While many Asian descendants living in the West call themselves "bananas" from "yellow" outer features inherited from their ancestors and "white" Western mentality, many Westerners in China call themselves "eggs," yellow inside and white outside. Mr. Rene Schmitt, a native of Germany and the managing director of the Kempinski Hotel Beijing has lived in China for 10 years. He counts himself among these eggs.
As cultural and psychological gaps are gradually shrinking and global distances are shortening, I wanted to know what "language barriers" and "cultural shock" mean to a German who has lived in China for so long and who has been married to a Chinese woman for six years.
On a mid-autumn afternoon, I met him in his office, which was decorated like an art gallery. It happened to be the traditional Chinese mid-autumn festival. He was half an hour late.
"Sorry, I am late," he apologized. "It is a different festival because we have the German President here. I got up early to see what he would like to have and had to welcome him." Before we began our conversation, he passed me a small box of moon cakes, a present people in China usually send to their friends and relatives on the festival.
Though busy with his work, he did not forget it was a traditional Chinese festival for family reunions. He had already arranged a family dinner at 6:30 with his wife, Qi Yan, whom he met in fell in love with when he first came to Beijing in 1993, and her family. He told me that he and Yan used to spend the festival nights at Houhai, a lake area in downtown Beijing, rowing boats and enjoying the moonlit tranquility on the lake. But they would not go there this year, because there were so many restaurants and bars there now, taking away some of the tranquility of the place.
He speaks English and German and a few words of Chinese, such as "bu hao" (not good) and a few numbers. He said that learning Chinese had proven to be a frustration for him. But he has no problem communicating and understanding either at work or at home. Most of the staff in the hotel speak English, and his wife, who speaks German and English is his interpreter and translator most of the time. When he goes to the flea market by himself, he will always take a calculator along, he said.
"We can understand each other through smiles and numbers on the calculator," He said. "And I enjoy communicating with people this way. They always talk to me and I smile and nod. No barriers in understanding each other."
Mr. Schmitt told me that he left Germany when he was only 19. He studied and worked in the United States, Indonesia and China. Before he came to work in China in 1993, he knew almost nothing about the country.
I asked him how he managed so many times to adapt to an alien culture and the local people. He gave me a simple answer and an instruction too: "Each time adapt a little, but never too much."
He explained that nowadays, people's values and attitudes are much the same, no matter where they are from. So moving from one culture to the other, just a little adaptation will do. He came to like fresh fish that he did not eat before, for example. In the first couple of years when he came to China, he did experience some difficult times.
"It was a disaster," he recalled. " But I can't tell you."
But what can so many "little" adaptations eventually do to a man? I asked. "In my case [become] a stranger to Germany," he joked.
"Now I am white outside and yellow inside," he said proudly. "And China is my first homeland."
He showed me some of the antiques he had collected from the Panjiayuan antique market with the help of his calculator. "See the color and glaze on the figurine; it is a Ming relic," he said and pointed to a framed Buddha sculpture. "Only Ming figurines apply the color and glaze."
A dozen gold, bronze and jade hat tops on display were Qing Dynasty relics, according to his appraisal. Viewing many Buddhist figurines and paintings, I couldn't help asking him whether he believed in Buddhism. "Well, sometimes," he answered very seriously and showed me a jade pendant he wore. It was Guan-yin, the goddess of mercy.
(China Pictorial November 14, 2003)
