03.28.08
Sweet Home Chicago (personal update)
Generally when blogging, I try to keep myself out of the spotlight, but it’s been a while since I’ve written a personal update, so I wanted to scribble down a few words to let readers know what I’ve been up to of late.
As most of you probably know, I moved back to the US in late August, and then moved to Chicago in late October. It is hard to believe that I have already been here 5 months. Overall, I have been extremely pleased with my decision to move to Chicago. I came here for two reasons primarily. Firstly, I wanted to live in a large cosmopolitan city, but also wanted to remain in the Midwest. Secondly, after being abroad for 3 years plus, I wanted to be close to friends whom I had rarely seen over the past few years. Coincidentally, most of the people I care about (excluding immediate family) all live in Chicago. Thus, the Windy City was the logical choice.
Chicago is an excellent city from both a cultural and a practical standpoint. With its history of immigration, Chicago, like New York City or San Francisco is a salad bowl of cultures from around the globe. On any given day, I could eat dim sum, have a conversation in Mandarin, buy chilies at a Mexican grocery store, drink Zywiec in a Polish night club, get a ride from an African cab driver who speaks 6 languages, go out for Korean BBQ, overhear a conversation in Fuzhou hua, buy tamales from a street vendor, and the list goes on. It has been reinforcing my image of what it means to live in America.
I have also been enjoying the convenience, financial freedom, and sense of ecological and social responsibility which comes along with not owning a car (something which is not possible in many American cities). Chicago’s rapid transit, while old and dilapidated, is also one of the most extensive systems in the country. I live a 7 minute walk from a subway line which in another 10 minutes takes me downtown, from which point I can get virtually anywhere in the city via the 8 different lines. Rarely is there a location within the city which I can’t reach on the train.
As for my employment, I am currently working 2 jobs. I spend my days as a medical interpreter for a company based out of Cincinnati. Several days a week they send me to different hospitals in the Chicago area where I am an interpreter between doctors and Chinese patients who can’t speak enough English to get through their appointments. In the evenings, I work 4 nights a week as an English teacher at a local training school, not so different from the ubiquitous 培训学校 in China. My students are all adults and come from a variety of backgrounds. The largest percentage of them are Polish, but I also have students from Ukraine, Bulgaria, Austria, Mongolia, Thailand, Korea, Turkey, and Benin. It has been an interesting and completely different experience from teaching Chinese students, and I plan to elaborate on this more in a future entry. Needless to say, I have learned more about Eastern Europe in the past few months than I had in my entire life.
Even though I am back in the US now, I am doing my best to keep in touch with my life in China. People often ask me if I miss China, and I my answer is “no.” This is the same answer I would give people in China when they ask if I missed my life in the US. To me, my life in China has always seemed separate from my life in the US, like an alternative universe. When I am in the US, I think about the US and when I was in China, I thought about China.
That being said, in the past few weeks I have not been able to help myself from thinking about the events which have been transpiring in China. And the more I think, the more frustrated I become, not so much with the events themselves, but with the way they are covered by the media, both Western and Chinese. While the Chinese media does its typical song and dance of selective reporting and damage control, the Western media continue to feed us the same over sensationalized, one-sided, Hollywood dribble we’ve come to expect in post 9/11 America. Neither side is lying, yet nobody is reporting the whole truth. With one side seeking to numb the masses and the other in dire need of sales and ratings, the true losers are the readers. The resulting ignorance on both sides only provides more fuel for the fire, and I fear this trend will continue throughout the impending Olympics.
With all this in mind, I am going to do my best to take a trip back to China for the festivities this summer. While plans are still up in the air, and by no means definite, it is my desire to keep current on the country I spent nearly 1/8 of my life living in, and besides, if the proverbial shit hits the fan, I plan to be there to pick up the droppings. In the interim, I’ll be in Chicago, which for now, and the foreseeable future, is home.
Tina
said,
March 28, 2008 at 12:58 am
I’m glad you are enjoying Chicago. We left there in July to move to Xiamen China and have been enjoying China since we have arrived, though there have been times where we just shake our heads.
Chicago is a blast in the summer and there are many venues which are inexpensive or free. Millenium Park has some great free concerts, and there are enough festivals to keep your liver busy. Enjoy Chicago for us.
Dave!
said,
March 28, 2008 at 6:44 am
To be fair (re: the recent events in China/Tibet) the ability to tell both sides of the story and tell the whole truth is entirely in the hands of the Chinese. Western media outlets might sensationalize, but that’s partially because they have little info to go on, and frankly, what they do have is pretty sensational. One of the major reasons that Western news outlets coverage may seem biased is because they are not given access *by* China to tell the whole story. That isn’t the fault of the Western media…
維特利
said,
March 28, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Isn’t Chicago a crime infested city, just like Detroit?
Benjamin Ross
said,
March 29, 2008 at 5:01 pm
維特利-
Chicago and Detroit are similar in many ways. Both cities are heavily industrial, and lost significant population numbers after peaks in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The difference is that while Chicago began rebounding in the 1980’s, Detroit has continued in a tailspin, which has ruined the city’s economy, and thus has caused Detroit to become one of the poorest, most crime-ridden cities in the US.
Like Detroit, Chicago also has many poor, (and crime-ridden) areas, mainly on the South and West side, but today Chicago is booming, unlike Detroit which is essentially a dying city. So there are also many areas which do not suffer from the same problems as Detroit. Chicagoans often refer to the city as a checkerboard, meaning some spots are very safe, but in other areas it’s a matter of crossing a few streets where you are suddenly in a more dangerous neighborhood.
Josh Ross
said,
March 29, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Nice post man..guess you were up late!
Leben
said,
March 31, 2008 at 6:24 pm
You can’t say “That’s not the fault of western midea “.If you don’t know that thing exactly , you can say “We are still keeping an eye on it “. You can’t just guess the things going on there .
Matt Schiavenza
said,
April 10, 2008 at 7:48 am
Well crime-infested is relative. American cities by developed-world standards tend to have more crime than most, but I’m pretty sure Chicago is considered quite a bit safer than the aforementioned Detroit, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Oakland, Newark, Baltimore, and dozens of other major cities.
As Ben says, lots of American cities generally suffered in the 60s and 70s due to the rise of the suburbs, the corresponding pre-eminence of the automobile, and the decline of manufacturing industries. Some cities, like Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Boston, managed to turn things around. Others weren’t so lucky.
Detroit’s particular problem is that it was a city built around one industry: the automobile. As the American market became inundated with foreign-made cars, and as more Americans felt that these foreign-owned cars were cheaper and more reliable, the market share of domestic cars declined considerably. And even though the federal government subsidizes Big Auto and taxes gas less than in other countries, Detroit hasn’t been able to reverse its decline.