Half a life half way around the world

Editor's note: We have asked expats living in China to share their own stories with the cities they work and live in. Benjamin Hammer is a US resident who has been living and working in Shandong province for 15 years.

I lived the first two decades of my life in America and the next two in China. It is a strange feeling to know your own country only as a child and to become an adult in a foreign one.

I experienced very little culture shock upon arriving in 1998 because I knew very little about China. I had no expectations. Just live and learn. I arrived in China as a college student at Nanjing University.

On my first day living at the student dormitory, I went downstairs to the convenience store to buy a bag of chips. I came back five minutes later to buy a Coke. As a joke, I said to the cashier, "Long time no see!" 

She immediately corrected me and said, "No, you were here five minutes ago." That was lesson number one in China: sarcasm does not translate.

Soon after, a local friend invited me to his house for my first ever lunch in a Chinese home. His father finished eating first, put down his bowl and chopsticks and said to me man man chi ("Eat slowly").

I was confused. I didn't realize this was part of Chinese etiquette. He wanted to express that just because he was done eating, I should not feel rushed to finish.

I thought, "Am I eating too fast? Why does he care about the speed at which I eat?" After they explained it to me, I learned my second important lesson: to learn the language, one has to learn the culture.

I had already studied the language for three years before I came to China. I knew words, but there was so much I didn't understand.

Why were people putting food into my rice bowl? Why were people at the table telling me when I could and couldn't drink my cup of beer? Why was it okay for everyone to spit things out directly onto the table, but they covered up their mouths with their free hand when using a toothpick to be polite?