Fear and Loathing in Zhuhai

KGSM Student Radio

Welcome back to Aural Fixation the Podcast from China loyal listeners, after a two week hiatus while I was in Beijing we are back with a new episode that I wrote while sitting in one of the Hong Kong Airport’s fine dining establishments and the China Ferry Terminal’s Starbucks. It’s getting close to the end of my semester abroad, and while Gustavus finishes up its final exam schedule, I am just beginning to prepare for mine. There are only three more episodes after this one, and only two more I will write while enrolled as a student at United International College. I am finding myself a bit exhausted from all the traveling and am looking forward to getting back to the old routines and established order of normalcy back home and this episode is a reflection on the last two and a half months I’ve spent here in China in attempt to dissect and identify the overarching ideas that have constituted this adventure, and without further ado I give you Fear and Loathing in Zhuhai, the eighth episode of Aural Fixation’s special China edition.

It’s strange to still be wearing sandals so close to Christmas time but Zhuhai weather is a lot like parts of California in that it rarely rains or drops below a brisk 55ºF; the buildings do not have heat, the dorms are not even insulated which makes for some chilly nights and mornings waking up on the rock hard ply-wood board I call a bed because even in the coldest months of the year the weather is still, generally speaking, pleasant to gorgeous everyday. Whenever I check Minnesota Public Radio’s website or see a Twitter update conveying some kind of snow or cold related distress—like road closures or people’s eyelashes freezing together on their way to a final exam—before strapping on my Birkenstocks, I am reminded of just how great being here really is. As with any great adventure though, there comes a denouement point where the novelty of being away gives way to the harsh realities of what was left behind; I’ve begun to realize in the last two and a half months just how important the people, places, and things I left behind are in my life, and have grown to realize just how much I take it all for granted back home.

A close friend of my family is sick with cancer and her condition recently progressed to the point where the doctors said there was nothing more they could do to lengthen her life or cure her cancer, and I feel stranded and powerless to give her family and other friends the appropriate support—and while she still has the love and support of her other friends and family, I wish I were not in China right now just so I could see her smile and give her a hug, and the news of her condition came with an amplified effect as a consequence of my remoteness. It is moments like these that make study abroad so valuable. Time and again I am reminded of just how much of an individual or anomaly I really am. It is not just my white skin and blue eyes, nor my superior command of the English language and my funny American accent (all those things set me apart in a more apparent and obvious day-to-day way) rather it is my memories, my personality and experiences that give me identity unique from everyone around me: driving across the barren expanse of parched soil and sagebrush that is the Eastern Colorado wilderness leading, finally, to the majestic snow-capped summits of the Rocky Mountains; walking across the Mississippi River’s Headwaters at Lake Itasca; the fact that I am one of a handful of people in this country who care or even know who Al Franken and Norm Coleman are, or have any—if scant—memory or knowledge of Bloomington Minnesota’s pre-Mall of America days; it’s humbling, in an ironic way, to have these claims to uniqueness. It forces a certain pride or appreciation for what was previously taken for granted—what I assumed or presumed would never have any further significance or semantic value beyond good family memories or a few points for Minnesota History nights at Patrick’s Trivia—while also reminding myself that these mundane feats of life or esoteric circumstances of being Minnesotan have analogues in everyone’s life and how important it is to take pride and ownership in the place I call my home. In all three years of my Gustavus education I have taken classes in math, philosophy, religion, political science and many other fields outside my major, and all of these, in addition to, and to a far greater extent, the courses in my major, have all featured the so-called “aha-moment” where the essence or the bigger, deeper, idea of the course is suddenly revealed through the process of academic discovery, but never in the course of these three years have I learned so much about myself, about what it means to be an individual in a world of 6.5 billion people; never have any of these courses had as much power over my entire concept of reality and sensory perception as the cultural immersion of the past almost three months has had on me.

I have always loved traveling—ever since my brother and I first flew to Arizona with our grandparents, seeing new parts of the world and revisiting old destinations to make new discoveries has been a central part of my life—and I have been fortunate enough to see many corners of the world—from Ixtapa, Mexico and Lubbers Quarters and Hope Town in the Bahamas to Antwerp, Munich and Prague and most recently Zhuhai and Beijing, China (to name a few just a few destinations)—but never before have I felt the sensationally uncomfortable culture shock I feel here—handicapped from effective communication with anyone, finding and accessing money, asking for directions and understanding the answers, even basic tasks like reading transit maps are challenging to the point of impossibility and the nearly complete lack of western-style empathy when things suddenly or randomly go awry renders my capacity for self-sufficiency or self-guidance to a state of total nonviability. It’s a terrifying realization to discover you are not invincible but rather are simply unable, and need help in the form of a 24/7 companion, to get a bite to eat or find a bank that will accept your foreign Visa card. It robs you of your spirit and eventually makes you long for that self-surviving personal autonomy you spent the better part of your twenty-something life developing. That simple task of walking to the grocery store or a restaurant and buying or ordering what you need—which you can no longer do because you cannot read the labels or tell the staff what you are looking for, leaving you to surrender yourself to pictures and those products that are branded in your foreign language—suddenly becomes one of the most desired or coveted skills you could ever want at this point; it’s a hard but important lesson to learn that, contrary to what you were told throughout primary and secondary school, you cannot do everything and that in fact to nearly a quarter of the world’s population you are not only dumb but functionally illiterate; it’s a lesson that no amount of classroom instruction, dialectic or so-called formal education can even breach the possibility of preparing you for. It is simply implausible to feel this out of your element, robbed of personal autonomy, without being immersed in an environment so at odds with what you know as real or normal that you cannot function on your own. Studying abroad is not a vacation—much like how sabbatical is not just “time off” for faculty—for students, it is a capstone of a well-rounded education: the self-reflective component of a liberal arts experience, the ultimate exploration of life, humanity and the existential Truths of the world that higher education institutions like Gustavus strive to endow upon their graduates year after year; it is an experience so powerful that it should be required for graduation.

I leave China in just over three weeks—leaving behind a country and community that has changed my life in just over three months to go back to the United States, to the real Americana I have so genuinely missed here—with a renewed, refreshed, and regenerated sense of self, ready to take on whatever life throws at me next. I have my final housing placement for the spring now—in Rundstrom and it should be a good home for my last semester—and now am starting to fell that it is just time for me to get out of here and back to normal life, be done with all this; I’ve had the time of my life but now I’ve learned all I can learn, and done everything there is to do here and am ready to get out and get home: drive my car, eat some home-cooked food, drink some milk that isn’t condensed milk, grab some Summit Winter Ale and most importantly fall asleep—really put myself into a deep and healthy sleep—in my own soft, not-made-of-plywood bed with my own blankets that don’t smell of construction debris and humidity and wake up, on my own schedule, warm and cozy in the comfort of home.