What Happens When You Become Familiar

While this may not be the nicest entry I have ever written, it hopefully illuminates the importance of getting to know a place and its people. Before my first real independent travel abroad (to China in the Fall of 2004), I was totally ignorant to the diversity and history of this part of the world. Not only was I ignorant, but I was actively stupid. Being unaware is fine... as long as you keep an open mind towards what you don’t know or understand. But deep-seated prejudices and pre-formed biases, on the other hand, are dangerous and stifle intellectual, as well as interpersonal growth. Anyway, I am sad to admit (as much for myself as for my privileged upbringing in an upper-middle class American town subject to the regular mistreatment of important issues and themes by the US education system) that prior to my arrival in China I had four distinct impressions: 1) All Chinese are short (Yao Ming had only just started to make waves in the NBA at the time), 2) All Chinese love to eat rice, 3) All Chinese know kung fu, and 4) All Chinese are really smart, especially when it comes to math. At the time, even with these mind-blowingly vague (and incorrect) notions of the people whose country I was about to make my temporary home, I would not have been able to distinguish one Chinese person from another, let alone someone born and raised in let’s say Korea, Japan, Thailand, or Indonesia…

Now I’d have to write a book if I were going to address one-by-one the ridiculous preconceptions of my past and how my impressions of China and Asia have changed over the last 5 years. So instead I’ll just move forward with a description of what happens when you keep your ears and eyes open and are committed to deepening your understanding – from more than one angle – of a certain subject, phenomenon, people, or place; your power of perception increases, along with your ability to discriminate between what’s true, what’s not, and what’s in between. You begin to develop nuanced opinions and are able to share your distinct, experience-based perspective. The real life value of this type of competence besides being able to write blog posts?... How about the capability of recognizing that the security guard you just made eye contact with looks like a cartoon character from the Mashimaro cartoon series?* Now that’s a good observation!

*Mashimaro is an animated rabbit personality created and designed by pair of Koreans named Kim Jae In and Jang Mi-Yeong. I spent the entire summer of 2007 living and working in South Korea, so its image, which is widely used as a marketing tool over there, is impossible to escape.