A few years ago, my husband Ben, who is a nutritionist and permaculture advocate, wanted to have a community farm on the campus of the university. He gathered signatures, made a proposal, and created a budget for making this garden a reality. It took several months, but he, with the support of my colleagues, was able to figure out who to talk to and where he could have the farm.
Since the university was new and all the plant life on the grounds was being audited and taken care of by an outside company, we couldn’t have any land. However, they would give us a box. In other words, we would have a raised bed garden. This actually worked out quite well for us because then we could fill this box with good soil. We had to buy that soil ourselves, but it was fine. We got very good soil from the north west of China, which wasn’t itself very eco-friendly, but we wanted the best for the vegetables to grow well.
Once the box was made, they placed it in the location we were given. We then took the soil we’d had delivered to campus to the area where the box was. It was a day full of excitement. Months of work was finally culminating into the product that had motivated our actions in the first place. All we needed to do now was fill the box with soil, add some water, and maybe even plant some seeds!
However, when we reached the box with our piles of soil, it was already full.
The soil in the box did not look very good. The color was not very good, but it was already in the box. We were not sure what to do. Where did this soil come from? Should we just try using it and save the soil we bought for later or a future box? We did hope to expand the garden eventually. If we did take the soil out and use the soil we bought, where would we put all the soil that was in the box when we got here? There was some discussion, but we decided to remove the soil from the box.
This took a lot of work. It wasn’t a very big box, but it took 3 people, taking turns, to dig the dirt out of the box. Notice my change in vocabulary from soil to dirt here. In the dirt, we found plastic bags and even a plastic bottle. As we dug up all the dirt and trash in the box, we were glad we had decided to remove it and replace it with the soil we had. Nothing good would have grown from that dirt.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure the person who filled the box with dirt thought that they were doing us a favor by filling the box with something akin to soil where one could grow vegetables. However, the end result was not what we were hoping to find.
So why this story? How does this relate to intercultural encounters?
It has helped me to conceptualize why intercultural encounters are so difficult to manage in many cases. We all arrive at these encounters with our boxes full of ideas about the “other.” As one can see from the blog “Where are you from?” There are many, many layers to that question. In order to have a Chinese person really understand and legitimize my identity as I see it, requires me to dig out all the dirt in their box. This dirt might have plastic bags and other trash that is simply untrue. And this goes both ways. I’m no expert in the 5,000 years of Chinese history. My interpretations of my interlocutors words and actions may be very far off the mark.
Add to all that the complexity of different languages.
I remember one time at the grocery store, a woman behind me in line just walks in front of me and puts her groceries down. I was immediately incensed. What was it about standing in a line and waiting your turn that was so difficult for Chinese people? Or is it just that they feel foreigners take too long to do everything because they obviously can’t speak the language or don’t use the convenient Alipay app?
Ben seeing that I was upset said, “She’s just cold.” This is something she apparently had been complaining to her friend about in Shanghainese, a completely different Chinese language than Mandarin that I do not know. You see, the line for the check out is right by the fridges. I was also cold. The further back in the line you are, the colder it is. This person was just putting her stuff down to keep her place in the line and then moving away a bit to an area that wasn’t as cold.
I have had so many instances of a person trying to cut the line in China, any action that looks like this behavior, will be immediately judged as such. Also, my habitual reaction of anger will also come into play.
So, we all have these boxes. As we learn more about other cultures, we may replace some of our dirt and trash with good soil, but it takes many years to do that. It also takes a lot of effort, just like that small garden box took three of us, in the blazing sun, taking turns to finally get all the dirt out. When I encounter a stranger in China these days, I normally don’t bother trying to dig any dirt out of their box.
Just two weeks ago, a Didi (China’s Uber) driver asked me, “Are there any cars in your country?” You can imagine that there are many ways to answer that question. In this case, I just blinked a few times and answered simply, “Yes.”
This is a big change in attitude from a few years ago when I was shopping for a warm, elegant shawl to wear over my wedding dress, since I would be having the US ceremony in winter. As I looked at a shawl I liked, the owner pointed out that this would be good for a winter wedding, but “You won’t need that in your country.” I asked, “What country am I from?” She hesitated before responding, “India?” I just put the item down and walked out of the store. I bought the exact same thing a few stores down.
In the first scenario, the Didi driver drops me off feeling great. He’s just talked to a foreigner, and he showed his knowledge of her cultural background (He went on to tell me about the African leaders that were visiting China at that time to discuss partnerships with China). His assumption that I am coming to China from Africa, the continent, is inaccurate, but I would need more than a 15 minute car ride to unpack that box, so I just let it go. In the second scenario, the woman probably felt bad, but more than anything, she probably felt angry and defensive. “Why is she so sensitive? How am I supposed to know where she’s from? I just made a simple comment.” Leaving someone angry and defensive isn’t going to foster much intercultural communication and understanding.
If I don’t have time to dig up the box, I just go along with whatever is coming out of a person’s mouth. If I have more time with a person, I may spend more time shoveling the dirt out of their box. But this job is not something just one person can do. We both have to work on both of our boxes, and I don’t just mean by asking each other questions. My father-in-law learned a lot on his own about Jamaica after an awkward conversation about where it was located. I think he knows more about Jamaica now than I do.
Sometimes I just don’t have the time or energy to dig up all the dirt in a person’s box, and if I feel that a person would like to persist in their inaccurate understanding of who I am, I just let them. I’ll never be understood by all the people in China, or in any other country for that matter. However, I can find a few people who are willing to work together to better understand each other.
The Reversal
When I told my director, Don Snow, about the Didi driver who asked me if there were cars in my country, he laughed a lot harder than I expected. He then took out his textbook Encounters with Westerners and reminded me of this situation he entitles “Cars.”
Dear Fran,
I’m studying in America, and last week one of my American classmates invited me home for dinner. While my friend was helping her mother get dinner ready, her father and I sat down in the living room to talk. First he asked me what I thought of America and how I liked it here, especially what I thought of all the large buildings and traffic. Then he asked me if there were any cars in China.
I thought this was a pretty ignorant question and was a little shocked by it. How can Americans know so little about an important country like China?
Sincerely,
Ming
The truth is, we all know a lot less about the world around us than we think we do.
**The featured image is from the community garden on the university campus.
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