So the other day, I was talking with one of my classmates.
Assignments for our projects are coming up, so we have to get working on them. But
it’s hard, as my classmate and I seemed to agree that we didn’t want to get
started. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to do the projects, it’s just that we
felt so fatigued from our workday, that doing the projects feels like more a
burden for each passing day.
Then it hit me.
There was a stage that we were MISSING all ALONG.
In the traditional view of the cycle of cultural personality
shift when moving to a new country, the phases are thus:
1. Culture Appreciation
2. Culture Shock
3. Culture Adaptation
Let’s examine each of these in turn.
1. Culture Appreciation.
When you first arrive in a new country, you’re hyper-aware
of your surroundings. You make sure that you do your best not to offend anyone
in the new country that you are in. After all, you’re a visitor to their
country, right? They are letting you be here, so you should learn everything
you can about their culture so that you can live and thrive in it. Righttttt?
2. Culture Shock.
After about a month, it hits you that you’re HERE TO STAY. You
start to panic. Have you adapted enough? The stress of living in a foreign
culture and having to eat rice EVERY DAY for EVERY MEAL is starting to get to
you. You sneak in using a fork wherever you can. Trips to McDonald’s become
more frequent. Far more frequent. On the subway, you get nervous when you
realize you’re the only white person on the train. In America, you wouldn’t be
caught dead listening to Carly Rae Jepson, but now you know every word to “Call
Me Maybe” imagining seeing the guy from the music video when in reality the
closest you’ve seen to him was the balding 60-year-old Russian guy just because
he was the only guy you’ve seen today who WASN’T Chinese.
4. Culture Adaptation.
You’ve accepted that people here do things differently than
you’re used to, and that’s okay. You can use either chopsticks or a
fork-and-knife. You go to the restaurant that gives you the best value,
regardless of whether it’s American or Chinese. You don’t even notice the
stares anymore, and you stop panicking whenever there’s people around you
talking in Chinese and you can’t quite understand what they’re saying.
But there was a part we were MISSING this ENTIRE TIME.
3. Culture Fatigue.
Culture fatigue is a stage beyond culture shock, which is
indicated by a general reclusiveness of the individual from the new culture
back into familiar territory by surrounding themselves with their home culture.
It’s the point where the sheer exhaustion from culture shock pushes the
outsider to adapt a new persona which they would not normally use otherwise.
Culture fatigue is defined by not shock, but a sort of anger, contempt of the
individual for the society in which they currently reside. It can take many
forms, such as badmouthing native residents for the cultural identities that
were appreciated in stage 1, or further rationalization of cultural shock
tendencies, (such as “I don’t go to McDonalds because I want Western Food, but
because all of the Chinese restaurants are terrible,” “Chinese pop music is so
terrible,” “None of the stores ever have anything I need.”)
Of course, it’s important to bear in mind that oftentimes
the different stages can overlap in unexpected ways. It’s not a clear progression
from stage 1 to stage 4 in all dimensions of cultural shift. Rather, these
things manifest themselves differently in different areas. For example, someone
can become used to eating Chinese food, but still not be able to adapt to the
transportation system, and can become great at talking to native Chinese
people, but still hate going shopping at Chinese stores.
As for me? Personally, in food, I went from Stage 1 to Stage
4 in China practically instantly.
Shopping? Stage 3.
Still can’t find 3x5 cards or a proper notebook ANYWHERE.
Ugh. Or
brown socks. Those
gosh darn hard to find brown socks, seriously, does no one in China wear brown
socks? I can
find gray and black socks and white socks, but brown socks? Nooooooo. I guess people in China just
don’t wear brown pants. You’re either wearing black pants and are part of the financial elite
or you’re part of the losers of the economic growth wearing second-hand
clothes. China
has such a big problem with the wealth gap, so much more so than in the US.
There’s just not the
middle-class you see in the US…
But ANYWAY,
That's life in the Middle Country.