Sorrow of Separation

(1/23/07)

Week 2 of classes began with an almost epidemic infection of homesickness, dissent, or culture shock -- perhaps the three deadliest plagues for this ship of ours. Before I started preparing to study abroad, I had thought ‘culture shock’ was just something people said as a joke, but the more and more I read I found it to be a very real and frightening prospect.

I suppose my first encounter, and a visceral one at that, with ‘culture shock’ was a play put on by a Chinese student at Midd my freshman year. It was an amalgamation of excerpted works and her own experiences while abroad in Taiwan; fittingly, the show was entitled ‘Culture Shock.’ The most memorable scene of the show for me was the moment of despair, with the actress alone, curled up, lonelily and despairingly asking questions of her distant family.

I would not say I have yet experienced culture shock (though sources say that it can happen up to 3 months after arrival). My feelings of discontent fall under different categories. No, culture shock falls upon others, such as one friend who very frazzled one day confessed that she was thinking of dying her blonde hair because she couldn’t bear the stares or the whispering or – in some cases – photographs.

No, I have not felt the itch of eyes on me, nor have I grown frustrated with any other aspect of life or culture here. In fact, I’ve grown quite comfortable. I know my way around, I don’t mind dodging cars or bicycles, shrugging off touts and merchants; I love drinking the giant bottles of green tea I can find in all the stores, and I’ve even begun a love affair – as many others have – with a particular breakfast ‘sandwich’ you can buy a short walk from the main gate for 1 kuai (a couple of dimes I suppose). It is a piece of bread, a bit like a tortilla in nature, cooked with an egg and smeared with hot sauce and lastly fitted with questionable lettuce. I think I may even like it more than the English muffin I eat almost religiously for breakfast at Midd.

There is a word for the feeling that grips many of us now – not quite the throes of culture shock, but subtle, or perhaps stronger for some, is lichou: 离愁, ‘sorrow of separation.’ I found this word in a poem written by an emperor in exile after his dynasty had been lost. The characters that make up this word are literally ‘separate, away’ and ‘sorrow.’ I’ve always loved this word for sorrow, its literally meaning ‘autumn (秋) of the heart (心).’

Homesickness first crept into me as a I heard a song from last semester, just some small thing that for a moment put me back in a place, happy and at east, and especially with many good friends. Though I very much like my classmates here, it’s the smallest social circle I’ve been in in years, and besides that, there are people I miss in particular. The internet woes and telephone expenses only make the distance that much more real.

Thrown out of the ‘small world’ mentality I’ve grown used to, I find myself imagining travel and adventure of the pre-1990s and deeper times. Distance then must have been tangible, some curtain or wall, some great mass – an ocean or mountain. Distance was a snow-covered pass or a rain-wrecked road; there was only waiting, waiting and words – prayers and poetry. But maybe I romanticize.