They also don’t know that what it will feel like for my parents to come back for Christmas and get on I-85N, above all that it will be coming home. They will come home and then get on I-85 to drive up to Richmond again, where they hosted a wedding two months ago, to spend Christmas with family. That’s not something anyone around them now can relate to, but it’s important to my parents.

Reel 2 Reel’s I Like To Move It (insert giggle of recognition here) similarly clearly has traditionally non-European influences and performes, and who cares? That doesn’t mean much to me, or most of the Europewide listeneers either, I imagine. It’s our song, simply because it was a hit.

More recently, there’s Boom Boom Boom. The video has people in Illinois basketball jerseys and various American pop culture, but I’m fairly sure that it’s safe to say it’s not an American song. They’re just using the American stuff as props to make it look more international and new, but given how you can identify your taste in music by saying ‘electronica’ and that makes sense to people here (as opposed to rock, country, r&b, rap, or hip-hop), I would assume that most of these songs were always meant for local consumption. Here, you can see fairly clearly how what Americans might consider black music speaks on behalf of the US as a whole. (For those who are thinking about Rednex, think about how we laugh at that song compared to most Europop.)

Look at the comments under all these songs on YouTube in various languages. We’re all feeling united by the music, rather than divided. That’s just what happens in an era of globalization. People move around. They bring music with them. They get influenced. That doesn’t mean we’re all the same. It just means new things are happening.

I feel a little alone again – very few of my friends might know what any of those songs are. Even the largest club or Europop anthems never made it here, and neither did the unifying and open music culture.

Maybe it has something to do with missing being in a place where I visibly live in the third culture. Here in the US, I’m a hidden immigrant. Sometimes I just want permission to be weird and go with it. I met another TCK through Facebook here where I live, and she mentioned that some of my feelings are being out of step with your peers. She’s right, that’s another thing – I want to do things that my peers here don’t want to do, like sing karaoke and go clubbing. I want to go have fun in new ways my parents didn’t, and that makes me out of step with my peers. And missing other places where people do those things.

It might also have something to do with another thing my friend said. She described where we live as ‘monochromatic’, and I know exactly what she means. Being in contact with several cultures at the same time is like living in a rainbow of color and texture. Living in only one culture can be boring, frankly, and maybe I just want out for the sake of getting out, and what better place to experience it all at once than in the third culture?

Those times when I hear bad news of people dying from a part of the world I know and think “There? I could have been there! I could have died!” are often times when I feel alone. International news so emotionally distant to local people. On the other hand, I felt rather emotionally distant from Hurricane Katrina. I’m not entirely sure why, but one explanation is that I live so thoroughly in a world of distant proximities that I’m just that lacking in patriotic fervor. I may simply feel closer to 北京 (Běijīng) people or 重庆 (Chóngqìng people than New Orleans people, because I conceptualize belonging nearly completely in a transnational, abstract space. It’s always hard to analyze yourself, but this might not only be an example of Pollock and van Reken’s properties of TCKs, but it might also connect that property with experiencing distant proximities strongly and living in Rosenau’s Affirmative Global world.

Maybe I feel for the earthquake victims more than Hurricane Katrina victims because I am very aware of that my life has intertwined with 四川 (Sìchuān), but not with New Orleans. My repatriation has made me keenly aware of the fallacies of assuming commonality because of shared language, partially shared culture and shared genes. I see myself, others and my own identity playing out in a space of emotional connections which are distant proximities. I do not automatically feel connected to people because they superficially ’seem’ like me. The most bitter moments of my life were caused by such people, and in contrast, some of the best were with people who were not superficially like me. I am committed to a global identity in ways that I doubt many expatriates are.

Perhaps our reactions to international news regarding our old homes or places we visited a lot locally is just the visible indicator of what really sets us apart from expatriates or other international-minded people. If I’m anywhere near typical, I just don’t care about people (above and beyond fundamental human dignity) just because they look like me, talk like me, dress like me, or have the same passport as me. All of those have been shown to be poor indicators of real similarity to myself. I feel connected to anyone I’ve met who is open-minded and open-hearted, and I continue to feel that way no matter how far away they are from me at the moment. The strong emotional reaction to bad international news is a natural consequence. 

