A cultural corridor : stepping in

There I was, about to leave the supposedly beautiful country in which I had been raised, in which I had all my family, all my friends, and overall the only cultural environment I had ever adapted to. It was the first time I walked through such a large and long corridor and saw people on both sides sitting and waiting on their gates, some of them ready to go to Asia, Africa or America for their businesses, and others ready to sit in a plane for hours, heading back to their homes. I was just wandering how I would feel after taking off, being surrounded by people from a different culture, speaking a different language, and that for hours. Only my father had experienced this since he would go on international business trips every two months or so.

As I was still walking through the long corridor between the international gates, I was amazed. I heard people speak languages that my teachers had never got to transmit to students, including Spanish and English. Spanish was a language that was not unfamiliar to me and that I hadn’t had troubles to learn at school since I truly loved it. I also heard languages that I had never heard before and that I couldn’t identify. I was in Charles De Gaulle airport but no longer in the French territory (which is hard to realize), in the middle of a culturally mixed place.

Our gate was part of the last ones at the bottom of the corridor, and I chose to walk there instead of using the kind of flat automatic escalator in the middle of the way. The only French people who didn’t seem to ever have really travelled before were the ones working in the boutiques on the sides, talking to strangers in English with a(n) (almost exaggerated, I would say now) French accent. On the sides, there were a few people already on the line to their plane. They were the ones going everywhere in the world for their work, always traveling on business class seats.

We were there. There were about three French people, probably going on a business trip, and one family of four. I was guessing that the rest is Chinese. They were all carrying Dior and Chanel bags, wearing T-shirts with things like “I love Paris” written on them. This was one first cliché of the way other people saw France. Those Chinese people had apparently gone to Paris, spent thousands (of euros) on bags and clothes, and bought one cheap T-shirt proving that they had been to Paris. And I guessed that they missed the best parts of my country.

About one out of ten billion of the total Chinese population was right here in front of me. Some of them were playing cards on their big luggage, and some others were playing games on their iPads. But their most noticeable aspect was their language. When you hear it without understanding it, you find it to be the complete opposite of French. The tone, the noisiness, the accent, the sounds and the way they move their lips are all different from what I speak.

I didn’t know how to feel about the fact that those people would be surrounding me for twelve hours after only half an hour. I thought I should pretend that it was not the first time I was in this kind of cultural mix. The feeling was not bad, though, the only sad thing about this situation was that I couldn’t step back, I had to get in this plane, I had to leave. This was just the beginning, the environment hadn’t quite changed yet. It was still France. I was trying as hard as I can to only see the positive out of these circumstances. “I’m about to discover another side of this planet and live in a city that’s 7 times bigger than Paris. Not everyone at my age has this kind of opportunity” I tried to tell myself.

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It had been about twelve hours, and we were landing. I liked the trip for the little TVs on the front seats and all the good movies they had, the view of Moscow at night through the window, and the pretty waitress. I could however not sleep at all. The plane was too loud and my mind too busy.

I was now in the Chinese territory, walking through a similar long corridor as before the flight, and I had never had such mixed feelings. On one side, I was sad about the long distance that now separated me from what was still my home. But at the same time I felt amazed to be on the other side of the planet. It was just hard to believe. Outside the airport, a driver was waiting for us and took us through the city, to our hotel, and for the first time, I discovered a place in this world where it was all there. In such cities, it all moves, it all happens. Tall, large, peopled. That’s where I now lived, and I was not yet aware of everything that my life was about to go through.

Two months later, it was time to go to school, and I was rather scared to find myself in a small class with only nerdy, rich students. In the end, I met Abdoul, my very first Canadian friend. He was the one to show me all the different aspects of Guangzhou, introduce me to multiple people from different international schools. And this was when I started to go out more and socialize with English speakers, slowly improving my English skills.

It surely took time to reach a sufficient level of English in order to properly communicate with others. But the fact that I had a friend and a girlfriend who spoke French but had friends from everywhere in the world supported me and forced me to take action about language.

I had troubles with the accent for a long time. People always figured out about my nationality and let me know about it, just by hearing me speak English. Then I started learning Chinese and was forced to use it everyday, to buy my food, to explain an address to a taxi driver, etc. Strangely, I didn’t have much trouble with my accent with Chinese. When people in the street heard me speak Mandarin, they would think I spoke the full language and start talking to me as if I was an expert, which I wasn’t. I would quickly get lost and confused and tell them that wo ting bu dong ta men shuo shenme.

Two years of adaptation, cultural mixture

Now when I think about those times when I was trying to communicate with English speakers, I realize how language and even cultural adaptation hasn’t been too difficult for me. It took me about two years to realize that I’m a person to live overseas in big cities, because they are the places where everything happens. And when I go back to my home country, I can see the different aspects of France from an outside perspective. It makes me feel like I’m now a culturally mixed person. And the language I speak makes me think differently, in another perspective.

Now, I think that my experience of course has advantages but also disadvantages. A certain freedom has been given to me since I came to China. It is a country where there is very little violence and danger, compared to France. My parents now allow me to go out further from home and later at night. In France, this kind of freedom is removed from me. When I go back to the country where I have grown up, I don’t feel at home anymore. My freedom is different. Also, I see my old friends growing up, changing, having a totally different life from mine and I don’t understand them clearly, and neither do they understand me. I only get to remember about my way of living in France in summer, when I spend a few weeks there.

In France, people don’t consider me as a typical French guy anymore. But in China, the way I act make most foreigners realize that my nationality is French, or sometime Canadian which is strange, and that makes me a kind of cultural mixture. Also, when I think about it, the three best friends I had in my life were French, Canadian and Indian. All of them were from three different continents. This is how language and culture in general shaped and defined who I am.