Apologies if this is a bit scattered, it includes topics I will certainly be exploring for awhile. Also, if you’re reading, feel free to leave a comment! It’s my way of knowing people are reading as I can’t do any number count (a lot of the blog sites are actually blocked here and I am going through a proxy server!)
Since I’ve arrived people keep asking me what I am going to “do” while I am here. Am I going to travel around China? Will I visit all the sights? (Tian an men, Forbidden City, etc.)
The answer, honestly, is probably not. Though I do plan on traveling for work to Yunnan province in late June/ early July and I will undoubtedly run into tian an men square as I hear there is an amazing rooftop bar near the forbidden city, I’m not aiming to make this summer that of years past, meaning literally soaking up every Chinese thing I can possibly do.
This may touch on something mentioned in my first blog entry but this summer I am going to try and “live” in China, meaning carrying out life as I normally would, simply doing so in Beijing. But I have so much guilt surrounding this that it is difficult to write down or even admit that this is what I want to do.
There are a variety of reasons for feeling this way, and for the guilt it inspires. A favorite line of the director of my high school program was that we didn’t “undermine our SYA (the name of the program) experience.” Granted, I probably took this to an extreme, as I do most things, biking to school when I was sick to be sent home in a taxi because I couldn’t sit through class. But I think that part of the lessons were incredibly valuable. There are so many lives that are lived here which simply are an uprooted version of that in America or other countries in the world. Housewives with drivers who relish in the fact that they spend their hours getting massages and playing golf (I kid you not, we went to see a theater performance last night and one women’s bio read along these lines and I cannot even write them or I will throw up on my computer), speaking mainly in English, eating only foreign food. I don’t mean to judge (ok ok I do) but I want to ask sometimes “what on earth are you doing in China?!” Not so much in what sort of work are you doing (the number of foreign companies here is truly astonishing) but why are you choosing to do this in China, be American in China, be Australian in China? Granted, the lifestyle is cheaper, you are the upper upper class of society, but it just doesn’t sit right with me.
I think that part of this also comes from visiting Indonesia this past March (and various other countries throughout my life) and seeing the same pattern of western bodies being attended to (literally, on the beaches of Bali, with umbrellas, ukulele’s, manicure sets, incense and massage hands) by hands of citizens of the countries they are visited. (Again, I definitely engaged in massages while I was in Indonesia, just not on the beach while having my eyebrows plucked and ordering a man to sing next to me, does this make it different? I don’t know). The sights made me weary but then again, I think who am I to look down on something that brings people in poverty income? But then again, if this is the only source of income for these people what does that say? If you can only wait on white people to make money, than we’re perpetuating the role of those in power and the servers of that power. What happens when the tourists leave?
When I brought up these arguments to people in Namu village and Lijiang, where I lived and studied and ultimately wrote about some of these issues in my thesis people would say things like “well sure the children all want to dance for/paint pictures for/be tour guides for the tourists, that’s how they make money! That may cause a problem down the road, but what are we supposed to do about that now?”
Ah, the “ need of the now” v “ repercussion on the future” argument, very difficult to deal with in any setting, heck I still haven’t figured out the answers to it in terms of immigration after working on it for a year (and probably won’t in the next decade or so).
So here I am dealing with my own now v future dilemmas, albeit in smaller sectors than the future of the economy of a developing town. Here I am making some of these same choices and decisions as the Laowai I’ve judged (and still am) in the past. I’ve already gone out for “foreign” food twice since arriving and I have been a prisoner in my own apartment for the past three hours, unable to take a shower, because we have a woman who has come to clean, and I am currently debating spending what is a (Chinese) ridiculous amount on a membership to a nearby gym.
Am I the world’s biggest hypocrite? Quite possibly. Though my Chinese NGO working status may give me some leeway in the guilt game, what really separates me from the Laowai taitai (foreign wives) if I chose to spend a large part of my time in Beijing merely living life as I would in America. (and let’s face it, much better than I live in America, it’s much more rare there that I can afford going out to dinner multiple nights a week or even take a cab in New York City). But then again, where does the guilt really get you? If I am happier eating pizza one night and that means I am less stressed at work the next day and can learn more characters or be more involved in a meeting than is it a benefit? And am I really so shallow to feel guilty about what I EAT, believing that that of all things actually matters?
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I just got back from exploring modern art galleries with a group of expats connected through an old college friend. We took a cab and viewed art only a small percentage of Chinese will ever see. But they speak Chinese, they work at NGO’s, restoring Hutongs or introducing Chinese art to the world, they organize benefits to fund the earthquake (trendy here now but still). Maybe it’s possible to operate between the two extremes and be of use somehow to yourself and to a greater picture.
I guess this summer is my time to figure that all out.
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