XXI (Returning: Part 2)

I write this in my sister's study in Washington DC, which is actually more of a toy room with a seldom used computer off to the side. Before I came here I had visions of writing this post at the airplane terminal in Madison, or Detroit, or maybe on the airplane itself, like the last post. But I decided not to bring my computer, and instead revised my vision to include this prelude, an exposition of decision making processes. Or in other words, a description of my writing process as an exercise in remembering, using a notebook and a few notes to plan what I will write, or simply reminding myself of the kernel of a thought of keep myself from forgetting. Like an egg in incubation, I try to keep the thought alive until I can find a space and time to hatch it. Part of this process then is to protect the idea, a protection that presumes a kind of stasis, as if the idea and the impulse to write the idea will not change. Of course somehow and some way it does change, but it's hard to say what this holding on does to it as I will either completely forget what it was supposed to be in the first place or when I finally sit down to write it, whatever does end up getting written replaces its memory. Returning to what then I don't know as I sit here and write, but I manage to hold onto something of the idea, even if that something is only the impulse to keep writing. And now that I've written this I have to set this post on hold, as I need to leave back to Madison in an hour.

The impulse then is a counter-point to the idea that being in the States is similar to being in China. It's been two weeks and of the time I've been back home in Wisconsin the experience is different than being in Shanghai or Ann Arbor or D.C. "Home is where one starts from." says T.S. Eliot but there is nothing like settling into the oldest grooves known, and thus I'd draw a distinction between being somewhere other than home, regardless of language and culture. I felt as "foreign" at the conference in Ann Arbor as being at a conference in Shantou China though everyone spoke English, I could read the warnings on the elevator, and I knew pretty much what to expect from the experience of entering a Walgreen's. It's also possible that everything feels a bit distanced when you're severely jet lagged but that's another story. Yesterday my mom and I went out to the horse farm where she keeps Theo, and as we stood there at the base of a valley looking up at the broadly sloping Wisconsin hills, it's hard for me to imagine feeling "at home" in any landscape other than southern Wisconsin. I lived for six years in California and every time I flew back to either Oakland or San Francisco (depending on which tickets were cheapest), I would ask myself why I chose to live in a place I didn't belong to; its air and hills still novel. Thus it was not just an idea, but I could feel this unbelonging in my person.

It is difficult to write about being home. I'm tempted to say its the opposite of being foreign, but I suspect it is just another point on the spectrum. I am also tempted to write about difference, about the things that stand out between here and there; the people in Chicago walk faster than those in Shanghai, that Americans are bigger, that their traffic flows move en masse without stopping and starting as quickly as the flows in China, and the trains and their stations in the States are old and slow and falling apart. There are less smokers here, more blondes and more diversity. There is more variety of bikes and beer, though there seems to be just as many super high end cars and Starbucks. I can understand what people are saying here but I'm not sure its particularly interesting and I'd probably just rather read my book or escape into my phone. In Wisconsin there are more bugs than there are in Kunshan, more birds and houses. More blue sky and the air is without question clean. All said, it is too easy to view these contrasts as competition rather than difference, and my noticing drifts into value-laden judgment. More importantly for my purposes though, I'm not sure these kinds of comparisons gets at the phenomenon of being foreign. Regardless of the details then there is something that remains of my old impulses born of habit and conjured by place. Returning to what then I don't know but it is easy to fall back into old grooves at home or in writing. I head back to China in a few days.

XX (Returning: Part 1)

I write this on an Amtrak traveling through Michigan. The train, amazingly, to me at least, has the internet. Right now I'm looking out the window at a water tower, blue on the stem and white around the bulb: "Wilson," it reads. Or at least I think that's what it said. By the time I finished the sentence and worked out the syntax of how to describe the tower I had forgotten what it said. At any rate, we're passing though a small town somewhere in the middle of lower Michigan. I came here to attend the Consortium of Graduate Communication Institute at the U of Michigan in Ann Arbor, getting in late late Saturday night, Shanghai to Dallas to Detroit to a really expensive cab ride. The thing ended today, Tuesday, though I had to skip out in the middle of keynote to get on this train; going to Chicago, and from there I will get on a bus to Madison. On Friday Buddyfest begins and after, will have two weeks to see family and other friends before heading back to China at the end of June. I'm a bit sick but it's nothing serious, run down from the jet lag and lack of sleep in combination with the business of the conference. All said I learned a lot and made a few connections. Swales and Feak, pretty much the biggest names in the field of graduate communication were at my presentation / "works-in-progress talk" (of course not to see me but the person before me), and that in itself would make it all worthwhile.

