anyway. 
I hope that you don’t mind me bringing up the following. I remember when you first mentioned in an SDMB thread (2005?) the idea that you were thinking of joining the Peace Corps. That was back in your days of woe in Santa Cruz, and there was no shortage of respondents (I’m particularly thinking of Collounsbury) who wagered that you would either not make the cut, or once in-country you would return stateside in tears after a few weeks.
Make that 212 weeks, f***ers, and returning in triumph!
You showed them all, and you showed them good. And on the way you have had adventures, travels (Timbuktu, Tibet, and Thailand to name just a few), and some heartbreak.
I have known Peace Corps Volunteers who didn’t complete the 27-month standard service, some who did, and a few who extended for a 3rd year (usually in the same region). To do two back-to-back full service periods in two different continents is – unusual, to say the least. Good on you for doing it, and even better on you for seeing it through to the end.
There is no question that you have touched many lives over the last 4 years, in ways that may not yet be clear [it sounds as though you are just now getting the payoff from your last two years in China], but for hundreds of people in the Northern Province of Cameroon and in the backwaters of Szechuan province, you are the face of America, and they will always be touched by the differences that you made in their lives. Given the geopolitical misadventures of the last decade especially, you have been the best positive “bang for the buck” that US foreign policy could possibly imagine.
I want to thank you personally for keeping in touch with the SDMB over the last four years (I know that it was often a 3-hour bus trip to get to the nearest CyberCafe when you were in Cameroon). You have done the Straight Dope proud.
I concur with Mr. Excellent’s thanks – although I wouldn’t feel right saying them on behalf of the US, not being a US citizen myself. However, the volunteerism that you have shown over the last 4 years is beneficial not just for the US; I truly believe that such work promotes Global Peace in the most hands-on way possible, and I can certainly thank you personally for that.
Finally, you’ll love Grad School in DC. Stories of foreign adventures are the local currency in the milieux in which you will find yourself (RPCVs and students in International Relations), and you will arrive with billions of credits in that bank account.
Have a wonderful last few days in Liquor City ( ), a great time in Mongolia, and a safe trip back to the US, to recharge in California before heading off for new adventures among the opposite-coasties.
[Oh, and I can’t wait to hear your take on Grad School! ;-)]
Wishing you luck in your journey home!
Thanks Antonius. You know what an ally you’ve been through this all, and I’ll never ever forget your kindness and generosity.
It has been the journey of a lifetime, and it feels like the journey of six lifetimes. I really think us four year’ers deserve a medal! I was worried that I said too much, but the things I am working on is honest and bravery. China, above all, has taught me that without that you have nothing. As Rumi said, “What kind of person says he wants to be polished and pure, and then complains about being handled roughly?” This part of the journey has ended up strangely personal, which is perhaps what I’ve needed. I wanted adventure, and damned if adventure isn’t what I’ve had!
I can’t wait for grad school either! Even the looming statistics classes don’t phase me! I want to do what I can in Africa, and I’ll do what it takes to make me effective at my work. I think I’ll be able to meet plenty of fascinating people who can share my vision, and that is how great things happen.
I think it’s important that you know that the people who have been talking to you like this are low-class, awful people (in my opinion, and I don’t think I’m wrong on this one). What you’re describing is so far past inappropriate, you can’t see inappropriate from here. Also, it has a distinct smell of pedophilia, with all that talk of tiny hands and tight vaginas - I’m glad to see you put “friends” in not-really quotes, because this is quite horrible behaviour. Hopefully in grad school you’ll become acquainted with some decent people, and this kind of crap will be over.