In Hotelland, I am everywhere and nowhere, exactly where I’m from. It’s tremendously comforting to belong somewhere. I belong at the Marriott more than all these people around me, who are just visiting from Localland. Who don’t see that the head chef isn’t doing a good job. Who miss local things. I can see why lots of TCKs end up in hospitality management. This is probably what Saskia Sassen is talking about in her essay “Whose City Is It? Globalization and the Formation of New Claims”. I feel at home in the San Fransisco Marriott because I’ve already felt at home in Marriotts elsewhere. Hotelland comes with me, and to some extent I do want Hotelland to push Localland aside. Although I hate touristy areas of any town because they’re inauthentic, authenticity doens’t bother me much when it comes to Hotelland. It’s what I’ve got, in terms of not constantly having to work to understand everyone in Localland worldwide, whereas no one even considers that they need to understand me too. And because of that, I wish Hotelland were bigger. The locals have so much space, they can afford to give some of it to us, the global nomads. The entire world is theirs! They have roots everywhere. The only roots I have are in the air – is it too much to ask for some space for them, too? They tend to get squished in the scramble for space in Localland.

Anyway, returning to the original topic, from Hotelland I know how to make anywhere a new home. While sipping my Cosmopolitan (no pun intended) , I started thinking about a word I saw on TCKID: xenofilia. The word stuck with me, because it was a bit of a surprise. Logically, it’s the obvious opposite to xenophobia, but somehow it never occurred to me that there was a direct logical opposite – I always thought of the opposite of xenophobia as comopolitanisms. The poster who used it implied briefly that TCKs were xenophiles. In a sense, maybe that’s true. As much as I complain about being poorly understood myself despite having to understand all the locals, I do enjoy getting to know new cultures, things, thoughts and foods. However, I don’t think of them as xeno – as alien or Other – simply things that exist that I don’t know yet.

There are two cultural phenomena I can think of that makes me relate in an alienated way. One is widespread sexism, like in the Middle East. Being a woman whose parents are feminists from some of the most egalitarian countries in the world and having spend ten years in the most egalitarian country on earth as a child, I feel like someone’s trying to cut off my arms sometimes when men from very sexist countries start opening their big mouths. Sexist men from less sexist countries tend to get a hammer in the head from someone in their own culture – often another man – that makes it a cultural deviation, not a rule I’d have to abide by when I interact with them. Locals throwing hammers at sexists gives me permission, too.

The second is hyperlocalism. People who are from a small town somewhere in the world and have never left scare me, because my repatriation went very poorly at the hands of such people. People with strong regional accents make me a bit uncomfortable, as if one moment they will be smiling at me and then biting me in the neck the next, after screaming OUTSIDER!!!. Small towns can be cute, but to me they’re a bit scary. I don’t want to stay long, and I don’t want to step out of the “I’m just passing by” role. There is no Hotelland in those places, they are too small. Our kind does not go there enough. I was ostracized by people who look just like me and where I didn’t speak the language with even a hint of an accent. If real xenophobia can come out even when there is no tangible difference to seize on, what will happen when there is? When my parents briefly moved to 合肥 (Héféi), I could feel the localism coming at me immediately. I don’t even know exactly what I picked up on. Something about how people looked at me that I recognized from Sweden, even though they were looking a lot more because I looked foreign. Something about how they talk to each other. I’m not sure. But it was scary. I felt like I was back in the small Swedish town where I lived during my repatriation and I almost had a panic attack.

That’s why Hotelland is such a pleasure to be in. If I don’t open my mouth, I could be from anywhere. I am from anywhere. I could have arrived from anywhere in the world. I could fly to anywhere when I leave. I both belong and am free.

References

Sassen, S. (2000). Whose City Is It? Globalization and the Formation of New Claims. In F. J. Lechner and J. Boli (Eds.), The Globalization Reader (pp. 70-76). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

It would be easier to have a teacher, but there aren’t many 太极拳 (tàijíquán) masters where we live. The course I took earlier was given by an American who was taught by a Korean. The teacher counted in Korean, which confused me endlessly. I get confused if 太极拳 (tàijíquán) is presented clearly outside a Chinese cultural context. Some sort of fusion or third culture context works too, but if the keynote isn’t Chinese I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to do or how I’m supposed to relate to the teacher. It seems easier to put myself mentally in China and remember without support than to associate another culture with 太极拳 (tàijíquán). (I’m sure this is how cultural mismemories among immigrants and expats are formed.) But nonetheless, having been foiled by PAL video on an NTSC TV, we’ll just have to use distant proximities to imagine ourselves in the room where we practiced with fog and green bamboo outside in the valley, or in one of our parks with new concrete paths and sculpted landscapes, or on the roof of our building with the 扬子江 (Yángzǐ Jiāng) flowing beneath us, visible through the special fog- and pollution-mediated light. It’s surprisingly easy sometimes.

