Beyond Bounds Blog

Beyond Bounds has been a solid idea of mine for a few months now, although it’s been brewing for over a year. I discovered blogging in early 2007 and wanted to use this platform to tell the world about my experiences in China. I started a blog at blogspot, which I wrote for about 6 months before I stopped due to lack of focus. I regrouped my thoughts and decided to pursue blogging more seriously.

There is a lot of material out there about China, traveling to China, studying in China, the economics of China, doing business in China, and living in China, but I have yet to come across any blog or book that discusses real interaction with Chinese people. There are short guidelines about Chinese customs or what to avoid or expect in Chinese society, but there is no solid place to go for insight in how to interact. I see westerners and Chinese clash on a daily basis, with neither side getting closer to understanding or accepting the other. It is pretty obvious that this subject needs some light shed on it. We can’t keep avoiding the topic just because it is hard.

I’m unique. I speak fluent Mandarin Chinese - and when I mean fluent I mean that it would take a long conversation with me in Chinese, if you couldn’t see my face, to distinguish me from a local. Language differences do not hamper my ability to communicate. Since I am living completely immersed in China, I can gain insights at a much faster pace than, say, if I were living near a China town in America.

After I broke the language barrier, I found that the cultural barrier was the really barrier. Previously I had thought “if only I could speak Chinese better - I’ll finally be able to make real friends!” How wrong I was. Looking back at the US, many people of different backgrounds speak English fluently, but so often these people group together and do activities only together. While this isn’t a rule, it is a tendency that is far too common. Los Angeles is a perfect example of this - different ethnicities have broken themselves off into different regions. There is definitely something wrong, but the topic has become so politically charged and socially taboo that not many people are talking about it.

In the past few months I’ve finally begun discovering patterns. I’ve been making adjustments in my thinking and behavior and am finding amazing results, not only in my ability to make friends with locals, but my ability to live happily in this society. In this blog I will show you first hand what is successful and what is not in dealing with Chinese, and I will prove that these lessons can be carried over to other cultures and interactions.

I’m not sure how this blog will evolve, but I do have plans and goals. I’m very excited to start such a challenge and I’m sure that I will grow a lot in the process of writing this. I am not an expert on China and I definitely don’t have all of the answers, but I won’t take the easy answers and won’t ask only the easy questions - this is one of my main motivations for writing.

It will take me a while to get acclimated, and I will be making lots of adjustments to the overall look and feel of the site. I will be experimenting with different writing styles and topics, so please let me know what you think!