Being back in the U.S. feels surprisingly uneventful so far. Asides from my frequent encounters with cheese, and seeing a few old friends and acquaintances at the conference, there is an odd lack of novelty. Part of this is due to the fact that I was back in the States in February, part of this is due to the fact that I was at a similarly purposed and populated conference in China last March, and part is due to my relentless connection to the people I love via smart phone. One of the best days of my life, so the story goes, is the day I got back from Japan, a place that I was much more isolated in because there weren't smart phones or Skype or Wechat. I spoke with my family maybe three times over the course of a year. The only thing that was constant was email, and even then there was a delay between sending and receiving due to the fact that I had to travel an hour to get to a computer to check my email. Of course email was the beginning of instantaneous global communication (for those who couldn't afford to buy expensive international phone cards such as my 19 year old self), so I was lucky to have that. And of course it's not like I'm two-hundred years old, and kids these days, and etc. performances of the wizened and wow I was alive in 1998! My point though is that part of my joy upon returning to the States, of the thrill of being able to speak English and be "understood" again, was the fact that I had spent the previous year in a kind of seclusion, one where I didn't really ever really get to "be myself" though the expression of language.

Connecting this to the last post then, and the "privilege" of possessing these technologies that continually spin around us, is that I'm never very far away from anyone that I want to talk to (and who wants to talk to me). Seeing, say, my girlfriend in the flesh is certainly different than seeing her on the Wechat, but I don't forget what she looks like or the sound of her voice. Some of my most pressing needs then, the need of talking about my day or for goofing around, or the more "practical" needs of coordinating plane tickets or getting help with a recipe, are taken care of in the moment, and I don't experience much longing. The global economy, at least in the part of China where I live, is ever present, and though I can't get a good burrito, I can get a-good a lot of other things. All said, as I come back the States it doesn't feel like I've been gone a long time. During the entire time I've been in China I've also been in constant touch with most of the people and things I care about. "Wherever you go there you are," the title of a book I've never read but it's seems true in this case, that I feel many of the same things here in the U.S. that I felt in China since much of my immediate experience is similar. Further, I can even be foreign in the U.S. so long as I hold the idea of China in my head, or rather, the idea that I am a person who has been living in China for the last year in my head (and therefore the idea that I am different than a person who has not been living in China). This spirit of difference in mind then, I will say one thing: the trains here are quite old and a little dirty and slow, but they are quite comfortable.

XIX

Absent from these discussion of foreignness has been the idea of privilege, an idea that I have been intentionally avoiding in part because the usual suspects of privilege, e.g. race, gender, and in this case, nationality, can quickly become the main event. Or in other words, I don't think there is much to be gained by writing about being a white American male in China. Not because there is nothing to be said, but because there are not many things that have not already been said. Yes I benefit from being a white American male in China, from boosting my authority in the classroom to rarely having to worry about safety. The web of identities conjured simply by walking down the street is infinitely complex, and I cannot begin the approach the sophistication with which many have already written about privilege, patriarchy, whiteness, fear, and its connection to the English language and American hegemony. Yet, there is a difference between experiencing privilege and the experience of privilege. While the former is often connected to political discourses that, at their best, work towards strengthening liberal democracy, the latter discussion of privilege is difficult to enter without spinning off into guilt spirals or psychobabble. It is the latter that I wish to discuss in the context of foreignness.

Specifically I want to discuss the privilege of an ubiquitous American cultural presence, and being able to relate to that presence. For example last week I saw the new Star Wars movie Solo (I liked it!). This morning I watched game 1 of the NBA finals on my television while eating oatmeal and drinking green tea. Last night I played pickup games in a gym adorned with huge posters of Kobe Bryant and James Harden. I can walk into any corner store and buy a coke or a Snickers or have burgers and Budweiser delivered to my door in thirty minutes. Here I sit in my living room connected though a VPN to Google's Blogger, a site that is theoretically beyond the great fire wall of China. I can stream Amazon or Netflix (if I were willing to pay for them), and lately have been digging for episodes of the newest season of Westworld, which I am regrettably not as enamored by since Dolores broke bad. QQmusic allows me to download, mostly for free, all kinds of music, from the mainstream to the obscure, and I thus I plug in my headphones on my way to work pedaling my Trek  up the wide avenues of Kunshan. I don't spend all of my time immersed in these American entertainments, but I could if I wanted to, and sometimes, when I have the time and need to take a break, I can leave China for a little while and visit familiar places. 

Part of this particular incarnation of foreignness then is the privilege of not being foreign, if only for a little while; to have the ever present option of engaging in media and activities I am well acquainted with. In contrast, I think of foreign students in the United States from smaller, not as wealthy countries. I think about the difficulty in accessing television and media from places that don't create as much content, or whose foods and cultural delights have not been aggressively exported. Without one's "home" culture easily available, there is no choice but to engage with what's around them, which in most cases, will require putting oneself in a vulnerable position. This privilege however is not unique to me, or Americans. Chinese students in the United States have a similar privilege as where if they don't want to, they can engage minimally in American goings-ons because there is plenty of other Chinese students, food, and media options to keep them entertained. I know this because many of my Chinese students in the States have said as much. In an even broader sense, this privilege of proximity is the backbone of the internet, and enables anyone with a smart phone to remain centered in a safe place. Though it may not be a part of foreignness for everyone, part of my being foreign then is both deliberately stepping away from the ease of this ubiquity. It is not easy.