Here are some things I discovered on my 2009 Discovery channel (since i didn't have a real one). The most important things you learn aren't from the tube, anyway.
Note: this list increases every time i have a new thought, which is like 3x a day.1. bittorrent. this seriously rocks. everything at the tips of my fingers. well, almost everything. sorry artists and producers. :P
2. shanghai. this seriously does
not rock. i have returned to the
original mother land and have learned how much humans can actually ignore their humanity. i could go on about this but basically, this just isn't my cup o' tea. i have surveyed others who love this city about why they love it, thinking i might have overlooked some things somehow. maybe there's a secret, hidden, shanghai jewel somewhere. maybe there's a mystique i missed. regrettably, despite the multi-nationalism and raw and brutal chinese culture, it just about ends there.
i came, i saw, and i did not conquer. go genghis khan! at least i got to see a few cool cities in china as well as in neighboring countries. i plan to continue this til i leave, fo sho!
3. me. i learned that i am capable of some evil evil things. i hope to change this forever and ever. i believe i have buddha's blessing. Oh, and Om Mani Padme Hum too.
4. friendships. good friends are hard to make, great ones are even harder. no matter how sociable you are, where you live, or how many different people you meet, finding true friends is damn difficult business.
5. dkf. i have discovered this time and time again but seem to always take it for granted. i have peered into the kindest and most caring spirit, and that is dkf. 2009 taught me that the good spirit of dkf is unfaltering, despite the mishaps we had this year. thank you.
6. children. children are brilliant, creative, innovative, insightful, intelligent, resilient, spirited, and purely amazing. even the ones with disabilities blow my mind, in fact, particularly the ones with disabilities. thank you for renewing my hope for humanity when i look into your eyes and test your IQs.
7. chinese people. i now know that the more i know about my fellow peoples, the less i really do. i realized how much more different we were than similar. we may speak the same language (sometimes) and hail from the same race, but that's about it. thank you for teaching me that. and as much as i would like there will never be a reconciliation on that front. i also understand where my family comes from and why certain beliefs and habits run deep. sadly, i have adopted some of them too. i have also recognized them bred deep within me from before birth. i admire the same traits i detest.
8. ABCs. yah i really do think ABC's are "coo," at least cooler than locals or full on foreigners.
we understand what it feels like to not understand. we have one foot out each door and it drives us nuts. we recognize in the local chinese the same traits our parents have but also know that is the source of much misunderstanding and incommensurability. we think we understand chinese culture but we really don't. we think we're american, but americans disagree. we are torn between 2 worlds and that has become our personal world. our parents don't get why we're so american and americans ask us about the weird chinese food we eat. we can't speak perfect chinese no matter how hard we try or how many chinese classes we take or how many years we study abroad in beijing. despite this, local chinese expect us to speak perfect chinese. and when we don't, they think we're stupid or not nationalistic enough or our parents didn't teach us right. we speak perfect english but some people assume we can't truly understand american culture as well as a "real" american does. this is especially the case with my american clients. we feel discriminated against. we are not as exotic as other foreigners but we're not as native as the locals. but we're "coo" and we can spot one another easy. we're like laidback chinese people, decked out in U.S. fashion, hang out with foreign friends, speak our chinese with an easy american twang and miraculous perfect english comes out of our mouths. we know we are caught between a rock and a hard place but we're cool like that and settle in quite nicely. we know our parents wish we could read and write and speak chinese better, and want us to adopt more chinese traditions and teach our children chinese so they can communicate with them and the culture won't be lost. there aren't too many ABC's here in shanghai. i know of 4 others. if their experience is anything like mine, they love it for the same reasons they hate it.
9. my mother. as difficult as she can be, i know she loves me. this i discovered this year...again.
10. chinese food. i thought i loved this stuff, couldn't live without it, no matter who cooked it and where it came from, but i now know i am wrong. i actually don't care much for it anymore. at first i thought i loved chinese food, then after coming here, i realized i only loved my gramma's cooking. :) i sure miss it.
11. relatives. this the year of my taiwanese relatives. beware thy relatives, esp. ones you have not seen in a long long time and assume they miss you as much as you miss them. my dad's side of the family was AWESOME though. it was a bittersweet reunion, discovering my 17 year MIA relatives in taiwan. all in all, i am glad i connected with them again and saw my old childhood/grandpa's home so many years later. it's always neat to see the place where so many baby photographs were taken.
12. international life. it's quite an experience, not having the usual comforts of home. you realize how well you can adapt but also how much you strive to re-create what you were used to at home. you are willing to pay more to get items that merely approximate what you're used to. you are willing to pay more to shop or eat at places that might carry stuff that resembles native goods. but at the end of the day, it isn't home and the stuff will never be the real deal. you learn how much you can tolerate certain things and how after awhile, you don't even notice it anymore. you adopt habits you would never dream of doing back home and dismiss social etiquette that would get you ostracized back home.
you pay inflated prices for cheap beer and burgers. you lose your native language fluency including grammar and diction and syntax to acclimate to local english. i realized there were things i could live with, but certain things i could not. and i had to ask others to bring them back to china for me or send dkf back with a long list of must-buy goods. floss, tampons, organic lotions, bras, soap, electronics, Q-tips are just some items i either am US-specific or have a hard time being China-specific about. i would recommend everyone live internationally at least once. it's good to get out of that comfort zone at least once in your life.
13. contractor work. i absolutely love it and will have the hardest time going back to a full time 9-5 job with a boss hanging over my shoulder in an office. in fact, i intend to avoid that again if i can help it. i enjoy working from home, making my own hours, having someone arrange my schedule and do the dirty work, postponing appointments, blocking out my schedule and taking vacation whenever the hell i want, and getting paid for every hour of my time. the best part is making as much money as i would as a full-timer! in addition to the ideal type of work set up, i actually really enjoy what i do. i love working with multi-national families and learning about the nuances of different cultures. it's alot like a finger foods sampler at a restaurant, except it's a sampling of cultures. in addition, because of my contractor work, i have more time to pursue other career opportunities and to broaden my scope of work, to make it interesting. i love how i can teach privately and have a private practice all from my home, with no administrative body to preside over me (well technically the chinese govt is supposed to preside over this too but it's easy to fly under the radar; if i get caught, there might be trouble but it's pretty low risk at this point.)
14. delivery service. in shanghai, anything and everything can be delivered and for cheap. i have completely exceeded my usage of delivery service in the last 8 mos i have been here than ever in my life. while that may make for lazy morbid obesity, it sure is nice to get your water, mail (picked up and delivered directly), beverages, groceries, household supplies, McD, breakfast, lunch and dinner delivered to your door, especially when it's super humid or freezing outside. there is even dry clean pick up service for clothing and carpet.
15. tea. what's this got to do with the price of tea in china? everything. tea is cheap, exotic, different, unique, earthy, plentiful, comes in bulk and strange shapes and from far away places, and damn good esp. on winter nights and served well with friends and strangers. while i am no tea connoisseur, i have quite the appetite for it, so i drink up! as a tea seller said to dkf and i, us foreigners don't know good tea from bad, but we know what we like!
