Our conversation veered into topics and territories that I’ve come to expect – these days, my conversations around the globe seem to be more and more similar. We talk about parents, about aging, about our ever evolving relationship with them. We talk about moving away, about visiting friends and family, about how hard it is to balance our dreams and our realities. We talk about our own fears and uncertainties, and our sense of guilt and responsibility to those around us. We talk about these things because these are the things that are in the back of our minds, that are percolating just below the surface, that are the source of both our hope and our stress – because, in essence, these are the things that we care most about and that drive us.
When I first moved to China to teach English almost ten years ago, I remember what a strange creature I seemed to my students. For them, they couldn’t decide if they wanted me to be Chinese or American, although most defaulted to seeing me as generally American. Yet because I had Chinese parents, I elicited an intense curiosity in them. How Chinese IS this guy? Does he think and behave like us, or like those Americans we see on TV? How much of our culture does he understand? What does he consider himself? Most of all, they wanted to know what insight, if any, my dual-cultural identity could shed on their notions of how different Americans were from Chinese people. For instance, why don’t Americans take care of their old parents? How can American parents kick their kids out of the house at 18? How come American students are so lazy?
I found myself frustrated with these questions, in no small part because many were based on false assumptions about the two cultures. I didn’t expect my Chinese students to understand American culture, but I did hope that they could be more introspective about theirs. I pointed out the difficulties in taking care of elderly parents given increased geographical mobility for the kids; I suggested that caring for aging parents wasn’t as simple as sending money home or moving ones parents into ones house. I argued that given the increasing mobility of next generation Chinese, it may be harder for them than they imagine when the unfortunate time comes to figure out how to support their aging parents. More generally though, I became frustrated with these questions because they all focused on the superficial differences between cultures, rather than the similarities we have deep down inside. I told my students that differences did of course exist, but that there were more similarities than differences, and that a real dialogue between cultures could only happen if common ground was identified.
Of course I believed it then, but I did not have any firm foundation in its truth. It was more of a convenient rhetorical tool, used to provoke my students into considering new perspectives (and naturally, to help them realize how much of a genius I am.) Yet, as I’ve wandered the world a bit more and met more people from different backgrounds, I’ve come to realize how true it actually is. The conversations Young and I had with Neema and Leo are just the latest example, but a really remarkable one. When you think about it, we are four people, from three cultures, and two countries, who can sit together and commiserate about the same concerns. We can talk about four sets of parents, born worlds and decades apart, and come to essentially the same conclusions. We can discuss the things that stress us most, and share many of the same types of solutions. We can tell of our dreams and our fears, and recognize each other in their shadows. We are, at the end of the day, more alike than we are different. That’s a really cool thing to think about, and it’s even more cool to live out.
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