{"id":521,"date":"2018-08-20T22:59:17","date_gmt":"2018-08-21T05:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/?page_id=521"},"modified":"2020-02-20T16:56:09","modified_gmt":"2020-02-21T00:56:09","slug":"life-overseas-2012","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/life-overseas-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Life Overseas (2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Hong Kong<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Every year in June I\u2019d read stories about what some celebrity said to graduating students. And I thought, \u201cWhat would I say? What that would be different from what other people said?\u201d The thing that came to mind was my experience living nearly four years overseas, from 1989 to 1993. As the slow season for column writing began, I wrote a column that ran in the Seattle Times of June 20, 2012.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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It is the time of year to dish out advice to graduates. Here is mine. Some time in your life, live outside the United States. Not only will you be in another world, you will more clearly see the world you came from, and who you are.<\/span><\/p>

Sometimes it changes you. In a recent column, I argued that the U.S. government was acting wrongly in letting its embassy and consulates in China be used as sanctuaries. Readers emailed me for and against. Many of those who agreed with me said they had worked overseas.<\/span><\/p>

So had I. From 1989 to 1993 I worked in Hong Kong as a magazine editor \u2014 and probably I would not have written that column otherwise.<\/span><\/p>

Americans see themselves as a practical people, but from Hong Kong, Americans in their political aspect seemed like a sentimental people, a naive people.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Ross Perot was running for president then, and he threatened to stop trading with China. To people in great big America, maybe such an action was thinkable; in Hong Kong, it was nuts. Our vegetables came from China. Our drinking water came from China. Perot seemed to have no understanding of the history, or the culture, of the Middle Kingdom.<\/span><\/p>

That the Hong Kong people had a different view of it did not automatically make them right. About China, I thought they were. On other things, though, being overseas showed me how American I was, and in ways I was proud of.<\/span><\/p>

One time I was sick and went to a doctor. After he examined me I had to wait outside his office for my prescription. A nurse called me to a window with bottles of pills.<\/span><\/p>

\u201cTake a red one every four hours and a white one twice a day,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>

\u201cWhat are they?\u201d I asked.<\/span><\/p>

\u201cThey are your\u00a0medication<\/span>,\u201d she said impatiently.<\/span><\/p>

\u201cYeah, but … What\u00a0are\u00a0<\/span>they?\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cThe doctor will have to tell you that, and he is with another patient. Shall I make another appointment?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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At that moment I had no sympathy for the culture around me.<\/span><\/p>

I worked with people from a dozen countries. All were changed by working abroad, those from traditional cultures most of all.<\/span><\/p>

A colleague from Pakistan told me that after living in a cosmopolitan city for several years, he could not go back to a traditional culture. He was\u00a0contaminated<\/i>. I never heard a Westerner say that, but I heard plenty say that being abroad had changed their thinking.<\/span><\/p>

Politically, they seemed less supportive of America throwing its weight around. It is more difficult to condemn a people, impose economic pain on them or drop bombs on them after you have lived among them \u2014 or among any people different from you. The world outside the United States seems much more immovable when you are in it.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0 I was a kid when the Peace Corps started, and I remember the hoopla about all the good it was going to do. It was going to change the world. I became skeptical of that, and decades later, when I met the agency’s director, I pressed her on it.<\/span>The agency’s improvement of the world was difficult to measure, she said. But one thing was sure. The Peace Corps had changed the young Americans who were in it. The experience opened their eyes. It set them on tracks to new careers \u2014 in academia, in the diplomatic service, in global business. It gave them friends overseas and joined them to a fraternity of former volunteers who recognized each other for the rest of their lives.<\/span><\/p>

And though I had never been in it, I knew what she was talking about.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a9 2012 The Seattle Times<\/span><\/em><\/p>

\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Of course, President Kennedy would never have been able to sell the idea of the Peace Corps if he\u2019d said the principal beneficiaries would be the people who served in it.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hong Kong \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Every year in June I\u2019d read stories about what some celebrity said to graduating students. And I thought, \u201cWhat would I say? What that would be different from what other people said?\u201d The thing that came to mind was my experience living nearly four years overseas, from 1989 to 1993. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-521","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":877,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/521\/revisions\/877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}