I've organized the answers into short, medium and long answers for the impatient and apathetic to the interested and caring!
How was China?
• China was amazing. It was very challenging to live in a foreign country and I struggled a lot at times, but it was very rewarding at the same time. I learned something new all the time; life was always fascinating.
• It kind of feels like a dream now. Sometimes I ask myself, “Was that real life?” My memories are starting to slip away from me, and sometimes it feels like I never left; I was just asleep in this dream for a long time. It was wonderful though. I had a lot of freedom to do what I wanted to do with my own time. I was still super busy--fieldwork completely consumed my life in pretty much every waking moment—but I was constantly out meeting new people, writing down my observations, conducting interviews, exploring new places and new ideas, and practicing my language, so it was a very rich and fulfilling life full of community and meaningful work.
• It was difficult in the sense that I was very lonely at times and it was hard to find a solid community there. I had a few really close friends, but they had all moved away to other places or gotten really busy with work by 2016. I would often make a few close friends, but for whatever reason, things would fade out after a few months. I jumped around a lot between several different groups. I had a far-reaching community network with a lot of different types of people—jiujitsu, Crossfit, lesbians, a few migrant families I was helping with English—but it was hard to find those kinds of really close, intimate bonds with people like I have with high school or college friends. Despite that, I made some friendships that made a lasting impact on me. I had several friends who meant a lot to me and it was hard to say goodbye to them at the end.
How was the food?
• I loved the food. There was a lot of diversity because Han people eat a lot of vegetables, fish, and spicy food, and Uyghur people eat a lot of squash, carrots, and bread.
• My favorite food was pumpkin dumplings because they were sweet and also had lots of carbs, oily fats!
• My Uyghur tutor taught me how to make their version of “spaghetti” (called leghmen) and rice pilaf, and I still make those dishes at home now because the ingredients are all really cheap! The Han food is more difficult to make here because they use a lot of specific spices that you can only find in China (and I’m too lazy to find my way to the Asian market). The Uyghurs really only used salt to flavor their food, so it’s a lot easier to replicate here. I also learned how to make dumplings, but that can be very time consuming so it’s easier to buy the frozen ones at Trader Joes!
What were you doing in China?
• Field research for my PhD dissertation
• I was able to collect a lot of really fascinating and valuable data, and explore the violence of inequality and totalitarianism.
What is your research about? (non-academic response)
• My area of interest is at the combination of anthropology and political science, and I look at the effect of authoritarianism and capitalism on urban areas.
• How and why economic inequality is growing remains the main passion that drives my work. By taking that to China, I look at how a dictatorship can either stifle or encourage economic growth, and the effect that has on how local people live their lives. Especially in China where there is mass urbanization, I look at how people cope with moving to and living in cities in terms of assimilation, culture shock, and forming communities, while under incredible economic stress.
• My methods are mostly observing, interviewing, and analyzing government documents. It was really important to me to learn about what everyday life was like there—that’s why I spent so much time in-country—because it wasn’t about conducting a survey. It was about learning how people lived their lives. By integrating as much as I could into the community, I was able to learn about what was most important to people in their everyday lives. I learned that inequality and economic crises are a huge part of people’s lives—how they are going to feed their families is a main concern of people. But then, of course, there were also people who were jetting off on international travel, had multiple houses, and would spend hundreds of dollars on a purse, which is why I’m so interested in inequality because there was a big gap between the rich and the poor. Another main concern was the separation of families because often a family would get separated when some of them went to the city to work. So that was another major theme in people’s lives: missing their family and friends back home.
What is your dissertation about? (non-academic response)
• I focus on how people live their lives in the midst of state security and economic stress
• I look at local government, how minorities express difference from the majority through cultural practice, and how rural migrants live in the city in terms of culture shock and discrimination.
• I find that people will always find ways to live outside of attempted state control, and that counteracting negative stereotypes is a major influence on minority cultures’ lives. I find that rural migrants encounter a lot of discrimination and hardship in the city.
How is it being back?
• It’s nice to be back and see my friends again, I missed my family and friends a lot while I was gone. It’s also hard to be away from my friends in China, and it’s hard to feel uprooted and at a loss for community again.
• There’s definitely a lot of reverse culture shock, such as going to grocery stores or big box stores like Target, and being faced with the overwhelming amount of selection. There’s a lot of unacknowledged privilege in the US that can be frustrating, and a lot of luxuries that feel unnecessary and excessive to me now—even like ice in cold drinks, greek yogurt, pre-cut and pre-washed spinach: those kinds of things feel weird to me. Customer service staff is so friendly here that it feels really fake to me. I am worried for my friends’ safety but I can’t contact them, so that’s super tough too.
• It’s nice to have an office where I can go and write in peace and quiet every day—that was the main reason I came back was so that I could focus on writing my dissertation—but it also feels super lonely and isolating. I’m also super overwhelmed about the dissertation because I feel like I have so much material and so much to say, and it’s hard to put all of that into the right words. Obviously, the political situation in the US is not in a good place either, so that can be hard too to be in such a tense and depressing political climate. I’m finding community at the jiujitsu gym and among other grad students. It’s nice seeing and talking on the phone to family and friends again.
Are you going to go back?
• I don’t know. If it wasn’t for the pollution and the oppressive political situation, I would undoubtedly go back, even to live or teach there long term. It’s difficult to live in a situation where you live in constant fear of what someone will overhear, report, or get in trouble for being in contact with you. It’s difficult to make an impact or impart change or inspiration when you and everyone around you is living in constant fear of being watched and getting arrested. I also feel obligated to my family in the US, and it’s difficult to give up the comforts and luxuries of the American lifestyle—including, but not exclusive to, cheese, Netflix, fast internet, and freedom of speech. However, I feel a very intense sense of obligation to my research participants and deeply desire to give back to the community who gave me so much. I also feel like I abandoned them when they needed me the most, and I have no intention to abandon those friendships and relationships. I hope to go back frequently to visit, and maybe to live for short periods of time. Perhaps I will go back and teach English for a year of longer someday. Or perhaps I can figure out a way to live and teach there part-time while maintaining a teaching position in the US as well.
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