All posts in Craziest thing I saw in China today

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been in China for a month already. Adjusting to the cultural differences has been going surprisingly well. But there are still the occasional low points.

During my 2.5 week training session at Peking University in Beijing, my fellow CTLC participants and I learned all about culture shock. It is said that there are 4 stages of “acculturation” — the ability to call a foreign place home:

1. Honeymooon: excitement, anticipation, enjoyment of differences
2. Hostility: irritation, anger, depression, physical ailments
3. Humor: a growing ability to deal with the differences and see them as interesting or funny
4. Home: the ability to function well and feel comfortable in the new culture

Of these stages, I would say that I mostly find myself in #2 and #3. My honeymoon phase was pretty short. The miserable Beijing weather — a mix of hot, humid and polluted — was enough to put me out of that stage pretty quickly.

Hostility

It’s very easy to be hostile in this country. Common courtesies in the United States — saying “thank you” or “excuse me,” waiting in line — simply aren’t recognized in China. Pedestrian safety is low on the driver priority list, and drivers here are more likely to honk their horns than a New York City taxi driver. And unless you’re willing to pay a lot of money, your only food options are Chinese, McDonald’s and KFC.

Humor

But at the same time, the cultural differences can be absolutely hilarious. If you follow my Twitter feed, you’ll notice that I’ve been running a “craziest thing I saw in China today” series. (From now on, that series will also be part of this blog). One of my favorite things about this country is all of the poor English translations. T-shirts with English writing on them almost never make sense (i.e. “Orange Music Crumple”), and my favorite store to buy teaching materials from is called “Office Thigs.”

Will I ever reach the home phase? Only time will tell.

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In other news, I am all moved in to my apartment in Shenzhen. I will provide the details about my area and school in an upcoming blog post.

On that note, this website has been blocked by the Great Firewall of China. For that same reason, my access to websites like Twitter and Facebook has been limited. There are ways around that, but they require an extra amount of work. And when I am able to access the sites, the connection is painfully slow.

And finally, my camera broke on the flight to Beijing, so my only images from China have come from my iPhone. I hope to upload those to my Flickr stream and this blog once I have a more reliable internet connection.

Until then, I will try to keep blogging and updating from coffee shops.