Raoul's China Saloon (V5.0) Beta

The Bar Room => The Bar (ON-TOPIC) => Topic started by: Calach Pfeffer on August 30, 2021, 05:28:36 PM

Title: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on August 30, 2021, 05:28:36 PM
Serious culture question, probably a lifer or lifestyle question:

If you're not going to take serious part in the culture, should you even go?

See, I know something now about the culture and my reaction to it. I know for example that I will always avoid dinners and drinking and relaxing together. I know there are good projects I can do there in China - and they more or less have to be in China because they're classroom teaching projects and where else do you find Chinese classrooms? - but I also know I would have to do them alone just because I wouldn't find ways to let the locals open doors for me.

See, it's like this. I look at Chinese behaviour and I see resource restriction. Power and authority in China more or less mean you don't have to share your resources with other people. Other people have to come to you and find ways to let you help them. Dinners. Drinks. Relaxing. Making friends. This is a social power, and it tells me nothing at all about their intellectual or academic power, and yet it is the gate that corrals all significant collaboration. You don't get cooperation without friendship and you don't get friendship without subordinating yourself to authority.

Now, fine, whatever. Egalitarian societies can't privilege any one person's opinion or power so they make impersonal law; hierarchical society can't undermine social standing so they leave much scope for personal fiat. Whatever.

Thing is, they know that about me now. The people I used to live and work with, they all know I more or less opt out of their social system and I think they probably resent me for it. From their perspective I am hording my resources against them. I'm not sharing the way I should.


Which is a long way of saying, if you're not going to attempt to play by local rules, should you even go at all?
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on August 30, 2021, 05:51:54 PM
Jumping ahead a little, straight up saying "No, you shouldn't" kinda rules out any long-term travel even to other English speaking countries. Like, how American does an Australian really want to become? They could fake it a lot longer than an Australian could fake a Chinese cultural personality, but even so...

So the pragmatic answer is it depends on how much individual cultural antagonism the foreign destination (China) can tolerate? You can be a permanent expat for as long as "expat" is a tolerable category in that country and after that you'll have a very short grace period for putting on a show of compliance but you're probably out anyway?


I might be answering my own questions here. None of the "expat" roles really seem sustainable anymore.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Escaped Lunatic on August 30, 2021, 05:54:12 PM
In an new environment, the "When in Rome" principle does make working with others easier, but that doesn't have to mean engaging on all levels of local customs.

So, I think you need to find a balance between how far you are willing to assimilate and how much inconvenience lesser levels of assimilation will cause you.  If you can find this balance, then you can get along in China (or America or wherever you may be),  If you can't find an acceptable balance, you will probably be far less happy than you would be in a place where you can find it.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on August 30, 2021, 06:34:37 PM
Likely true.

Any thoughts on what levels of assimilation are relevant for Chinese culture? Milestones, I guess, that Chinese themselves would recognise, and what characterizes them.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on August 30, 2021, 09:44:15 PM
The other aspect too is if you're trying to do deals. On the one hand, attending to the nuances of Chinese culture should take a lot of the bumps out of the negotiation process. On the other hand, aren't you supposed to be bringing something of your own to the table? And if you are, why walk too far away from the terms you know and prefer for deal making? And on the third hand, if neither side is attending much to what "middle" means for the other side, how do you meet in the middle?

There's a ton of cultural nuance that I truly doubt anyone really knows how to attend to. For one thing, to even know that cultural nuance exists beyond large scale formal things that people can point at and caricature, you have to see your own culture - that deep aspect of you that tells you how to manage yourself and your interactions - as not fundamentally motivating for all people.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Escaped Lunatic on August 31, 2021, 05:40:19 PM
Chinese people and jobs aren't a uniform thing, just like jobs in any country.  Even within the same organization, different departments can have wildly different cultures.  Check out what the typical US Physics professor wears vs the typical Geology professor if you want to see an example. What might be seen as a foreign employee doing a good job fitting into one place might be viewed as excessive or not enough somewhere else.

