Welcome back one and all to the August edition of Fact or Fiction. Those of you who read any or all of the last seven will know, every edition I will have a guest and we will discuss a few of the big issues in China of the day. Every answer will have a “Fact” or a “Fiction” and some justification to go along with it.

My guest today is fellow Lost Laowai blogger, Travis.  Travis recently turned heads, and opened up tear ducts with his post titled “There and Back“, a look at the journey back home for the summer and how things changed from when he first left.  Judging by the response to the post, I certainly wasn’t the only one who was touched by his descriptions of the complicated place that we call “home”.

In keeping with the themes of his most recent post, and the fact that the summer is the most likely time for many of us to head back to the land of our birth, our topic today is going to be one that is both simple and complicated, happy and sad: home.  Join us today for Fact or Fiction IX: Homecoming!

Welcome back one and all to the August edition of Fact or Fiction. Those of you who read any or all of the last seven will know, every edition I will have a guest and we will discuss a few of the big issues in China of the day. Every answer will have a “Fact” or a “Fiction” and some justification to go along with it.

My guest today is fellow Lost Laowai blogger, Travis.  Travis recently turned heads, and opened up tear ducts with his post titled “There and Back“, a look at the journey back home for the summer and how things changed from when he first left.  Judging by the response to the post, I certainly wasn’t the only one who was touched by his descriptions of the complicated place that we call “home”.

In keeping with the themes of his most recent post, and the fact that the summer is the most likely time for many of us to head back to the land of our birth, our topic today is going to be one that is both simple and complicated, happy and sad: home.  Join us today for Fact or Fiction IX: Homecoming!

Fact or Fiction

1. Homesickness is one of the biggest challenges of living in China.

Glen: FACT

Absolutely! As much as I want to explore new things and learn about a culture that’s very new to me, it’s hard not to long for home sometimes. Every now and then I just get a craving for some maple syrup or Tim Horton’s Coffee, or I ache to watch hockey with people who appreciate it (also: I realize that I am a walking Canadian stereotype). I find the lack of peers who understand the eccentricities of my own culture to be something that I find alienating at times.

Travis: FACT

Yes. No matter who you are, this will be a problem. You go into a place with customs you don’t understand, a language you cannot speak, an alien writing system, and you get to the point where you realize: I’m alone here. All alone.

But you overcome that. You have students to help you, you make friends, you maybe get a girlfriend and then you find yourself missing certain comforts. Breathable air. Sane westerners. And after awhile, you find new comforts. You find how exciting everything is, how novel such ordinary occurrences are to you.

Then you hate everything. You hate the guy who intercepts the taxi you just spent an hour waiting to flag down, you hate the people who reschedule your classes and don’t tell you until the night before, you don’t understand why they just cannot be normal, for Christ’s sake.

If you manage to overcome all that, then a day comes when you jaywalk unafraid and are okay with last-minute dinner invitations. Holy shit! I can tell the taxi driver where to go and chat with him on the way! That’s when you know everything’s going to be okay.

A nice, family style agreement from the get go.  1 for 1.

2. Your time in China has been very different than you originally imagined it to be.

Glen: FACT

I was fully expecting to spend two years teaching in Suzhou before moving to some other continent for a new adventure. Now I have moved to Guangzhou recently, but I did not expect myself to stay in China, or to find leaving Suzhou to be so difficult. I have set up far more roots than I had originally expected to.

Travis: FACT

Oh God yes. I was supposed to spend a year teaching before going home for grad school, but before even that, I was supposed to go teach in France through the ‘assistant d’anglais’ program. I was devastated when it didn’t work out, but look where I am now: married, with an opportunity to study Chinese that I never would have had otherwise, and I’m happy with what I do. With everything that’s happened, I cannot imagine what my life would be like if I had gone to France as planned.

As for staying here one year…well, what did I know? I was the same guy who was going to France, then grad school. For my wife and I, me going home was an issue from the get-go. What happened was that I found that I was happy here, happy with her, and I loved her too much just to go back home and do what I am “supposed” to do. I stayed on for another year, and another, and I do not regret it at all.

