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Was he in China? Culture shock can be quite devastating. And you might think that after 3 1/2 years that you get used to your new environment, but it can actu

Was he in China? Culture shock can be quite devastating. And you might think that after 3 1/2 years that you get used to your new environment, but it can actually get progressively worse. I was pretty lucky that when I moved to Japan I instantly felt at home. I've seen people pretty much melt down from the stress of having all their values brought into question and everything that they thought was common sense thrown out of the window. Even when you have a good gig and you love what you are doing, it can be impossible to continue. The worst bit is that it can actually be harder to return because without knowing it, you can change. And everything your remember about home is a little different. I remember the first time I went abroad, when I returned I felt that I lost my home. It took me years to find a new one.

sho_hn 10y ago
This rings true. I'm a German living in Korea, and there's a fair number of Western foreigners here who eventually grow restless and unhappy, or even embittered. It's usually the people who came for economic reasons, without strong interest in or ties to Korean culture - they have no positives to be able to offset the sometimes very real negatives, and it slowly whittles them away. It's not smart to move somewhere if you don't have a couple of sure-fire things you know you will get joy out of on a consistent basis at the destination.
- da02 10y ago
  What brought you to Korea? Did you learn some of the Korean language before moving?
  - sho_hn 10y ago
    Yep, I went to school in Berlin to study Korean for quite some time before the move, along with self-study before that. Basically, at some point I turned my hobbies into my career, so I needed new hobbies/outlets and ended up picking "learn Korean" for a bunch of reasons (I had done some light work on a CJK input stack and feel in love with Hangeul in a geeky sort of way, a layman's interest in linguistics, some Korean colleagues/acquaintances and a strong interest in the pop culture and history - music, movies, contrasting Korea's 20th century with Germany's, etc.). Over time this and spending some time in the country changed the make-up of my social circle a lot (more and more people also learning Korean, or being involved with Korea somehow, e.g. ... being Korean :). Eventually I moved over and basically already had a support network of local friends and activities (people to hang out with, a weekly engineer meet-up, etc.) so it went pretty smoothly. I've been here long enough now that the honeymoon period is definitely over and I've seen a fair amount of the pressures/stresses of life in Korea either up-close or as people close to me went through them. Yet I enjoy so much of what's going in and what's available, and the people close to me, so it's a good life. Many Western foreigners in Korea are in a very different place. There's a large swath that came over in 2007-2011 as English teachers after the US recession, because $13.5/hour for English teaching in Seoul beat $7.50/hour at Starbucks in Des Moines, and that's all they could do with a sub-optimal undergrad degree. Yet that job offers a promotion path to almost none (along with many English schools in Korea being more or less scam businesses, not-so-wholesome) and they often don't acquire any marketable skills good for anything else while doing it, and the money made as an English teacher isn't good enough to support anything but a bachelor lifestyle in Seoul. And they often don't speak Korean and don't feel any strong ties to Korean culture. That can get pretty stressful and frustrating.
    - mikekchar 10y ago
      That's really interesting because it is very similar to my reasons for going to Japan. I made a semi-random choice to learn Japanese. Because I was busy with work, I couldn't really afford the time to study properly and I made the fateful decision to move to Japan so that learning Japanese would be one of my job requirements ;-) I really think that language is a gateway to the culture. It hacks with your mind so that things you wouldn't accept without the language, seem completely reasonable with it. In Japan (and I suspect it might be similar in Korea) language is often the only real barrier for being accepted by other people in the culture. You go from being some scary foreigner, to being a semi-celebrity that everyone wants to talk to (hmmm... it probably helps that I live in the countryside ;-) ).
      - brutus1213 10y ago
        I'm really interested learning mandarin some day day. Can you describe how you managed to get started with Japanese? I have a 1 year old so all free time currently goes to her and the Mrs. I think I also don't work very efficiently .. so need to fix that too.
        mikekchar 10y ago
        Ha ha! I really need to write this down in a central location (again... because I slowly refine my opinion). As briefly as I can put it: Strap on the seat belt because you will be working on the language for a long time if your goal is adult level proficiency and fluency. 5 year olds have about a 5000 word vocabulary and add about 1000 words every year until they reach about 18-20 (depending on if they go to university). There are about 1500 grammar structures to learn in an average language (this last stat is pulled out of my ass, but I think it's about right). There is no course, nor video, nor software that will get you anywhere beyond absolute beginner level. You will be lucky if you manage to talk like a 5 year old. Very long story short (and slightly controversial): You will acquire language by comprehending input that is repeated enough times to remember it. I personally believe that you need to also have a way to test your assumptions (but my opinion is not echoed in the scientific literature -- just my opinion). Way to success: Learn to read. It is your secret weapon. Pinyin is fine for helping you learn the readings for hanzi, but do not get into the habit of reading pinyin. There are about 3600 (IIRC) Chinese characters that you need to know to be functionally literate (there are others in use, but you will be able to devine there meanings through context). The Chinese characters are made up of building blocks and are not especially difficult to learn. They also provide a very powerful mnemonic for vocabulary. Remember that if your goal is adult level proficiency, you will need 15K+ words. The 3K characters will dramatically increase the speed at which you can learn the vocabulary because the system is very logical. My biggest suggestion is to read. Whatever you like. However, since there is a strong tradition of manwa (comic books) in Chinese, which handily use conversational language, this would be my way to go. Learn grammar through example. Some people like to learn grammar. You can, but you don't have to. It's a double edged sword. It helps you figure out the meaning of sentences. However, it also makes you believe that you can construct sentences using these rules and have it make sense. This is incorrect. This is why non-native speakers have all these bizarre grammar ticks when they speak. Use spaced repetition software to help you (I recommend Anki). There should be a vocabulary list of the basic words somewhere. The first 2-3000 of these are probably worth memorising. After that you should switch your focus to learning vocabulary through context (because the meanings will be subtly different than their English counterparts). Read, read, read. Last piece of advice is the most important and feel free to ignore everything else I've said. If you do not do this, I think it is impossible to succeed: Study every day. Better to study twice a day. Better to study three times a day. 5 minutes 3 times a day is better than 30 minutes once a day. 30 minutes once a day is better than 7 hours once a week. (And in fact, anything less than 4 times a week will have you reaching a ceiling pretty quickly and staying there forever). Also: Never give up. Good luck!