Sometimes it can be quite difficult to get hold of music from other countries than the one you’re in that you’re looking for. Other than the above-mentioned examples, finding drum and bass CDs in the States is an exercise in futility. Not even the Virgin Megastore in San Fransisco has anything worth mentioning – not a single Andy C album. As I don’t travel to the UK on a regular basis anymore, I have no idea of what’s going on in that scene and can’t buy any new records anyway, so all I can do is listen to the same CDs over and over and over and over… you get the idea. Most people in my immediate vicinity have no idea of what a dance club is (as opposed to a meat market) nor know what drum and bass is. Last time I encountered an American reference to jungle was in a book called Culture Moves by Hermay Gray, about who gets to define African-American culture. I don’t know the origins of drum and bass, but I do know that I encountered it in the UK in a fairly cosmopolitan crowd, out of very few were black but many more were brown. I have no idea of what that means – am I inauthentically claiming Black American culture that I encountered in London for my own? (Disregarding the large uncertaintly in what exactly is my own culture.) I’ve met about 15 Americans total of any skin color that know what drum and bass is in the first place, and the context in which I encountered it links it to the music of my generation – trance, techno, Europop, Cantopop, J-pop, house… not what Americans seem to consider Black American culture. Or maybe I have no idea of what Black or White American culture is. That’s always quite possible. However, rave and dance culture isn’t a very fertile medium for linking race and music, that’s part of the point. The godly jungle DJs are both black and white (but not brown, curiously). But then, rave culture doesn’t seem to exist in the US, save perhaps (I’m hoping here) NYC. What all of the godly dnb DJs do have in common is being British. Whatever way this works out, I’m confused about who gets to make and listen and dance to jungle in the US authentically, but I really wish I could be more connected to the London scene. Actually, I wish even more there was a local scene, but I’ve given up hope years ago. Nobody knows what I’m talking about when I say “event” or “rave”, so clearly can be no scene.

This, by the way, is the kind of thing I’m talking about:

Currently, I’m in an even bigger fix with trying to find a Chilean album called Aerolineas Makiza by a band called Makiza. I’ve seen a YouTube video of Makiza’s hit La Rosa de los Vientos, which I wrote about earlier. After reading more about them, I’d love to have the whole album, but of course no one is trying to sell me an older Chilean album in the US. Sony signed them, but not even Sony’s website helps. Given that Chilean hiphop is said to be divided into “before Makiza” and “after Makiza”, I’m sure any record store in Chile would have a copy. Not that that helps me any, since I’ve never set foot in Chile and my life trajectory doesn’t seem to be taking a swing by Chile any time soon.

I realize I’m part of a niche market here, but why can’t there be at least *one* web store that can get you any reasonably popular music or film (Took me three years to actually get a copy of Anglagard into my hands from the US as well) in one country from another? The global shopping gets slow, and you only go to so many places anyway. It’s assumed that if you live in certain places, you have no interest in what’s going on elsewhere. Or know that there is something going on to begin with. But when you’re a third culture kid, you know a lot of people from various countries who can say “Hey, isn’t Blahblahblah Band really awesome?” or “Did you see Really Cool Movie?” and prompt you to want to hear Blahblahblah Band or see Really Cool Movie whether they were released officially in whatever country you’re in. Perhaps when third culture kids have taken over the world, I will be able to order Aerolineas Makiza.

At least, I think that’s why I get a crushing sense of wanting to be somewhere completely different sometimes. Last week, I almost started crying in my car in the parking lot outside the grocery store I shop at, because the whole thing was so ridiculously American that it was like a bad joke, and exaggregated movie, and I didn’t want to be in it. I wanted to be approaching a Chinese grocery store (on foot) with Chinese things and foods inside, smell the smells of a Chinese supermarket and the smells in the air outside. I wanted to take a taxi with my groceries home. Maybe even argue with the cabbie about the short ride and whether he should or shouldn’t take me. There was some American 80s music playing inside, and it was irritating me immensely.  There were 372469175 kinds of large bags of chips and 2L bottles of soda, and aisles upon aisles of pre-made food in boxes and cans where there should have been regular food, like dried berries, rice, or dried mushrooms. (We read in some expat materials before the China move that Chinese are obsessed with fresh food. I wasn’t sure what that meant, and was even more confused once in a Chinese supermarket – there was lots of frozen, dried and preserved food. Now that I’m living in the US as an adult and shopping, I’m 99.9% sure that whoever wrote that Chinese are obsessed with fresh food was American. From their point of view, everyone must be obsessed with fresh food.)

From time to time, something jilts me and I see the country I’m in as if I just stepped off the plane and don’t understand why the locals do such silly things.  I think it’s a cumulative effect of many small reminders that people don’t appreciate how much their culture determines their reality and that to explore Reality, others’ realities also have to be explored, and therefore culture considered, like I said above. But I’m not quite sure. I had no idea why I didn’t want to be in the United States all of a sudden at the time, and my theory is mostly an after-the-fact construction.  I wonder if this is something all third culture kids go through, or whether it’s just me. I wasn’t irritated at anything in particular that Americans do at the time. I just got incredibly bored of being here. And why in the supermarket parking lot? Not a clue.