Also consider - how would a Chinese FT in your country address the same questions?  That person will also encounter cultural oddities and unexpected terms and conditions for dealing both with job responsibilities and just fitting in.  In either direction, some people can find a way to fit in and some people find the situation isn't worth it.  The exact same thing happens when looking for a new job in your home country.  Sometimes, you and the culture of the employer will fit well.  If not, sometimes the fit is so bad that the choice is to suffer great unhappiness or else leave.

Hopefully, the place you work for values you for more than your pretty face and more or less standard spoken English, but the same could be said about teaching jobs in Australia or the US.  Some really do want diverse opinions and some want absolute conformity.  Happily, most places that go to the effort to hire foreigners realize that absolute conformity isn't a likely prospect.

I think the key is to have a general level of respect for the local culture.  You don't have to jump in a dragon boat the way I do, but if your colleagues are out there paddling with all their might on race day, showing up is the polite thing do do even if you aren't a dragon boat fanatic the way I am.  When I hear 5 or 6 houses near me setting off fireworks at 4 am, I'm not happy to be awakened, but I also know it's some sort of local holiday thing, so I don't run around demanding they stop.  If people did that in a subdivision in the US, a very common reaction would be to call the local police and make a noise complaint.  In China, I just mutter something about "Happy fireworks day" and go back to sleep.

An important thing to remember is that some local customs (even those confined to a corporation or educational institution) will look silly to you, but if we brought foreigners into communities and jobs in your hometown, some local customs would look just as silly to them.  One thing I absolutely love about being here is when someone asks "Why" I (or Americans or Westerners) do something.  Things that "are this way because things have always been this way" back on the homeworld often turn out to either be silly or unimportant when examined carefully.

Be open minded, be respectful, and try to approach things with a sense of humor is my best advice, whether you are doing something as big as getting a job in a different country or as small as moving to a new department at a job in your hometown.  If it turns out to be intolerable, then leave as soon as possible.  If it's just bad, keep an eye out for new opportunities.  If it's good, stay and enjoy the ride.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on August 31, 2021, 10:45:36 PM
Major difficulty with communication in and about China is the extent to which we all use the same words and mean different things. There's a macro trend extant that kinda overshadows local variation, and, I think, accounts for a tremendous amount of miscommunication. You hear a word in English that makes sense in your own culture - "teacher", say - and you think you've got an understanding of what the other person just said and you know how to talk about the issues associated with teaching. But that's the obvious level. We all know cultural roles vary so we can kind of expect "teacher" to be different in different cultures. But what about "science" or "friendship" or "timetable" or a thousand other things that are treated differently because they exist in a different conceptual organization of the world?

I think it's a grave mistake to assume that in the end we will all understand each other. Values, or the things that people hold dear, mean that it's entirely possible to know, understand, and not accept. But a condition like that will not have arrived through some benign inspection of the world and the people around you. That lack of acceptance will be formally exist prior to the understanding, meaning the understanding will have arrive through some significant, lengthy, and unpleasant miscommunication. And this will be especially likely if the base level cultures are different enough that genuine culture shock is possible.

How for instance do you continue to respect a person who continues to make choices you find not respectable? You can, but it requires you to acknowledge that this person is alien.


Anyway, mutuality seems like a hard relationship aspect to find. You either become the alien or have to always be reminding yourself that the alien has respectable choices that you wouldn't otherwise respect.


Jeez. Such a position probably means don't travel.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on September 01, 2021, 01:12:24 PM
When in Rome, act like a Roman.
And when acting like a Roman, try not to feel like an Egyptian.
Because when you feel like an Egyptian while acting like a Roman, you betray both Rome and Egypt.


That's to say, act like a Roman is for tourists, people who need no genuine relationship with Rome.


#fact
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Escaped Lunatic on September 02, 2021, 05:27:31 PM
Tourists are typically forgiven for ignoring Roman customs.  After all, they can't be expected to know much about local culture and customs.  People who want to get involved in society are expected to at least follow some local norms.  I seem to recall a woman who decided to go a little too far being Egyptian (even though Egypt was under Rome at the time).  Her final embrace involved an asp.

