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| PBJ sandwich. Image source. |
Part 1: I Didn't Know I Had a Culture Until I Lost It
Part 2: On Immigration and Double Standards
Part 3: Because of an Idea
Part 4: Culture, Objectivity, God, and the Real Reason I Moved to China
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Living in China long-term has taught me so much about what culture is. I never could have learned this if I had stayed in the US. I've learned about Chinese culture, yes, but I've learned even more about my own culture. Specifically, the fact that I have one.
As a white American growing up in the suburbs in the northern US, I never thought about culture. Culture was when people in other countries ate weird food and celebrated weird holidays. That's all.
Culture? No, I don't have a culture, I just do normal things, things that everyone does. Eat a bowl of cereal and milk every morning, make a sandwich for lunch.
Just a regular dinner. With a cup of ice water. A fork, spoon, and knife- I don't know the technical correct way to make a place setting, but there are etiquette experts who do. And it's good manners to put your napkin in your lap. Pasta, meat, and a side of vegetables. Salt and pepper on the table. Dinner rolls with butter. Lunchmeat sliced right in front of you at the deli counter, so many varieties of sliced bread, so many different kinds of cheese. So many varieties of pasta. Buying a dozen eggs in a styrofoam carton, and a gallon of milk. Oh, and there's chocolate milk too. Pop-tarts. Raspberries. Bagels. Baking birthday cakes and decorating them myself. (And of course, licking the batter from the bottom of the bowl.) And you can eat cake and ice cream together. Granola bars. Chocolate chips. Pancakes with syrup.
Culture? No, I wouldn't call it culture. As kids we just watched normal kid movies, about believing in yourself, about following your dreams rather than being constrained by your parents' expectations. We played duck-duck-goose and HORSE. Let a slinky walk down the stairs. At birthday parties, we played pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Parents put kids' artwork up on the fridge. Swimming pool and swingset in the backyard. Fighting with your siblings. Planting sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds outside and watching as the plants grow. And we were so excited when we stayed at a hotel that had a waffle maker.
School bus. Pledge of allegiance. Spelling bee. Kids getting their family to order chocolates or whatever as part of a school fundraiser. PBJ sandwiches. Middle school band concerts. Science fairs. Reading Shakespeare and Charles Dickens and Langston Hughes and Robert Frost and Mark Twain. Prom and homecoming king and queen. High school football and cheerleaders and marching band. AP classes and the SAT. You know, just all those normal things that every teenager thinks about. Yearbooks. Class rings. Senior pictures. College admissions essays. Going down to the DMV after school on your 16th birthday to get your learner's permit, then taking drivers' ed and getting your license around age 17. Some kids' parents even bought them a new car.
Culture? That's not culture. It's just Superbowl parties and people who are only watching for the commercials. Just snow days and sledding and owning a variety of gloves and mittens. Shoveling the driveway. Painting Easter eggs. Easter baskets and the Easter bunny. Filing income tax. Spring break. Going to the garden store and buying a whole bunch of flowers for the front yard. Just summer camp and s'mores and canoeing and scavenger hunts in the woods. Wearing flip flops everywhere you go. Picnics. Barbecues, grilling hamburgers and hot dogs and sausages. Corn on the cob with butter. Just Halloween costumes and trick-or-treating and haunted hayrides. Raking all the leaves into a pile and jumping in it. Just Thanksgiving dinner with turkey and cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes and pumpkin bread and pumpkin pie. Black Friday shopping and going to the Christmas tree farm. Candy canes and elementary school kids making their own ornaments. Stockings hung over the fireplace. Rolling out Christmas cookies, cutting with cookie cutters, baking them in the oven. Kids can meet Santa at the mall. Christmas lists, Secret Santa, white elephant. Drive around the neighborhood to look at everyone's Christmas lights. I don't have a culture, I just do all these normal things that everyone does. Things like Christmas shopping and wrapping gifts and putting them under the tree and waiting for Christmas morning. Leaving cookies for Santa. New Years resolutions. And just about every holiday has chocolates for it.