It’s been a growing experience. It has to be, or else, what use was it? Just to have something to do for a year or two?

Things may not have gone according to plan for these two, but this post is goign according to plan.  2 for 2.

3. The culture shock of going home is harder than the culture shock when you first arrived in China.

Glen: FACT

…but not a strong fact. I think that “Reverse Culture Shock” is an incredibly understated problem for expats. Of course mannerisms and customs that take place back home are familiar to you, and it is rarely that hard to get back into the swing of things. However, that being said, I feel like when I moved to China the newness excited me, and I hada large support group of people to help me with any difficulties or shocks. However, whenever I go home I don’t have that kind of support. Sure my family and friends are there for me, but they don’t seem to understand any sort of difficulties I experience with the unfamiliar familiarities of home.

Travis: FACT

You’re dead on about the lack of a support group to help overcome reverse culture shock. And once the novelty of going on Facebook to see so-and-so’s photos of her latest trip to the grocery store wore off, I found myself wondering why I even came back in the first place.

My family cares about me, they were curious about my time in China, and if I was having problems, I could talk to them about it…but at the same time, it would be hard for them to understand where I’m coming from.

What makes it hard, I think, is that all of you have changed in your time away from home, but they (understandably) think of you as the same person you were when you left.

Still good.  Let’s switch things up.  3 for 3.

4. You do not feel as close to your family anymore.

Travis: FACT

For me, yes. We talk off and on by telephone while another teacher spoke to his family everyday on Skype. It made me feel a little ashamed. I don’t keep in touch with them as much as I should. Sometimes I find it hard. I’m doing my own thing, they’re doing theirs, and so weeks will pass without us speaking. But in the end, we’re family. So the distance doesn’t mean as much.

I think it’s much worse when it comes to friends. They’ve started grad school, their careers. They have grudging responsibilities now. The common ground we had in college and high school has been shrinking for a long time now, to the point where there’s barely anything left. I think though, that it does say a lot about the strength of your friendship, if you can reconnect easily despite how far apart you’ve grown or if there’s nothing there but experiences two years old or older. Sometimes you just have to move on.

Glen: FACT

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my family dearly, probably more now than I did when I lived in Canada.  But that being said, things felt a little…off this past summer.  I have spent a great deal of my life coming and going from the people I love.  In the past, I’ve felt like my arrival and departure were sort of…well events, big gatherings, big dinners, the whole shebang.

This time though it felt a bit more subtle and expected.  Of course my family drove to the airport to get me, my sisters were waiting at my dad’s house to see me, everything was great.  But there were no tears when I left, it was expected, another fact of life.  The consequences others had to deal with for my own decisions.  I know that they were sad to see me go (as I hope they know that I was sad to leave) but it felt natural this time.  I know it’s my fault for not calling or e-mailing as much as I should, or filling my summer with all sorts of different things, but I still felt a strange distance this time that I hadn’t felt in the past.

Wow, 4 for 4. We agree more than I do with my actual family!

5. You get homesick for China more than you do for “home”

Travis: FICTION

This is a difficult question to answer. Right now, I’d say ‘no’, based on my limited experience. While there were things I missed about China, I don’t think it compares to living in China for the first time.

Of course, I was only in the United States for a month, so this might change when I go back on a more long-term basis, but for now, I’m saying this: going to China is an adjustment while returning home is a readjustment. Difficult, but I don’t think anything close to the first year in China.

At least, I hope it isn’t…

Glen: FICTION

I have found that the last two summers I’ve been very “China Sick”, but not compared to how much I miss home.  I think a year ago, when I came back to China the first time, I would have answered “Fact”.  However, I think that it was more that I missed adventure and excitement.  But I suppose now that I’m a year wiser and a year more Chinafied, I miss the comfort and warmth of home.  China provides me with some of that, but like many things here, it’s an inferior copy.

