Culture Shock: China
on Mel and Steve in Nepal (Nepal), 15/Apr/2010 15:45, 34 days ago
Hello and welcome to another blog,Since we last blogged, we have left Nepal and started our journey home, through China. In fact, right now Steve and Mel are on different continents, Steve is on a train in Siberia and Mel in the somewhat warmer US city of Los Angeles. We'll blog more about our separate travels later. This blog records our adventures through China, and especially some of our responses to Chinese culture in the context of our arrival from Nepal. It should be said that a 3 week journey in China did not, of course, give us the same understanding of the culture as we were able to get from 2 years of living in Nepal. Also, like in Nepal, there are many cultures in China too, so a lot of our feelings and observations are generalisations.First, a quick summary of where we travelled. We started in Kunming in Yunnan province in the far south of China. Coming from hectic Kathmandu and having the idea that Chinese cities are all overcrowded, the city of Kunming was a lot less busy and a lot more quiet than we had expected:From Kunming we headed to Zhongdian, in the North West of Yunnan province, to get a flavour of Tibetan culture. Zhongdian has been cleverly renamed Shangri-La by the Chinese government to draw tourists to the area - well it worked on us! It is an 'autonomous prefecture' of Yunnan province and was part of Tibet in the past. The culture and language of the local people is Tibetan, not to mention the yaks:From Zhongdian we took a bus to Lijiang, where we stayed in the 'ancient town' (rebuilt after an earthquake):After returning to Kunming, we took a train to Xian:... and from Xian to the ancient walled town of Ping Yao:Finally to Beijing where we parted company:During our travels, one area of culture shock was that we were suddenly unable to speak to people in their language. Our frustration and embarrassment at not being able to communicate with most people made us realise just how much we had come to rely on speaking Nepali.Luckily though, due to an increasing number of international tourists in China, in some places signs are translated into English. Because of the difference between the structure and uses of Chinese and English words and grammar, some signs don't quite get the message across in the way it's intended. Steve, however, liked to take the instructions on the signs literally, as you can see below:Another area of culture shock was that we were surprised to find that, despite being neighbours, the culture of China and Nepal are different in many ways. Of course the Himalayas provide a pretty big barrier between the two neighbours but we still found it strange to find so many 'opposites'.Before pointing out the differences, it's also worth saying that we noticed some similarities. The most obvious of these relate to religion. Religious ideas, rituals and icons did manage to cross the Himalayas. Many of the mostly Buddhist temples we visited were very similar to those in Nepal and many Hindu symbols and icons are mixed in with the Buddhist. While there were temples everywhere we went however, we didn't get the impression that religion and ritual played such a major part in daily life and influencing behaviour, in the way it did in Nepal. This is partly due to the values brought in by the Communist government in China after the revolution in 1949, and especially during the 'Cultural Revolution' of the 1960s and '70s.It was a real pleasure in China to meet so many assertive and independent women. On our train to Xian, we got chatting to the women below (some of them spoke English). All of them were travelling alone on an overnight train. They spoke confidently among themselves but also when interacting with the men on the train. Those who had children talked openly about issues such as their experiences of pregnancy and childbirth. It was surprising to us that they would share this information in such a relaxed way with strangers because these issues are taboo in the far west of Nepal and even our closest friends did not discuss these matters with us there.In the majority Han population in China, the assertiveness of women is a relatively new thing, influenced partly by the 'One Child Policy' which means that many families do not have boy children. That same policy though, has caused a reduction in the female population in China due to selective abortions so it's a very mixed picture for women.In the places that we travelled, we found that a number of Chinese ethnic minority groups have in the past, organised their society and families on matrilineal lines. That means that all the property was owned by and passed on to women and that children were raised in the mother's family home. The photo below is of Naxi women - a group that has a history of matrilineal organisation. There is still one ethnic group in China that is organised matrilineally.You may remember from our blog on gender in Nepal, that women in our area were not usually engaged in leisure activities like playing games. We enjoyed seeing women at leisure in China, like these playing Mah Jong:In both China and Nepal, a lot of respect is given to older and elderly people. However, in Nepal, like in the U.K. when people get old, they are not expected to, or provided with, many opportunities to take an active part in life and are usually confined to their homes. In China, we noticed that older people are generally very much more active and they seem to be the people who are having the most fun, too. China's beautiful parks and public spaces are packed with older people having picnics, taking their grandchildren for a walk, playing cards, Mah Jong or Chinese Chess, or doing gentle exercise like these people practising Tai Chi:In many places, the local government provides free outdoor equipment for gentle exercise and physiotherapy (see photo album for photo), and most of the tourist attractions are free or heavily reduced in price for the elderly.Other cultural differences meant that we had a chance to do some things for the first time after two years, like...... boarding a bus that wasn't falliing apart ...... feeling a little more confident that our health and safety wasn't being left up to the gods...Sharing a plate of food. (In Nepal, 'jutho' rules mean that food must be kept strictly separate, although there are exceptions for close family in the home) ...... walking down clean streets where people take some pride in doing their jobs well, whatever they are ...... buying completely unneccessary, low quality tat. In Nepal, most shops sold necessities or high quality goods. In China, we are embarrassed to admit, we did allow ourselves to be seduced a few times by the consumerist monster that has taken up residence in recent decades ...... and showing affection in public:We'll try to keep you updated with more blogs before we return.