One of the reasons I came to China was because I assumed that being here would give me time to work. And by work I mean read and write. Of course I came to China to work in the usual sense of the word, which in my case is to teach and be part of the university. But I also came because I assumed that the lack of immediate comfort and familiarity would push me into a hermit-like mode, one where I had ample time and space to work without distraction. In this sense then, my time so far has been successful. I live alone, stay in most nights (and free days), and generally spend my non-teaching/administrating time reading or writing. That is not to say that I am unsocial, or that I hide in my apartment. I socialize outside of work and have fun doing it. I go for bike rides and take short trips when I can. This morning I played basketball as part of a tournament that I've participated in along with other staff, faculty, and some graduate students at my school. I'm learning Chinese, and other things. Yet, if I am being honest, my plan in coming to China was never to completely immerse myself in China because China wasn't entirely the focus of my work. Instead I'm writing articles for publication, editing and revising, and reading the things I didn't have time to get to in graduate school. Being in China helps me concentrate on these things because being in China can be hard.
I knew this coming in. A few of my friends, including a friend from China, said to me, "I think you'll be lonely there." This however has not been the case. Partly because my work has been engaging and challenging in good ways, partly because of the good people at work, and a little more than partly, because I speak with my girlfriend at length on a daily basis. That said, in response to the presumption of loneliness, I too presumed I would be a little lonely. That was part of the plan though as it has always been my experience that the sometimes unpleasant edge of loneliness is a spur for a particular kind of productivity. When I was younger this was certainty the case. The prototype, or, proto-experience where I learned this was my time in Japan where I holed up in my bedroom in my host family's house smoking cigarettes, drawing pictures, and pretending to do my homework. Looking back it is easy to trivialize the alienation I felt as a shy nineteen-year old living in a country that I knew not all that much about, and where I could not comfortably communicate. At the same time however I took solace in reading, and it was then that I began to establish the "creative" habits that I've more or less been practicing since. The habits that first lead me into poetry, and then academia. "Writing."
These habits then; this form of production, is born out of a coping mechanism, a defensive strategy to survive in a foreign country. My intention here is not to self-mythologize, but to highlight an intention to be apart from the world and how that intention has manifested itself in my experience of being foreign. To not be entirely of China is a part of my experience here, and further, the difficulty in deeply engaging in a place that I only have a superficial knowledge of makes the work of reading and writing seem like an escape of sorts. Or in other words, I planned on being somewhat alienated for the purposes of motivation and concentration. The less I know about China, the less investment I have in being here, and the easier it is for me to engage in "my work." Now, that sounds like a terrible thing to say, but there is some truth in it: the less connected I am to the community the more I can do a particular kind of work. And so I go back to my time in Japan, and the possibility that one of the intentions underlying this particular mode of production is the intention to disconnect from my immediate surroundings, wherever they may be. Sigh. But to be clear: creating space is just one of many reasons that I came here. I am merely trying to make visible this small aspect of being foreign.
