What was it like to move from China to Scotland for this writer?

Do you have a spiritual home? Xing Zhao does. He's a Chinese Writer, Translator and former international student in Edinburgh, Scotland. Xing shares with us a blog post, Kapa Zhou, that he wrote during his first year studying in Scotland. He goes on to reflect on how his memories of that time period and how they are not fully represented in the blog entry. Xing also shared a post he wrote on the Chinese language version of this blog as advice to other international students. As someone who has taught international students both in Asia and in my passport country of the U.S, this was interesting insight to get first hand indeed. 

Xing’s website: https://kapazhao.com/

Original publication date: May 14, 2018

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Transcript

Xing:

My name is Xing Zhao. I live in Shanghai and this story is written in Spring 2005 when I was living in Edinburgh, Scotland. When I finished my BA in Hangzhou, I decided to do a master's degree in the UK. So I went to Scotland in Edinburgh to do my degree and then I wrote this story. So here it comes. When school is a wonderland. If school is a wonderland, what do you want it to be like? Having only a few classes a week, no exams, and great friends to spend time with. These, I got them all. I'm currently doing a postgraduate degree in cultural studies at Edinburgh University. I have only two classes a week. Two essays for each class, no exams, but interesting friends from the program, and lots of nights out with Scottish pints. I live with a trendy black New Yorker who never stops snacking and a small animated Taiwanese man who cooks beautiful dinners in a crappy basement-like flat next to the Edinburgh castle. The best time of the day in my kitchen is early morning. Having the first cup of coffee of the day with a view of the new town and a corner of the sea, without being looked at by passing by tourists looking into my window and say, hey, is that a hostel? I enjoy looking at the people passing my bedroom window through my bamboo blind. And I sometimes read Oscar Wilde at my kitchen table with a couple Americano, imagining that I'm sitting at a cafe with huge floor-to-ceiling windows. The class that I enjoy the most is Decadence, Literature and Art in Europe. We read Oscar Wilde, Thomas Mann, and W.H. Irwin at home, and we go to class and talk about decadence, homosexuality, and masochism with my coursemates and our German professor. We study subjects such as Orientalism, National Identity, Gender, City, Space and Culture Industry in my course. And we enjoy being intellectuals. My course professor is a stylish Polish Canadian lady who sometimes dressed in a dark green dress, orange leggings and avant-garde bracelets. I hang out with a bunch of North American and European kids who study cultures, literature, and politics. We go to a bar called Benamín's on Tuesday nights for the karaoke sessions. We go to the student pub, Rush, for their cheap pints and free shows of beer bottle-throwing fights. We pick out the cheapest wine from Tesco's to house parties to get drunk. We go to the Latino-centric El Barrio to dance after we're drunk. We would end up at some French party and hear birds chirping when we are heading home in the morning. In Edinburgh, I get long snowy winter nights that I can read my favorite books in my little warm room. I get long summer days that I see tourists everywhere and hear bagpipers playing all day long. The city itself is like a game. One minute it's sunny and the next minute it's hailing. I get out of bed one day and find a parade passing my window. I step out onto the Royal Mile and see the Queen of England in a car. I snap a shot and there is Sir Sean Connery waving at my picture. Going to school in this small European city which has long history, old castle and buildings, Nice cafes, cool pubs, shopping, international people, changeable weather, haunted stories of its underground world, and everything else. It's like hanging in a wonderland.

Steph:

First of all, thank you so much, Cheng, for inviting us into your 2005 world. Having just finished that post, what is your immediate reaction?

Xing:

Reading this story, it sounds like it was a really nice time. It was fun. It was interesting. And then I think I was having a good time as a young adult in Edinburgh. But from this story, it doesn't see some of the, the not so good time that I had later on or the struggles I had later on. So I think the story, I pretty, pretty much painted a nice picture of my life back in 2005, which was true to it. But what I'm trying to say is Back then when my friends were also young and we just thought we were having a good time. But in reality, maybe we weren't necessarily having such a good time.

Steph:

What do you mean by that? Were you guys forcing going out and partying and having fun, but you weren't enjoying it?

