Coming Home is the Hardest Transition
For some, being an expat is forever, while for others, it’s an interlude that may last a few years or perhaps many but with the intention of returning home at some point. Peter Hessler, who went to China after college and stayed 15 years, has written a New Yorker article “Go West” about his coming back to the U.S., with many keen observations of the cultural differences between the two countries.
He and his wife arranged for movers without knowing where they’d be living. Since it would take five weeks for their possessions to reach the U.S. by ship, they figured they’d have plenty of time to decide.
He describes how the Chinese movers worked, carefully fitting cardboard around the shape of each piece of furniture. A chair became a box shaped like a chair; another package resembled a bed. He writes, “It was like watching a tam of sculptors work backward, until every object we owned had been converted into a larger, rougher version of itself.”
Finally he and his wife, who was from New York born of Chinese parents, decide to live in a small town in southwestern Colorado. It’s a long way from Beijing and not just in miles or even in population density. He notes, however, that the Americans he encounters here have an “appetite for loneliness.”
The individuals he meets willingly tell him their stories in a way that Chinese people would never do. In this lonely landscape, it seems that everyone has a story, and fortunately, he enjoyed listening. He observes that Chinese people, on the other hand, like to talk about relatively impersonal subjects such as food or weather, rather than disclosing much about themselves, and they unabashedly ask foreigners all sorts of questions. They are genuinely interested in other people.
Americans, he notices, like talking about themselves are less keen on listening. Merely mentioning that he and his wife had lived in China is a conversation stopper. There’s more, and you can read it in The New Yorker, April 19, 2010 or online at http://www.newyorker.com, where there other examples of Hessler’s writing, including an article titled “the Doorknob,” about the Peace Corps. His most recent book is Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory