Sometimes I would say something casual like, “I’m wondering if you know where I can ship a package”, and suddenly people are treating it as Serious Business, and Something They Should Do As Friend/Family, and they’d whisk the package from my hands and fuss over it and then it disappears and then I find out they had to leave for work a half hour early to mail my package, and that they spent 300rmb of their own money sending it. And all I had wanted was to find out where the post office is.
On the other hand, sometimes it’s nice to know that family is just there for you in really heartwarming ways, and that you don’t always have to say thank you, because those are things that people just do out of a sense of duty and relationship. The Chinese teacher at work once said to me, “Why do I have to thank the students for doing their work? That’s what they’re supposed to do, just as I’m supposed to work hard to be a good teacher.” In the same way, family and friends are just supposed to be.
In other news, I’m planning to finish up China Comics by the end of the year. I have another one to post tomorrow that is a follow-up to this one, and then 3 more that I’ve planned. If I do one a week for the next month, I should have them finished in time.
There are many more things to tell about China, but I feel like 24 pages is a good place to pause, and if I were to come back to it later, it might be in a different format. This has turned into more of a Chinese culture primer than storybook, so if I were to come back to telling stories about China, I’d like them to be actual stories.
Part of the reason for the upcoming break is that I feel like growing as an artist — leave my one-page edu-comics comfort zone and actually try my hand at telling stories, but more on that later.
This also matches my experience. I was complaining to my friend Grace about how my aunt had promised to help me move, and then backed out of most of said promises when it was too late to make my own arrangements. Grace was appalled. “That’s not family!” Seeing the relationships you and El and Grace have with your extended families, I could see what she meant.
In general, I like the Chinese model of friendship and family networks. Friendships in the US seem to be very strongly based around mutual interests, which is great, but one thing I sometimes miss about China/Taiwan is the ability to form bonds and support networks with people that I may not share all my interests with. Somehow we still find things to talk about. On the other hand, I do get a little nervous, because I’m never sure what’s expected on my end, and I worry that my general flakiness will result in serious hurt feelings. And I can feel a little guilty when someone does something big for me, and I have no idea how I’m supposed to repay them.
I’ve really enjoyed the China 101 series! It’s been very nostalgic for me, and also fun reading! But I’m happy to see you move on to something else, so long as there are more Sushu comics in the future!
Oh, and also: any China comics you make that are history-related (or just have a historical setting) will probably find themselves printed out and stuck to my carrel.
Greek family is actually the same. I met my second cousin once when I was 7, and her and her brother let us stay with them and walked us around our hometown for 3 days when I went to Greece. Had we met any of our relatives on our island (which was very likely, but didn’t happen), I’m sure they would be happy to go to dinner with us or something.
Macedonia was exactly like this. Everything is done through extended family relationships and friendships, and people go above and beyond what an American would expect. It engenders some guilt, because of the problem of repayment, also because I know that I wouldn’t be able to extend as much of my time to my friends in Macedonia as they’ve extended to me, if they came here.
Cage pointed out to me though that the differences between “connection culture” and American culture are not just rooted in our overwhelming selfishness or something like that. Part of the problem is also the very professionalization of time. At least in comparison to Macedonia, where people tend to be unemployed or underemployed and there’s a lot of built-in inefficiency that forces you to simple wait things out, our time is actually worth more because of the way we structure our lives, and it costs us more in comparison to carve out time to give away to guests.
I still feel like I’m never going to be able to repay my Macedonian friends and colleagues, though. It’s definitely guilt inducing.