My Return From China: Noticeable Differences At First Sight. (Part One)

I remember when I took my first step on Belgian soil after coming back from paradise, a scream was roaring inside me for escape out of here to go back where I truly belong. It took me more than half a year to accept the fact I wasn't in China, but in insignificant Belgium where no foreigner could point to its location on a map.

A lot of things had improved whilst I was in Beijing: my wushu, my Chinese and ironically enough my English (due to the fact I was living with foreigners on the same floor and most of which were beginners in Chinese and so we were forced to use English for communication. That I have a native English speaker as a boyfriend may also be a contributing factor.)

But to my disappointment, nothing had changed in Belgium whilst I was gone. Everything seemed to be time-frozen, everything seemed to be stuck in a time-bubble. The big change so far was the new colour on of one of the houses, that was all.. 
While in Beijing, nothing remained the same, especially due to the ethnic changes just before the Olympics to impress western tourists. From megaconstructions eg building the Bird's nest , to minor adjustments like new paint on apartment walls. The city seemed to spin endlessly.

Horrifying sights and disturbing sounds welcomed me on Belgian streets. Young people blindly wearing the latest fashion to spice up their image with their accessories . Old people wearing fewer clothes in order to achieve a younger and wilder look. Groups of fresh blood trying to make a point with their lifestyle, which was occasionally based on music, that went along with arrogance written on their faces and an intimidating attitude to keep out invasive outsiders. Children driving their parents up the wall for the latest overpriced toys and artificial fluorescent coloured candies. Others wandering with neglected looks and a breath pervasively smelling like cigarettes and alcohol were often framed as “marginal” people.  
The streets were filled with the latests music of someone's I-Phone, the chatter of adults, the giggling and tittering among girls, the whimpering of a child and the clamour of a drunken crowd.

Around five o'clock, the streets were gradually abandoned , stores were closing, people were drawing back to their comfy houses, the traffic cooled down at last. Silence seemed to dominate the forsaken streets and I stood there in the dark outside with a sudden headache emerging. I could hardly believe my eyes how our society was filled with superficiality that mainly consisted of materialistic desires. 

Me-culture 

In westernised areas, billboards are crowding the high streets. These commercials promote the latest fashion, the latest perfume, the latest electronic accessories,... Even though they are displaying a various range of products, they do have one thing in common: the way they are sold.
Most companies use their image or emphasise the consumer's individuality to stimulate people to purchase it.

(L'Oreal with its famous slogan: "Because you're worth it".  A good example that the consumer's individuality or worth is emphasised.)

In the west, we have a strong belief that each person is unique and that we have this need to bring our unique personality out more as people tend to value first impressions. The outcome of this persuasion: image might determine your social life, hence the exceeding attention to redundant items like clothes, make up, perfume, shoes, accessories, handbags, cigarettes, alcohol, laptops, cell phones, cars, tickets to a concert,.. 

One might discuss that we might need clothes to keep us warm, cell phones for communication and cars for transport. Yes, indeed but do we need this such a range of selection? In some situations, popularity of the products seemed to outweigh its quality (think of people using windows, instead of linux or mac)
From a business point of view, this is a quite tactical way of companies to get the economy going and in some way “manipulate” it.

To sum up, we are subconsciously brainwashed to buy more and to do more due to peer pressure. 

After reading, can you honestly say you weren't easily influenced, that you hadn't been blind to this at all?

My first entry

“For years, China has enthralled me mainly due to a desire to understand my own Chinese roots. Growing up with a foreign culture in a western society has not been easy for me, not only did it confuse and confront me with cultural obstacles, it made me a complete stranger to my own culture as well. I strongly believe that culture shapes one's identity, …., as it [studying Chinese] will colour my personality richly....”

-  A passage from my own personal statement

   
Two years ago I traveled to China to train wushu, as known as Chinese Martial Arts ( for the wushu experts among us: I trained competitive wushu). 

My stay of less than ten months was delightful and enlightened, the more I stayed, the more I understand.
My heart was broken when I found out I was forced to break off my journey for a while, I wished I could have stayed longer and learn more about the culture, the language, wushu and the people.
Nonetheless, my love for China didn't disappear while I was back in Belgium, instead it grew stronger, that it changed slowly into a true obsession. 


I remember my return from China of one year ago, it had been nothing but a combination of frustration and misery simply caused by homesickness. Not only had the western surreality (and the obvious culture shock soon followed) seemed to appall me, but the ignorance and lack of knowledge towards China as a nation as well. 


With this blog, I will try my best to inform people about China from my point of view and proof my point with steady evidence, I hope I can clear the prejudices hold against China. I would like to share my ideas and experiences with the rest of the world and feel free to comment whenever you want. Also, this blog give me plenty of excuse to continue to study the Chinese culture.

Also my apologies if my blog isn't perfectly written in good English as English isnt my native tongue and as I'm also truly struggling with writing itself (so imagine to do difficult things in another language!).



China, the country of differences.

It should be known that China is hard to define as one nation. We define Chinese people as one kind of people with one general culture, while China is actually home to more than 50 ethnic groups with the Han-Chinese forming the majority. And even then there are a lot of differences among the Han-Chinese, depending which province you come from.

From a historic point of view, China was never one kingdom from the beginning of the time, there were tribes fighting for the throne, historic books even about China when it was divined,...(like the three kingdoms)

In the west, we depict China as conservative and patriotic country, so patriotic that we think it's unhealthy and it looks more like brainwashing.
Let me explain, this patriotism is actually a recent phenomena. It's certainly not a method that the Chinese government had introduced to mislead the people.(except the last years under Mao's reign, I'll explain more in the future) Ok they do take advantage of it sometimes, but the reason why I think Chinese people take it as it is, it's because Chinese people are by nature clan-people. 
They value taking care of their families or their clan.s This love for a family has only enhanced into a “bigger” love for the country due to the historic events. 
China had been suppressed , violated and humiliated for centuries by foreign nations eg GB and the Opium war. When Japan occupied China, the two rivals parties (the communists and the capitalists) even shook hands to fight off the Japanese people to save their country. Patriotism only existed in wartimes and definitely by foreign occupation. 
The present sense of patriotism is only strong because it had found its roots in Chinese people's nature.

In the west, (more in Europe perhaps), people don't have this proud or this strong love for a country. Maybe it's an unknown thing for us, maybe it's not in our nature or in a culture where everything is a bit darker and bit sarcastic and hold other values.

From my experience with Chinese people, they have different values and even emotions than us. For instance their relationships towards the opposite sex , it is different and in someway much more innocent and childlike. It's not uncommon that Chinese people married with their first boyfriend or their girlfriend, while in the west,well... no need to explain...
In the west it take years and experiences in relationships to find the right person, there they take you as who you are. 

They easily make friends as well and to them friendship is a serious matter.  
For example, we rarely call someone a friend, we call them an acquaintance. Even if they say “we'll see you tomorrow”, they uhm...won't see you tomorrow, if you ask them to do stuff, they...let you wait for months... Anyway it's hard to find a true friend in the west. My experiences with Chinese people, is that they were willing to do more for you. They even buy gifts for you, buy you dinner, make sure you're healthy, accompany you to the hospital,...
There's even a saying in Chinese: “在家靠父母，出门靠朋友”(zai jia kao fumo, chumen kao pengyou) : At home you can rely on your parents, outside you can rely on friends.

That's all, I'll update my blog weekly. Thanks for reading. 

Peace out!

P.S. I hope it was good,because I feel a bit self-conscious about writing...I don't know why I'm publishing this...sigh...I guess I love to tell stories about China too much that I need to get it off my chest.