Oh I cannot tell you the feeling of coming back home after a long trip. It feels great to eat my home cooked meals, to sleep in my comfortable bed, and to shower in peace and serenity.
China was such a great experience for me because I learned a lot about their everyday culture and their corporate culture. Interacting with many Chinese students and adults helped me expand my horizons and understand a new perspective of how they live their lives. One of the main concepts I struggled to understand was their conservative culture. Although I am from Saudi Arabia, I am pretty Westernized in the sense that I love to talk about contraversial topics, about current global issues, and discuss anything that has to do with political or economic conflicts.
I was hoping to get the insight of the Chinese on US- China relations, but I was fairly disappointed when I didn’t. I felt as though the conferences did not promote open and honest discussions, but rather a fake-fairytale dream relationship between US and China. The conferences we went to made it seem that the relations were overly optimistic and perfectly sound, but we all know the truth here. One thing that frustrated me most was when Americans would try to take the conversation to a deeper level and mention the issues between the two countries, the people on the panel would respond very cunningly by avoiding the topic or trying to make it seem more positive.
We all have differences, and the Chinese and US definitely does too. A suggestion to political leaders of both US and China is that they should come to reality with their struggles. They should acknowledge their problems, and their differences — and a solution, or numerous solutions can be discussed. However, if we just brush off our differences and act like they never happened, or be in denial of what is actually going on between the two countries, then no problem can ever be solved that way.
From this trip, I have learned to embrace and understand a different culture. This way, I have managed to see life through their eyes and their perspectives. Although I do have a lot of disagreements with the Chinese government principles I have come to terms with it, and I’ve also embraced their differences because it gave me a new experience to see events, obstacles and issues in a different light.
Thank you for keeping up with my journey so far.
I hope to find time to write to you soon, as I have been very busy with my family during Ramadan. It is a religious holiday where all people of my religion fast from dawn to dusk. Pretty cool isn’t it?
I’ll keep you updated.
Best,
Tala