The many faces of culture shock









Culture shock is "a state of bewilderment and distress experienced by an individual who is suddenly exposed to a new, strange, or foreign social and cultural environment" (Dictionary.com). What the formal definition leaves out is the many ways this bewilderment plays itself out. In addition to confusion, culture shock can show itself as irritability, suspiciousness, or fear.

When we arrived a couple of days ago, I could access my blog. Then abruptly, my blog was cut off-- I could neither see it, nor post. This has happened before when I visited China, a function of their information control, people say. Our dear friend Dennis Cope is doing the postings, which I send him via my Gmail. It's a nuisance not seeing it, but I knew to expect the problem.

Then today, I could get on the Internet. I have several email accounts, but none took my password. Joe couldn't access his either. Our passwords kept being rejected. I tried changing the password on my yahoo account, but it didn't help. I phoned the aide at International Programs, a lovely young man who calls himself "William." But when I reached him, he was climbing the Great Wall of China with a number of other visitors and could not determine the problem over the phone. There was no one else I could ask.

Email is my lifeline to the US. With it, I communicate with my office, keep track of my family, check on the well-being of my cats. Not to having it makes me panicky and suspicious.

While no one would describe me as a virulent anti-Communist; I do possess some predictable American attitudes toward the political system here. I imagined my blog had offended some Chinese official and my access email had been revoked. I wondered what would happen to me and my husband. Less troubled than I, Joe suggested we visit a grocery store, since we were out of orange juice. Then Joe disappeared in one of the aisles, and I imagined he'd been arrested. Suddenly, I remembered we had not registered with the American Embassy-- something American visitors to China should do. It was only when I discovered my husband scrutinizing labels on Chinese snack foods did I begin to consider that I might be overreacting.

Back at the apartment, I discovered did some research and learned that my Yahoo account was not taking cookies. I tried to change the settings, but I had trouble because here, toolbar directions come up in Chinese. I monkeyed around with things using a Chinese/English
dictionary, but had no luck.

I don't know how Joe did it, but he figured out we needed to lower security settings, and so we're back in touch with the world. It's my fifth visit to China, but I'm still not immune to culture shock.