In Transition

In the eleventh grade year of Language & Literature at my Beijing school, we read an essay by David Sedaris entitled "Chicken Toenails, Anyone?"  In this essay, Sedaris (fresh off a trip to Japan) goes to China and has some culture shock.  Because he's Sedaris, he reacts to his culture shock with brutally funny observations; disappointingly, he uncharacteristically spends too little time reflecting on what his reactions to China might mean about him.  The usual Sedaris self-deprecation is mostly absent, and he goes for low-hanging fruit: dirt, organ meat, and China's ever-present bodily fluids.  He takes delight in comparing China's chaos to what he observes as Japan's careful aestheticism.  As my students said, it's not that what he says about China isn't true, it's just that it isn't complete.  

A month ago, I was sitting in a restaurant in Ito, Japan, with my friend Sarah.  Sitting kitty corner from our table was the sort of social group you typically find in a youth hostel: two English kids and an American, they'd clearly just met and had gone out to dinner.  The English people were travelers, and the American lived in Japan.  He was taking great pleasure in educating his new friends about the Japanese culture and lifestyle.  And then:

"Have you been to China?" the Englishman/boy asked.

"Ugh, no," said the American, "I'll never go there."

"But you like Japan!  Why would you not like China?  They're so similar!" This from the Englishgirlperson.

"China is disgusting -- it's dirty, and the food is terrible, and babies poop in the street.  It's nothing like Japan," said the American.

It's difficult to pinpoint exactly the most offensive part of this conversation -- Sarah is rooting for the "Japan and China are the same because they're both Asian!" insinuation, and she's correct -- but the entire thing made me want to go over, give them a talking to, and possibly accidentally punch them all in the face.

"You can't do that," Sarah said, "What would it accomplish?  They're children."

Again, she's correct.  Still and all -- it makes me feel privileged to have the students that I've had, to know that my teenagers have approached travel and culture and humanity with ten times the sensitivity and nuance of these early twenty-somethings.

It also makes me wonder: why do we have this obsessive impulse to compare China and Japan?  Sure, they're both in Asia, but so is Cambodia, and Singapore, and Malaysia, and I didn't have the urge to make constant comparisons when I was in those places.

Perhaps it's the stark contrast of the two places: in Beijing, you're an idiot if you don't shove your way to the front of a line.  In Japan, you're an idiot if you do.  (I was reminded of this when I accidentally pulled a China and pushed an elderly woman out of the way in a Tokyo supermarket.  Whoops.)  In Beijing, you eat amazing dumplings in a hole-in-the-wall filled with yelled conversations and raucous laughter.  In Tokyo, you sit in a row of businessmen on their lunch break and slurp down amazing ramen with fanatical concentration: you're in and out in twenty minutes, and the whole thing is done in complete silence.

That said, to pare down the two countries to their differences is to reduce them to less than what they are.  As my students would say, it's not complete.  In both countries, little old women smiled back at me (once I stopped shoving them out of the way).  In both countries, walking down the street was an exercise in bobbing and weaving (and, when it was raining, constant umbrella pokes -- ow).  In both countries, grandparents clearly loved their grandchildren.  People are people, everywhere.

And to pry deeper:  Japan is more than Sedaris's vision of a beautifully presented, endlessly polite wonderland.  Japan is that place, but it is also the country of the rape of Nanjing and brutal bullying in schools.  China is dirty, and yes, babies do sometimes poop on the streets -- but it's also a place where grandmothers line-dance together on streetcorners rather than in a gym and a mass of people crossing the street will always win out against the car attempting to drive down it: where humans are always more important than technology. 

Honestly, I lived in China for two years, and I'm aware that I'm still woefully ignorant of the place in many ways.  I know even less about Japan, and I'm totally unqualified to comment on either country.  Even though I'm interested in the compulsive way that we compare cultures and countries, if I used China as a baseline against which to measure Japan, I would still be doing it wrong:  China isn't a fixed point to me.  It floats in a sea of my own ignorance, and as such, it shimmies and dances and wobbles away from anything approximating "truth".  Even as a resident in China, I was a visitor.

All this is in my head because I've just moved to New York, and the urge to compare and classify is rearing its head once more.  It took me a week to get my New York walking legs: while Beijingers and New Yorkers have the same basic walking rules ("KEEP MOVING"), for some reason I spent the first few days I was back crashing into my fellow pedestrians.  Maybe in Beijing, we weave through the sidewalks in a different pattern, or something?  Whatever it is, I'd like to send out a virtual apology to the multiple people that I beaned with my shoulder.

The comparisons keep coming:  The subway is more convenient in New York than Beijing.  Cabs are more expensive.  I can eavesdrop on conversations.  Bureaucracy is easier to deal with.  Time Warner cable is significantly worse than China Unicom (except for, you know, the censorship).  Clothes fit me, and are even flattering.  I cook more for myself in New York, and order takeout less.

And then I realize that these contrasts are as much about me as Beijing and New York.  The part of me that stays permanently alert to social cues, that girds its loins before going to the bank, that navigates alienation and otherness and facial expressions and body language because I'll never speak Chinese: I'm tucking that part of myself into a quiet place in my skull.

And the part of me that has no excuses, that will clean its own damn bathroom and make its own damn meals, that can listen to the conversations around it and teach in a public school and stay forever on its toes:  that part is waking up.