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> Personally, I think the biggest difficulty for a Chinese in studying abroad in the US, is the difficulty of being accepted into the circle. You could make fri
by kinghtown 6y ago
> Personally, I think the biggest difficulty for a Chinese in studying abroad in the US, is the difficulty of being accepted into the circle. You could make friends and acquaintances with Americans, but you're never part of "them". I constantly feel like I'm on the wrong side of a aquarium glass pane, being observed and judged.
As a foreigner living in Taiwan, the vast majority of people here do the very same to me as well. I am constantly shut out of circles and deemed too weird to actually know yet always being watched like some sociological specimen. I don’t think that “othering” is a known concept here or if it were it registers pretty low on people priorities when interacting with me or mindlessly staring at me while I eat in public..
People will literally take their children away from the park when I bring my daughter to play. I must insist that I was a well adjusted and popular enough guy home. It’s been a bit of a heartbreaking experience to realize that probably every culture on earth has irreconcilably racial biases and prejudices inherent in the majority because the most common unifier amongst all people is stupidity.
Also, when you mention Americans and never being a part of them do you mean all Americans including blacks, latinos, natives, arabs..? I see a great deal of projection going on here where Chinese Americans are being shut out of socializing when it seems to me the truth is that many Chinese born people living in the west actually don’t like the culture all that much and don’t want to integrate either but don’t vocalize it this way because it doesn’t sound nice to say.