Dec. 15, 2013
Before I came to China, I was told that the most common word that would be applied to me was the term ‘laowai’ – lao meaning honoured, wai meaning foreigner. My parents, who spent four years in the early nineties living in Hong Kong, slightly cynically warned me to expect the racist insult ‘gweilo’ or ‘smelly foreigner’ at some point. While I personally have never had that applied to me (a guy I know in a much smaller town than me has though) I’ve also never been called laowai either. I’m most commonly known as ‘wai jiao’ (I’ve yet to learn the meaning of that one, but I think it means foreign friend or foreign teacher) ‘waiguoren’ [wAI –go-ren] (wai, as above, meaning foreign, and guo ren being a way of referring to a person’s nationality’ e.g. Zhongguoren [SJHong go ren] means Chinese person. I am, to my students, alternatively ‘yingguoren’ [EEN-go ren] (England person) or ‘yingguo laoshi’ [EEEN-go-lao-SHUR] (England teacher/teacher from England.)
Although it is not quite correct, I have become used to answering the tiresome but expected question ‘Where are you from?’ with simply ‘England’, not going into my life story unless the push me for details. (The Chinese don’t understand not having a hometown…) I’m often, rather charmingly, called by my colleagues and friends who are fluent or near-fluent in English, a ‘foreign friend’ to both them and the students I teach.
I’ve grown accustomed to my new status, to being stared at most places I go (either I don’t notice it or it doesn’t bother me as much as it did when I arrived), to being afforded greater privileges and respect by pretty much everyone simply because I’m different, and having my students exclaim ‘Teacher soooo beautiful!’ whenever I walk in the door (not gonna lie, I like that one, and fat chance of ever getting that reaction in the UK…)
I also feel that after 4 months in China, having overcome significant difficulties in the strength of God alone and in His time and provision finding a church, new friends, a gym, having my friend from uni in Cardiff, Nicola, around to keep me sane and to share some perspective, hanging out with the other expats here and discovering that China does do chocolate after all, I have finally become settled here, just about. But that this took about four months to come about may tell you something of the degree of culture shock I’ve undergone in that time, and to be honest it still gets me occasionally. It probably will until the day I leave. And that is because, for all the things that are similar, there are about ten things that are different and some days it just feels like what I imagine being a settler of an alien planet might feel like.
Take my first few days of arrival in China, for example. On August 10th, 2013, my friend Nicola and I flew one of the most mentally and physically draining journeys I have ever taken in my life (even though the flights went well!) from London-Berlin-Beijing-Changsha. It was an 18-hour blur of rushing and suitcase dragging and takeoff and touchdown and pressure headaches and checking baggage and choking on Beijing’s polluted air before we finally touched down in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, where we were to meet…well, whoever the mysterious Lany, the Chinese woman affiliated with our teaching organisation, TEIC, had arranged to pick us up. This turned out to be two students from the Lanhu Cultural Exchange Centre of Xiangtan University (Xiangtan, as it transpired, is a city of 3million – so a small town – to the southwest of Changsha.) Their names were Jet (yes, after Jet Li) and Lily, who met us in Arrivals once we had hauled our suitcases off of baggage claim and were congratulating ourselves upon our more or less intact arrival. Jet and Lily were very pleased to see us but didn’t seem particularly organised (welcome to China.)
They had already collected a small group of waiguoren who were also with TEIC who were sitting on the cold floor of the airport with large suitcases and baggage trolleys dotted around them. We were getting to know one another when the unwelcome news came that we were going to have to wait for the last two girls to come – at 10pm that night – it was 4pm. Needless to say, it was a very grumpy, smelly, sweaty group of waiguoren who finally boarded the Bouncy Express (my jovial nickname for our coach) to the city of Xiangtan, where we were to stay that night.
We all nodded off on the coach journey for a while, but I remember waking up with a start when we bounced off the pot-holed motorway exit to Xiangtan.
As we entered the outskirts of the city, huge apartment buildings bigger than I had ever seen before loomed up out of the darkness towards the window, as did massive billboards with incomphrensible Chinese characters splashed all over them. All I could see in the dimly lighted streets was dust and billboards and giant buildings and crazy traffic, and I felt the sudden return of the unreasoning panic that had first overwhelmed me on the plane from Berlin to Beijing. It was a familiar terror in a way – I had moved to utterly different countries before then and I recognised it for culture shock, but knowing the name doesn’t make it any less of a shock. All around me was the unfamiliar and the alien and the bizarre, and the knowledge that I had signed a contract that bound me here for a year was enough to make me want to run away back home with my tail between my legs. I dismissed it as overtiredness that night, trying to reason with myself that it would get better with time.
