Shifting Spaces

by Jane Young

Yesterday, my boyfriend Pete and I stood on the side of the road in downtown Guangzhou, China. Six lanes of traffic blew by us, driving in the typical Chinese way--as fast as you can, as aggressively as you can, and most likely, with your fist firmly planted on the horn. The noise was deafening as usual, the air was dense and smelly with pollution as usual, and it was dark. We were trying to grab a taxi home. Empty taxis drove by us, with their lights clearly on. One taxi finally stopped and a Chinese man leapfrogged us out of nowhere, and jumped in the back. Taxi after taxi blew by us, and we had no idea why. Pete and I began to argue. One taxi even slowed down, and as we began to open the door, he sped off. Then just to make it official that this was a bad night, there was suddenly a dull thud to the right of me. I glanced down at the road beside me, and there was a large, twitching rat. I spun around, to see a man standing in front of a restaurant, wiping his hands in satisfaction. Why, I wanted to scream at him, why would you do that?

It was a Friday night, and as a treat to ourselves, we had decided not to cook. We would go to McDonalds and get a fix of western food. The McDonalds is not too far away from our home--maybe a 20-minute bus ride. It took over an hour, and (as usual), we were jammed into a heaving, reeking bus like sardines, to listen to people horking, spitting and shrieking into their cell phones. The cheeseburger was good, but not worth all of this. By the time we got home, our quickie-McDonalds meal had taken 3.5 hours. At this point, I knew we were both firmly planted in the second stage of culture shock: rejection.

The term "culture shock" was coined in 1958 to describe the feelings of anxiety that occur when someone moves to a new environment. There are distinct stages of culture shock: the initial honeymoon phase, where you are positively stimulated by everything new in the foreign culture. Then the rejection stage begins to rear its head. After encountering difficulties, you may begin to complain and feel aggressive about your new home. This second stage is the crisis point. You either deal with it and move along in the cycle, or because of the mental and physical stress you become weaker, and you go home. The second stage can morph into a third stage that some people skip. This is regression and isolation. You become anti-social, and do only things that are familiar. You idealize your home country, and draw many comparisons. You only speak your language, and hole up to watch movies or talk on the phone in your free time. If you manage to recognize this and get yourself through, you enter to fourth stage of recovery and acceptance. By this point, you have developed enough tools to get around and communicate. You have some answers to the frustrating "whys" of before. You have hobbies, friends and most importantly, you are more at ease.

I have been forced to think about culture shock a lot lately, and I have come to some of my own conclusions, based only on my own experiences. First, culture shock is a term that is thrown around very easily. When I try to explain to people at home what I am going through, they seem to think culture shock is just the surface differences--like going to McDonalds? and finding they have bean and lychee pies instead of apple and cherry. It is much deeper and more insidious than this. To me, culture shock is about your reaction, and how mentally it can take its toll. There is a loneliness, and a constant second-guessing of your own abilities. Physically, the stress of always being in super-aware high gear, can weigh you down. It has been shown that people have sleep problems, aches and pains and often depression. Because people look at it as just a little quirk of living abroad, it contributes to your alienation and loneliness. You have to accept that you cannot talk to the people you previously relied on, because they just don't get it.

My second, and more disheartening conclusion is that it will always happen. You may get somewhat better with coping with it, and you may be more self-aware as to where you are in the cycle, but you will always be in that cycle. This is my third time abroad. I lived in Rwanda and then Papua New Guinea before coming to China. I experienced the highs and lows of culture shock in both places, and when I moved back to Canada, I knew I took with me a wealth of new found patience, a better understanding of who I was, and a vault of memories into how the other half lives. There were times that I hated where I was and I wanted to go home. But now, when I remember my times there, I notice that the negative has minimized, and they have become overwhelmingly positive memories for me.

I thought coming to China would be easier. I thought that because I had done this before, I could skip through all the stages, and get to the happier acceptance phase. But it is all so different, and I will never make the mistake of thinking there would be similarities again. In Rwanda, the challenge was basic daily living--food, electricity, water. In Papua New Guinea, it was overall cultural confusion, and coming to grips with being in a rural, tribal and male-dominated society. In China, it's communication. You can't talk to anyone, and they can't help you. You can have a handful of maps, guidebooks and dictionaries and it doesn't matter. You can't talk to anyone.

I know I am more aware of what's happening, and I am thankful for the patience I have developed. Watching Pete go through this is painful. It is his first time living abroad, and he is experiencing the rejection phase much more strongly than me. I can't do very much for him except listen to him, and extend my hand to help pull him into the next stage. It will get easier I say, look at the positives, think of how strong you will be after this. We talk about options. But packing up and going home is not one, because I know what it means --the most difficult thing I have ever done, what I would not wish upon an enemy. The descent from the fourth stage into the final fifth one: Re-entry. It sounds like an something an astronaut does, but you soon realize it is an accurate description. I believed moving back to Toronto after Papua New Guinea would be a breeze, after all, I was returning to familiarity. It wound up being the most mentally exhausting experience to date. Canada was still the same, and most of my friends and family were still there, with only a few minor changes. What I had not anticipated was that I had had major shift in personality, values and priorities. Most disorienting were the eyes that I now saw the familiar with had completely and fundamentally changed--for the better.