When I spent that year living in Shenzhen, one of the biggest problems I had was not making many friends. This has never been an issue for me in any other living situation – be it growing up, at summer camp, at college, or in my twenty-something life here in New York. I’m plenty likable, plenty outgoing, and take a genuine interest in hearing about other people’s passions.
To illustrate my point, I’m excluding, for the moment, the group of foreign English teachers that were part of my program. Those were my closest friends, and I’m still in touch with many of them. We all lived in different neighborhoods and worked at separate schools, but met up in the center of the city to study, eat and go out, and spent vacations on extended travels together. They were a fantastic, adventurous group of people, and I can probably thank them for my sanity.
However, I wasn’t able to develop a legitimate friendship with nearly any Chinese people, which was distressing to me. It was definitely a culture – not language – barrier, as my Chinese language skills were decent (not fluent) and many many people spoke good English.
It’s hard for me to articulate this situation without coming off as racist and judgmental. Through my whole series of “Living in China” entries, being able to explain why I didn’t make Chinese friends is the subject that I’ve been dying to explore.
I’m going to do a little informal research among others who have lived in China for extended periods of time and complete this thought. I have a lot to say, but it’s tangled up with emotions right now. I’ll be back.
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