Whiplash Culture Shock: 2.5 weeks in the States after 50 in Germany

When you return from a year abroad, you realize that nothing back home has really changed, but since being away, you have.

Sure, friends are either getting haircuts or getting married, but America is still the good ol’ USA. The national flag has always flown over every car dealership and in your neighbor’s front yard, but you were never quite so aware of their omnipresence until living in possibly the least nationalistic nation in the world made you as sensitive to the red, white, and blue as a dog to squirrels.

As I child, I used to recite the pledge of allegiance every time I saw the flag. (International readers: This is abnormal.) My parents probably remember with some bitterness that oft-driven stretch of highway with many a dealership.

And now?

Landing: New York, New York

The 70-strong CBYX crew said a bittersweet “Tschüss” and “Danke schön” to the Lufthansa flight attendants as we disembarked at JFK, a large U.S. flag greeting us at customs and immigration, along with a new station of electronic kiosks that have replaced human customs officers, who now deal only with non-citizens.

(You touch-screen your way through “No, I do not have fruits, animals, or more than 10,000 USD on me” and then fit yourself webcam-style into the outline of a torso to have your mug taken. As I squatted to align myself, a supervising officer enlightened me, “You can move the monitor.” Embarrassed, I laughed awkwardly, “How practical!”)

On the streets of New York City, everything is as I left it. Young 20-something sunglassed hipsters brush past 30-something fashionistas in Louis Vuitton pushing high-end strollers around suited-up, briefcase-toting businessmen juggling Starbucks and a Bluetooth ear piece.

I'm sure they were there before, too, I just never noticed --

Standing on the corner of 47^th and 3^rd I can count eight flags. Underground waiting for the 6, the subway whooshes past me, a flag adhered to the same corner of each car. Walking along the river, more than 15 miniature flags wave from the outdoor deck of a seafood joint.

Next Stop: Fort Worth, Texas

Coming back home is a familiar feeling.

The first notable experience is the dread of leaving the air-conditioned airport. The tinted automatic doors slide open and you are unapologetically engulfed in 100°F and blinded by the sun hitting concrete.

The second is hitting up all your favorite eateries. (More on that later.)

The third is driving a car again. Like riding a bike, you don’t forget how.

During my brief week home, between visiting family and Godfamily and adopted families, I say hello to some longhorns (no, really, I do), eat Krispy Kremes 3 breakfasts in a row, have the best homemade pie I’ve had in a year (sorry, Germany, but you don’t really know how to do pies), and try not to cry while singing a wedding.

At the Fort Worth Stockyards.

One night in Texas

Grandma, who is also a snake by the Chinese zodiac, is 60 years older than me. She’s lost a lot of her teeth, walks very slowly with the aid of a walking stick, and is suffering from failing vision and hearing, but most of all, from solitude. (Her most faithful companion is Cantonese television.)

I visit her now that I’m back. Dad and I enter through the garage door because she’s afraid of wasps and lizards dashing through the front door, where they’ve recently sprayed. I run to her side, bending over to hug her short frame, and I note that she smells the same as she always has, a mixture of her favorite Chinese soap and Bounce (her dryer sheet of choice). She wears a random T-shirt covered by her usual sweater vest (to stay warm, even though it’s 100 degrees outside), loose-fitting pants, and house slippers. Her hair is still salt-and-pepper gray. No doubt she trims her hair herself. Her eyes look smaller, the crow’s feet more pronounced, and I think she has fewer teeth than the last time I saw her.

She loves to save things and is loath to throw anything away, sentimental or not. Having barely stepped into the house, she shows me the mail and asks me if I need any books. I tell her gently that the Half Price Books coupons have already expired. We sort through credit card and airline advantage program deals. She’s told they’re advertisements, and she hesitates, asking me for a second opinion.

“Yes, Grandma, they’re advertisements.” The medium-sized print on the lower-right hand corner of one envelope reads, “This is an advertisement.” I point to each word and translate into Mandarin, “這是廣告.”

Moving beyond the foyer she begins offering all varieties of food: canned eel, instant coffee, guava-flavored hard candy, fresh plums, bran bars, and Little Debbie blueberry muffins. My father and I joke that, should any epidemic strike, we would be able to survive off of Grandma’s stores for up to two years.

For as long as I’ve known my grandmother, she’s always lived like this, with piles of mail and newspapers and packaged foods towering around her. It occurred to me that she couldn’t have always been this way, that perhaps she didn’t grow up used to having goods so readily available.

In fact, as a girl she often didn’t have anything at all.

Sitting on either side of me on the green pleather couch, my grandmother entreats my father to do something – what, I’m not sure, because they’re speaking in dialect. I interrupt the cyclic conversation, suddenly curious, “Grandma, what was it like during the War?”

Completely nonplussed by the abrupt change of topic, she begins to answer in Mandarin but quickly reverts to Cantonese. Dad has to occasionally translate for me into English.

…

婆婆’s father had made (marginal amounts of) money selling wares door-to-door. Her mother repaired costumes for Chinese theater troupes. A few days before it actually happened, her mother had a dream forewarning of a Japanese air raid. They retreated to a relative’s home in the countryside and soon received the news that their home had indeed been bombed. The Japanese were overtaking Canton (Guangdong) so the family retreated to Hong Kong, along with many other mainland refugees. At one point their shelter caught fire, and with only a split second to think before fleeing, my great-grandmother grabbed the costumes she’d been sewing, for fear that their loss would lead to demands for reparation from their owners. Otherwise, they had nothing.

            My grandmother was about ten years old.