Xing:

No, what I mean is this was written a few months after I moved to Edinburgh. So we were having a good time. It was a nice time. and for me, I was learning a lot of things. I was coping with the cultural differences. I was learning to be more culturally fluent in that context. I could have been the Chinese bubble. Two days after arriving in Edinburgh, I got a phone call from a Chinese international student inviting me to the house party where All the other Chinese are together making dumb things. I went to the party, but that was the one and only time I was there. I never went back. Looking back at this now, given the fact that the Chinese community is so tight and strong, you know, after two days of being in the city, they have found me, they found my phone number, They called me and they invited me to the party. I think it was very friendly and they were trying to offer their support to someone who was new to the city. But I wanted to break away from that. But if I wanted to be making dumplings with Chinese people, I could have stayed in China. I didn't have to go all the way to Scotland to do that. I wanted more than just that. I wanted to be like all the other international students. So making my way into the international bubble, it wasn't all that easy. I also had to make an effort. I remember the first time my friend who is Spanish asked me if I was going out tonight. reacting to that question, my answer was going out to where? Going out? She was like, going, you know, going out, going out. I didn't really understand the expression of going out because it wasn't just that it wasn't in my vocabulary, but it was also not in my concept or my lifestyle. When I was a student in Hangzhou, I wasn't in the habit of going out to a bar to drink, to do all the silly things that young students would do. But I went out. And so that was the beginning of me learning a lot of new things. Edinburgh is not a big place. It's a pretty small city. But looking back at it now, at the time, Edinburgh was a big world to me. It opened up a very big world to me. After the first year when the period was over, I had more struggles. My bubble, at the time my international bubble bursted. And then I was forced out of that bubble and to be more in reality was Scotland. And then the real world began. But it's such a long time ago and I have such nostalgia about the city. Now when I look back, all I can remember was the night's time. It was how I feel I'm emotionally attached to that place. But I tend to forget about the struggles I had after that first year.

Steph:

Now you mentioned the bubble. Do you feel like being in that international bubble that you described, do you feel like that delayed your culture shock with moving to Scotland?

Xing:

I think so. I think I had culture shock when I first moved there, but the culture shock came from the shock of moving from the east to the west. It was Western culture to me in general, but less as Scottish culture, as a local culture, because I was spending a lot of time with Americans and English and Europeans. So it was more of a more general Western culture to me at the time to adapt to and to learn about. And then I think it was after that first year, I started working there and I started meeting more Scottish people. And then I started to realize they were under the bigger Western culture umbrella, there were other categories, other cultures that I had to adapt to.

Steph:

You mentioned that you published the blog in similar forms both in the English language as well as the Chinese language. Why did you decide to do that?

Xing:

I loved writing and I was writing in both English and Chinese. But when I'm writing in English and Chinese, the tonalities were different. the expressions were different. I think I have different personalities when I'm writing in English and in Chinese. I was also reading a lot of stories by David Sedaris. I think when I write in English, I'm funnier. And then when I write in Chinese, I'm more sentimental.

Steph:

So if people were able to read both languages, do you think they would get a full view of the many sides of you?

Xing:

I think so, yeah.

Steph:

Did you feel like your writing styles were that different before you started this blog or did it develop as it went along? I've got something to tell you.

Xing:

Are you ready?

Steph:

I've got a special tip today for the Americans out there thinking, planning, actually in the process of moving abroad?

Xing:

I didn't write that much in English before that. When I studied in Hangzhou, in China, my BA was in English. So I did write in English, but I didn't write that much English. So I didn't really realize that until, I guess, until I started writing these two blogs. And also, I was I was in a completely English speaking world when I was there. And then so I think the whole time I was there, I rarely spoke Chinese. And so I had to, I wanted to keep a Chinese blog so I could be writing Chinese and I could be expressing myself in Chinese or expressing the other side of myself.

Steph:

Did you start out doing both languages when you started the blog or did that develop with time.

Xing:

Yeah, I started at the same time. I think also when I started the blogs, it was the time when people just started writing blogs. So when we were writing blogs, we wanted people to read them. So we were sending our emails to friends and telling people, well, I have this blog. I want you to read it. So I had English audience. I also had Chinese audience, and I wanted I wanted the people. The is it morning yet? Deal. How about now? Or now? Because morning time is McDonald's breakfast time.

Steph:

And that's the best time of all the times.

Xing:

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Xing:

My friends, family at home to read my Chinese blog to stay connected. So that's why I also wrote the Chinese blog. But the answer is I started both blogs at the same time.

Steph:

Wow. What was the blog name?

Xing:

They have two different names. The English blog is called... I think I remember one of them is called My Scott Scott.

Steph:

Okay.

Xing:

Okay, and then the other one is, I had this English name called Kapa. It's K-A-P-A. So I think the English blog was called kapa-jiao.com or something.