If you have zero interest in at least trying to fit in with those who may have different customs and a different culture, your best choice is to remain in your hometown forever and to find one job you can tolerate and never try another.  For everyone else, it's a matter of how different things are in the new department, new job, new city, new region, or new country vs their ability to adapt.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on September 03, 2021, 12:04:01 AM
When in Rome, tell them you're honoured they think one day you could be Roman too. Ask them to pay double though because you're not Roman and the transition will be difficult. They'll certainly agree. After all, they hired you because you weren't Roman.




I think, these days, especially these days of the wolf warrior, maybe a more combative relationship with the locals is warranted. It'll definitely produce a lot more lose-lose negotiations, but maybe also a lot fewer win-lose negotiations.

I think it really is time for Chinese culture to be recognised as Chinese - which is a courtesy you cannot really perform if you're going to ape their culture in hopes of fooling them into better deals. We should probably remember that Chinese culture is significantly more competitive than anyone seems willing to announce, and they'll certainly let you be the ape for a lot longer than is really healthy for mutual respect.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on September 03, 2021, 03:28:53 PM
When in Rome, be the wolf warrior.



It's only imperialism if you actually kill people.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Escaped Lunatic on September 03, 2021, 05:34:22 PM
Let's put this in evolutionary terms.  A species is suddenly thrust into a new environment (ice age, low lying area flooded, whatever).  There are only 4 possible outcomes:

Adapt.
Migrate.
Mutate.
Die.

Adapt or Migrate elsewhere are generally considered the easiest choices.

If you can adapt to the new environment, great.  If no, migration to a different environment is probably your best choice.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on September 03, 2021, 11:57:01 PM
I think spectating a culture is permissable. It's probably even necessary for anyone who intends genuinely to take part. I think we can probably judge cultures too in terms of how much spectating time they allow. Ironically, cultures that somehow allow just the right amount of spectating are probably the most compatible. Too much or too little and you're pushing people around.

But...

There are cultural aspects that are peculiar to China relative to "W3s+3m" that make the "When in Rome" equation something special. The nature and practice of authority is one. I suspect the moral imperative to hierarchy - perhaps understandable as the absence of impersonal institutions such as rule of law and thus the necessity of formalisable but formally personal institutions such as "here is how you listen to an elder" - is a lot deeper than credited. China isn't just authoritarian politically, it organizes itself right down to the grassroots around the concept of authority. And so on.

Foreigners don't often get caught one-on-one in the trap of denying authority. The Chinese around them are sensitive to signals that you're not going to cooperate. So they don't offer you the opportunity to be anyone important to them, and you don't get the chance to offend them much beyond the mere existence of yourself as an unconnected person in their midst.

But give them time, live and work around them long enough, and they're going to eventually expect real relationships, or perhaps begin punishing the absence of real relationship.

That I think is where I'm at. It's an honour of sorts. People cared enough to be pissed off. But I wonder if they cared enough to know what they expected in any terms other than the default. That's probably less of an honor. Or more. I don't know.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on September 04, 2021, 11:18:41 PM
I wonder if it'll turn out Chinese believe in universal human obligations.

Not rights. That's for individuals. But obligations, that's what you have toward the locus of identity. (I was going to say "to the collective", but that's not right.)

Probably if we want to understand the impact or meaning of these universal human obligations, we should look to Chinese reaction against universal human rights.



Disclaimer: individuals can do anything, be anything, it's culture that's polarized, not people, because without a pole there is no direction to face aka assertion of value, so it's not exactly the same as racism when you say Chinese/Western CULTURE has some extreme elements.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Escaped Lunatic on September 06, 2021, 08:09:35 PM
In general, western cultures focus more on protecting the rights of the individual and Asian cultures focus more on obligations to family/society.  All cultures come to a balance of the two, but cultures that go to far towards either extreme eventually find the point where things get unstable.

Anti-vaxxers/Anti-maskers in many countries fall back on "my rights" to justify themselves without any thought of any possible obligation to society.  People like this are using their rights to place others at unnecessary risk.

Rights come with obligations.  In nearly all countries, you don't get the right to drive unless you pass a test about the rules for basic obligations for sharing the road with others.