- hocuspocus 10y ago
  I lived nearly 5 years in Korea and it was indeed gradually driving me crazy. I didn't move for economic reasons and I was enjoying enough positives to make the negatives bearable, but in my case the lack of fulfillment at work eventually became too much. That said I have two friends who stayed in Korea but moved to a more reasonable company (Coupang) and they're having a good time.
  - sho_hn 10y ago
    What did you work as? A lot of Western foreigners in Korea work as English teachers, which indeed rarely offers any sort of long-term promotion path (see my longer comment). Even outside of that it's very easy to run into a glass ceiling as a foreigner though, yeah. There's relatively few companies where you can work your way up into lead or management positions - though this is often because foreigners simply don't acquire the Korean skills they'd need to manage Koreans. There's some amount of luck and strategizing your career path involved to make it work, and that does leave you with narrow paths to the goal. Engineering and market research/business are probably the easiest fields at least. Don't get me wrong, I'm not really blaming anyone for failing to make it work and getting out. There's a lot of wishes/desires (in choice of job, in choice of lifestyle, etc.) that are legitimately and totally incompatible with life in Korea as a foreigner, yet have nothing wrong about them.
    - hocuspocus 10y ago
      I was a software engineer at the company that makes exploding smartphones. I still had plenty of headroom regarding promotions, and I'd argue that Korean skills are a double-edged sword. In big and rigid corporations, saying that you need luck is an understatement. Short of your VP being fired, it's typically impossible to make significant moves within your company.
      - sho_hn 10y ago
        Thanks for sharing. Regarding Korean skills being a double-edged sword, yeah, expectations leveled against you rise with your skills, and there's a high bar before those skills really pay off meaningfully (in a job context - in private life they pay off almost immediately), so there's a tough plateau inbetween. Super interesting that you're in Berlin now - that's where I came from.
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
> Culture shock can be quite devastating. I find its not as much as being in a place where the people would never, ever accept you as one of their own. To them, you're something to be avoided and barely tolerated. This is why Westerners have a lot of trouble in China or Japan, but an American spending a few years in Germany or England or France isn't a big deal. The elephant in the room is a certain level of acceptable racism that hurts foreign workers. Some nations are better at this than others.
- jza00425 10y ago
  You think Asians do not have the same problem when they are in West? Asian are already treated as foreigners no matter how many generations
  - drzaiusapelord 10y ago
    I think its easy to nitpick the flaws of western melting pot societies while ignoring that many asian societies are not remotely melting pots and citizenship is near impossible to get. The number of immigrants from Asia to the states shows that there's something desirable about its culture. How many Americans move to China or Japan and attain citizenship? Not many. Its seen as best as a temporary work gig dues to the complete lack of acceptance of foreigners and ethnocentrism there.
    - 77pt77 10y ago
      > citizenship is near impossible to get The requirements for naturalizing as a Japanese citizen are actually quite reasonable both in paper and practice.
    - jza00425 10y ago
      I did not even talk about the flaws the West has. It is about majority and minority. There is always a disadvantage for minority, especially psychologically. You just love to jump to conclusion that Western culture is better and other cultures are worse and find the evidence to serve your goal.
- 10y ago
max_im 10y ago
He was living in Beijing. As a Chinese-speaking westerner who lived there for a year, I can tell you the air pollution alone is enough to do it. While reports seem mixed on whether he loved his gig like you did, I imagine his family's culture shock was probably creating a great deal of stress as well similar to how you described.
baby 10y ago
The key is to have friends. With friends anywhere is home, without friends and you feel like a stranger.
seertaak 10y ago
> I've seen people pretty much melt down from the stress of having all their values brought into question and everything that they thought was common sense thrown out of the window. I'm curious as to what values are so different in China. Could you give an example, please? For my part, I've lived in Argentina, USA, France, Spain, German, and the UK. I've found that values are pretty similar. Nothing that makes me feel shockingly out of place. But they're all "European" countries, hence the question.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- zhengyi13 10y ago
  I lived as a student at Beida for a full year, between 96 to 97. I saw Deng die, and the return of Hong Kong. At least at the time, three things always struck me: 1) The pollution was awful -- we were in in Qinghuadaxue for fully one month before the sky finally cleared enough that we could see the Fragrant Hills - we literally had no idea they were there. I re-visited China again in 2013 I think, and it's just worse. There can be no overstatement of how bad it is, and this is what I thought of immediately when Mr Barra mentioned his health. 2) Culturally... No one queued. Ever. For anything. At the McDonald's at Tiananmen square, you had to physically shove your way forward through a solid crowd 15+ feet deep, wave your money at the cashier, and once they had taken your money, then you could give them your order. In 2013, I didn't see this sort of no-queueing behavior, but I had only two weeks in country that time. 3) Social mores are a little odd. You could have a conversation in a private place with a local (like, a taxi driver in cab) and they'd talk all about how awful and stupid the government was. But prostitution? No, we don't have that here. HIV? Oh, that's a foreign disease. Gay people? We don't have them here either. And about that last, I don't think this is any longer the case, but at the time in 96, there was one gay bar in the entirety of Beijing (Yi Ban Yi Ban, IIRC), and they were raided/harassed on a semi-frequent basis. At least in 2013, the public spitting was greatly reduced, but I still saw children being guided by parents to pee on the street. China was an amazing experience as a student, and the Chinese people I got to know directly (i.e. outside of official functions) were wonderful and welcoming. But boy howdy, there were some rough edges to public life.
- 10y ago