Steph:

Ah, okay, okay.

Xing:

And then the Chinese blog was called My Scott Scott.

Steph:

You said you didn't write much in English before you moved to Edinburgh. Did you write a lot of anything on or offline in Chinese? while you were in China?

Xing:

I always wanted to write when I was a kid. I was really great at my Chinese class in high school. So I wrote a lot in Chinese. I read a lot in Chinese back then. But I think after I started my English degree, I didn't write so much in Chinese, but I wrote more English.

Steph:

Why did you initially start the blog?

Xing:

To record my daily life and to keep people connected and to keep people at home and read my experiences. And more importantly, I felt very inspired. I felt wanted to write about what I was seeing, experiencing, learning and feeling.

Steph:

While you were reading the entry I wrote down, City is like a game when you were talking about Edinburgh. 'Cause you were reading a lot as you were writing this book. Did that quote come from somewhere or is that something that you created?

Xing:

It's something I created because I genuinely felt that way. I think where it was, it's so pretty and then it's so old. It's like nothing I had ever seen before. It's like a medieval town that's built on the hills and the old town has a castle and the new town, used to be a lake where they were drowning the witches and then they built the new town. And then with the bagpipers playing all day and then with the weather so changeable, you would see Scottish people wearing t-shirts and just like kids walking down the streets in the winter. Be like, oh, they're not cold, but they're not. And then in the summer, it's still cold that you, you know, you can still wear a jacket, like a winter jacket, and then One minute it's raining and like a hailing and next minute the sun comes out, you see the rainbow and when summer comes, people are like stripped down to the t-shirt or on the street and then in August the city becomes the Edinburgh Festival, the whole city becomes the festival and there is even a movie called the festival about the Edinburgh Festival and so the whole city becomes like a like a Wonderland, like a fairy tale, like a fun fair. It seems really unreal. But like I said, my second year, it was quite different from the first year. It wasn't so much of a Wonderland anymore. It was more of a touch to reality. But somehow I think I remember more of Edinburgh than this. wonderful place. And it's. It's just so wonderful. And then you just see even the rain just, you know, smells nice and looks nice. And then you see rainbows and you see the sunshine.

Steph:

Did you feel like the game of Edinburgh was an interactive activity, or did you feel like you were watching it?

Xing:

I think it was both. I was watching a. like a movie, but I was in that movie. I was in my own movie.

Steph:

The first year or all of the years?

Xing:

All of the years.

Steph:

All of the years you were watching.

Xing:

Yeah, but I guess like the first year, second year, it's like a sequel. Every episode is different.

Steph:

Season one, season two, season three. Now you had the pleasure of going back to Edinburgh recently, correct?

Xing:

Yes.

Steph:

What was that like?

Xing:

I went back to Edinburgh last month after 10 years. And I took the train from King's Cross in London up to Waverley Station in Edinburgh. By the time I stepped out of the train, I was at the station and I was like, wow, it's like everything feels so familiar. The train station feels so familiar because my apartment during my first year, it was very close to the train station. It was minutes a walk away. And then I walked out of the train station. I was out on Princess Street where I could see the Scott's Monument. I saw the street. It was raining a little bit, but everything just felt so familiar. And then the following days I was there, it was like I never left. Everything was still the same.

Steph:

Did you feel the same as you did in 2005?

Xing:

No.

Steph:

What was different?

Xing:

I was different. Yeah. I was different.

Steph:

I.

Xing:

Went back to see my professor from the university and then I actually, I talked to her about if I had gone to Edinburgh to study now, it would be a very different experience because I am different. And I was also telling her a lot of the theories we're studying, a lot of the books we're reading didn't make so much sense to me at the time. But with the knowledge and experience I have now, they would have made more sense to me and I would have understood better. And then she also mentioned that she said, oh, you wrote a paper, you wrote your dissertation on lonely planets, on backpacking. I was like, yeah, but if I had this now, the subject would have been different. I wouldn't have written about lonely planet. Interest would be different.

Steph:

For international students, what do you think can be done to help with that transition so that they can focus or understand their studies more?

Xing:

I actually, when I wrote this blog entry, I actually wrote something else. A few tips for international students. A few fun tips. Do not have an incredibly high expectation of improving your English within your one year stay in this country. Number two, do not waste your energy to bring a rice cooker from China.

Steph:

Toast your oven from the US to anywhere else. Yeah, go ahead.

Xing:

Actually, my mom wanted me to take a rice cooker with me. I refused.

