Tea in the ancient world: Deeper lessons learned from living in a foreign country

being married in a Thai wedding ceremony

It's a familiar enough theme that significant exposure to foreign cultures broadens one's perspective, and teaches life lessons about how worldviews can differ. I’m American, and I’ve been living in Thailand for almost all of the past 15 1/2 years. Shorter exposure to culture and perspectives elsewhere can teach us a lot, especially about our own worldview, but after a longer time really assimilating a foreign way of looking at things enables awareness of deeper levels of assumptions.

I’ve been living back in the US for 4 of the last 8 months, returning to the last place I lived, Honolulu, where my wife and I met in grad school, but that’s a different story. Maybe returning back does help with the comparison, going through reverse culture shock and re-acclimation.

Lots of trivial differences come up living abroad, which I will only sample for reference here. People eat different foods, and observe different norms related to social roles, or forms of expression. Something like tipping stands out (or not tipping restaurant servers, elsewhere), or female cleaning staff working in the men's bathroom while you use it. It will be tricky to identify what matters most, without piling up a lot of examples of how roles and communication vary, but let’s consider a few. These examples are selected to highlight some fundamental differences, not so much how to navigate slightly different expectations, but instead how views of reality and self can radically differ.

You can’t get angry in public in Thailand; that’s different. Eventually people will, if pushed far enough in situations, and then they tend to blow up, like a bomb going off. You just can’t do that at work, not even the early stages of getting upset, like a heated meeting discussion. Of course you can in the US; crossing the wrong person is political suicide at work, but emotionally charged disagreement can be a healthy form of exchange, for sorting out people seeing next steps and background themes differently. We're still not there related to the most fundamental defining themes, but narrowing potential range of expression is significant. It's funny how Thai soap opera tv shows highlight this difference, with emphasis on the "blowing up" part, landing in about the same place American soap operas do.

People are less independent in Thailand, in the sense of experiencing social connections as more binding, and more a part of how they define themselves. This ties back to the anger issue; work is about a group of people coordinating shared experience, not a group of individuals working together as distinct cogs in a larger machine (although this is really a continuity, not an opposition). In the US older forms of employee training sessions geared to build teamwork were really about functionally integrating people to enable them to work together. This works out differently in Thailand, about helping redefine self-identity, really building shared perspective.

The same general point goes for family, about limiting individualism and independent self-definition. You don’t move out from living with your parents as quickly or as often, even in wealthy families, where expense is not really a factor at all. The parent-child social bond doesn't drop out to the same extent at 18 or 21; it remains a defining input for all of one's life.

Paying respect means more. That’s easy to say, but hard to define, at the level it really applies. It’s not about giving your parents something nice on Mother’s Day, instead about keeping those parents included in your life, forever. Not tied to infrequent weekend visits with grandchildren; Thai nursing homes barely exist because people would much rather take care of that older generation until the very end. Maybe it sounds better, in the sense that the connections would mean more then, and worse, in that the experience of individuality and freedom is highly valued by Americans. I suppose both judgments work.

These examples don't necessarily stem from a common underlying layer, supporting all the effects from these examples, that highlights what is really going on, what is different. Thais are Buddhist, but that changes less than these other factors. Formal religious ceremonies take other forms, and people have different reasons to “do the right thing,” but in the end it’s about the same. Actually believing in Christianity, or Buddhism, or being atheist doesn’t seem to have to change all that much to me; people can be ethical or not regardless of accepting or rejecting supernatural story lines, or more practical abstract teachings.

Fate is viewed differently, and that does change things. Let’s consider the “soul-mate” theme; if someone takes that seriously, and truly believes in it, then they also tap into and accept an underlying degree of external control acting in the world. Maybe God is doing that, or spiritual forces, or someone might accept it without even thinking it through as caused by something clearly defined. Thais go further; they would accept the soul-mate idea, and also that people have a time to die (we do; I mean a more pre-ordained version), that a job hunt should work out as it’s supposed to, that serious diseases are tied to fate as much as normal root causes (poor diet, genetic inputs, etc.), and so on. They’re more open to astrology, or ceremonial forms of making wishes, ways to interpret this external control, and ask for favors. So what does this change then?

Personal responsibility is scaled back just a little. That matters less than one might think; even in the Western atheist’s stone-cold, rational perspective external factors (bundled as luck, or just accepted as lots of individual bits) are as much a life-input as personal control. Still, to an American it can feel like Thais are only leaving one hand on the wheel, that they aren’t leaning into trying to control everything as much as waiting to see how it works out.