sho_hn 10y ago

This rings true. I'm a German living in Korea, and there's a fair number of Western foreigners here who eventually grow restless and unhappy, or even embittered. It's usually the people who came for economic reasons, without strong interest in or ties to Korean culture - they have no positives to be able to offset the sometimes very real negatives, and it slowly whittles them away. It's not smart to move somewhere if you don't have a couple of sure-fire things you know you will get joy out of on a consistent basis at the destination.

da02 10y ago
What brought you to Korea? Did you learn some of the Korean language before moving?
- sho_hn 10y ago
  Yep, I went to school in Berlin to study Korean for quite some time before the move, along with self-study before that. Basically, at some point I turned my hobbies into my career, so I needed new hobbies/outlets and ended up picking "learn Korean" for a bunch of reasons (I had done some light work on a CJK input stack and feel in love with Hangeul in a geeky sort of way, a layman's interest in linguistics, some Korean colleagues/acquaintances and a strong interest in the pop culture and history - music, movies, contrasting Korea's 20th century with Germany's, etc.). Over time this and spending some time in the country changed the make-up of my social circle a lot (more and more people also learning Korean, or being involved with Korea somehow, e.g. ... being Korean :). Eventually I moved over and basically already had a support network of local friends and activities (people to hang out with, a weekly engineer meet-up, etc.) so it went pretty smoothly. I've been here long enough now that the honeymoon period is definitely over and I've seen a fair amount of the pressures/stresses of life in Korea either up-close or as people close to me went through them. Yet I enjoy so much of what's going in and what's available, and the people close to me, so it's a good life. Many Western foreigners in Korea are in a very different place. There's a large swath that came over in 2007-2011 as English teachers after the US recession, because $13.5/hour for English teaching in Seoul beat $7.50/hour at Starbucks in Des Moines, and that's all they could do with a sub-optimal undergrad degree. Yet that job offers a promotion path to almost none (along with many English schools in Korea being more or less scam businesses, not-so-wholesome) and they often don't acquire any marketable skills good for anything else while doing it, and the money made as an English teacher isn't good enough to support anything but a bachelor lifestyle in Seoul. And they often don't speak Korean and don't feel any strong ties to Korean culture. That can get pretty stressful and frustrating.
  - mikekchar 10y ago
    That's really interesting because it is very similar to my reasons for going to Japan. I made a semi-random choice to learn Japanese. Because I was busy with work, I couldn't really afford the time to study properly and I made the fateful decision to move to Japan so that learning Japanese would be one of my job requirements ;-) I really think that language is a gateway to the culture. It hacks with your mind so that things you wouldn't accept without the language, seem completely reasonable with it. In Japan (and I suspect it might be similar in Korea) language is often the only real barrier for being accepted by other people in the culture. You go from being some scary foreigner, to being a semi-celebrity that everyone wants to talk to (hmmm... it probably helps that I live in the countryside ;-) ).
    - brutus1213 10y ago
      I'm really interested learning mandarin some day day. Can you describe how you managed to get started with Japanese? I have a 1 year old so all free time currently goes to her and the Mrs. I think I also don't work very efficiently .. so need to fix that too.
      - mikekchar 10y ago
        Ha ha! I really need to write this down in a central location (again... because I slowly refine my opinion). As briefly as I can put it: Strap on the seat belt because you will be working on the language for a long time if your goal is adult level proficiency and fluency. 