Today, Sunday morning, I sit thinking and typing at my computer. My thoughts are in my homeland, India and my body is in China. The body is here and mind there for a good reason. Mr. Hu is president and I am resident and both are in each other?s countries (what a difference the absence of one small letter makes!). Mr. Hu will return in a few days and I will stay on longer. Mr. Hu is important to the world and I am to my family and hopefully, to friends and students.
Mr. Hu discusses economics and politics and other important worldly things with his counterparts across the globe and I ruminate on life, love, nature and other sundry things that sometimes have some meaning for some students and friends. My actions and decisions drive a microcosmic economy of a family. Mr. Hu?s every word and actions drive the economy of a large, growing nation and billions of people across the world and what he will say or do in India may affect me, too, perhaps in significant ways.
There is a lot of excitement in India these days about the potential of these two ancient nations and the growing cooperation between them (bilateral trade expected to surpass US$ 20 billion this year). In India, the excitement is not merely limited to businessmen and politicians but spans across the nation and touches the hearts of the common man, too. Some canny and forward-looking students are taking up Chinese with the same enthusiasm that many Chinese students are showing for English. They know that knowledge of Chinese will gave their careers a huge push and that little advantage which often makes so much difference, like the lack of a ?p? in my resident status.
Today, I am a foreign teacher, and a little more, in China and some time later, I imagine, many of those reading this article might be ?foreign teachers? in India, Europe, the US or perhaps in Brazil, Russia or Africa. Foreign teachers are like mini ambassadors who help build small bridges of understanding, cooperation and respect between their homelands and adopted countries. Their success in another land is incumbent on their ability to accept a different way of life and to accept it deep within their hearts. If they continue to feel ?foreign? they will remain just that and become a curiosity among the people. The feeling of being an ?outsider? in an alien land can be emotionally devastating for most and is caused largely by one?s actions rather than non-acceptance by others.
To live and work in another land and to understand another culture, its people, their minds and way of life is a singularly exciting experience that is a journey within as much as it is outside. Through discovering an outside world we also discover an inner one. And, as we learn to adapt to new external situations so do we learn to accept ourselves as we are, ironing out the creases of prejudices and stereotypes in our hearts and minds. It helps us emerge new, refreshed and energized with a zest for life, love and nature.
While we live in the external world, our real lives are internal ones?that is where we experience a rainbow of emotions. That is where we feel happiness and sadness, despair and elation. We exist outside but we live inside.
I have been in China a little more than four years and while I might appear a ?foreigner? to untrained eyes here, inside me I feel ?bendi de? (local). Sometimes, when I return home to India during the holidays, my relatives and friends remark how I look Chinese. I suppose I look somewhat foreign to them. But, inside I feel as Indian in India as I feel Chinese in China. And, as long as China and India keep coming closer, as they were once upon a time, I will continue to integrate into a Chindian?a man with one body and mind but two mothers, India and China.
Mr. Hu is in India and this is who I am in China!
Rajesh Kanoi (Jack) is a published writer, now living and working in China. Many of his short-stories, poems and articles have been published, including a book of short-stories, 'From China With Love' (Lipstick Publishing).
To order a copy of my book, please visit: http://www.lipstickpublishing.com/chin.htm
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