Of course, the first few days in a new place always seem stretched out, as if time slows to a crawl while you experience all the new sights and sounds and smells - oh man, the smells…that is something that no words can convey…that the new place has to offer. We were staying in the Green Tree Inn in Xiangtan, a smoky, spartan, but adequate establishment where no English was spoken by the staff (not helpful, especially on the night of arrival when they messed up our room arrangements by giving us keys to rooms that were already inhabited…by other TEICers who had arrived the previous day.) After a lot of sign language we managed to get rooms for the six of us who lacked rooms, but due to our late arrival we got only five hours’ sleep. When jetlagged to the max this is not sufficient.
Waking up the next day to blinding 46c heat and humidity, we dragged ourselves off to Xiangtan No.2 School, where our ‘teacher training’ was supposed to take place. Ha. Ha. Teacher training. That’s funny. There was no teacher training about it, it was just a series of lectures on how to survive in China by a Polish guy called Martin, which, though helpful, were not entirely what we had expected. Then it was our first into to Chinese food at lunch, where we found that in most places, the food comes swimming in grease and damn spicy (regional specialty.) Lovely. I tried a Chinese beer and found it just as weak as I had been told before coming (kinda disappointing, but no surprise.) Then after ‘training’ was done, Lany wanted us all to go and take pictures in the park. Photo taking is something of a national obsession. At that temperature all one wants to do is lie in the air con consuming a pint of iced tea every half hour and moaning about how hot it is. Fat chance. Nope, it was pictures in the ‘park’ – a tree lined boulevard that didn’t really much resemble a park – for us. The juxtaposition of familiar words – lunch, beer, park – with things that didn’t really match up to my concept of them was for me as much a part of the culture shock than anything else.
Mostly my memories of those days are of the dust coating Xiangtan No. 2 School, the stinking heat and the bizarre feeling that the sun was closer to me than normal (Hunan is equatorial), the constant need to buy drinks lest one expire in the sweaty lecture theatre where our training took place, and the sweetish-rotting stench of binlang, or betel nut (a mildly euphoric recreational drug that gives one a ‘buzz’ similar to caffeine but is strongly linked to throat cancer.) Xiangtan is famous for it (binlang, not throat cancer.) It was also my first introduction to the utterly bonkers free-for-all that is Chinese traffic, with motorbikes and electric scooters zipping along both pavement and road with mad abandon, and buses, trucks, lorries and cars battling it out for space on the road in a metallic re-enactment of the pushing and shoving that customarily occurs when attempting to take a bus in China. I was both appalled and admiring at the recklessness of the casual Chinese pedestrian, who steps out into this insanity very calmly, often texting away, and manoeuvres steadily between cars without rushing, often inches from a passing truck and not batting an eyelid. I decided very quickly that I stood a better chance of crossing the road in company with these daredevils, and therefore stood foolishly at the side of the road until a Chinese person came along to whom I could stick like a burr until I had crossed the road (I still often follow this policy.) Even now, I often get to the other side of the road and feel like imitating Mushu from Mulan: ‘I liiiiiiiiiiiived!’
Anyway, I digress. I describe the first few days in order to convey a sense of the complete strangeness of it all to me. Everything about China was new and bizarre, and to be frank, I did not like everything all at once. I cried a lot, I missed home like a physical pain and it didn’t help that in fact, I liked very little about China on first glance, and it did not seem like the semi-mythical Middle Kingdom to which I had aspired to go since childhood. Even though I’ve grown accustomed to some things, I still don’t like them (squat toilets?? Why, China, whyyyy?) The culture gap is a big one, and I’m not going to cover everything in one post, but it is worth saying, hang in there. It will take you a while to get your bearings. You might be a wreck for the first week like I was. You may run into massive problems with your visa and your teaching agency and your employers like I did. You may still not like China very much after some time here. (I still don’t, not really.)
