Us and Them

The last month has beaten me down with a variety of winter illnesses, always striking over the weekend or right at the beginning of the week when I’ve time to write. But now I’m healthier and ready to blog!

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It seems like a truism that living abroad would make you more respectful of the differences between peoples, more understanding of the common humanity of nations around the world or, at least, more culturally sensitive and savvy.

Not always, I’m finding.

All too easily, a bit of stress or shock is all it takes to scrape off our thin veneer of respect and sensitivity and reveal a mentality of “Us and Them” that we share with expatriates of the earlier eras. I’m as guilty as the next expat, but I plead remorse and reflection in hopes it spares my traveling soul.

Many times, living here, I find myself slipping into the feeling that I am fighting against a tide. I’m battling waves of men spitting on the sidewalk, grandmothers letting their baby defecate in the street, hoards jostling to get on the subway before anyone has gotten off, or boys driving their motor scooters up a crowded sidewalk. I become convinced that I am being targeted because I’m foreign, ---that they try to snatch my cab because they know I can’t swear at them and won’t resist that much.

And always, always, it’s about “them.” We know better than to speak too often of “The Chinese,” as it rings of unmitigated colonial racism, so it becomes a vague pronoun that somehow serves only to make it worse. “They” are a nameless, faceless mass of black-haired spitters, hawkers, smokers, and thieves who are bent upon popping the bubble of happier, cleaner, quieter, more decent and ---though we so don't want to say it--- more Western ways, we try endlessly to puff up around us.

At school, some items of value have gone missing and we are painfully quick to accuse “Them.” (I can’t help but say “We,” though I find myself in complete disagreement with my colleagues.) Some suggest, with an attempt at earnest sympathy, that times are hard and wages are low, the problem would be solved if we paid them more. With money comes morals, after all, as evidenced so well in the US right now. Others, almost choking on their own racism, ask, “Who else could it be, you know, they have the keys?” The thought never occurs to “us,” of course, that it could be one of “us.” Worse yet, though, is the unspoken reality that we do not even know most of “their” names. When we talk about who may have stolen what, we have to describe faces and haircuts. “Us” and “them” is just all we know.

There is no chance for them to become our friends, or at least gain the sort of names, lives and identities that forestall the merger into "Them" ness. Here, just as long ago, expats can and are expected to satisfy every aspect of their social life, from going to church to joining a sports team, in their own little bubble. Even where the opportunity exists for Us and Them to meet and know each the other, at work, the language and precedent does not.

Saddest of all, perhaps, is how this descent into dichotomies seems almost inevitable when we stop traveling and start living abroad. Living abroad gives us the opportunity to see a country in a depth beyond shallowness of the spectacular. But once we have settled in, once the awe and excitement fades, we find that below the surface is the murky, dark and cold. The day-in-and-out grinding of the unfamiliar and uncomfortable leads us to forget a little of why we came. After a stressful week at work, we enter the weekend bent on living our own life, finding decent Mexican food and a book to read. Sometimes, a new park or an old building knocks us back to a state of happy amazement and dizzy intrigue with China. But all too often it goes the other way. A crazed driver and errant elbow combine to make us discard all thought of the incomparable complexity and majesty of this 4000 year-old civilization and to focus exclusively on all that divides “Us” and “Them.”