Sometimes, the way countries react to so-called "universal" rights does not match the stereotypes.  The US voted against food being a human right.  China voted for it.


You aren't under any obligation to take a job in China.  If you feel you can't adapt to a new job in China, stay in Australia or pick a country more to your liking.  If you can adapt, balance the decision based on comparisons of jobs and work culture in China vs Australia (or other locations you may be considering) instead of worrying about abstract West vs East ideals.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on September 06, 2021, 10:32:10 PM
Obligations are as insidious as rights, bruh, and just as alienating. Like for instance, "adapt". Adapt on your own terms or someone else's?

Or... "expert". An expert in my own terms or someone else's? If someone else knows better than me what my expertise means for them, then any hiring is in their terms. But what if I know something they don't? Or more importantly, won't.


The former employer had started signalling the importance of academic output. Like, somehow foreign staff would produce research papers. That's creative work. That kind of expertise, most espeically when the employer is not currently possessed of that expertise and hires you to get it, needs to be heavily circumscribed by any number of stipulations if you want it to not run outside the bounds of whatever you can tolerate culturally. Staff presumably adjusts to that by not actually focusing too much on creation. Actually, culturally speaking, that is what I saw at the former establishment, all these "academics" who looked a whole lot more like middle class family tenders. The first priority in creation was children, making them. Second was wealth, making that. The third... I don't think it was knowledge. I think "knowledge" probably came in after comfort or security and a workable timetable.

Something weird going on there.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on September 07, 2021, 03:26:23 PM
That's it, I guess: how much lip service do you pay to the culture when in theory what you were hired for doesn't.... have a role in the culture?  Damn. I suppose it's not really possible to be hired for anything like that unless the hirer is looking for you to be a change agent. Which is not what any Chinese hirer is actually looking for even though there is (or used to be) a lot of superficial rhetoric to that effect.

I suppose my question is not really about assimilation. It's more really just a statement, again, of disappointment. They said they wanted change. They said they wanted a breath of fresh air to enliven or enlighten their educational approaches. They said I was there to introduce new ideas. Then right at the end they said I was supposed to have made friends with leaders. Bait: switch. Rug: pull.


When in Rome, make sure you interpret Roman pronouncements correctly.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Escaped Lunatic on September 07, 2021, 06:09:20 PM
Bait and switch, quick pull rugs, etc. are common in nearly all employment situations.  Sometimes it's a failure in pre-hire communication and sometimes it's a deliberate thing.

I personally got terribly screwed over (robbed of significant amounts of cash, lost all paid sick and holiday time) in my first job in China.  This wasn't a Chinese cultural issue.  This was 2 former Saloon members (one Australian and one Canadian) who hired and managed FTs for a Chinese company.  Their planned luxurious life of teaching a few hours per week while directing others to do most of the labor didn't work out.  Instead of trying to cut expenses in other ways, they hired 2 more FTs and shortly thereafter unilaterally changed the contracts of all their FTs.  Since I was already past the halfway point, really enjoyed being in China (except for working for a pair of cheating scum), and didn't have another job readily available, I put up with it.  The next two FTs they hired after I left both did a runner very quickly after being subjected to even more abuse (like being forced to work 7 days per week).

My advice - read the contract carefully.  Make sure the contract you sign is exactly the same as the one that came with the offer.  If a job starts demanding more that what the contract requires, it still comes down to adapt or migrate.  Having some sort of backup plan can make that migration as simple as jumping to another company nearby.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on September 07, 2021, 08:31:43 PM
Arguably, it's a generational thing. The previous generation of work environments were marked by all sorts of Wild East phenomena and we were all, except for tru noobs who could perhaps be helped by an Internet Saloon of Experienced and Hardened Shady Characters Wielding Questionable Beverages, kind of able to see and characterise those phenomena - weird contracts, astonishing conditions, visa oddities, super dangerous managers, and running in the night. Back then it was "Do I hono(u)r this contract or wat?" These days it's not yet decided what the real question should be. Is it "Just how Chinese do I have to be?" or is it "Now that China is Ascendant, do I need to be a western apologist? Can I be foreign in Rome without being pressed into the legions?"

