Insider and Outsider

After graduating from college, I went back to Chengdu last month first time in seven years. I was lost in the city, and I couldn't find the gate of my college! The real estate has doubled its value in less than five years in Chengdu and where my parents currently reside. I sometimes read about how the maps of some cities in China have to be updated in every few weeks. I also heard how people outside of China were amazed by the pace of developments and changes in China. Every time I went back to China, I felt like I had to catch up so many new things, and sometimes I even felt myself like a person who was coming from the countryside visiting the big cities.

For the first few years in the US, I was so occupied by experiencing the US: studying in English, making American friends and friends from all over the world, doing part-time jobs, traveling in the US, etc. Then I was trying to understand the US and Americans. It was then that I recognized there were so many things different between the US and China. I grew up in China immersing in Chinese culture, Chinese education, and Chinese values. I have taken them for granted and haven't thought about them intellectually, or at all: how the Chinese think and behave, how those thoughts and behaviors relate to Chinese values, culture, history, etc. The feeling of ignorance of China and the Chinese was frightening. I borrowed a book titled "My Country and My People" by Lin Yutang published in 1930s about China and the Chinese people. This book is a little bit outdated. However, I still found it useful.

When I started the PhD program in urban planning three years ago, I saw studying China and Chinese become popular in the US and other parts of the world as China has gradually emerged as an important international player thanks to her fast economic development. More and more news on different aspects of China could be found in the US major media. I got to know the changes in China through different media both from the west and the east. However, the gigantic size of China often results in grasping information/facts on China uncompleted. The reports in the media only reflected part of truth.