Cultural understanding in Washington, DC

Future leaders live here

iColumn (爱专栏) is a collaborative blog whose contributors are largely Chinese media professionals but also include overseas students and journalists stationed throughout the world.

Here's how the site introduces itself:

iColumn is a platform for Chinese youth writing against a global backdrop, where young Chinese across the world can relate their international experience in their native language. Concerned with urban life, news, lifestyle, and the arts across the globe, these are first-hand records in words and images of the feelings and experiences of a particular place and time. They are personal stories set against a global backdrop, not unsubstantiated personal gripes.

How do Chinese people fit in the process of globalization, and how will globalization change China? Read iColumn.

The US presidential election figured prominently in recent blog posts, and although there's a lot of wonky political content overall, iColumn is also home to other "personal stories," from travelogue-style pieces and culture review articles to cross-cultural encounters both inside and outside China.

It's interesting reading from a variety of voices.

One blog post by iColumn editor Tony Lee (李梓新), who recently concluded a three-month stint in the US, was reprinted in a recent issue of the Shanghai-based lifestyle magazine The Bund. In the piece translated below, he makes some interesting cultural observations about life on Capitol Hill:

I live in northwest Washington, DC, in an international youth residence known as the Consulate Apartments. Most of the people living here are the leaders of the future, a squad of young people from all over America, and the world, crowding together here to compete for a meal ticket in Washington.

A fair number of them haunt the offices of senators and representatives on Capitol Hill, serving as interns to those eminent individuals. And from the fashionably-dressed young women who go in and out of the apartment every day, it's possible that one or two Monicas might emerge.

I understand a little better the life of young guys on the Hill, because one of my building-mates works for a Florida representative. He's got a full beard and looks somewhere between white and latino. The floor in his room is piled with all sorts of clothing in an unkempt jumble, just like his beard. But every weekend he sets up a small table and meticulously irons his clothes, because on Monday he needs to wear a wrinkle-free shirt when he goes whistling off to work.

Hill interns seem to have little spiritual life. Their time outside of work is spent on the sofa watching movies or football, and their tables are covered in all kinds of cans. The few of us Chinese residents spend our days hidden in our own rooms writing or doing other things, and in their eyes we must be mysterious indeed.

A friend of mine who looks like Harry Potter is an intern at the US Council on Foreign Relations. He can speak a little Chinese — he once spent two months studying at Nankai University, so he's got a little bit of -r in his speech. His sister is apparently a Chinese to English interpreter. He's certain to look us up every day to practice conversation. We always teach him slang, and he's even figured out that "awesome" on the lips of American youth is niubi in Chinese.

We can forgive his awkwardness in Chinese, but will today's globalized world forgive our awkwardness in English?

A few days ago I went to the famous Brookings Institution. The Chinese officials from the Development and Reform Commission, which included a Tsinghua University professor, could only speak in Chinese. And the Powerpoint files they had prepared were all in Chinese. The foreign computers couldn't handle them and simply displayed everything as a bunch of boxes, to the bewilderment of the foreigners in attendance.

However, John McCain's old high school has started Chinese instruction and his college offers a major in Chinese. As we size each other up, the world moves forward toward a common goal.