But you might be able to make the best of the year you so unwittingly signed up for, and gain some valuable experience from the year here. I would say, only pack up and leave if you have a genuine reason, like a family emergency or something, or if your school is completely and utterly unbearable (which they can be!) but if not, make as much of an effort as you humanly can to look on the bright side and learn from everything that occurs. If nothing else, surviving in China for a year will not only give you some serious street cred back at home but will make you appreciate home and all the people and things and rights and privileges you took for granted back home (family, friends, a proper Christmas, uncensored internet and cheese being in my top ten.) And it’ll be something else to talk about at job interview/look good on your CV and who knows, the skills you gain here may well help you in a future career. Whatever way you look at it, your time here has a lot of potential, and although I think it has helped toughen me up, I would not say I have got through this on my wits alone. I have stumbled and fallen and had to be picked up by my God and set on my feet again. He has provided for me through friends and advocates, the prayers of friends and family, in the kindness of strangers, and in many other incredible ways that I will share about in this blog, and this has increased my faith and trust in His provision greatly.
I hope to encourage my Christian readers with these tales of provision, and perhaps intrigue my non-Christian readers. But if you are a new waiguoren who wants out of here, let me just give you a few hints for adjusting to the culture:
1) Don’t expect to feel fine soon. I know that doesn’t sound good, but seriously, the false expectation that you will feel better about everything once the jetlag has worn off/you start teaching/other short term benchmark is usually not realistic. If you’re worrying about when it will start to feel ‘normal’ to be here it won’t help. Take one day at a time.
2) Don’t feel bad/irritated if you’re the only homesick one. So the other people you came out with don’t feel homesick at all? Well, whoopee for them, perhaps they just simply get on better with Chinese culture than you (some people do – I don’t understand them, personally.) It may well hit them a bit later on, or they are trying to put on a brave face and act normal, or they have a coping mechanism such as hanging around mostly with other expats and drinking a lot…whatever. If you aren’t doing so well, there’s no shame in it, but try not to feel martyred, it won’t help. Just cut yourself some slack and don’t compare yourself with them, it’s not secondary school anymore!
3)Do get accountable. If you came out alone and not with a friend or partner, talk to a trusted friend back home via email and Skype. If you and they are Christian ask for prayer. Just talk to someone who won’t reprimand you for ‘not being positive’ but will listen and offer constructive ways to help. I was very blessed by having Nicola close by, going through the same thing as me, able to pray with me (and for me when I was too choked up to speak) and talk with me. Also friends and family via Skype and email and FB did encourage me and help me greatly during the early days. The fact that my English phone worked for the first two weeks and I could text my dad helped hugely.
4)Do pray. OK, sure, not everyone has a faith. But if you’re really in a dark place…well, I know this guy that really loves to help out people who are at the end of their rope. His name’s Jesus. You could try asking Him for help if you want; He’s sure to give it. Christians, you know how true this is – He will help you get through it all. Romans 8:28.
5)Do get busy. It’s the same principle as moving away to uni, really, or boarding school for those of us who’ve done that. The busier you are the better you will feel, the quicker time will pass and you’ll even start to enjoy yourself. But be careful what you do to get busy. I’ve found personally that watching excess TV series or movies or playing excess computer games or even just overindulging in social networking and reading articles online (with the beauty that is a VPN) can drain me rather than enervate me. Learn a bit of Chinese online. Take up a hobby. Revive an old hobby. Explore the local park a bit. Look for a church, and/or a gym, make the effort with your Chinese colleagues even if they don’t with you. Even just go sit in the local Starbucks and read; you’ll find that the Chinese people who can speak English, even if it’s just the baristas, will start to chat with you. If your town doesn’t have a Starbucks, maybe KFC or McD’s. The cliché is that most expats end up in one of these three places eventually and therefore it’s a good place to go to meet foreigners, so the English speaking Chinese tend to hang out there. Granted, this is easier in big cities; you might run into a few more problems with this in the small towns.