Does the fact we don't know the modern age's Coming to China question mean there isn't one anymore? I mean, is there still a Coming to China question? Does anyone still go, really?



I watched C-beams glitter in the dark
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: kitano on September 08, 2021, 04:08:12 PM
I think that what 'we' and 'the Chinese' often miss in this conversation is that whole 'you can't go back into the same river' thing

Chinese culture, like every national culture, is by definition conservative and weird, and completely unrealistic. I first went to China in 2009 and it was completely different thing to what it is now, officially and in reality. It's changed just as much as the USA or Oz or Europe. I don't know about Oz, but the UK in 2009 was the end of New Labour regime and the US was all excited or furious about Obama. Those are foreign countries to time travellers from there and it's the same in China, it would be as weird to go from Hu Jintao China to XiJingPing China as it would to go from Obama America to Biden America, and it's not even a huge amount of time.

There is an element of 'la plus c'e change', but there is also the fact that we are travelling forward in time involuntarily. I lived in China for 7 years and love the place. Got married, saw some horrific stuff, saw some beautiful stuff, became 'Sinicized' without adapting at all, I am still pretty rubbish at speaking Chinese to be honest, but I do have a handle on the way of life and the thinking. But then to a Chinese person I am totally clueless, not because they all love this idea of China, there is just no way I could get my head around what they hate about China. I hate it for such different reasons as them
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on September 08, 2021, 05:34:06 PM
I think that what 'we' and 'the Chinese' often miss in this conversation is that whole 'you can't go back into the same river' thing

Not to be that guy, but  yyyyyyyyyy...

The idea that history has a direction is not a Chinese idea. The world and all the stuff of the world is in a state of constant change, but cyclical change, motion between poles. Time as such is a circle. Up until barbarian science started making the material conditions of China look stupid, in principle, if you were metaphysical enough, there would come a "time" when you could step back into the same river.

I guess that's the real meaning of "5000 years". It's not a long time, it's a thoroughly complex and vastly sophisticated eternal now.

And just to be prosaic, it's probably why "development" finished biding it's Deng Xiaoping time and became "Rejuvenation".


Which is to say, a properly educated Chinese might want to say the modern concept of change, that you can't go back to yesterday, is entirely too short sighted. An enlightened ruler, for instance, might for a while tolerate the young people's notion that everything's different now, grandad, but he'd know that what's really going on is......

 bebebebebe



I wonder if modern China has a notion of entropy.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: kitano on September 10, 2021, 08:23:47 AM
Hey man, don't apologise for intellectualising. I live for that haha.

But philosophy is one thing and politics is another. This for me is the biggest problem with Chinese politics as I see it, and politics in general. Of course people are happy to say 'twas ever thus' when they are at the top, but it is important. I think China is even worse than anyone for that, like they will invoke ancient China, and what they are evoking is awful.
They are not so into banning mobile phones or promoting footbinding, or the government being so rubbish that the British bullied them
In metphyascs China is unique, but it's still a bunch of people who eat and poo. Not long ago China was a poor country with a mad old man in charge, then it was a hyper capitslist country. Now it has a mad guy in charge again, lets put bets on how that works out lol
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on September 10, 2021, 03:50:46 PM
The primary pain point, I'm beginning to believe, in Chinese and "western" cultural communication is expertise vs authority. China will always put authority ahead of expertise. Like, if you have a situation where an expert has one opinion and a leader has another, leader wins. But what makes it a pain point is how authority is constituted. Because for instance if some idealist claims that, well, expertise is a kind of authority, then note, no, it's not. Authority is a moral construct and expertise doesn't give you any authority unless expertise has some moral standing already (which, as it turns out in China, typically it doesn't.) I mean, no one even wants expertise per se. Achievement in China is the product of dull, repetitive "hard working". Expertise is actually a kind of immorality, a personal claim of specialness, which by itself is just plain gauche.