5 year olds have about a 5000 word vocabulary and add about 1000 words every year until they reach about 18-20 (depending on if they go to university). There are about 1500 grammar structures to learn in an average language (this last stat is pulled out of my ass, but I think it's about right). There is no course, nor video, nor software that will get you anywhere beyond absolute beginner level. You will be lucky if you manage to talk like a 5 year old. Very long story short (and slightly controversial): You will acquire language by comprehending input that is repeated enough times to remember it. I personally believe that you need to also have a way to test your assumptions (but my opinion is not echoed in the scientific literature -- just my opinion). Way to success: Learn to read. It is your secret weapon. Pinyin is fine for helping you learn the readings for hanzi, but do not get into the habit of reading pinyin. There are about 3600 (IIRC) Chinese characters that you need to know to be functionally literate (there are others in use, but you will be able to devine there meanings through context). The Chinese characters are made up of building blocks and are not especially difficult to learn. They also provide a very powerful mnemonic for vocabulary. Remember that if your goal is adult level proficiency, you will need 15K+ words. The 3K characters will dramatically increase the speed at which you can learn the vocabulary because the system is very logical. My biggest suggestion is to read. Whatever you like. However, since there is a strong tradition of manwa (comic books) in Chinese, which handily use conversational language, this would be my way to go. Learn grammar through example. Some people like to learn grammar. You can, but you don't have to. It's a double edged sword. It helps you figure out the meaning of sentences. However, it also makes you believe that you can construct sentences using these rules and have it make sense. This is incorrect. This is why non-native speakers have all these bizarre grammar ticks when they speak. Use spaced repetition software to help you (I recommend Anki). There should be a vocabulary list of the basic words somewhere. The first 2-3000 of these are probably worth memorising. After that you should switch your focus to learning vocabulary through context (because the meanings will be subtly different than their English counterparts). Read, read, read. Last piece of advice is the most important and feel free to ignore everything else I've said. If you do not do this, I think it is impossible to succeed: Study every day. Better to study twice a day. Better to study three times a day. 5 minutes 3 times a day is better than 30 minutes once a day. 30 minutes once a day is better than 7 hours once a week. (And in fact, anything less than 4 times a week will have you reaching a ceiling pretty quickly and staying there forever). Also: Never give up. Good luck!
hocuspocus 10y ago
I lived nearly 5 years in Korea and it was indeed gradually driving me crazy. I didn't move for economic reasons and I was enjoying enough positives to make the negatives bearable, but in my case the lack of fulfillment at work eventually became too much. That said I have two friends who stayed in Korea but moved to a more reasonable company (Coupang) and they're having a good time.
- sho_hn 10y ago
  What did you work as? A lot of Western foreigners in Korea work as English teachers, which indeed rarely offers any sort of long-term promotion path (see my longer comment). Even outside of that it's very easy to run into a glass ceiling as a foreigner though, yeah. There's relatively few companies where you can work your way up into lead or management positions - though this is often because foreigners simply don't acquire the Korean skills they'd need to manage Koreans. There's some amount of luck and strategizing your career path involved to make it work, and that does leave you with narrow paths to the goal. Engineering and market research/business are probably the easiest fields at least. Don't get me wrong, I'm not really blaming anyone for failing to make it work and getting out. There's a lot of wishes/desires (in choice of job, in choice of lifestyle, etc.) that are legitimately and totally incompatible with life in Korea as a foreigner, yet have nothing wrong about them.
  - hocuspocus 10y ago
    I was a software engineer at the company that makes exploding smartphones. I still had plenty of headroom regarding promotions, and I'd argue that Korean skills are a double-edged sword. In big and rigid corporations, saying that you need luck is an understatement. Short of your VP being fired, it's typically impossible to make significant moves within your company.
    - sho_hn 10y ago
      Thanks for sharing. Regarding Korean skills being a double-edged sword, yeah, expectations leveled against you rise with your skills, and there's a high bar before those skills really pay off meaningfully (in a job context - in private life they pay off almost immediately), so there's a tough plateau inbetween. Super interesting that you're in Berlin now - that's where I came from.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

