So, about two months ago I read an article about how people feel when they move to another country. It didn't matter if it was just for a little while for work, or if it was a permanent move. My move certainly is not permanent, but I am going to be here for a long time.
Now a few of the points in the article points really did hit home and I shared them with my fellow expats. Like for instance, one of the points was that you will miss things that you never even cared about. I suppose that point goes hand in hand with the simple belief that most of us will hear applied to relationships now and then of "you don't miss it until its gone". For me, one of the things that I miss that I knew I would are Walkers Cheese and Onion crisps. Easily the greatest crisp in the world. If you do not agree. Tough. You are wrong. Fact.
Now the thing that I miss but didn't think I would was cheese. In the UK I quite enjoyed cheese, but I would never go out of my way for a particular cheese or anything like that. I would rock into ASDA and get my usual block of extra mature cheddar and go home. And then usually grate it onto something. Or occasionally devour large chunks of a block when I was drunk.
However I was at a friends a few weeks back and him and I are known for being "posh". I would not say that we particularly are, but the areas we were lucky enough to grow up in are rather nice and so sometimes we sound posh. Now we were waiting for other friends to arrive for a gaming night. Said friend after all has a large HD projector so split screen is brilliant. Before hand, he asked me if I wanted dinner. I took him up on his kind offer and proceeded to get the cheese out of the fridge. For any of you that have been to China for any sizeable length of time you know that most things you tend not to buy in shops. Even a lot of simple groceries, but you get them off the internet. Particularly a website called Taobao. I recommend you go on it and just search for anything. My friend appeared with 5 different cheeses, oatcakes, beetroot chutney (hate beetroots but loved the chutney) and caviare.
When our fellow coworkers arrived and saw our meal, we were branded toffs and have been called such since. The thing about this situation for me was that it reminded me that the closest I had come to eating cheese in four months was the weird yellow paste on the inside of a McDonald's quarter pounder. So I got one of my PA's (it helps to be Chinese to actually buy things on Taobao) to get me some cheddar cheese. I paid nearly £10 for two blocks of 350g cheese. So more than you would pay for them in the UK by quite a margin, but its like getting it off the black market here. I also have a particular thing about hoarding Old El Paso fajita mix whenever its in an imported section. But that's another tale (Plus, getting hold of the wraps is such a chore).
Anyway, thats enough rambling about that. But suffice to say, its strange how I do indeed obsess over something that before I could not care less about.
The other point in the article that I found amusing was the idea that "any foreigner you meet, instantly becomes like a long lost friend". For a while I agreed with this, largely because I was greeted with open arms every time I went to any pub or bar where foreigners frequented. The thing was though, I was going to these places with the express desire to meet foreigners. Which is the same reason they were there. Its always nice to go where everybody knows your name etc etc. After a day of teaching people English and then the rest of my day struggling to speak Chinese to those I don't teach, its nice to go to these lands where I can talk to people. For some reason though, outside these places I like to call "green zones" I don't like to meet foreigners. I will avoid them like the plague when I go to Starbucks to get my weekly ginger-nut latte. But the most important place I try to avoid other foreigners is the supermarket. Most people in China get things from markets and street sellers. They are fresh and safe (I think the eggs are way better). But with my limited lingo skills I like to stick to the familiar, like many of the foreigners. So I go to a supermarket called Carreforre. Its French. It is, to say the least, just like Mos Eisley spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. This is largely because the people that work there are the least helpful and most depressing people on the planet. Its like where all of the cast of Lost will go when they die.
Now I was in there and bagging up my items in the vegetable section and all of a sudden I heard this New York fake Italian drawl go "hiya buddy, what are you doing here?".
For one second I did nothing as I did not recognise the voice, so just assumed that it wasn't me he was talking to. A silly thing to think, but I could only hope.
Sadly I was wrong. This man, who fair enough just wanted to chat, had decided that I was someone he could talk with.
The only downside of this is that A) I am clearly busy and focussed on my task at hand and B) I had been teaching for 9 solid hours. I wanted my food and I wanted to escape my personal hell that is the Chinese supermarket.
Again, I can see where this man was coming from. He saw a white man and wanted to talk to him. But the thing that for some reason grated me was his assumption of instant link and friendship that the article spoke about. My problem is that we had only two things in common. We are both foreign and we speak English. We are not even from the same bloody continent, let alone country!!! and my experience with the Americans in China that I have met so far is that whilst they are usually as lovely as I know the American people to be, when they are in China, they seem to take on the assumption that it does not matter what they are doing or what they are saying but they are right and everyone else is wrong. I have seen this in all my US coworkers and I can only speak to them in small doses because of this (generally because most conversations amongst large groups of foreigners in China will always turn into an "us and them" debate somehow and it gets tiring. God forbid get into an argument with one.
I know that this makes me sound like a horrible human being. I do like people, I just don't understand them much. A close friend of mine commented the other day that she likes how I always try and see the best in people when I talk to them. I was thinking that this is true, but at the same time I don't like too look too closely at people in case I am wrong. That's why I try and keep largely to myself.
Like nearly every foreigner here in this beautiful and exotic country, I do tend to stop and say to my friends "look, new foreigner" when I see one. I think that the only difference between me and what the writer of the article shows is that I have no interest in then just going up to that foreigner and speaking to them.
Well, that's enough of my crazy talk for now. Next time on the John show...... why do Chinese women find it so strange that a 26 year old Englishman enjoys cooking and can also cook Chinese food???
End of line.
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