The question though is how is authority constituted. It definitely is a social construct. It might I suspect be how well you believe yourself to be the people. Not "the people" in the modern socialist sense, but how much you identify yourself with the relationships you have, and what you've done to cultivate those relationships. The more you take charge of enhancing those relationships, the more authority you have.

Or something like that.


The point being though that reflection, the accumulation of knowledge, various attempts to determine how things work, even coming to know how to address given difficulties... all trumped by authority.

The key difference between this circumstance and, say, a dumb boss in a western country, is the dumb boss can identified as mistaken. In that particular contest between authority and expertise, the Hollywood outcome is expertise wins. The Beijing outcome is................... 

:wtf:


Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on September 11, 2021, 03:21:46 PM
What i think this means for assimilation is you always start at the bottom. Walk into any room anywhere in China and every person there is already better than you at the Path of Authority. They already know how, where, and when. They can keep you in whatever place they wish, and you won't even know it, except for the lingering sense of alienation that follows you like a cloud. And this will be especially acute if you keep on wanting to walk the Path of the Expert, which more or less amounts to refusing to assimilate.

Are there even "foreign experts" anymore? There's been some kind of expertise inflation over the last 10-15 years hasn't there? English isn't an expertise anymore. It's C-tier.


Anyway.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on September 23, 2021, 01:58:38 PM
Thing about When in Rome that I can't quite let go of is it's a minor idiom, barely more than a quote. In context it was about changing the time of doing a thing you normally do because in a different place, they did that same thing at a different time.

But ru xiang sui su, that is something far more substantial. It's a major cultural injunction that isn't that hard for Chinese exactly because it is a major cultural injunction. They live and breathe that kind of complex identity.

The thing about how When in Rome is used in China is it more or less means learn how to be a person. That straight line between what you think, what you say, and what you do, that's very adorable, it's so cute and lovely, but after a while, it's enough. If you keep on being direct and admitting no complexity in your relationships, well, basically you're insulting us. Learn how to be a person, why don't you?


That's a whole lot heavier as a condition
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on October 09, 2021, 02:20:40 PM
And another thing...

"Confucian moral virtues are geared towards the cultivation of an ‘ideal’ benevolent seniority and complying inferiority, so that both of them can act appropriately according to their right positions in the hierarchical society."



When in Rome, please suppose the natives to be too dull to see a world different from their own
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on March 03, 2022, 01:35:56 PM
Finally realised the essential comedy of "When in Rome..."

It's a universal value.

Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Escaped Lunatic on March 03, 2022, 08:06:06 PM
In any social situation. be it completely new or an existing one you prefer to avoid (country, town, job, local bowling league, visiting the in-laws) that has its own set way of doing things, short of personally starting a revolution to enlighten everyone into believing and acting only as you want them to, your choices are Adapt, Migrate, Mutate, or Die.  Most people don't kill themselves because they don't like the local behavior patters, so this leaves Adapt, Migrate, or Mutate.

Adapting is the most straightforward.  Minimize the amounts of interactions you find displeasing as much as possible and then follow the When In Rome motto for the truly unavoidable.  When your spouse laughs at her fathers lame jokes, you at least grin.  When grandma gives you a sweater so horrible that you plan to burn in the fireplace as soon as you get it home, you smile and say now nice it is.  When the new company gives everyone a "surprise" birthday party every year, you at least refrain from telling the office manager (who thinks this is the best idea he ever had, and sadly it probably was better than all his other ideas) how unsurprising it is.  Everyone does some version of this all the time.  In a fair world, people who take 25 items into the 10 item express checkout lane should be subject to massive verbal abuse, but the general social rules usually limit most such interactions to disapproving expressions or a quietly muttered snarky comment.

Migrate.  Think living somewhere else might be better?  Move.  Dislike an entire country?  Don't move there.  If there already, move away.  Hate your job, cannot adapt or mutate?  Start applying elsewhere.  Supposed to go spend a week with the in-laws you can't stand?  "I'm terribly sorry, but my work is sending me on a business trip that week and the next week two.  Then I'll be busy for a month catching up on things in the office."

