this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
205 points (99.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43935 readers
542 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I lived in China for a year after college, and that was basically fine since I was already pretty knowledgeable about the country and I went into it expecting to be off balance and that there would be a lot of new things. What was a surprise was the culture shock when I came back to the US. I don't think that the jet lag helped, but I remember feeling really really out of sorts for about a week and just generally in a bit of shock about how different life was here having largely not been exposed to it for a year.
Came here to say something similar, but I never adjusted and just ended up leaving the States again for good.
Interesting how it went the other way.
What stood out in particular?
A few things, how empty and clean it was in comparison (I lived in a city at the time, which could show you how dense Beijing is, like everywhere you go is the most crowded place you have ever been). I also remember waking up from jet lag and my brother was watching that puppet comedy guy on tv and thinking what the fuck is going on here. I was pretty unplugged while I was over there (fall of 2004) so I essentially missed that whole election cycle which was honestly really nice, it sucked that Bush got reelected, but it was good to not be steeped in it while it happened. Since I had a very rudimentary grasp of mandarin at the time I wasn't really engaging which Chinese pop culture either so I was basically just hanging out and talking to people which was really nice. Chinese social interactions are a lot more structured as well, which I found very refreshing at the time, I didn't have enough of a grasp of the language to be awkward so that was also really fun.