Balancing

I am currently sitting comfortably, if not a bit chill-illy (gotta love AC!) in the starbucks about a 15 minute walk from my apartment. Since my last post I’ve shared dinner and a show with my Chinese host family from 8 years ago checked out Chinese vegetarian restaurants, chopped all my hair off (ok that was last week but I wasn’t sure if I had posted it) and finally gotten to see the spectacular if ominous Olympic buildings, eaten at a south African restaurant where I saw a kid I used to babysit rock out fantastically in a duet concert and made my first appearance on the Beijing nightclub scene, which is, I am beginning to realize, the most frequented of all scenes for expats living here. But alas, that scene will never be for me, regardless of what country I am in. Someone back home go to Wicked Willie’s at 4pm and order a four dollar white Russian for me, will you? J

I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was painfully missing New York right now. Well, perhaps painfully isn’t the correct word, I am still enjoying my time here but it’s hard knowing how amazing NY is in the summer and feeling like I am giving one of those magical incredible times up. Beijing is great but it’s not a walking around city, it’s not a walk on the grass in your barefeet city and it’s certainly not a catch a broadway show city. I hate to talk about the pollution but most everyday is wrapped in a gray package and I am excited when I can see half a mile down a road near my house. New York, my friends, has it all and I am willing to fight to the death on this point. I feel a little bit like I’m in a relationship after my first great love, it’s all good and everything, but it’s hard knowing what you COULD be having. Though, it’s great to realize that I wasn’t just chosing that life because it was there, and that I didn’t know/experience anything else. It just truly IS the life I love to lead at the moment.

Additionally, exciting things keep on happening in my life back in New York. Two of my former client’s have their greencard interviews next week and I am sad I am missing that though excited they email me to keep me updated on their lives. Also, I am very excited about the publication and release of a report that I helped collect the data for is finally coming out on Monday, more to be posted then. So, while I struggle with being an “academic” and sitting doing research and meeting with activists in Beijing, the impacts of my work in New York are occurring. Don’t get me wrong, again I love China as well and this summer is a growing one, an informative one, even if it may end up partially being a final one. Haha, probably when I come back to NY in the fall and my report from this summer is published I’ll be feeling the same way, only in reverse. I imagine that’s got to be a hard part of constantly traveling around, you never get to see the effects of the wake you leave. Though, perhaps that’s what also allows us to travel, we never see the destruction either.

So my big question for this week (and no I haven’t gotten to it yet, kudos to you for getting this far if you’re still with me though!) is how much of culture do we accept because it is culture and how much do we stand up to because you know it is wrong. (let the conversation about what wrong and right is begin.) I got to thinking of this when I was out to lunch with my adorable coworkers (our whole office jumps ship at 12 15 everyday and we go to lunch in a big Chinese/Laowai group) and there were two men, clearly very very drunk, at the table next to us. One came up to me, tried to touch my arm, was talking loudly about how Americans are great, the stink of alcohol on his breath, after my coworker told him to leave he stared at me the whole meal, making obnoxious gestures while the people at another table wondered loudly, in Mandarin, what “us foreigners” were doing at such a restaurant. I should note this is not at all the norm, most of the time I feel openly welcomed into this country (if there is constantly the noted acknowledgement that I am different). I, unsurprisingly, got pissed at the man, and at the people at the table behind us questioning why I should bother to be in “their” country, and wanted to leave. Then, I felt guilty about leaving! Guilty because I told myself that they were right, that I was asking for it by being in their country, that it wasn’t my place and thus, I should take whatever is thrown my way.

Now, could you imagine me telling one of my clients in America that if an American treated them this way they should just get over it because they knew they would be the outsiders as they immigrated to “my” country. Of course not. So is there an inherent difference because I am from a developed country and am in a developing country? Or, is saying that there is a difference just a way to perpetuate patriarchy because only “western values” are against it. (Because clearly, we do such a good job resisting patriarchy, note my sarcasm and note this fantastic article http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/woman-in-charge-women-who-charge/?em&ex=1212984000&en=79e45b084c96a44c&ei=5087_)

There’s a great line in the Asian Charter on HR which states,

“cultural traditions affect the way in which a society organizes relationships within itself but they do not detract from the universalism of rights which are primarily concerned with the relationship of citizens with the state and the inherent dignity of persons and groups.”

I like that. That, to me, makes sense.

Next week’s topic: what the heck ARE the universal rights? And how do we know what is and what is not?