The cliché statements you hear about people who travel abroad are everywhere:
“It was so beautiful!”
“The people were so nice/rude/beautiful/happy/sad/etc.”
“The culture was so different.”
Although these sayings are not incorrect, I am reluctant to necessarily use them without deeper thought. After all, there’s no easy way to describe an extended stay in unknown waters to people back home who can’t understand your experiences first hand. How do you describe the good parts and the bad parts without leaving your listener with the wrong impression? Overemphasize the good and they’ll be left with a picture of an utopia without flaws, but stress the bad too much and they’ll picture a dangerous and unhappy place. There is no country, culture, or people in this world without flaws or redeeming characteristics. For this reason, it’s important to experience these things for yourself rather than to take the word of another. But this isn’t always possible- travel can be very expensive, and I was lucky enough to be able to travel to China thanks to funding from STEP. I want to express myself and my experiences as realistically as possible, but know that no matter how much detail I put into this writing, I lack faith in my own ability to properly represent the rich experiences I had, or the country which I have only just begun to dip my toes into.
The China Global May program is unique, and a program which I highly doubt could be successfully replicated elsewhere. It promises a crash course in the minority ethnicities living in China by offering interesting lectures given by scholars of various realms. These lectures are supplemented by field experiences which gives students the opportunity to meet the people behind the cultures which they read about. The real jewel offered by the China Global May program is the partnership which was cultivated between Ohio State professor, Dr. Mark Bender, and Southwest University for Nationalities, Professor Aku Wuwu. Because of their deep friendship and professional work together, we were lucky enough to be partnered with students from the SWUN College of Yi Studies. This allowed us to navigate the history, pop culture, and streets of China, while also developing deep bonds. My partner, Sha Sha, was by far the most memorable part of the trip for me.
The first picture (of many) which Sha Sha took of us.
This trip came at an interesting time for me. I had recently just decided that I was unhappy with my Management Information Systems major, and wanted to look into other majors where I could interact with people and understand them better. From this desire, I began leaning towards Sociology, but I was still unsure. The China Global May program was the perfect diving board into exploring the field. I was exposed to various types of societies and cultures where values and taboos were widely different from those which I was used to back home. I became very interested in understanding how my gender and skin color changed how people treated me in the streets of the large southwestern capital of Chengdu versus the rural mountainside which we reached by a fifteen hour train and an additional four hour car ride through some dirt roads which were snuggled up against the edge of mountains.
Here we taught our partners an old game we learned way back in elementary school.
Sha Sha helped me navigate these new rules which I was so unused to. Having grown up in a more rural conservative village before heading to college in one of the more liberal cities in China, she understood the many faces of the country well. She helped me understand how skin color, gender, sexuality, ethnicity (something she understood particularly well, being an Yi minority), and many other things were interpreted by her peers and her elders. Thinking about these issues and experiences was stimulating, and I enjoyed learning about the good and the bad behind different political and social issues in a country which very few Americans fully understand beyond what the media informs us of.
Some of the people in our group got “cupping” done. It’s a form of traditional Chinese medicine used to alleviate a variety of ailments.
I thought I understood China relatively well. After all, I have been taking Chinese classes for a while, exposing me to not only the language, but also the deeply intricate and lengthy history and culture. However, although this education gave me a strong foundation for understanding the basics behind the country and people, the intricacies were new territory and I found myself gaining a better perspective. Coming home, people asked me, “Is it true they can’t use FaceBook there?” My response was always, “Well… Yes and no. Many of the students I interacted with had a FaceBook because they used a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to get around the firewall.” This is just a small example of how I believe Americans (including myself) are when it comes to foreign countries. We learn small, one-sided tidbits of information about a country and feel very well informed. But there’s always more to the story than just the perspective which we hear about.
We tried on some of our partners traditional Yi clothing. The patterns were beautifully intricate.
My month long experience was both vast and limited in what new opinions and facts I was exposed to. I learned so much more than I ever knew about China and the many different types of people living there; however, I cannot claim to know it perfectly after visiting a small, small fraction of the country. I want to learn more about the way Chinese values differ from American values, or understand the ways that the many ethnicities which I didn’t have time to learn about have learned to navigate a Han-majority China in the 21st Century. Of course I would like to return and visit my many new friends, but I also see possibility of future trips, perhaps in graduate school, which focus on sociological studies and research. Maybe there will be an opportunity for me to better help Americans understand the somewhat complicated and multifaceted landscape of China, providing information on the good, the bad, and the in-between.
A picture of the sacred Lugu Lake.
Cheyenne – Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and story. I appreciated your opening statements about not overemphasizing the good, but not dwelling on the bad. It has to be difficult to find that happy medium to share how you truly felt during that time without providing a false idea.
I enjoyed hearing about how identities of yourself and others played into your trip. Whether this was you recognizing your identified while in China, or engaging in conversation with your partner. To hear how this could have potentially helped you decide on a major change continues to play into the transformational experience.
Use the knowledge you have received from this trip into your role as an RA and a student. Continue to help others feel welcomed and share the knowledge in which you learned.