May 9. That was the day I traveled to a foreign country by myself in hopes of finding and learning more about me. I decided to travel back to my homeland, China. What better place to find your true self than the country that your ancestors came from? I started on a one month journey to find out who I really am. I wanted to do this trip because I felt like I lost touch of my true self and started to become someone I am not. Do you ever feel that way? For example, were you the innocent band geek in high school then turned the frat star in college? See, I felt like I had too many different personalities and just did not know who the real me was.
I bought a plane ticket back to my birth place a couple of months ago. I’ve never traveled to another foreign country by myself before so this decision to travel to China for a whole month was not an easy one to make. Thanks to my mom who forces me to speak Chinese at home, I can speak Chinese fluently. However, reading and writing are a no-go for me.
When I first arrived in China, I was so positive and open minded; I was ready to find myself. Then after a couple of days, the mood started to slowly take a turn. I started getting really sick to my stomach whenever I ate or drank water so my appetite was not that great, and no food means no happy me. It turned out that the water in China is not as qualified for drinking as the water that we drink in the U.S. This is lesson number one: I am spoiled. I was so busy complaining about my stomach ache and the food that I did not realize how spoiled I was. I should be thankful that I grew up in a country that provides top notch clean water for everyone. And the food? I should be thankful I even have the option to eat three times a day while homeless children roamed the streets of China just to find one small bite.
One day, I was running stairs outside of a temple. A group of 70- to 80-year-old retirement folks came and starting to do their routine exercise. They took up the whole front area of the temple, kicking everyone out without even asking. I continued exercising and doing my stair running. The leader of the group later came up to me and told me that I was being noisy and asked me to leave. I didn’t think much into it so I left. However, when I was walking home I started to get irritated by the fact that I had to stop my routine morning exercise for them even though I was not being loud and the fact that it was a public area. Therefore, I went back and started running stairs again. Oh boy, did hell break loose. A couple of old men started yelling at me and pointing their fingers at me an inch from my face. They called me names, and said I was disrespectful. I explained to them that the temple is a public place so everyone had the right to use it, and I was running stairs so I was not being loud. The old folks did not choose to listen and continued to yell. With me being outnumbered, I decided to declare defeat and walk home.
The main lesson I learned from that incident is there is a huge cultural diversity between Americans and Chinese folks. Americans are all about equality and what is right and wrong, while the Chinese are all about “elders are always right” and “respect your elders.” Don’t get me wrong, I do support respecting your elders, but the thing I do not support is agreeing with them and letting them do whatever they want just because they are older. Equality is something I stand for, and I think China can have a little more of that.
One suggestion I have is if you ever want to open your eyes and see the world differently, go out and travel the world. You cannot just read about it in a textbook or have a group discussion about it in a classroom. Go out into the world and see for yourself.
