Culture Shock - Part I
Things that my 12-year-old extremely-hill-billy self found to be intriguing, fascinating, scary, confusing, and or shocking. Sometimes all at once. (A little background: my family and I moved to the US from the other side of the globe when I was 12. None of us spoke English. For this and other details, go read my “about me” page).
These shocking things are in no particular order, but each proved to be comical and foreign to my-then-12yr-old-self (some are still shocking to me).
* People. I lived in a small village and never traveled further than 3 hours away from where I was born. I had only seen non-Chinese people on TV, in black&white television. When we landed in O’Hare airport, various hair colors, eye colors, and people’s sizes really shocked me and continued to for a long while.
* Food - western food. Which to me meant anything that wasn’t Chinese food.
* Language. Did not know a single word of English. No one knew my native language at my school, and not many in the community either. It was an 90degree uphill journey sprinkled with many many thorns, spikes and potholes along the way.
* Smiles / friendliness. When you smile or say Hi to a complete stranger in China, people would think you are slow, stupid, or have an ulterior motive. They just don’t do friendly over there, especially if you’re Asian. Times may have changed some, and westernized a little more since we moved away, but I think these types of views are still very strong.
* Hugs. In the US and many western countries, people hug when greeting a friend or family member. In China, you don’t even see parents hug each other. Nor do you see parents hug their children once the kids are past the Cute Age (meaning, preschoolers at the latest). Feel free to let us know if your Asian family is a huggy-lovey one, coz mine’s definitely not. This is one aspect of the culture I will NOT pass onto our own kids.
* Religion. People around me practiced the inert type of Buddhism - at the most they went to the temple once a year or something. And are/were very superstitious.
* For many months, I didn’t know what a “body shop” was. Every time the school bus drove by some building that said “body shop” I was very confused. As I was starting to learn English from scratch (ABC, colors, numbers etc), body meant, well, body, as in physical body. Your body, my body. At first I thought maybe it was similar to a red district. But then the building looks too crummy to be that. It was after many funny hand gestures and exchanges that my new friends told me what it meant.
* Moving vehicles / boats / airplanes. My parents had two bicycles to transport us around. After arriving in the US, Motion Sickness was my first name for a very long time. To this day, I must be the one driving, otherwise there’s a high chance that I would hurl.
Next I’ll talk about lotions, soft mattresses, flushing toilets, and more. Not necessarily in that order.