From Sunday to Tuesday, I had a big crisis due to the well-known cultural shock! Homesickness, rejection of Chinese society, fighting against myself not to hate them and to stop despising their way of living, it was hard because I knew I was wrong and I had no right to judge them but at one point you cannot bear things anymore. In this city which is at the heart of China without any instructions from the government (example, Chinese people from here told me that in Beijing and Shanghai, the government gives some orders how the inhabitants should behavior. They have to be polite with foreigners, streets are cleaner and they cannot live naturally like here in Wuhan.) Example, here men are often half naked in the street, sleeping directly on the floor after lunch during a nap they entirely deserve considering their hard work, which continues day after day, night after night, without any day off at the week-end which doesn’t exist here… At least when you don’t work in a company! Woow this sentence sounds too French and not enough English I am sorry, I hope you got it because I am too tired to change anything today J
Well so, in the biggest cities in China which are the most touristic, people are not allowed to do things which could shock “civilized” foreigners but in Wuhan, people don’t care! So I am shocked a little more every day, at least I was because now I finally start to get used to it, phew! ** sigh of relief** ^^
Actually I don’t like the government’s habit to give instructions to people, they should be able to live as they want and if people are shocked well they don’t have to come back! It’s amazing when you think about this, I wouldn’t like my government forbid us to do things or to eat things because American or Asian people are not used to see this in their country! You don’t go in a foreign country to find the same life that you have in yours seriously.
Anyway in Wuhan they are free to live as they want and I am glad for them J But I had to stand back more and more and to be tolerant, to forget my European prejudices or hygiene habits otherwise you start to become crazy… First, people don’t say hello when they come into a shop, they don’t say goodbye when they leave, they only say thank you but in only rarely case. Basically, you come into a shop you say “I want this”, you pay and you leave. At the beginning I was always saying “ni hao” (hello), I was showing what I wanted to buy, always thanking after I paid and saying goodbye but at one point you start to get fed up when nobody replies to you! I thought maybe there is something wrong about me, it’s because I am a foreigner so they don’t appreciate me but what I finally realized it’s not about me Blandine, 22 years old French girl, it’s about their culture and their habit, nobody does it so when I am polite, it’s even chocking them because they are not used to it. Phew…!
When I try to speak mandarin Chinese they are not patient, they don’t even laugh nicely to my stammering, they just lose patience and show me I have to be quick or to pay but they are rarely willing to help me or to teach me something. I think it’s the worst thing that can happen when people from the country you are living are not willing to help you to pick up their language, especially because here they don’t speak mandarin Chinese but Wuhan language which is quite different! So every time I talk to them they have to go back to Mandarin and to stop talking their dialect. And when I want to pick up some words I need to pay attention and to check: is that Mandarin Chinese or Wuhanese? So difficult! Their pronunciation is not exactly the same either so it’s a bit frustrating actually; they don’t pronounce the “ngeu” and say “lleu”. When I was in Exeter I was never able to see the difference between different British accents but here I can definitely do that, they really speak differently. And don’t even try to speak English to them, omg no! Students are always willing to talk English when they have some notions and when they don’t know this language, they are even more rude because obviously they should know some vocabulary and they don’t so they don’t feel proud and so on you make them uncomfortable and they don’t like it.
Well so I really felt unwelcome…And abnormal because everybody keeps staring at me in the street.. And the fact is that if they were looking at me with curiosity or with a smile on their face, it would be fine and I would understand them but here they never smile in the street. You know I am always smiling at people when I walk in the street, always and I am never happier than when they reply to my smile, they did it a lot in England, and in Germany and South Korea as well even if it was less often but here it’s really really rare when they smile at you. So basically, nobody replies to my smiles but everybody looks at me with insistence and they make me look down because of this uncomfortable feeling which grows bigger and bigger everyday. This is why, feeling unwelcome and abnormal I really wanted to go back home!
But now it’s ok J Fortunately, there are many children here and there is something amazing with children it’s their behavior when they see something new for them. Here, babies and little kids stop to do everything when they meet me, they look at me, they often finger point me (can I say that??) and they start to smile, a very very big smile, they even laugh sometimes and some of them try to talk to me ! They are so cute omg, downstairs there is a ping pong table where many children from my street play everyday and two days ago when I went back from work I came along to say hello to them and I asked if we could play together ! J Ahahaha their reaction was sooo funny but they accepted and I liked it! Being surrounded by kids, whatever is their nationality children are children and I get along with them very well and they were smiling and smiling and being with them reminded me that all these people in the street have been kids one day J Maybe they learnt to hide their feelings but it doesn’t mean they don’t feel anything so I should be more attentive! And that’s what I am doing at the moment J
On Tuesday, a man came into the bus at night with fruits (huuuuge bunches of grapes!!) and he started to sell them because everybody in the bus was tempted by these big grapes and finally he took some and he juggled with them while he was talking and joking! He made people laugh in the bus, even me and it was such a good moment to see all these happy and peaceful faces laughing at the same thing, I started to laugh too because I liked the whole situation and an old man smiled at me and asked me in English “Understand”? It was nothing, just a single word but just this, this old man trying to communicate with me in English, a language he obviously did not know was amazing, he was trying to create a link between us, a fragile and small link and it‘s this who helped me to see things from the good side now, thanks to him J
I give you a link about the cultural shock and I totally agree with everything said on this page because for the moment everything happened to me, fortunately now I am in the Understanding stage so the worst is gone and it will become better and better because I already started to see things differently, from their point of view J I thought you might like to read this article, maybe you already felt this way and will recognize some of the stages! Thanks to Asme for the link J
