America is difficult, English is difficult

"You're from America? Life there is really difficult, isn't it?" An unemployed, single man from Fujian asked me this today in Milan.

I was almost relieved to hear someone say this.

I've been outside of the United States for nearly six months now -- the midpoint of my journey -- and up until today, no one from any of the Chinese communities seemed aware of the many hardships that confront immigrants in the U.S.

To many people, the U.S. is Disneyworld; even some Italians said they were surprised how different New York City is compared to how it is portrayed in Sex and the City.

Is it the influence of American culture and media? Maybe: one bored day in Sao Paulo I spent with a first-generation Chinese family watching American music videos from Mariah Carey to 50 cent, and then watched the first two "High School Musical" movies. Mind you, I had never seen any of the above, and considered the day well spent if for purely ethnographic purposes. One of the kids later told me that when he was in China, Michael Jackson was hugely popular, and he had bought a couple music videos of "Thriller" and "Billie Jean" when he first got to Brazil. American movies, television shows, music, have an enormous influence everywhere in the world, which undoubtedly help create a certain idea of America.

To be clear, I'm not saying that the "American Dream" doesn't exist. I know it does -- at least for a lucky few -- like my family. But it is this fantasy that the U.S. is paradise that is especially striking. Perhaps Europe may seem less appealing to Chinese immigrants, since Europe has only recently become an immigrant destination. Maybe, for poor Chinese immigrants, America's culture of individualism and capitalism are more promising than Western Europe's more socialist-leaning tendencies. I don't know.

Oh, and about English being hard: I got asked a bunch of English grammar questions by a first-generation Chinese immigrant, who at age sixteen, has only been in Italy for three years. The questions were mostly about distinguishing prepositions such as on/above, on/over, through/across, etc. As a native speaker of English I know instinctively what is right and what is wrong, but found it nearly impossible to explain these differences. I took comfort in the fact that the textbook was in Italian and I was trying to explain it in Chinese. But nevertheless, it made me remember how hard teaching English is. I did it for a few months when I was eighteen, in Nicaragua, and ffter that informative experience, I decided I could never do it again.
Kudos to my friends teaching English as a second language!