If you don't have anything nice to say,
don't say it at all.
This
post is a long time coming.
Beginning
in the fall of my second year in Chongqing, I had increasingly fewer nice
things to say about my adopted homeland as my rose-colored glasses wore down: I
began to see and understand more about this city and country I had grown to
love; but the more I knew, the less I loved what I saw.
Could I be suffering from culture shock? I sat in on my
teammate Mary Beth's class last semester, and in Divine providence the lesson I
chose to observe was about that very topic (based on Teaching in a Distant Classroom by M. Romanowski and T. McCarthy,
2009). Even more surprising was how much I related to everything she
taught.
Let's
start with the symptoms: feeling angry over minor inconveniences; unusual
irritability over the local way of life; overall feeling of dissatisfaction;
rising stress and distrust; a change in sleep patterns--wanting to sleep all
the time or not being able to sleep; excessive hand washing (OK, maybe this
last one is just the normal me...). It's safe to say I wasn't well.
But,
I protest, I wasn't always like this! Simply scrolling down to my earlier
posts reveal unmistakable proof of my genuine love for Chongqing, even to the
point of channeling the raspy voice of Rod Stewart (see the post titled
"Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?").
Case
and point, Stage One: The Honeymoon
Stage
-every
day is an adventure and you really enjoy discovering new things
-you're
blind to all your host nation's imperfections
-you
find so many things charming
Living
such a year protected by what could be considered a "superficial and
unrealistic experience of the [host] culture" made the crash into Stage Two that much more jarring and personally
heartbreaking: the Rejection Stage.
-the
little things you found charming at first now grate on your nerves
-judgmentalism
sets in
-you
are cynical, derogatory and sarcastic toward the host culture
-you
begin to wonder why you came to this strange land in the first place and how long you can last
How did I get here? In a matter of
months I went from rosy red to jaded green, and I am certain green is not my
color. My heart longed for the
naive bliss of my first year in Chongqing, but my mind couldn’t get past what
it had learned, and what it knew now was unsavory, unsettling, and
wholeheartedly unwanted.
This is why I’m grateful for grace. In reading one of Duane Elmer's
cross-cultural books, I realized that I had stopped trying to see the
persisting beauty of my adopted culture and instead saw only the obvious scars
of the fallen world. But grace is
powerful. By concerning myself
mostly with the brokenness around me, I eventually began overlooking His
presence in Chongqing and her people.
Elmer, therefore, encourages a proactive approach: "Look for the good
and the beautiful, and when you see it you will see [His] grace."
After
three years, I think I've finally reached Stage
Four: the Adjustment Stage: having an honest appreciation for my host
culture; becoming more empathetic and understanding that people are people—the
good, the bad, and the ugly; interacting more freely with the host culture as a
new cultural identity emerges; and gradually, seeing my host culture’s food,
habits, and customs—all things I thought I would never get used to—as normal.
I
invite you now to join me as I see my city with new eyes: renewed and refined
to see Chongqing’s persisting beauty—and ultimately the grace of her Creator.