Eventually, they made just enough money to rent one bed in a room full of bunk beds. The residents of the crowded room permitted two homeless refugees to take temporary shelter in the entryway and use the facilities to drink water and relieve themselves. These two would go around the city collecting cigarette butts, accumulating the very last dregs of tobacco to re-wrap and sell. When food ran scarce during the invasion of Hong Kong, there was much looting, and the two homeless ones stole a bag of rice, which they gave to my grandmother’s family. Because of their kindness, my grandmother survived starvation.

The British surrendered Hong Kong with little resistance. Normally, only young and fit Chinese would be hired by the Japanese as labor, but one Japanese official took pity on my bone-thin grandmother and allowed her to wear the badge that allowed Chinese to work. She carried firewood barefoot for hours, day after day. (“See,” she points to her arms and legs, “that’s why I have these scars.”) Sometimes, this same official would give her his leftover food, which she would then bring back to share with her parents.

“That’s why PoPo doesn’t hate all of the Japanese,” my dad explains. “She happened to meet a ‘kind’ one.” Air quotes around “kind.”

Eventually the Japanese decided that there weren’t enough resources in the territory, what with the crowds of mainland refugees. Those from the mainland were sent back, and my grandmother and her parents walked the entire way back to Canton. My grandmother can’t remember anymore how many months it took, but she does remember the hunger, falling sick, and just wanting the journey to be over. Some Chinese villagers living near the path offered ladles of rice porridge to these travelers, one ladle per mouth. Another miracle of kindness that allowed her survival.

One of my favorite Cantonese dishes: congee with pork and preserved
duck egg -- certainly not regarded by today's standards as fancy fare, but
still more than what my grandmother must have encountered on the
journey back to Canton. When I was a little girl, she would always make
me congee if I got sick.

Last stop:  Philadelphia, PA

I’m struck by the irony that I’m sipping a cappuccino in my favorite café on Germantown Avenue.

The Malta Club House on Boathouse Row.

Earlier this week I made a 20km (don’t ask me how many miles) trek into downtown Philly, where one in the row of iconic boathouses is another irony:  a quaint example of Fachwerk flying the American flag. Benjamin Franklin Avenue is lined by flags from around the world, including Deutschland’s. I visit Independence Hall, pick up a bubble tea from Chinatown (probably my last in a while), and discover at the end of my ride that the front reflector has since been stolen.

Naturally.

Maybe it’s the freshness of my German travels and the anticipation of being back on European soil very soon that makes me see all of these Germanisms (and Americanisms). I’ve had a little time to reflect, and I realize I’ve (worryingly?) found Germanisms in myself, too.

Distance makes the heart grow fonder:  Germanisms I can’t seem to shake off

1. Speaking English with German grammar construction and doubting my English
   (“…eligibility…e-li-gi-bi-li-ty…that feels funny…eligibility. Is that a word??”
2. Keeping my phone on “military time”
3. Showering the German way
   (i.e. turning off the shower head while lathering and turning it back on to rinse)
4. Lowering A/C levels
   (Americans, and especially Texans, really do blast it)
5. Wanting to wish everyone a “Guten Appetit” before digging in; being similarly unable to drink an alcoholic beverage without first looking everyone in the eye and saying “Prost”
6. Getting surprised when people I’ve never met before keep saying “hi,” but I get caught so unawares I can’t react in time
7. Cringing while every single thing at the check-out gets put in a plastic bag faster than I can say “No, th-”
8. Being appalled at the widespread use of Styrofoam L
9. Where are all the recycle bins? L

On the other hand:  Welcome Americanisms J

1. Nobody smoking in my face (smoking, recently described to me as “slow-motion suicide”)
2. Not needing an adapter to charge my appliances
3. Listening to NPR in the morning
4. Watching music videos on YouTube without a VPN
5. Nobody asking me where I’m from.
6. And...

Binge-eating my way through 2.5 weeks

It's not that you can't get good Chinese food in Germany, it's that you can't get good Chinese food in Weimar. 

As a warm-up in NYC, my first meal back in the States was of sushi and sashimi, featuring the appropriately-named "American Dream" roll. We hit up K-town for 순두부찌개 (sundubu jjigae) and 비빔밥 (bibimbap). My last meal in the Big Apple was conveyor-belt sushi at midnight -- because one can never eat enough sushi. Bubble tea was a daily beverage.

Back on home turf the first meal was similarly modest:  蔥油餅，韭菜盒子，紅燒牛肉麵，小籠包 (scallion pancake, leek turnover, beef noodle soup, and steamed pork buns)...

Left: beef noodle soup, leek turnovers in the background.  Right: steamed pork buns (i.e. heaven on earth).

...followed later by 紅豆沙麻糬（當然還有）珍珠奶茶 (red bean paste mochi, and of course, bubble tea).

Soft gooey goodness.

Not wanting to leave any base uncovered, Tex-Mex was the obvious other requisite cuisine.

Beef fajitas with all the fixin's, bottomless chips and salsa, and a frozen
margarita as big as Texas.

My stomach capacity would never again wish to eat so much food in so little time, but looking at these photos, I'm already drooling and ready to do it all over again.

…

Oh, America, I love you, I really do. (I just wish you’d recycle more.) And I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’m glad I got to see so many friends and family and collect their stories during this whirlwind return*, including a day of business in three different states, and I’ll only miss you all the more once I’m back in Europe.

*If I didn’t visit you, please don’t be offended!

This past year showcased:

• the NSA scandal and tapping of Merkel's cell phone
• the German general election in September, whose results I read on a chalkboard upon exiting the symphony hall post-concert in Cologne (pictured below)
• Germany winning the 2014 World Cup

"Bundestagswahl 2013"

What will this next year bring…?

Will I become more German…?

Will I be able to exercise these last 2.5 weeks off…?