Drive thru. Pizza party. Road trip. Oven mitts and measuring spoons and meat thermometers. Swimming lessons. Ordering drinks first at a restaurant, and dessert last. Watch out for deer crossing the road. Public bathrooms have toilet paper and soap. Board games- pictionary, monopoly, scrabble, jenga. Ice cream truck. Dishwasher. Clothes dryer. Toaster. Petting zoo. Writing a check. Thank-you notes. Police have guns. Shoe sizing is different for men and women. Mowing the lawn. Joint bank accounts. Rolling the trash out to the curb for garbage day once a week. Jury duty. Fahrenheit. Debates about "is it called 'soda' or 'pop'?" Hunting. Pool noodles. Country music. Most families have 2 cars. Sending birthday cards. Tipping. Two political parties.
You should go to the dentist several times a year. You should tell your family "I love you." Eat chicken soup when you're sick. Say "bless you" when someone sneezes. You pay more than the number on the price tag because you have to add sales tax.
What if I told you EVERY SINGLE THING on this list is not part of Chinese culture? Or, rather, some of the ones related to cold weather and not living in a city might apply to some areas in China, but not areas where I have been. (I live in Shanghai now, which is in southern China.) Or perhaps Chinese people my age who watch American movies have seen some of them, but that doesn't necessarily mean they really *get* them. For every single one of these things, I expect that the average Chinese person I meet isn't familiar with the concept at all and I would have to explain the entire thing, and they still wouldn't *get* it because they don't have the lived experience of it.
When I moved to China in 2013, I knew it meant I would be experiencing a new culture and I would have to learn a lot of new things. But I didn't really understand what I would be losing- how I was leaving my own culture behind. I thought of my own experiences as "normal", like a neutral baseline that I would be adding new Chinese things on top of. My own culture felt so normal that I didn't even know it was there, and so I didn't realize that moving to China meant I'd be living among people who just didn't know any of this stuff.
Sure, of course I knew there were lots of American traditions that Chinese people didn't share. Of course I knew I'd be telling them "we hang up stockings at Christmas!" and wouldn't it be so fun and interesting to teach them about it. But it's so much deeper than that. It's so many things, so many little things that run through every aspect of my life, and I constantly live with the weight of how much I miss my culture.
Sometimes it hurts more than others.
Sometimes I really want a donut.
And it's not just that I miss it. It's living among people who don't miss it and don't know what's wrong.
And some of these cultural things I don't even like, but all of them have affected me and made me the person I am. So it's not just that I miss them- it's that most of the people in my life don't understand. Can't understand. Sure, I can explain what some American concept is, but not what it means. That's something that can't be communicated with words; you only understand if you've experienced it. How can I explain the emptiness I feel when I don't have turkey on Thanksgiving, when I don't actually like turkey that much anyway? How can they understand that even if we search far and wide in Shanghai and cobble together some approximation of the thing I miss, it's Just Not The Same? How can I explain how I feel when I see some superficial commercialized attempt at copying some American tradition, and Chinese people treat it like it's the real thing and say "China is becoming so westernized" and I feel empty and I miss my home so much more? Why do I always have to do the work of explaining these deeply-felt cultural touchstones to people? It's exhausting. I wish they just *got* it.
I know that, compared with other immigrants, I'm privileged. I chose to leave my country. I wasn't forced to. I have the option to go back. So I'm lucky in that sense. I know that, compared with other immigrants, being American and English-speaking and white puts me in a relatively good position.
But this is hard. Living as an immigrant is hard. It's really good, but I lost so much, I gave up my own culture in ways I wasn't prepared for. It's what I want, I like living here, I don't want to go back yet, but wow it still hurts.
I know what culture is now, in ways I never did before. Because I never really I knew I had a culture. My white, American, suburban, northern-US life just felt "normal" to me- so normal that I thought everyone would automatically understand and I would never have to explain it. That's not true; it turns out I do have a culture, and I've lost it now. I've lost things I didn't even know I could lose.
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Next: On Immigration and Double Standards
Related:
I Didn't Count the Cost Before I Moved To China
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