I've recently been thinking about getting back into Chinese, reading more about China, and reacquainting myself with Chinese pop culture. Every time I talk to one of my friends in that world, though, I'm reminded of why we all have such a love/hate relationship with China. And it's not just us. This American Life did a recent episode on Americans in China, and the anecdotes and sentiments I've heard and expressed are echoed here.
I think the reason I stopped engaging with China is summed up in Act 1: the act's main character, Kaiser, and the narrator encounter the realization that there will always be a chasm between who they're trying to be — Chinese, in language and habit — and who the Chinese will always see them as — American, an adorable foreigner trying and failing to fit in. The narrator says that when that moment came for him, he suddenly became embarrassed at all the effort he had put in. I had that moment of my own, but instead of trucking onward, I felt so defeated that I stopped. What was the point? What is the endgame, if not to be able to be seen as a peer by the people I've studied so hard to understand? As I hopefully but warily ease back into whatever it was I was doing with China, one thing is clear: I still love Chinese, I just don't think I can love a China that doesn't (can't?) love me.
The American ideal of the melting pot is so ingrained in me that's it's hard to even conceive why a society would be so excluding*. Ex-pats aren't really a thing in America, partially becuase we assume anyone who moves here is taking a step up in the world and wants nothing more than to become American. Go America!
ReplyDelete(Since sports aren't my thing, I have to but all my patriotism in this post instead.)
*Noting of course they many ways this country excludes people based on where they were born.