Mutation isn't always a conscious thing.  You HATE the new mandatory shirts your bowling league makes you wear, but after all hints about what you think the perfect shirt should look like falls on deaf ears, you might eventually decide it's not as bad as you originally thought (alternatively, if you hate it worse each time, but wear it because you want to play, then you're just adapting).  When Uncle Jack insists that everyone join in on multi-player solitaire (yes, there really is such a thing) and you hate it, you decide to study it more closely in order to try to end his winning streak forever.  If you succeed, you might play just for the enjoyment of seeing him lose.  When you finally get frustrated enough while studying Mandarin to start using bilingual Peppa Pig CDs to help expand your vocabulary, you've just mutated into a certified Lunatic. ahahahahah
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Calach Pfeffer on March 04, 2022, 01:39:11 PM
Accept the world or change the world? One is harder than the other. Probably a real life is a balance of both. That actually might be a definition of a life well lived: changed some things, accepted some others. I dislike the "When in Rome..." approach because it appears to rule out the "changed some things" part of a life well lived.

It's bullshit anyway. It exists as a dictum for small groups of people who expect to spend a lot of time together, and that's where it makes sense. The larger the scale though, the more alienating the effect. If it ever should encompass all aspects of a given life, that life is over.


One can visit the china.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Escaped Lunatic on March 04, 2022, 05:14:37 PM
Change it, accept it (mutate), adapt to it, move away from it (migrate).  It doesn't matter if it's only the next door neighbors or an entire continent, everything boils down to using one or more of these approaches.

Even running into the wilderness and living in a cave would fall into adapt and/or mutate.  The only remaining alternative is to die, but I'm a firm advocate of That which does not kill us makes us stranger.  ahahahahah
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: kitano on March 08, 2022, 04:21:47 PM
Dear lord, give me the serenity to accept the things that I can't change, and the courage to change the things I can.

It did seem to be kind of the joke when I turned up here 10 years ago, like it was a bit like being drunk in a crazy bar being in China during their industrial revolution. Now we are a bit further into the night

One thing that has stayed with me more than anything about my exile from China is that when I was fucking up my marriage it was 2016 when Britain and USA lost those two elections to bullshit and I was really depressed, and my wife said 'why don't you care about me instead of that?'
It did happen after that sunk in that I was just watching something I couldn't change. I was using it to dodge my own problems, should have just been nice to my wife.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Just Like Mr Benn on March 13, 2022, 02:28:47 AM
This thread is making me nostalgic. Maybe that's not the correct word.

I too am an exile from China. Part of me wants to go back, but if I'm being honest, it's in large part wanting to go back to China in 2012.

Like Kitano (or at least I think this is what he's saying) I do sometimes wonder if I gave myself to concerns and issues that would and could never love me back.

You want to change the world, or failing that try to change the world, or failing that try to help people who are trying to change the world, and in the end, all you're left with is the feeling of having failed.

But anyway,as I say nostalgic. This really was a great place to be, with really great people. There probably were a few short lived and destructive typhoons I've managed to erase from my memory, but this community was a really nice part of my life.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: Just Like Mr Benn on March 13, 2022, 02:34:49 AM
I might be out of practice with the whole on-topic thing.
Sorry. As you were.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: never2late on March 13, 2022, 12:37:55 PM
I know what you mean about nostalgia. I'm told that dogs are loyal to families, and cats to places, but with me it's the combination of where and when. And 10 years ago things were pretty good in China.

Can we ever go back and stick our toes in the same river a second time? Probably not. Is it worth going back and sticking one's toes in the new and improved river? YMMV, but for me probably yes.
Title: Re: If you don't want to assimilate, should you (I) ever even go (back) to China?
Post by: El Macho on June 05, 2022, 06:11:21 PM

I too am an exile from China. Part of me wants to go back, but if I'm being honest, it's in large part wanting to go back to China in 2012.
just this.

I would love to go back to 2006 Changchun. Where I was, the people I was with, and what I did and experienced and felt were just what I needed.
I went back to China a few years later and stayed for five years but tbh it wasn’t the same - in retrospect it’s just because I lucked into something special the first time around.