Four Days in China

                Uganda prepared me for China. If I had to sum up China, in my own experience, using only my own experience as a guideline, I would describe it as in between Uganda and America. Now this analogy is easy to generalize when I have only really been to the USA, Mexico, Uganda, and now China. But in many ways, China is in between Uganda and America.

                China is cleaner than Uganda, but dirtier than America. It is crowded like Uganda, and people stay very close to each other, but it is about the same as Uganda. In China we have electricity and running water, much the same as in America. The traffic is similar to Uganda, with motorcycles weaving in and out, buses and vans driving quite close to pedestrians and other cars, but much less so than in Africa. In fact, they obey traffic laws more than I thought they would. The food is like Africa, but generally more industrialized. Instead of eating off of roadside markets and locally grown fruits, vegetables, and animals, we eat at restaurants and in cooled buildings.

                China is unlike either my experience in Uganda or America in that it is a sprawling city. There are taxis and buses, lots and lots of buildings, concrete in most places. But nothing I wouldn’t expect in New York or Los Angeles in the US. China is also different in that they obviously speak Mandarin, and things are written in Mandarin. But surprisingly, many things are in Pinyin or English, and even in totally Chinese things they use roman numerals for food prices or room numbers. There is smog, but on a good day it just looks like its cloudy outside, which it honestly is most of the time. It has rained all but one day since we’ve been here.

                There are more people here than in America, but there is never a massive blob of humanity swarming across the streets. At its busiest, there are as many people as there were in between classes on OSU’s campus. Not unbearable.

                Things are much similar to America as well. They drive on the right side. They read left to write. They have electricity, running water, hot food, paved streets, grocery stores. They understand a smile, a pointing finger, a shake of the head. The Chinese are really not that different.

                And really, America has had a lot of Chinese influence over the centuries. Maybe it was because I did a lot of research before, but everything here I had seen in some way. Pagodas, dragons, Chinese characters, watercolor art, noodles, and lotus flowers are all familiar to me. I’ve seen martial arts movies, the Chinese at the Olympics, eaten at Chinese buffets. While still different and filtered, they were at least familiar to what I experienced here.

                China was not that different. Maybe because I didn’t want it to be. Maybe because I’m very open to new things and have experienced other cultures from teaching English in the states. Or maybe it’s because the Chinese are just people like us. Both nations share the most basic and essential human state, and that is the state of humanity. We are drawn together by the fellowship of humanity, and because of this anywhere in the world can feel like home.