The Displaced Nation

A home for international creatives

China — just TV, fantasy

1 Comment Posted by on March 20, 2011

When I was an expat in Japan, I enjoyed going to talks at various expat clubs. It made me feel more in touch with thinkers and trends from my former world.

Sometimes, however, this “old reality” dose can highlight just how displaced you are.

Nancy Lewis, who teaches English in Shanghai, furnishes a brilliant example of this in a March 9 post on her blog, Wandering Solo, about a book talk hosted by Shanghai Dolls Book Club. The speaker was Emma Donoghue, an Irish writer who lives in Canada. Her most recent novel, Room, was shortlisted for last year’s Man Booker Prize. It tells the story of a woman who is trapped in a close, sustained relationship with her captor-rapist from the point of view of the five-year-old child, Jack, who is the offspring of their union. Jack has lived in the 11-by-11-foot room of the title with his mother since the day he was born.

Donoghue acknowledges that she was inspired to write the book by the Elisabeth Fritzle case.

Lewis enjoyed Donoghue’s talk so much — she found her “warm and engaging, with a great sense of humor” — that she went home and downloaded the book on her Kindle, spending the rest of the evening engrossed in the story.

What’s more, Lewis concluded that the boy’s view — he sees everything inside the Room as real, and everything outside as TV, fantasy — has something in common with how she views her own life in Shanghai:

When I’m at home, I’m alone in my 10-foot by 10-foot bedroom, reading or studying or chatting with friends on Skype. When I’m at work, I’m surrounded by Westerners – people like me. (Since we’re writing English language learning materials, we’re all native speakers of English.)

My contact with Chinese life is short & intermittent – the morning commute on the subway, a 10-second conversation with a shop keeper, giving directions to the taxi driver. …

Every once in a while, I have to remind myself that I live in China. China! CHINA?! How did that happen? It’s not an altogether real part of my life. My job is real, my room is real, my Western friends are real. But China? China is just TV. Fantasy.

 

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PHOTO: Sea of green

Leave a comment Posted by on March 17, 2011

For the past 43 years, the Chicago River has turned green on March 17. So the residents of New York City’s East Village didn’t blink an eye when the water in the street near an Irish bar turned green this year as well. It seemed plausible to many of us that a leprechaun had been crying a river wondering why Irish Americans are more Irish than the Irish. (His eyes had not been smiling…)

“Is it a case of far away hills being greener?” he lamented with a keen.

You see, Dublin is quiet on St. Patrick’s Day, but American cities are anything but…

UPDATE: By the following morning, the green water had magically evaporated, proving we’d been right to give short shrift to the skeptic who insisted it was an antifreeze leak.

image: E. 10th St., NYC, by mlawanohara

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Some tart comments on the sweetness of American food

Leave a comment Posted by on March 17, 2011

The two-year-old blogging relationship between UK-based American Mike Harling and US-based Brit Toni Summers Hargis has entered a sweet phase. Mike wrote on Pond Parleys the other day:

I was surprised, on our recent visit, at how sweet America was: the beer, the bread, the pretzels (sugar-coated pretzels—honest to God) and even, oddly enough, the candy. And if it wasn’t infused with sugar, it was too salty and/or covered in cinnamon. After nearly ten years in UK, I found it all a bit too cloying.

Toni agreed, throwing in a recipe for marshmallow fruit salad, while also defending British food against its reputation for being too bland.

Most commentators agreed that American food is too sweet but less because of sugar as of additives like high fructose corn syrup and trans fats. One US-based Brit opined:

The epitome of American sugary ‘candy’ … has to be the easter ‘peeps’ that my dear mother-in-law is guaranteed to give us and which will stay in the cupboard in all their food-colouring sugariness until I throw them out next year to make space for the more recent offering.

Another British expat to the U.S., however, noted that she can’t tolerate canned baked beans in either country because of their over-sweetness. She went on to say she’d developed a liking for America’s apple pretzels as well as cinnamon flavoring. “I may have to make apple crumble tomorrow,” she wrote.

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When tragedy strikes, should you listen to the home government?

Leave a comment Posted by on March 17, 2011

Not if it’s Japan, apparently. More and more foreigners are opting to leave in the wake of the nuclear radiation threat — even those who aren’t being relocated by their companies.

A 22-year-old Aussie explained his decision to abandon his home in Fukushima and get on the next Qantas flight, as follows:

My message is don’t listen to the Japanese media, don’t listen to the Japanese Government because they’re trying to keep Japanese people calm, which I completely understand, but I don’t think that they’re giving the full truth. I think that by not telling people the complete truth, people aren’t able to make rational decisions, and the only rational decision at the moment is to get out.

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Bye for now, world!

7 Comments Posted by on March 17, 2011

Detail of Chinese Ship by Fra Mauro, public domainAND A WARM HELLO to all international travelers, be they backpackers, globetrotters, expats, rexpats, repats, or armchair dreamers. We have created a country for those of you who have traveled for so long and crossed so many cultures that you don’t seem to belong anywhere else.

The best way to gain entry is to subscribe to our posts!

Perhaps you are a little anxious as we aren’t in the guidebooks. Let us reassure you. While not a storybook paradise, the Displaced Nation is beguilingly otherwordly and exotic, full of twisting vines, golden cobwebs, and silky-haired monkeys. It is the kind of place that entices you to stay because of all the wonders and sources of inspiration you find within.

But before we get carried away with the pleasantness of it all, a few ground rules. While we haven’t got a constitution or a bill of rights, we expect our citizens to behave with the sort of decorum that has earned them a place in other people’s cultures for so long.

Also, please don’t be affronted if you find some of our instincts counterintuitive. For instance, we are great believers in navigating the new world with old maps. Our generation may have big dreams, but let’s face it, many of our forbears were great adventurers, too. Are we any less clueless than they were? A dose of humility is in order.

Cheers,

The Displaced Nation Team

image: Detail of map made around 1450 by the Venetian monk Fra Mauro, courtesy Wikimedia

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