> Culture shock can be quite devastating. I find its not as much as being in a place where the people would never, ever accept you as one of their own. To them, you're something to be avoided and barely tolerated. This is why Westerners have a lot of trouble in China or Japan, but an American spending a few years in Germany or England or France isn't a big deal. The elephant in the room is a certain level of acceptable racism that hurts foreign workers. Some nations are better at this than others.

jza00425 10y ago
You think Asians do not have the same problem when they are in West? Asian are already treated as foreigners no matter how many generations
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  I think its easy to nitpick the flaws of western melting pot societies while ignoring that many asian societies are not remotely melting pots and citizenship is near impossible to get. The number of immigrants from Asia to the states shows that there's something desirable about its culture. How many Americans move to China or Japan and attain citizenship? Not many. Its seen as best as a temporary work gig dues to the complete lack of acceptance of foreigners and ethnocentrism there.
  - 77pt77 10y ago
    > citizenship is near impossible to get The requirements for naturalizing as a Japanese citizen are actually quite reasonable both in paper and practice.
  - jza00425 10y ago
    I did not even talk about the flaws the West has. It is about majority and minority. There is always a disadvantage for minority, especially psychologically. You just love to jump to conclusion that Western culture is better and other cultures are worse and find the evidence to serve your goal.
10y ago

max_im 10y ago

He was living in Beijing. As a Chinese-speaking westerner who lived there for a year, I can tell you the air pollution alone is enough to do it. While reports seem mixed on whether he loved his gig like you did, I imagine his family's culture shock was probably creating a great deal of stress as well similar to how you described.

baby 10y ago

The key is to have friends. With friends anywhere is home, without friends and you feel like a stranger.

seertaak 10y ago

> I've seen people pretty much melt down from the stress of having all their values brought into question and everything that they thought was common sense thrown out of the window. I'm curious as to what values are so different in China. Could you give an example, please? For my part, I've lived in Argentina, USA, France, Spain, German, and the UK. I've found that values are pretty similar. Nothing that makes me feel shockingly out of place. But they're all "European" countries, hence the question.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
zhengyi13 10y ago
I lived as a student at Beida for a full year, between 96 to 97. I saw Deng die, and the return of Hong Kong. At least at the time, three things always struck me: 1) The pollution was awful -- we were in in Qinghuadaxue for fully one month before the sky finally cleared enough that we could see the Fragrant Hills - we literally had no idea they were there. I re-visited China again in 2013 I think, and it's just worse. There can be no overstatement of how bad it is, and this is what I thought of immediately when Mr Barra mentioned his health. 2) Culturally... No one queued. Ever. For anything. At the McDonald's at Tiananmen square, you had to physically shove your way forward through a solid crowd 15+ feet deep, wave your money at the cashier, and once they had taken your money, then you could give them your order. In 2013, I didn't see this sort of no-queueing behavior, but I had only two weeks in country that time. 3) Social mores are a little odd. You could have a conversation in a private place with a local (like, a taxi driver in cab) and they'd talk all about how awful and stupid the government was. But prostitution? No, we don't have that here. HIV? Oh, that's a foreign disease. Gay people? We don't have them here either. And about that last, I don't think this is any longer the case, but at the time in 96, there was one gay bar in the entirety of Beijing (Yi Ban Yi Ban, IIRC), and they were raided/harassed on a semi-frequent basis. At least in 2013, the public spitting was greatly reduced, but I still saw children being guided by parents to pee on the street. China was an amazing experience as a student, and the Chinese people I got to know directly (i.e. outside of official functions) were wonderful and welcoming. But boy howdy, there were some rough edges to public life.
10y ago