In the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, people sleep on the streets. The steep street is lined with taquerîas, drug addicts, empty shopping carts and dodgy motels. My home used to be not too far from here.
However, now I live in China. I’ve been based in Beijing for the past 2.5 years. Previously, I had a small stint in Algeria — but for the most part, in recent years, all of my time has been spent in Asia. And now that I’m freelance and more in control of my destiny and geographic location — I took the chance to visit my own country for a change.
Although my purpose and goal of this trip was not to photograph, from a photographer’s standpoint, its very interesting to take pictures of the Western world after years of photographing the developing world. For me, I always found it easier to photograph foreign places and things than my own home. Just by the mere fact everything is different from what I grew up with, seeing interesting frames in the developing world seems easy.
However, after a long time away from this country — these frames seem a bit unusual to me. A worker walking in front of a store that conveniently sells amo and booze or even a non polluted sky are fairly strange to me.
This blog post is not about reverse culture shock but more some general observations about America from the perspective of an American living in China.
Traveling by bus, train and car with stops in San Francisco, Central California’s wine country and a long drive through Oregon and Washington followed by a week at my former home at lake Tahoe I’ve had a good chance to check out what’s going on over here in the U.S. and ample time to ask myself the question “what am i missing?”
For me, I’m missing my friends and family; but what’s going on in the world around them I dont think I miss too much.
On Mission Street in San Francisco, the amount of blatant drug use and crazy people is astonishing. Homeless populations certainly exist in Asia (certainly South Asia) but in a “first world” country like the united states, we haven’t even figured out how to house people.
While China’s infrastructure at this level is super impressive, it’s hard to believe we can’t allocate our money in a way to keep people off the streets. One step above the homeless population I’ve been seeing, is Americas lower class scattered around the west coast, still seemingly in a state of depression. The ironic thing is this depression seems to be surrounded by a lot of natural beauty. A beautiful foggy city, a clear blue sky, or a snow covered mountain on the side of a highway — the landscape is stunning.
However, even though the landscape is stunning, one thing I can confidently say — a poor person in the developing world seems infinitely happier than a poor person in America, even though they most likely face much greater and basic hardships. To counter that, the physical environment of a poor person in the developing world is visually the opposite.
While we call ourselves a first world country and we have some nice highways, restrooms and soaps, its visually obvious to me we’re behind in some of life’s basic assets.
Happiness should not be a foreign concept.
However, with the bad — there is always good. Picking up with the good, next post.
One Response to “An expat visits his own country – Part I”
G.E. Anderson says:
Great photos and interesting observations. I look forward to your future installments.
“it’s hard to believe we can’t allocate our money in a way to keep people off the streets”
What’s interesting about this observation is that San Francisco is way ahead of other US cities in devoting funds to trying to solve its homeless problem. Of course, the nice weather there probably puts it at somewhat of a disadvantage.
For the longest time, I thought US homeless problems were more about cultural differences than policy choices (the former being a determinant of the latter). Asian cultures seem to value a cohesive family unit more so that there is less likelihood someone could fall through the cracks. The US seems to value self-sufficiency more …
On the other hand, my views have changed a bit over the past decade or so as I’ve gotten around Asia more. There are surprising numbers of homeless in Tokyo and Hong Kong. (And there seem to be many more in China than there were in the mid-90s.) So maybe a country’s level of development is an even more important factor than culture.