One and a half hour until the plane for San Francisco departs from Seoul Incheon Airport. My second short-term work trip to Korea concludes with more calmness and less of the passionate pro-Korean emotions I got from the country last time. Back in 2008, I remember telling myself that I will for sure come back and for months after, tried my best to keep up with everything and anything Korean (ultimately leading to my taking Korean class my senior year). Talk about the power of the Korean Wave...
Three years later, back in the same airport, going to the same place after finishing the same thing, there somehow is only a nonchalant, almost empty non-caring attitude. London, surprisingly, is not in my head, even though the news of the riots seem to make everyone around me a bit more anxious. And of course, going back to San Diego, as always, never really excite me more than the fact that I can get some free housing and food. Inside my mind is emptiness, pure emptiness, without a slight sympathy for what I am leaving behind.
Perhaps a bit more experience can account for the blank tranquility. After all, this time, it was not just another teaching stint in Korea, it was a whole "tour" of Asia that span more than a year in China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. And even more, it was my ultimate attempt to be "Asian" once again, anchored by an attempt to live permanently in Japan as part of the local society. The abortion of such a plan and the end of the "tour" was more than just a soothing feeling of "it is all over."
It is more than even just a shoulder-shrugging dismay. It, as some dark part of my mind keeps on telling me, pure heartbreak in many ways. It was the experience of having my childhood home reject me culturally as a member of her society, and consequently realizing that looking like the locals, or even speaking the local language fluently, is not a guarantee for open-armed acceptance. Yes, politeness and respect were handed to me, but they were the kind given to outsiders, not their own ethnic brothers and sisters.
Such situation somehow becomes more acute paradoxically in a time when the mingling of different ethnicity and cultures are occurring more frequently and at greater length. My heart aches every time I hear a local say (usually behind a foreigner's back) "What is he/she doing here (i.e. in the foreign country)?" It is simply unbelievable to hear such comment still leisurely uttered when the foreigner, not knowing the language or the culture of their strange destinations, still build up enough courage to depart their familiar homelands.
Instead, all they earned here in the foreign countries are irksome (albeit hidden) attitudes of the locals and subtle discrimination in the public. There are just too many stories of what foreigners cannot do in the country, from opening up online banking services or simply buying a ticket to a Korean pop music concert (so much for using Korean Wave to attract foreigners...). We foreigners do not demand respect or to be put on a pedestal, but we would like to be treated as equals in these still close-minded Asian societies.
Of course, we foreigners are also to be blamed for the situation. Too long have we treated the locals with condescension. Too long we have thought ourselves better than the locals (so nonchalantly as to not realize that we are indeed doing so), and too long we have expected the locals to bend themselves to adapt to our culture instead of ourselves adapting to theirs. We have used every opportunity to try to "educate" the locals in our "enlightened" methodologies and "modern" ways of thinking.
For every joke specific to American culture and for every sarcastic remark uttered in English, we the foreigners are enlarging that already-too-big emotional gulf between us and the locals. They simply become afraid of us, afraid that we will straightforwardly (and in a straight face in the classic Western way) tell them that we do not understand their broken English or botched attempt to emotionally connect by joking around. And as fear expands in their minds, how can we expect the locals to really take us in as their brothers and sisters?
Three years later, back in the same airport, going to the same place after finishing the same thing, there somehow is only a nonchalant, almost empty non-caring attitude. London, surprisingly, is not in my head, even though the news of the riots seem to make everyone around me a bit more anxious. And of course, going back to San Diego, as always, never really excite me more than the fact that I can get some free housing and food. Inside my mind is emptiness, pure emptiness, without a slight sympathy for what I am leaving behind.
Perhaps a bit more experience can account for the blank tranquility. After all, this time, it was not just another teaching stint in Korea, it was a whole "tour" of Asia that span more than a year in China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. And even more, it was my ultimate attempt to be "Asian" once again, anchored by an attempt to live permanently in Japan as part of the local society. The abortion of such a plan and the end of the "tour" was more than just a soothing feeling of "it is all over."
It is more than even just a shoulder-shrugging dismay. It, as some dark part of my mind keeps on telling me, pure heartbreak in many ways. It was the experience of having my childhood home reject me culturally as a member of her society, and consequently realizing that looking like the locals, or even speaking the local language fluently, is not a guarantee for open-armed acceptance. Yes, politeness and respect were handed to me, but they were the kind given to outsiders, not their own ethnic brothers and sisters.
Such situation somehow becomes more acute paradoxically in a time when the mingling of different ethnicity and cultures are occurring more frequently and at greater length. My heart aches every time I hear a local say (usually behind a foreigner's back) "What is he/she doing here (i.e. in the foreign country)?" It is simply unbelievable to hear such comment still leisurely uttered when the foreigner, not knowing the language or the culture of their strange destinations, still build up enough courage to depart their familiar homelands.
Instead, all they earned here in the foreign countries are irksome (albeit hidden) attitudes of the locals and subtle discrimination in the public. There are just too many stories of what foreigners cannot do in the country, from opening up online banking services or simply buying a ticket to a Korean pop music concert (so much for using Korean Wave to attract foreigners...). We foreigners do not demand respect or to be put on a pedestal, but we would like to be treated as equals in these still close-minded Asian societies.
Of course, we foreigners are also to be blamed for the situation. Too long have we treated the locals with condescension. Too long we have thought ourselves better than the locals (so nonchalantly as to not realize that we are indeed doing so), and too long we have expected the locals to bend themselves to adapt to our culture instead of ourselves adapting to theirs. We have used every opportunity to try to "educate" the locals in our "enlightened" methodologies and "modern" ways of thinking.
For every joke specific to American culture and for every sarcastic remark uttered in English, we the foreigners are enlarging that already-too-big emotional gulf between us and the locals. They simply become afraid of us, afraid that we will straightforwardly (and in a straight face in the classic Western way) tell them that we do not understand their broken English or botched attempt to emotionally connect by joking around. And as fear expands in their minds, how can we expect the locals to really take us in as their brothers and sisters?
Comments
Post a Comment