"Oh Yeah, I had Culture Shock For Like a Week and Then I Got Over It!"

The above title is the deathless sentence I heard uttered far, far too many times, usually by Rich White Kids Who Have Been in Asia for a Whole Semester. Culture shock isn't a case of diarrhea which you get over in a few days' time: it is an ongoing process of adjustment-and readjustment--that cycles throughout your lifetime. People here have what's referred to as a Bad China Day, which is often the result of a tangle with the local foreign visa office as well as with the electricity panel. Quite often the effects are compounded by culture shock: for example, as you're standing in line at the Foreign Visa Office, and simultaneous fighting to keep your place while negotiating on the phone with the guard at your apartment building to open up the locked panel that hides your electric meter so your friend can put the pre-paid card into the meter thus restoring your electricity --but the guard doesn't want to let your friend in to the panel because he's not registered to live there and by God you CANNOT leave the line to run home and take care of this because if you do you won't get your new visa paperwork filed in time which means you'll be kicked out or fined but the only guard allowed to open up the panel is about to leave for his wedding in his hometown and no one else will be allowed to hold the key which means a week or more of no electricity unless you solve this now...and you then bang your head on the marble floor of the Visa office and scream I FUCKING HATE THIS PLACE thus reducing your chances of being allowed another six month stay nil...well, yes, that's a Bad China Day compounded by the frustration of culture shock. Had you grown up in a developing country where such things are the norm you'd be a little more able to handle the less-than-straightforward methods of getting anything done around here. But no, you grew up in a time and place where electricity was billed monthly and regularly, where you had some grace days to pay a bill, where your meter was not kept under lock and key (unless you held the lock and key) and where you spoke and read the language.

The phrase, "Had culture shock for a week and then got over it" is often used by tourists as well: what they're really describing is jet lag. I don't know how sheltered you'd have to be for the usual tourist experience of "get on a bus, go to a hotel, eat a meal picked out for you" to be a total shock but there you go--it sure would be for me, regardless of what country I was passing through at the time.

 I do know that even the long-timers like me (about 20 years) still cycle and have very very bad moments that are attributable to culture shock rather than just a lack of breeding. The other day I got onto an elevator: instead of taking me downstairs to the exit it shot up to a higher floor, where some tall asshat with a cigarette in his hand got on. I saw the cigarette and snapped, and started screaming, "Get the hell off the elevator!" while pushing him off.  He was in such shock that he let me physically push him OUT of the elevator without protest while I rambled on in Chinese about the stink and danger of second hand smoke. I finished with "CHILDREN RIDE THIS ELEVATOR!" just as the doors closed. Since this happened in the compound where I live, it was an especially stupid thing to do, but so far, no one's come to complain about it. My friends Di and Suzie Q have reported similar incidents--just snapping at what is considered acceptable behavior here and plunging straight into Crazy without so much as a detour to "Let's Discuss This First." Di grabbed a cigarette out of a speaker's mouth and crushed it under his shoe: sadly, she was at a job interview at the time. Suzie Q also went berserk on an elevator, screaming at someone who lighted up in her presence. (She also grabbed a man and threw  a punch at him when he was beating his dog, but that's another story and yes, she lost her job over it.)

I'm sure if I were in a nation with a culture slightly more similar to the US I'd still have my moments, and I'm sure if I had never left the US I'd have moments where I flipped out due to frustration (or bad manners) but trust me when I say this; no one adjusts totally and perfectly to a new life situation, whether it's marrying up, or changing your socio-economic status, or picking up and moving to a new country. Once in a while, your past and your past expectations just catch up with you and you may or may not flip out. If you do flip out, take a deep breath, apologize, and remember: no one here is going to remember you in ten weeks' time, so get over it, and next time, don't punch anyone. (Especially since you are no doubt being filmed on someone's  iphone.)