Reflections of an American expatriate

BY KATE MASON

EUGENE WONG/YH

If this move seems a little excessive, or perhaps even a little stupid in light of recent political events, just ponder the possibilities. Sure, China right now is ruled by an overly bureaucratic Communist regime that imprisons intellectuals and picks fights with U.S. spy planes and nearby semi-autonomous islands. But it has several things going for it that America doesn't have. And I'm not even talking about its notable lack of citizens who call themselves Bush.

In order to understand the possibilities, consider my alternatives, or at least the one that most of my classmates are pursuing. I graduate and move to New York. I find a tiny apartment in Brooklyn for $1,000 a month and a job at a local newspaper. I spend my time writing blurbs on neighborhood traffic ordinances and school-board meetings. I pay taxes. On the weekends, I hang out at the local bar and watch the Yankees emasculate my home team, the Phillies, on TV. I complain about the traffic. I watch W. squinting into the cameras on the evening news, where I learn each night about all the new ways in which the world is going to shit. I read in The New York Times about China and all those other third-world countries the U.S. doesn't like, and I rant about the commentators' unfair stigmatization of alternative political systems. I wait to be discovered by a real newspaper, or better yet, by a movie producer. Eventually, I give up and apply to law school.

Now consider my next two years in China. I move to a rent-free apartment on the campus of Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, where I have signed a contract to teach English classes. Each month, I am handed a wad of cash that the local bureaucracy has not gotten its act together enough to tax. This money is enough to pay for 10 to 20 times what I could get as a teacher in New York, because one of the perks of living in a developing country is that a night on the town costs a total of about $3. The Chinese don't really keep up with American baseball but basketball is very popular there, so on the weekends I hang out in the local bar and watch my former high school classmate Kobe Bryant beat everyone in basketball (Yes, he really went to my high school. No, I wasn't friends with him) and forget about how abysmal my local baseball team is.

There are negative aspects to my life there, but each one helps to put my former life in America in perspective. Guangzhou is known for having air pollution so bad that it turns your snot black, so I no longer bother getting angry with Bush for messing with the moose in Alaska because, hey, compared to these guys he's doing a bang-up job. I also don't bother complaining about the traffic, because most cities in China don't really believe in traffic lights, and I should count my blessings if I can cross the street without getting run over. I don't have to worry about the many terrible things going on around me when I turn on the evening news, because all press is controlled by the government, whose official stance is that nothing is ever terribly wrong. I don't worry about poverty or AIDS because these things are officially nonexistent or at least rapidly improving. I certainly don't worry about race riots like the ones in Cincinnati, because there aren't really enough minorities around to start a race riot. I also don't worry about the civil rights violations that might cause such riots, because civil rights as I know them do not exist. There is no First Amendment—or Fifth or Fourteenth—to debate. There are no alternate politics to critique. The rules are clear: the government is right, always.

Chances are, I will not be exiled to a labor camp for being discovered as the rabble-rousing agitator that I am. I will probably return unscathed in July 2003 and move to that overpriced apartment in Brooklyn. But I am hoping that I will not be the same. I'm hoping I will have learned how little the world actually revolves around Yale or New York or even the U.S., that there are other ways of doing things and other ways of living that are beautiful and right and valid. But I will also perhaps have learned that activities like writing sarcastic newspaper articles are not fundamental rights bound up in nature but arbitrary and capricious rights that exist only because our society says they do. I will learn to respect freedom because it could be denied to me at any time.

When I return to the U.S. in 2003, the next presidential campaign will be underway. American citizens will be preparing to once again express their rights in the form of a vote. Much more importantly, George W. may already be on his way out. I will have entirely missed the peak of his reign. And that, my friends, is a damn good reason to spend a couple of years hanging out with communists.

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