Monday, July 17, 2017

Back from (not) Studying abroad in Shanghai


Buddhist shrine in Zhangjiajie National Park: home of the Avatar mountains
I didn't make it back to the good ol' U. S. of A. until after July 4th, but it was still nice landing back on native soil. Landing in Newark Airport was nice, I had a window seat and saw Metlife Stadium (where the Giants play) from a very cool angle. Then ate my momma's cooking - which is always the best - and saw a few friends. The best part of being home in NYC was the walking. I had spent a lot of time walking around Shanghai, exploring or just walking in the park for exercise, but walking around New York felt different, different even from how I had remembered it. First off the streets felt somewhat empty. They may have felt empty because it was still a holiday week, but I think they just felt empty compared to the bustling streets of Shanghai. Secondly was that I always knew where I was; it's a big city but I've been all around it and very few places in the city feel foreign to me. Most enjoyable though, was the diversity. The racial, religious and cultural diversity of New York City is something I used to take for granted when I was young. As I went away to college and spent time living in Boston I realized that diversity of cultures was part of my education growing up: meeting people from different walks of life, different countries and different social outlooks is great, and being back in New York was great for that reason.

Unrelated but a dragonfly alit on my father's shoulder walking around NYC
After a few days in NYC with my family, I set off on the beginning of my last leg of our summer adventures. I was solo, Katy was still working in Shanghai, so I picked up a rental car in Connecticut en route to the Adirondacks in upstate New York. There I stopped by a local butcher shop on the way to meet up with a great friend, then spent two days hiking, kayaking and eating great, local, fresh, American food. It was a great way to reset the body from urban life and convene with nature (as well as familiar food). Oh, and I used Google Maps to direct me the entire time I was driving, even though I pretty much knew where I was going, because it was a way of expressing my freedom. You may remember I mentioned how Google is off-limits in China. For no other reason than to appreciate Google better, I recommend spending some time in China.


From the Adirondacks I drove to Boston and stayed with a different friend. As I continued to acclimate to America, it was nice to have a chance to talk to someone about my experience who understood. Mike spent five years living and working in Asia after college and he helped me decompress some of the feelings I had, as well as help me realize some feelings I hadn't even realized I had been experiencing. It's not that life was hard in Shanghai, if anything I had more free time than I ever have had before, but it was socially isolating. Being Caucasian in Asia definitely comes with white privilege that I didn't expect, but I also felt like an outsider regularly. The Chinese word for Caucasians is "laowai" which roughly translates to "foreigner." As an identifiable foreigner no one expected me to speak Mandarin, which was nice because I never learned, but I also realized how I stood out of any crowd (the long hair didn't help). Basically the hardest thing was the over-stimulation and lack of predictable interactions. Little things bothered me: they don't say anything when you sneeze in China. It always seemed weird that no one ever said "excuse me," when they burped, or "bless you" when someone else sneezed. It's just not a part of their culture, but it made me reconsider our cultural norms.

The Bud Light of China
Now I'm back in America for good, but Katy still has another six weeks in Shanghai for work. She's jet-lagged pretty bad right now (and likely will be until even after she gets back) but I'm mostly on the right sleep schedule. It's probably not quite the same as acclimating to altitude, but after a week and a half I still t feel like my body is giving me bad clues. I heard somewhere, albeit it not from a scientist, that it takes one day per time zone that you change. Considering I was 12 time zones away I guess it makes sense that I'm not quite acclimated to the time here yet. Adjusting to the sun is probably not as big a deal as I expected it to be, while switching cultures is probably a bigger deal than I expected it to be. While I haven't had any perceived issues with Western culture, occasionally when I'm out walking on a busy street I feel overwhelmed by the number of conversations I overhear. Shortly before we left Katy and I had our anniversary dinner at a restaurant but were surrounded by English-speakers. It was terribly distracting for both of us, as we had gotten used to only hearing Mandarin spoken in public places. It's easy to ignore the conversations around you if you can't even understand the sounds people are using as words. Now there's a cacophony of sounds I recognize and I'm still getting used to it.

Being back with an appreciation of the other side of the world, their culture, social behaviors and mannerisms, is profoundly more rewarding than I ever thought it would be. When I studied abroad in Stockholm, Sweden in 2008 I was fortunate enough to visit almost a dozen European countries and soak in their culture. All over Europe I was surprised by the juxtaposition of English fluency and deep-seeded sense of tradition, culture and nationalism. Now that I'm back from China, I am starting to view America through a different, but equally eye-opening, lens. Shanghaiese people seemed to embrace Western luxuries while eschewing many Western principles. To be fair, I didn't get to wander the Chinese countryside by bicycle (as one of my few Chinese friends professed a love for) but I did get to spend a lot of time closely examining how urban Shanghai operates. Over 80 percent of Americans live in cities and 50 percent of Chinese live in cities. The urban organization and efficiency of Shanghai was overwhelmingly impressive. While New York City is efficient, it's nothing compared to Shanghai.

While almost all of Chinese culture is significantly older than American culture, often thousands of years older, New York City has had a Western influence for over 200 years before Shanghai ever did (1624 vs. the 1860s). The number of building cranes in Shanghai is overwhelming. Construction continues at an unabated pace that seems unsustainable, while also highly organized and efficient. While I heard about the ghost cities of China, I didn't get a chance to visit any. These cities were built in anticipation of a workforce that never materialized in the area. As such there are fully built cities that are capable of holding millions of people that are barely even populated. Under our capitalist decentralized system of government and resource allocation, a ghost city could never materialize in America the same way they have in China. However, the rigid urban planning, use of eminent domain, and ability to rapidly adapt is only possible in China's top down system of political, social and monetary organization. Being back now it's hard to say which is better - although it was/is interesting to observe and speculate about what public works programs would be possible in either system. A quick example is that Shanghai has built almost 400 subway stations since 1993, while New York City started building in 1900 and have just under 500 subway stations. While it's possible, I find it highly unlikely that New York City could have developed an additional 400 subway stations in the past 25 years even if there had been demand for it. Quick example: in NYC the 2nd Avenue subway just opened this year, 2017, but began construction in 1919.

While I'm thankful for the experience I've had, I'm also thankful to be home. It's kind of nice that I ended my time in Shanghai and jumped right into summer vacation. While it's been awhile since I've been in school, this seemed like an adult semester abroad for me and I expect I'll be a better person for it. I'm currently in Maine for a week with my in-laws, and then headed to a wedding. After which Katy will return to Shanghai to finish her work and I will still be on summer vacation (lucky me!). There isn't a whole lot I would change about my experience in Shanghai, but considering how much the time has impacted me, I feel lucky I had the chance to spend as much time as I did living and traveling in Asia. Just like studying abroad was a once in a lifetime chance, so was the time we spent in Shanghai. That being said, I am greatly looking forward to working the wine harvest season back in Oregon, planting some stuff in our garden, and making friends for life.

G-d bless America

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