{"id":875,"date":"2016-12-15T19:15:38","date_gmt":"2016-12-15T19:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mindmaker.wordpress.com\/?p=875"},"modified":"2020-07-25T19:06:56","modified_gmt":"2020-07-25T17:06:56","slug":"how-living-abroad-expat-taught-me-about-my-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mapsofthemind.com\/2016\/12\/15\/how-living-abroad-expat-taught-me-about-my-country\/","title":{"rendered":"How Living Abroad Taught Me About My Country"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I left the UK in 2012 to go and live and work as an expat in Shanghai I obviously expected to learn a bit about China and its culture, but what I didn’t foresee\u00a0from the experience of living away was how I would learn about the country and culture I grew up in; England.<\/p>\n

\"London

A buddy in London – another in Shanghai<\/p><\/div>\n

I lived over a year in Shanghai, went onto South Korea, and after three years of living away I returned to my hometown. The day I returned I took the family dog out for a walk, a walk I’d taken a thousand times before, but there was an obvious difference this time\u00a0– it was fascinating. I saw my neighbourhood and its streets and people with new eyes. What used to be a typically mundane walk to the park had become an opportunity for insight into the lives of English people. I felt like a tourist. The variety of nationalities astounded me after the homogeneous populations of China and Korea, and I marvelled at the narrowly paved streets lined with houses and the traditional public house on the corner – how English! Sound boring? Well, it was for me too, that’s why I left! But on returning home everything was fresh and inspiring and I realised how much better I actually knew my country than when I had left a few years earlier.<\/p>\n

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.”<\/strong>
\n– T.S. Eliot\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Dog

Walking the dog – different this time<\/p><\/div>\n

Gaining A New Perspective<\/h2>\n
\n
\u201cOne thing about which fish know exactly nothing is water, since they have no anti-environment which would enable them to perceive the element they live in.\u201d
\n– Marshall McLuhan<\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Arriving in China I was struck by the obvious differences from English society; language, mainstream culture, education, architecture, social norms, food, transport – and naturally compared everything to how it was back home. I had a new reference point for all of the things that’d made up and influenced my life in England but which I’d never had any real perspective on because I’d never lived anywhere else. I discussed the differences with other expats and came to a new appreciation of different aspects of my home country\u00a0whilst discovering and exploring the wonders of my new life and home in the East.<\/p>\n

Living with the internet restrictions of Chinese society (no youtube, facebook etc.) gave me a gauge on the cyber liberty of the UK, and living under their dictatorial regime – where speaking out as a dissident and protesting are dangerous acts to be involved in – gave me a benchmark with which to compare the freedom of expression my friends and family could enjoy back home. Leaving my country had enabled me to see it in a new way.<\/p>\n

\n
\u275dThose who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.\u275e
\n\u2012 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe<\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n

New perspectives can totally reshape what has become mundane, boring or even invisible. After learning how to read and write Hangul – the entirely phonetic, syllabic and incredibly easy to learn alphabet of Korea (seriously, you can learn it in a day) – I realised how poorly designed English is as a written language. Indeed, Hangul was designed to be easy – it was created by King Sejong in 1443 in an effort to increase literacy rates and to lessen the power and wealth gap.<\/p>\n

\"Hangul

A couple of words in Hangul – it’s easier than it looks<\/p><\/div>\n

By comparison, English is a clunky mongrel language – spelling, pronunciation and usage have evolved and mutated in as many and as varied ways as the places our words came from. Whilst I could easily have learnt this information without ever leaving England, the necessity of learning other languages forced these considerations into my consciousness and gave me an experiential appreciation of what would’ve been purely theoretical knowledge.<\/p>\n

There Is No End To Discovery<\/h2>\n

Language is just one example and there is seemingly no end to the new insights one can gain by delving into another culture. After three years in the far East I felt like I’d barely scratched the surface, yet had still found countless new perspectives on all manner of things that I’d never really considered back home; from greetings; handshakes vs. bows, to social outlooks; individualism vs. collectivism.<\/p>\n