From the grandeur of Great Wall to mythological events like the Long March (a 5,600 mile trek in 1934-35 as the Communists fled from the Nationalists to the countryside), China stands at the precipice between reality and magic. Visiting provides a snapshot into another world, based in a completely different cultural tradition than ours, but no less enchanting.
Part of China’s mystique rests in its isolation. Developing largely apart from the Western world, China grew distinctly, with separate leaders, philosophers and artists. Where our society was based on individualism, capitalism and Manifest Destiny, teachings of Locke and Jefferson, China was influenced by the Mandate of Heaven and the collectivist, isolationist ideals of Confucius, Sun Yat-Sen and Mao Zedong, leading to a different – but just as complex – society. Thus, by witnessing Asian countries like China, Japan and South Korea grow in dramatically different ways and traditions, we can broaden our too-often closed ideas on how humanity and societies can (and maybe should) function.
After working, eating and conversing 18 hours a day with my Chinese peers, I found that many Chinese people find our culture as strange as we find their own. For instance, as the Chinese media largely portrays the Dalai Lama as a selfish religious prophet unfit to lead Tibet, the U.S.’s decision to support the Dalai Lama and the Free Tibet movement strikes many in China as ridiculous as China advocating for America to annex Hawaii and name a traditional religious leader as King. Similarly, our shock of the unbreathable air pollution in Beijing can only be reviled by the fear that the Chinese read about Americans living in a place where lethal guns can be freely bought and sold.
Moreover, within days, I began to see how concepts of beauty and skin color are societal constructs. Undoubtedly, Chinese culture tends to fetishize the female body less than America, which often objectifies and sexualizes the athletic body. However, that is not to say that there isn’t a culture around beauty. Skin color and skin quality is the Chinese equivalent of the bust to Americans. Women in many areas of China are seen as traditionally unfit for marriage after 30 or 35, and while walking from street to street in the heat, it’s the norm to wear umbrellas to protect their skin from tanning. As tanned skin implies lower class or “skin of a farmer,” women are conscious to “protect” their skin by any means necessary.
So, while it may seem absurd that tanned skin could be seen as lower-class, it makes sense through a different lens. In a country where 90 percent of people are from the same Han ethnic majority and have come upon massive wealth and inequality, there must be a way to delineate beauty; there must be a way to differentiate. Yet while skin color is used to discriminate more on racial lines in America, I found that skin color in China was often used to discriminate between classes and create an urban-rural divide, as opposed to differentiating ethnic groups.
Thus, I was shocked to hear that my brown Indian skin “glowed” in a positive way, even though my skin was the same shade, if not darker, than rural or working-class Han. These perceptions and judgements transformed my thinking. My skin color allowed me to occupy different roles, and for the first time, occupy a place of ordinarily paradoxical racial (or skin color) privilege. Most evident was when my teammate treated our design team to one of his favorite restaurants, a Muslim noodle shop. Muslims are a minority in China, representing two percent of the total population, and largely descend from the western Xinjiang province, bordering Kazakhstan, India and Afghanistan. The menu was in Chinese and seemed like a typical Beijing restaurant, if not for the little Halal designation on the front door sign and for the waiters, who all wore kufis. From the moment we entered, we were treated differently. One waiter personally cut our noodles, another couldn’t stop staring and the last asked for a photo with me and the rest of his waiters. Wondering why, I asked my friend, only to have him laugh at me. Evidently, although I am a practicing Christian that goes to mass each Sunday, the waiters had incorrectly assumed that I was Muslim by my skin color and beard, and treated me with great respect. Ironically, the very skin color that would typically marginalize me put me in a position of privilege.
What amazed me in this scene was my willingness to enjoy and internalize my privilege in this pseudo-Stanford Prison Experiment experiment, where I was given a different role that I more than gladly occupied. Luckily, the episode ended the moment I left the restaurant, but I exited baffled by how easily the society around me could change my perceived status.
As myself and many of my friends are applying for research positions, jobs and fellowships at the start of the year, it is remarkably easy to get swept up in the process. The process to get that prestigious consulting job or graduate fellowship, as with the college process, rewards those who craft a story around themselves that focus on “what I did, what I achieved and what I delivered.” In a world of “I’s,” it requires taking a step back to understand that our successes were not solely driven by our own actions, but rather aided by the tide of our surrounding culture. For those of us in the Stanford community, we are lucky. Beyond our accomplishments, we are defined by our labels, and we likely have the strongest label behind us in our professional endeavors.
Thus, in this community, achieving is not a challenge, but the norm. Our labels have conditioned us for that. However, living consciously, understanding our inherent privileges and making the right decisions in that context is tough. It’s a ubiquitous struggle, one which we only ultimately conquer when we realize our story consists of more than just the “I.”
Contact Kyle D’Souza at kvdsouza ‘at’ stanford.edu.