By Desi Downey
Summary:
This hilarious article for expat author, Desi Downey, is a must read for anyone preparing for expat life and those grappling with the stages of culture shock. If you're having a challenging expatriate day, this article will life your spirits!
One of the first things I noticed about China was that all the men carried purses and the women held hands. This phenomenon shot straight to the top of my list of "Weird World Wonders" and stayed there until a mere five minutes later, when I went looking for a bathroom at the airport and came face to face with my first squatty potty.
This was culture shock, pure and simple, and I was already moving from the
first stage of it - the honeymoon, or tourist, stage, which I had entered before we ever left the States - into the second, the irritation-to-anger stage. Culture shock can mean many different things to many different people, and any kind of move - whether it be across town, across the country or across the planet - can create different kinds of trauma in different kinds of people. Kalvero Oberg first identified the five distinct stages of culture shock in 1958, and we know them today as:
- The honeymoon, or tourist, stage;
- The irritation-to-anger stage;
- The rejection/regression stage;
- The integration/assimilation stage;
- The reverse, or reentry, stage.
When my husband's company offered him a job in China, we jumped at the chance. This would be the opportunity of a lifetime, a chance to see the world, a great way to experience a new, exciting and mysterious culture. And get paid for it!
I was really excited. The first thing I did was run down to the local bookstore and buy a whole bunch of books about China, the Chinese people and how to speak Chinese. I even hired a Chinese friend from Taiwan to teach us the language (and whose first lesson of course was to explain that Taiwanese Chinese was completely different from Mandarin Chinese, but fortunately for us he spoke both).
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About the Author
 Desi Downey, author of Ni Howdy! An American Woman's (Mal)Adaptation to Life in the People's Republic of China (www.nihowdy.net), lived in China for six years, and taught English there for much of that time. Today, she lives in the Deep South, where she is currently hard at work on the sequel to Ni Howdy!
Ni Howdy!, Downey's first book, is a nitty-gritty, down-to-earth, hilarious account of how she triumphed over the trials and tribulations of becoming accustomed to daily life in a foreign country. From the horrors of her first encounter with an airport squatty potty to trying to buy groceries without speaking the language to her eventual, inevitable and very public entry into the squatty potty zone, Downey paints a vivid and humorous picture of her many adventures in China.
Ni Howdy! can be ordered online at www.nihowdy.net, from your favorite online book seller, or at your local bookstore (ISBN 0-595-34236-1). Ni Howdy! is also available as an eBook (ISBN: 0-595-79008-9).
Learn more at www.nihowdy.net or email the author at desi@nihowdy.net.
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First Published: Aug 06, 2005