6) Don’t just hang out with expats. This is a classic mistake expats make. Just because you come from the same country or speak the same language doesn’t guarantee you will always see eye to eye on things or enjoy the same activities. They may be extremely annoying or they may be perfectly pleasant, but I’d avoid spending all your time with them. Make an effort with the other expats around you if there are some, but don’t exclusively hang out with them; make friends with Chinese people where you can, whether in the workplace or, as I said, at church or a gym or even Starbucks. If there’s a university in your town befriend the students; they will usually speak some English. Not only will you gain a bit of insight into the culture, but they might end up teaching you some Chinese, taking you shopping, out for meals etc. Chinese people tend to be very friendly towards foreigners and regard it as their duty to show you the best Chinese hospitality. Just don’t insist on splitting the bill if it looks like they’re gonna pay, it’s very rude (so I am told!)
7)Don’t despair. Despite what your teaching agency may have told you, you can leave China anytime you want as long as you have in your passport a valid residency permit (the stamp that you should get sorted out by your school with the local police. (If they don’t do this within the first month you are in deep, deep trouble so make sure they do it!) If you arrive in Aug/Sept, you should have until June/July the following year and it will say on it the date of expiry. If you have this you can go in and out of China like a Chinese citizen would. If you want to go home for the spring break and you can afford it, don’t let any disparaging comments like ‘oh, you should experience China while you’re there’ stop you. You are already experiencing China 24/7 and if you can’t make it through a year without a dose of normality in between, so be it. And if you decide you don’t want to come back…well, to be honest there is nothing the school can do to stop you.
8)Do see the sights. The above being said, the people I know who were the unhappiest in China were the ones who didn’t, for various reasons, go out and see whatever there is to see in their city, the neighbouring cities, or the rest of the province. There is life beyond your little Chinese backwater town, and once you get to places like Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing, China’s real metropolises, you start to appreciate the true scale of the country you’re in. Not to mention, there are some pretty awesome natural places to visit, such as Sichuan’s Tiger Leaping Gorge, Hunan’s Zhangjiajie, the jungles of Yunnan, etc. And then there are the cultural centres everyone knows about like Xi’an which hosts the Terracotta Warriors, and the Forbidden City/Tianamen Square/the Great Wall in Beijing. True, you may get into some scrapes every once in a while. And they may be pretty scary. But you learn from them, and you will have some stories to tell! You are only young once, as the old grandpas and grandmas say. I’ve been to only a handful of places in China thus far, and still have quite a few on my tick list, the Great Wall being one of those…
9)Do have a good attitude. Not gonna lie, it took me a while to learn this one. I can be a depressingly cynical person by nature (I blame my artistic temperament ;-) ) and I am not very patient. But hanging out a lot with Nicola, who is both positive and patient, has rubbed off on me, not to mention the encouragement from our friend Rachel, from my parents and siblings and from other friends, all of whom were pillars of strength to me – it has been a huge blessing. I’ve learned from them to look for the good amidst the crappiness that may sometimes occur and to thank God for every ray of sunshine that breaks the clouds, both literally and figuratively.
10)Do get a VPN before you come out. As I’ll expand on in later posts, a VPN (Virtual Presence Network) is vital for life in China. If you want to be able to browse the internet like you would at home and not even notice the Great Firewall, get a VPN. A couple of the good ones are Strong VPN, Pure VPN, Astrill VPN and Switch VPN although there are more. I strongly recommend that you pay for a year’s subscription. I didn’t and it is costing me now in terms of not being able to access Youtube and a fair few other sites (I have, finally, managed to get a free VPN that works for FB – Identity Cloaker, demo mode.) Simply put, most free VPNs are complete crap and 90% of the time they will not work – and that is if they are a good free VPN. You get what you pay for, i.e. nothing. I’m having problems with my UK bank at the moment but as soon as I go home in the break I plan to sort out paying for a VPN for the rest of my time here. I know some people aren’t big Facebookers but for me there’s nothing to restore my normality than being able to connect with people there and to listen to music and comedy videos on Youtube and access Netflix. Of course excessive use will increase, not decrease, your homesickness but you know, all good things in moderation and all that jazz. Oh and if you haven’t got Skype – a) what kind of rock have you been living under and b) GET. IT. You will need it. That is all. Other helpful connect-with-home devices are smartphone apps like Viber and Whatsapp (don’t use them myself, and I can’t download them here, but my friends use them and say they are invaluable.) Of course, to root you in Chinese social networking you’ll need QQ (Chinese FB) and WeChat, (Weixin) but I’ll talk about those in a later post.
So there you are, and I’ve probably smothered you in quite enough advice and story and things for one post. Until next time, zaijian!
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