With less than a month left in my stay here, I’ve been reflecting a bit on life in China, and about going home. Just how different will things be? I don’t really remember, but I do know that China now feels perfectly normal to me. There’s very little here that surprises me or weirds me out. Life here is just life at this point; the days go by like they would anywhere. I’ve been thinking that means I’m pretty well adjusted to life here, which makes me susceptible to reverse culture shock when I get back home.

The piece de resistance came last night when I was helping a Chinese friend with the English application to a summer intercultural program in Beijing. One of the free response prompts she was asked to answer asked her to discuss a cultural issue that’s very different between the US and China. Being more submersed in (and aware) of the politics because of my other blog, my first thought was to address that, but she wanted purely cultural issues, no politics, and damned if I couldn’t think of anything different. At least for a minute or two. Finally I made up something about the importance of family, but the fact that nothing jumped quickly to mind was kind of disturbing.

It’s not because Chinese culture and American culture are all that similar, it’s just that I’m so used to China (at least this part of it) at this point that whatever’s “different” here is no longer different to me. And if I’m used to what’s here, it stands to reason when I get home and things are different from what’s here, it might require some adjustment.