at home… in China

They say that, if you sit by the river long enough, you’ll see your enemy’s body float by… checking out the trailer, it looks like some corpses get re-animated, though:
After a dumbfounded but fascinated Westerner went on a fantastic journey to a mythological China (in “Forbidden Kingdom“), now – 26 years after the original – a new Karate Kid makes his way to China.

I have to admit to a fascination with rather simple-minded movies, sometimes I will go so far as to hold the likes of Karate Kid or Kung Fu (the TV series) responsible for setting me on the path that led me here.
High theory be damned; shallow movies and TV series can be fun and they tell the world more – and more about the world, I sometimes think. They are certainly received better than high-brow theories.

So, let’s have a look…

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It’s all just words. What is being said. And so much more behind it: the thought of what to say, and the decision not to say certain things. Gestures, looks, expressions. Communication.

With people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, it’s only too clear that there will be differences. First of all, in the languages we grew up with and learned to speak; what subjects are considered topics for everyday speech, and which are rather sensitive; to what extent the communication is meant to support a social relationship or to be just the facts.

Intercultural communication has come to be of ever greater importance. Some people marry between cultures; some do international business; most come into some contact with people from other backgrounds. Maybe it has been given too much importance.
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In recent years, knowing something about China has become essential.

The country has been on the rise in many ways, and the culture and people are still rather foreign. Consequently, Chinese is the language to have one’s children learn, the country’s politics, society and economy feature prominently in the news, and books on China’s present and future influence, its economy and business practice abound. Blogs of foreigners in China – yes, such as this – are equally abundant.

Looking at what has been written, however, a certain trend is noticeable: China seems to be, at best, fascinating and attractive. Especially when it comes to offering the largest number of potential consumers within a single country. At worst, China appears to be noisome and repugnant. Too much trash, people spitting, pollution.
So, there is a lot to know about China, and a lot that China should apparently learn and take heed of.

It also seems as if there were nothing that the world could learn from China, however.

What is happening here?
It seems as if some kind of evolutionism were still at work, an idea wherein the “West” is on the zenith, and everybody trying to advance had to learn from it, “of course.” The other way round, there were nothing worth learning, just some quaint curiosities to try and import:
Chinese relics? Sure.
Chinese cooking? Well, as long as it gets adapted to Western tastes and ideas of what’s healthy and good.
Chinese ideas of society, life, sustainability? Are you kidding?!? Well, no.

Another culture. One of the reasons why “the other” is dangerous: It can serve as a mirror, reflecting your own image in ways leading you to recognize more of yourself.

Recently, my time has been very interesting:

On the one hand, last weekend, I realized one more reason why, in anthropological fieldwork, your private life is sometimes referred to as “the shadow side.”
The obvious (?) reason is that it is supposed to remain hidden. You go out in the field to live there, get to know the group/culture you live with, find out what you ventured out for, but not get too involved. (Of course, I’m also here to teach, to live, not strictly for fieldwork, so who cares?)
And, naturally, we are human. Many of the postmodern influences in anthropology – seeing anthropological writing as not much more than fiction, telling more about the author than about the purported research question – are of rather questionable value. They tended to let anthropological writing devolve into novelistic fables, more navel-gazing and literary artifact than even good travel writing is. Yet, there is value in having had this critique remind us that we are human. We cannot prevent being alive as a human being; not scientific instruments which just measure objectively, but persons with character and emotions, thought and feeling.

So, being human, I felt rather “in the shadow” last weekend. Emotional turmoil. I knew some of the reasons – mainly, a nagging feeling of loneliness – but still couldn’t quite understand what it was.

On the other hand, after the weekend, things started to look up.
Already on the weekend, I went to play table tennis. Probably for the first time in twenty years, if I ever really played before. Went and played basketball with some of them. Got out of the apartment… which, stupid as that sounds, is just too big right now. Took the chances I got for chatting with my students, which leads to them practicing German, me practicing Chinese, and everybody noticing that the other is actually open to socializing. Thought not about what will be, but what I was doing in the moment… and it’s not as if there weren’t enough to do… exams are coming up, winter break is a chance for either a nervous break-down, or chances to travel, write, do photography, and look forward to all of that.

In the spirit of “the other as mirror,” I noticed something:
Culture is, as we anthropologists (should) understand, oftentimes also hidden in the shadows, the crags and crevices of our consciousness.
German speakers, and especially around Vienna, have made an art form out of the complaint. People do not only go to pubs to drink, but also to complain. About the politicians, the weather, the economy, stupid people (which tends to be, everyone but the in-group), and so on, and so forth. It’s a form of socializing.
Bring that into a different context – like me feeling gloomy, living in China – and you get an interesting situation: I wake up with a smile because I’m here, feel that it’s the right place to be, am learning something new every day… but must have given some people a very strange impression when I first complained about the trouble I’ve been in, and then told them how much I like it here…