“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.
- 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.
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