“That place changes you, man” he said to me, “Big time”.

When he came back to the US, where things were supposed to be better, sometimes they weren’t.

Sometimes they were just different. He had nightmares. He took to drinking heavily.

That he went to Vietnam in 1993, and travelled there as a sex tourist isn’t really relevant to the point i’m trying to make, instead living in Asia does change you, despite what I wrote before.

Now I don’t want to be the “this is what i’m learning in this foreign land” kind of asshole, but maybe this will be of use to you. Or me.

A few things you realize after living in China for a little bit:

People take themselves too seriously in the US.

In China there’s so many people that you can’t possibly be important and not much is serious.

This is actually very freeing. Sometimes I’ll write something stupid here or Facebook,  act like an idiot at a bar, in front of coworkers– whatever— and I just don’t care anymore.

Not that I don’t care about people in the US or what they think about me, I just don’t personally think it’s important what I say or how I behave (with limits of course).

Eating Weird Stuff Stops Being Weird

I was a pussy about eating certain stuff when I first got here. A shrimps head? Oh no! Now I just toss them in the old wood chipper as if they were any other food. It’s food. I used to ask people what something was before I ate it. Is this pork? chicken? beef? Like I somehow have some principles about what i’ll eat. I eat cows and pigs and chickens because people in my country have been doing so for a long time. I didn’t really choose it or anything. Once you eat some weird crap and it makes you full, and not sick, and it starts to taste sorta good– well you add it to the stuff you’ll eat.

Chinese people would be appalled that Andrew Zimmern makes a ducal salary on a show eating “Bizarre Foods” that they pay top dollar to eat willingly.

You’re On Your Own Kid

Whether you’re in the US or China or anywhere else, you’re pretty much on your own. I think it just becomes more pronounced when you’re somewhat isolated compared with your regular life. Maybe the movie Lost In Translation touched on this, I don’t know, I’ve never seen it.

But being on your own— or realizing that you are— is a great step towards self-sufficiency. So many of people’s problems come from being disappointed, let down, betrayed or hurt by other people. Because i’m surrounded by a billion people and yet I feel somewhat alone (not lonely really)  isn’t so much a commentary on modern metropolitan city life as it is a commentary on life. You’re alone. Accept it. It’s good. There, now go meet other people and act accordingly.

Two Examples Of This:

If i’m having a bad time at a bar, and I want to leave, I don’t have any sort of “well you gotta stick with your people” ideas, I say fuck off to my friends and go somewhere else. It feels pretty good. I’m in China, I don’t even know you assholes.

Chinese people are notorious for just disappearing or having very truncated goodbyes. You might have a great dinner with a friend and afterward they might just be like “Ok bye” and turn and walk the other direction. The other night after a company dinner I was like “Where’d William go?” and they were like “He’s Chinese, he saw his bus and left”.

How many times have you stayed too long during the unwinding period? God knows I have.

Take Your Time

Take Your Time is an english figure of speech that Chinese people like a lot. I always feel like I need to rush or hurry up with things and I have no idea why. Here dinner takes 4 hours or more. Why eat dinner and rush to the bar? The bar can be right where dinner is, unless you’re not with the people you want to be with, in which case just get up and leave.

I have no idea why i’m rushing most of the time the same reason I have no idea why I say “you too” when a waiter tells me to enjoy my meal.

Um, I mean if you eat later, I say.

I’ve Calmed Down A Lot

This is similar to not taking myself so seriously and also taking my time, but I’m just a lot calmer here. The other day I asked the taxi cab to take me to Wal-Mart so I could buy a room heater. He takes me to a hooker street.

I know i’m not in the right place but I just shrug it off and start walking back towards my place. I see a group of 20 soldiers standing around. I walk up to the one in the fanciest uniform (supposing he’s the bossman and is the most educated> speaks english) and ask “Do you know where wal-mart is?”. Silence.

In Chinese I ask.

Silence, then he begins to speak and then the whole group laughs at me. “Wall-marrrt” he says. Normally this kind of thing would really piss me off. I just shrugged it off and said “Yeah ha ha (sarcastically) i’m a white guy and i’m lost ha ha. I get it”. And seriously, from their perspective, probably the first white guy they saw this month lost in whore-town, it’s probably pretty funny.

On my walk I found a crappy store and they sold heaters.

After I got in a cab and my phone was dead (I keep a collection of chinese texts with important addresses in my phone) and I was forced to give directions in Chinese. And despite what I said before about not absorbing any mandarin, it worked.

I told him my street and street number and where it’s near: it was like someone else was talking through my mouth.

You Can Try To Explain It To People, But They Don’t Really Care

I want to communicate to people what its like here and how it’s changing me and then I realize they don’t particularly care and also the time difference makes it so everyone is always off-beat with you. When it’s Friday night at 2am my friends are sitting in their office watching the clock at noon. Try having a conversation about being dropped in whore town and soldiers ridiculing you when you’re lost and then alas, finding a heater after all! And I spoke useful Mandarin! —- while you’re friend is staring at a spreadsheet pretending to work.

Doesn’t quite translate.