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Few
people in their college careers decide to travel abroad
unless of course they have a vested interest in doing so or
they have what I call “wanderlust”. For many like I who have
friends that do travel often, they often return with stories
of new friends, foreign lands, and experiences that stay
with them for a lifetime. This summer I had my first and
last opportunity to participate in a new study abroad trip,
going to both rural and urban China in order to better
understand the ethnic minorities of China and the effect of
their local ecology on their cultures. For me this trip
represented not only a unique opportunity to explore the
world that I had been studying for the past 3 years but also
the first opportunity that I would have to really experience
China.
Somehow I envisioned my trip being somewhat like the recent
movie “Shanghai Kiss” with me as Ken Leung. For those who don’t know this movie, it follows a
Chinese American who comes to Shanghai for family business
but meets a beautiful girl and ends up falling for her.
Finding himself more accepted in Shanghai, at one point he
feels compelled to stay but ends up coming back to the
States as this relationship falls apart. While I did not
expect to meet a beautiful girl who would compel me to stay
in China, I had expected a feeling of acceptance in China.
As a Chinese American, I had always felt a feeling of
rejection from mainstream White America. If my beliefs or
personality deviated from the norm it would be blamed on me
being Chinese, I was not an individual, I was just
“Chinese”. In the back of my mind I had hoped that perhaps
in some minute way it was true, that maybe some of my
personality derived itself from being Chinese and if I
visited China I would see this. While this may seem strange
to many readers, I doubt that there are no young Asian
Americans who also do not share in this experience of being
denigrated and having some desperate hope of fitting in
elsewhere. This trip has however showed me how wrong that
presumption or idea was. There is probably no place on Earth
I fit in less than in China.
My month in China, while informative and one of the
experiences I will remember forever, maybe one of the
loneliest of my college years. Many nights I spent in
different cities in China, I always felt as if I did not
belong, not because of any language barrier but a cultural
barrier. Many of the Chinese I had the opportunity to speak
to had very different mindsets and did not seem to share my
ideas on the world and in fact seemed to see the world as a
more hostile place than I saw it. Most Chinese however cared
little about the outside world; many were complacent living
their lives as either farmers or workers in urban cities.
For them, the world was as large as their homes, their
workplaces, friends and family.
Growing up here in New York City, we often see ourselves as
very worldly and are better informed than many of our middle
state counterparts. For myself I had always been interested
in exploring the world and understanding how different
people lived. Going to China, there were very little people
who shared these interests or cared about the world outside
of their own countries. In many ways this made me realize
that far from what I had been told, almost none of my
personality quirks or interests had anything to do with me
being Chinese and in fact is probably a product of growing
up in a diverse urban setting. While in many ways this
realization is an affirmation to my individuality and
personality, I found it strangely lonely sitting in a café
at night drinking coffee and watching the Chinese live and
play.
The study abroad however was not a disappointing experience
and I did have a lot of fun travelling around China and
learning about the different cultures that exist apart from
the monolithic image of China. The best aspect of the trip
by far would be the people I studied with who shared the
same zest for experiencing the world that I had. There are
little experiences I would trade this trip for and if I
could I would do it all over again. For myself I would say
that this trip was invaluable in helping me discover who I
really am and where my home is. |