Steph:

Good.

Xing:

I ended up cooking my rice in a microwave.

Steph:

Microwave rice or just regular rice in a microwave?

Xing:

Regular rice in a microwave.

Steph:

How I didn't know you could do that.

Xing:

You can do that, yeah. You just put the rice in and you know like water and put that in the microwave.

Steph:

Does it taste good?

Xing:

Not as good as a rice cooker.

Steph:

Right, of course, yeah.

Xing:

But I also I also learned to cook rice in you know just in a pot.

Steph:

Right.

Xing:

Just to for the rice.

Steph:

Sure, sure, sure, sure. But are you telling me they didn't have rice cookers in Edinburgh?

Xing:

No.

Steph:

They didn't sell that.

Xing:

Savages.

Steph:

Sorry, Scottish folks, but really, at the.

Xing:

Time, at least at the time, they didn't sell that. Right, right. I also remember when I left Edinburgh, I left most of my belongings at my friend's house. Yeah. So everything is packed there. And then because I hadn't gone back, so. My friends actually took out my rice cooker and they used it. They're not Chinese, but they were like, they thought rice cooker was pretty functional for cooking other stuff. Oh yeah, you can cook a lot.

Steph:

In a rice cooker.

Xing:

Yeah, so they actually use that.

Steph:

Yeah, we've cooked pancakes, omelets, soup. I've made all kinds of things in rice cookers, yeah.

Xing:

Yeah. So yeah, that rice cooker actually was brought to Edinburgh by my mom when she came to visit. She decided to bring it back to Scotland.

Steph:

Really wanted to cook rice cooker. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Xing:

And MSG actually.

Steph:

Let's keep going with this list.

Xing:

So number three, do not only hang out with your fellow Chinese, try to be as international as other students are. Number four, do have an open mind to experience everything. The next one is to learn to enjoy pubs in Europe. It's part of the culture. And the next one is do hang out with local and international people. Do a lot of traveling? Cheap flights in Europe can be found on Ryanair.com and EasyJet.com and the next one is: Be independent, be brave, there is nothing to fear of. To be a proud Asian prince/princess and show your startling Asian beauty. Do watch the weird British television if you can afford a TV license. Okay, the last one is good Chinese food is in London, Paris and Barcelona, but please try French and Spanish food rather than Chinese.

Steph:

I think that could be good tips for anybody whether they are Chinese or not.

Xing:

Exactly.

Steph:

As fun as the international bubble that you talked about is to be in and to experience people from many different cultures, it's also important to know where you are and to be in the local culture too.

Xing:

Yeah, definitely.

Steph:

Yeah. You mentioned that you were in that international bubble the first year and the second, third and fourth year. Did you go back and forth between the two or were you mostly just in the local culture?

Xing:

I was mostly in the real world.

Steph:

Yeah. Yeah.

Xing:

After I finished my studies there, I wanted to stay there and so I wanted to get a job and start making money, but I ended up doing lots of odd jobs and lots of decent jobs. I actually remember, I remember two books I read. One is the novel called One Day. I don't know if you've read it. It's part of the story setting Edinburgh. This girl, she's graduated from Edinburgh. She wanted to be a writer. but she ended up moving to London and working in a Mexican restaurant as a waitress. I also remember reading another book. It's called Little Life. It's a really long novel, but it talks about the one thing that people have in common when they move to New York City is their ambition. But a lot of the people, they end up doing lots of crappy jobs in the beginning. So I worked in a pub. I worked in a Moroccan restaurant. I worked in a Chinese restaurant.

Steph:

I.

Xing:

Worked at Starbucks. I also worked at the Edinburgh Festival. So yeah, for the first following years, I was more in the reality.

Steph:

Let's wrap this up with just anything that crosses your mind of final thoughts on this blog entry. Either the initial description or the tips that you're giving other folks when they study overseas. Any final thoughts on either one of those?

Xing:

When I was in Edinburgh last month, I walked by a lot of places that I had memories of. And I would take pictures of these places and send to my friends. the friends who were in Edinburgh with me at that time, because those were the people who would understand the context and my experience the most. And to me and to those friends of mine, Edinburgh really meant a lot to us. It meant a place where we lived as young adults. the process of growing up and big chunk of time when we were really young and learning to trying to find our place in the world. And that place remains a spiritual home to me. It really feels like a home to me, like a place I feel that I want to go back to and to live there. And then I hope my, I don't just hope, I think I believe that my experience will be different if I move back there.