Overseas

My first visit to Japan was in summer 2005. I applied for a two-month summer program at Kyushu University in Fukuoka and spent the whole summer there. Known to those studying Sino-Japan relationship, the anti-Japanese demonstration in April that year cast a long shadow on the diplomatic ties between these two countries. I could still sense the tension during my visit. My tutor, a law student in Kyudai is a very lovely girl, and we carefully avoided talking too much about politics; and so was my host family, who greeted me warmly. But several professors did point out that due to the increasingly intense relationship between China and Japan,  it's more and more difficult for Chinese people to lead normal lives in Japan: local people are reluctant to rent apartments to them; companies don't want to recruit them and even bullies prefer to rob Chinese.

When I was back to Beijing at the end of the summer, I met my Japanese friend in Peking University. He had been learning Chinese in PKU for two years, and was traveling all around China in the summer. When I asked him about his traveling, he didn't seem very happy. "People call me 'Japanese devil' when they found out I'm not Chinese," he said, "they thought I didn't understand what they were talking, but I did!" Then I asked him how he responded to the insults, he said: "I have no choice but to tolerate(忍耐)." The I shared my experiences in Fukuoka, and we both deplored the poor relationship and hatred between two countries for quite a while.

For whatever reason, when a country fails to handle its diplomacy well, its citizens overseas are always the first to be affected. Many Chinese people in the US can't help wonder which side they should take if the US and China are at war. I met a gentleman from Taiwan who migrated to the US in 1960s and have been living here ever since. His family members have all become US citizens but he still keeps his original nationality. And when I asked him why, he said he wasn't sure if he'd be loyal to the US if two countries are at war. It occurs to me very unlikely that the US will be fighting against China in the near future; but when two countries - one is your motherland and the other is your living place - have trouble with each other, the overseas will be suffering deeply inside.

The US is a diversified and individualist country, and therefore quite tolerant with immigrants. By "tolerant", I mean respecting different culture and religion, and able to detach individuals from their nationalities. But in a highly-unified nation-state, e.g. those with one ethnicity, one religion and one cultural tradition, people may view migrants very differently. Native people tend to label foreigners with their home countries first, and the migrants' ethnicity and cultural background may become their main characteristics as individuals. Things can get disastrous when migrants' home countries get into trouble with this kind of nations. As the reputation of overseas' home country is destroyed when in conflict with their resident country, the reputation of overseas are destroyed as well. They are not only suffering psychologically, but facing the threats of xenophobia. Think of the massacre of Chinese overseas in Indonesia and Philippine years ago, what did they do wrong? To the mobs, they were "wrong" only because they were Chinese.

When I was in China, surrounded by other Chinese people, I didn't have direct feeling towards how deterioration of foreign relations could affect my everyday life. But now as my family becomes more international than before, I can't be immune to the results of those stupid politicians messing up diplomatic relations. I just want to tell the high-level government  position occupiers: if you can't do good, at least stop doing evil.