5 for 5.  Can we have our first perfect showing?

6. You feel more at home in China than you do back “home”.

Travis: FACT

… for me, it is a fact. I left the States the summer after I graduated college. I left single, ten pounds lighter, decades younger. Fast forward to now, and you see that I simply have more of a home here than I do in America.

It is what you take with you. When I return Stateside next time, my wife will be with me. She is the crucial piece that makes China my “home”. I see China as my home because we’re together here, we have a life here. It’s not that I prefer one place over another…I just like the life I have with her.

Glen: FICTION

…although it’s a mild fiction, if that helps.

While I’ve made a nice life for myself here, surrounded myself with wonderful people (including my wonderful girlfriend, of course), it’s still not quite the same as home.  To be honest though, I don’t want it to be.  While I crave the comforts of home at times, I still want to have a bit more excitement in my life.  In my current state of mind, if China ever becomes more home than home to me, then I think it will be time for me to go.

But that day doesn’t seem to be coming any time soon, thankfully.

Well Glen had to go and ruin it!  5 for 6.  Record is tied.

For Travis, I’m Glen, thanks for reading!  We hope that you find a welcome home, wherever that is.  As always, we welcome comments/concerns/criticisms.  Let us have it 🙂

Discussion

6
  1. Pingback: Hao Hao Report

  2. I would have to agree that to repatriate is much more difficult.

    There is excitement about living abroad, especially Asia, where language, culture, and food are so different from what you experience back home. It’s challenging, learning a foreign language,food that you have never eaten, places and customs you may have only read about. Then you decide, or your company decides to send you back. It sounds great at first, you don’t have to listen to bad Filipino bands trying to sound like Bon Jovi, you get to see sports with like people who understand the game, you can speak the language, but, the problem is, that this lasts for a short time. Now the boredom/depression sets in, and all you want to do is go back because somehow you don’t seem to fit in anymore…

  3. I identify with so much of this. At least I know I’m not crazy… or perhaps, not alone in my craziness. Totally agree about reverse culture shock being one of the toughest aspects.

  4. This is something I worry about, repatriating back to Canada. I have been in China for the past 8 years, and quite a lot has changed back home since then. Not only gas prices have skyrocketed, but I am sure food prices, jobs, and so on, also have changed to some extent. Even though I have some friends back come that will find me a job and so on, the emotional part of it all will be one that I will be coping with, for good or bad.

  5. I’m glad to see so many people are worried about Reverse Culture Shock. It’s nice to know that I’m not crazy finding it so difficult. The real question though, is there anything that we can do either as individuals or as a community to deal with it or prepare for it?

    So far, I sure haven’t thought of anything.

  6. Your reactions are mostly spot on for me as well. I moved to China by myself when I was 18, in February 2005, and just left last year (never left during that whole time). My over two extra years (it seems you were there for two???) really changed my feeling a lot. I have been out of China for just over a year now and am finding the transition crippling. Everything I hated about China seems to matter little compared to what I miss about it. I get along with Chinese better than Westeners.

    I really went native there, learned Chinese, married a Chinese, lived mostly with Chinese, ate almost exclusively Chinese, studied Chinese Gongfu, traveled around the country by motorcycle, explored the jungles/mountains/caves of China, etc and my entire life was dominated by China in every way. I could get away with being a Kazakstani minority for Godsake and most Chinese would not think twice. But I didn’t adopt most of the negative things about Chinese people, fortunately.

    I missed my country (Holland) sometimes but negative things about China really pissed me off more than anything. Since returning to the West I can really appreciate the good, though, and I know that the only place that will ever be home for me now is China. After the adventures I had there a mundane life here in the West can never satisfy me, sadly.

    To add a third dimension, though, I am living in the United States for two years, rather than my own country, and this complicates things for the worse. I also lived in several other countries with my family before I moved off to China on my own so I never really grew up in one place and with my family in law all in one little area of China it becomes even easier to associate that place as a home.

Leave a Reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Return to Top ▲Return to Top ▲