It's been 3 weeks since I moved to the "motherland". Until now, my exposure to China had been limited to my primary school textbook and polarizing views from media and friends.
I'm not sure if it is because I'm coming from Africa where my standard of "comfort" has been substantially lowered, OR because I have quickly reconnected with my Chinese "root" that have been dormant in my subconscious all these years, adjusting to life in Shenzhen has been surprisingly easy.
It helps that Shenzhen is an immigrant city, the majority of the population is not "from here". At the office, mandarin (the common language) is for the most part a second language for everyone. Consequently, my officemates speak with a variety of accents, and sometime have a difficult time understanding each other! (which was nice because I don't feel so bad for making the super nice guy with a thick accent repeat something 3 to 5 time so I can understand him.) On any given day, my conversations switch between Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. In addition, pretty much from the time I landed, my focus immediately shift to developing "guan xi" (relationships), and business / interpersonal exchanges has been filled with flattery and a sort of superficial pleasantry that would have made me want to vomit had it been in a western context. Miraculously, I have not feel a tiny bit of cognitive dissonance, even though I do worry about developing multiple personality disorder in the near future. :-p
It's an interesting experience being a foreigner without feeling truly "foreign". Might it be in Kenya, Japan, France, or even in the US, I had been squarely pegged as an "outsider" either intrinsically (because of language barriers) or externally imposed (because I obviously look different from everyone else). Living in China is the first time this line has been blurred. I'm no longer sure if I'm "the foreigner trying to blend in" or "the clueless local who just moved in from the neighboring town". Previously, my social circle mainly sits in the expat "bubble", now I feel very positively outside that bubble, and very much looking in, pondering why people would spend that kind of money living that kind of lifestyle. (I can only infer that this might have been how my middle class Kenyan friend felt sometimes when they saw the way I lived)
With that said, as Woody Allen exquisitely articulated in the movie Midnight in Paris, we tend to idealize the past to escape the present (especially when the present is not so pleasant)... some of us idealize a foreign place to escape our present location. To me, living in developing countries represent both an idealized simple past (as many of these places reminded me of Taiwan when I was little) and an exotic escape. After making a giant circle around the globe, fate finally brought me back to Asia / China, let's see if I can learn to get back to the "present" and develop a new appreciate for the motherland.