It’s not just “making moves” that is reduced as a result, deeper belief in independent self-development, there is less of an emphasis on unpacking layers of external root causes we can’t normally clearly define or understand. Then again it doesn’t necessarily help Westerners, or Americans, since we never get much completely figured out, and the practical life-coaching self-help themes and content are usually more about selling material and seminars than piecing together functional sets of ideas. Studying psychology can be interesting, but in the end you don’t really reconstruct what makes you tick. Maybe you could dodge a lack or insight or awareness here or there, which is something.

It would be nice if mixing with a range of foreigners in a foreign country enabled really unpacking how a broad range of worldviews work, or if travel accomplished that. It’s not that simple. If you have a close friend from another country, from a similar or dis-similar culture, that’s going to help with working out how they see reality differently, but a two week vacation really won’t. You’ll be stuck back at how people use silverware differently, or don’t eat while walking, are more reserved in general, do or don’t queue as effectively, and so on. It seems like if you have a foreign co-worker you’re gaining a lot of insight, but really trivial differences tend to come up and stand out.

My kids have attended two Western schools and two Thai schools, each, not counting living in the US right now, and that broad range of varying experiences covers too much ground to sample easily.

my daughter at an international school, with students from lots of different places

Being married to a foreigner should enable all sorts of depth of insight, right? It seems like it depends on the person, and the relationship. It’s all too easy to make the other person the “bad guy” when serious communication or perspective difference problems come up, because based on your own assumptions they are doing odd things, easily regarded as ignoring other’s perspective and focusing on self-interest.

Or positive differences with your life partner can be seen as cute, more superficial, or just particular to them. You need real stress, real stakes, and problems to come up to really dig down to that next level; having kids helps with all that. Little differences can seem like “deal-breakers:” should they be vaccinated, do we hit them or use time-outs, how many different activities strike the right balance, are A’s and B’s ok, or only A’s, or should focus on other range instead make getting C’s a reasonable thing, when the kids have less potential in a subject?

Other examples would keep turning up other minor differences, which might seem to imply a few really important layers of perspective differences. In the end people are really more the same than different in different cultures, since human nature covers a lot of common ground, but these smaller differences do end up meaning a lot.

Are many Asian cultures similar in broad ways; can we at least shift to considering this level or type of question? Yes and no. A lot of what I’ve covered about emphasis on social placement, defined roles, and importance of family are common across different countries in Asia, but on the surface level cultures seem quite different, to me. Japanese people are very reserved; Thais are socially open related to engaging others and seeming positive but less so related to truly sharing personal perspective; Chinese people and Koreans are more straightforward, a bit less reserved, with different rules and norms structuring how they interact across different scope.

It was interesting visiting Shanghai with a Chinese family friend, a fellow parent at a Bangkok school who had moved back to China, how she would negotiate pricing at local markets, eventually getting angry and starting to raise her voice at the vendor, as part of the negotiation process. I could only imagine that she blamed them for trying to take advantage of us, but I couldn't know. Then they would settle on a fair price, and become friendly again.

Then mixing together how everyone in a country or culture only goes so far; personal differences, and differences across social levels, or in varying regions, in urban versus rural settings, etc., all factor in. This makes culture the kind of thing you unpack and sort out over years, not weeks, because every experience and highlighted difference only relates to one context and one set of inputs, related to a few people.

out of Bangkok lots of places have a smaller-town feel, familiar from my rural PA background

It’s interesting experiencing mixed-culture kids growing up trying to balance having two perspectives. My kids can “do” both, American and Thai outlook and forms of personal exchange. Before living in the US this past 8 months — we moved back to get them experience in schools here, since my son started high school, and will go to a US university later on — they were clearer on Thai perspective, even though I’ve always been a main influence on them. It makes all the difference to experience lots of examples of a cultural perspective, to interact within that medium. Media content certainly helps with passing on some Western / US perspective, but that only goes so far. It has to be lived out.

There aren’t really final “lessons learned,” or take-aways. It’s interesting how it all works out, and very complicated. Different people with claims to certain years of exposure, or having lived in different places, vary in what they’ve picked up from that. Plenty of US expats (Americans living abroad) who are married and then divorced from Thai ex-wives seem to not really ever piece together what caused all the disconnect along the way. They land on “Thais are irrational,” or deceitful, and to me the first is closer to the truth, although that’s really too simple. They see things differently, acting on different assumptions, based on different self-definition in relation to society and relationship roles. No one is really completely rational; a lot of life experience is about projecting out next steps based on hunches, about how past patterns will extend to next steps. Meaning and emotional connections settle here and there.

I suppose broad exposure to foreign cultures should make one wiser. Maybe I experienced that, but I don’t feel all that wise, for any number of different reasons. It does seem like I have a more balanced and informed worldview than many others, but I’m still working from a limited set of capabilities, so it’s only so helpful.