Moving to Asia?! Thoughts on Japan vs. China

Reflections on a year of traveling, as a Chinese American

I’m a Chinese American trying to learn about culture and belonging in a complex modern world. I have a crazy dream of returning to Asia, in part because my personality and dreams would go further in an eastern society than a western one.

In the USA, it’s hard to learn boots-on-the-ground information from newspapers or online forums, even ones dominated by so-called “experts,” so I had to go for myself and see it with my own eyes. In total, I spent around a year solo traveling in East Asia trying to get info about long-term relocation.

Karaoke Continent

Japan and mainland China are on two opposite poles in the discourse of Asian Americans. One is a favorite ally of western powers, where the American dollar can flow freely in streets that are open wide for tourists, while the other is seen as a harsh dystopia that is closed off to the world. How different and similar are these two places, really, for an East Asian person trying to find a new home?

One activity they share in common: karaoke. During sessions of free-flowing whiskey highballs and lemon sours with friends, we sang “Mr. Brightside” and anime songs in a crowded Shibuya bar on shared TV monitors — for me, a game of reading the Japanese fast enough before the words disappeared. On the other side of the pond, in small town China, a group of local homies cheerfully toasted and brought me to a giant KTV tower, with stacks of 2% beers and Chinese cigarettes in a mansion-like interior, as we talked about life over an unending sequence of Chinese and American pop songs.

After my mind-blowing adventures and new friendships, I became even more convinced that relocation is something that every Chinese American should consider for the sake of personal happiness.

Tokyo, the Eternal Party

At first glance, Chinese Americans and Tokyo City are a perfect fit for one another. Some people like orange chicken but dislike chicken feet. They like bubble milk tea but hate bitter oolong. That’s why Tokyo seems like a match made in heaven. Despite its Japanese appearance, Tokyo has a pan-Asian appeal with all the comforts of an international, western lifestyle, and anything that is too foreign or exotic has been deleted over decades of deliberate cultural shifting. A blend of East and West, just like the Chinese Americans themselves. Learn a little Japanese — which isn’t hard for ABC’s — and you’re good to go.

Tokyo is an eastern Wonderland, an oasis of refreshment and delight for transient people who are just passing by. For me, I was able to fill my heart up with all of these treasures — beautiful food, city walks, great nightlife, exciting culture, local encounters — and I’ll keep doing that again and again, as a vacation, not a home. I highly recommend the city as a pit stop for Asian Americans who are trying to refresh themselves during their return back home. But when the lights turn on, and the party ends, will you still stay around?

A Guest in Someone’s House

When I spoke with Japanese people, they were sometimes confused about who I am. I would tell people that I’m Chinese (中国人) or Chinese American (中系アメリカ人). This helped a bit, but they were still sometimes shocked that a Chinese person could speak English and Japanese at the same time. Occasionally, people would ask me “How long have you been living in Japan?” and I’d have to reply: “I don’t live here; I’m just a tourist.” As long as I kept my mouth shut, it was nice to blend in while walking around the streets. Non-local Japanese people would occasionally come up to me and ask for directions, although I couldn’t help them very often.

I tried to be mindful of the fact that Japanese people you speak with are the ones who are curious about foreigners. To some extent, it’s less true for Chinese Americans, since they look Asian. Maybe this person just took a genuine interest in you, or thought you were handsome.

During my travel, I took great pains to talk with EVERYONE who actually lived in Tokyo, not just the tourists. I spoke with Euro/American expats, Japanese returnees, Chinese people born in Japan, Chinese nationals living in Tokyo, and my fellow ABC’s. I got the impression that Japanese culture is difficult to penetrate, and essentially, you don’t make local friends. Okay, maybe a few. But the general rule is that local people don’t really become friends with you in the same way as they would with each other. They’ll get dinner with you, but you aren’t invited to their ski trip.

A Chinese American friend who married a Japanese woman told me decisively that Japanese culture is “close enough” to Chinese, so he’s fine with raising Japanese kids. I think his example is the only gold star success story I’ve seen of a pure foreigner who has relocated to Japan. I also met a half Japanese returnee from South America, who had some difficulties with the iciness of people in Tokyo, but made the long-term decision to stay and is doing quite well. I think part of his happiness comes from his conscious choice to become more Japanese, while still occasionally hanging out with foreigners and speaking English.

For relocation, it seemed to me that the question you need to ask yourself is whether you’re honestly okay with assimilating and raising Japanese kids. And if you’re not okay with that … then what are you doing in Japan? Have you really built a home for yourself? Although I’m writing about Japan, this applies to immigration in general. People talk about a happy life within the “expat bubble” — and I believe them! — but to me, this is just a fancy way of describing a cultural ghetto.

Culture Clash

For me, the gap between Japanese and Chinese culture was surprisingly large. In China, when you love something, you take a picture of it. In Japan, to show respect, photography is forbidden. In China, asking deep questions about someone’s personal life — where were you born? how much money do you make? mother’s maiden name? — is an icebreaker and sign of affection. In Japan, doing this is a conversation-killer. As part of my Japanese language practice and cultural immersion, I put on a local facade, learning the rituals of politeness, to see what it would be like. I found out that I didn’t enjoy it.

People in Tokyo are very conscious of privacy, personal space, and surface-level politeness (the infamous “tatemae”). In contrast, Chinese people are very warm, friendly, and “nosy” in a loving way; they want to find out where you’re at so that they can relate to you better. Chinese people are also fairly blunt by Tokyo standards, saying things in a honest and direct way. Japanese people also have a ton of rules, sometimes invisible, in various places or social circumstances, and it gets annoying keeping track of these all the time. I would guess that living in Tokyo might drive a Chinese person pretty crazy over time, never really knowing what others think about him. It turned out that Americans and Chinese, by comparison, seem to do whatever they want and get pretty comfortable!

Tokyo (or Eastern Japan in general) is a collaborative etiquette society where everyone puts his best effort to create a good life for everyone. You put on your best self before you leave the door of your apartment, unlike Americans who go to the grocery store wearing pajamas, or Chinese uncles who wander the city streets with their bellies exposed. I think this is why Japan has a hikikomori (social recluse) problem, because the cost of performing well in society can be very high. Getting ready to leave the house is itself a chore. In contrast, Chinese society is more relaxed and like a cozy home, a place where you can talk loudly in public places and smoke cigarettes indoors. Chinese people are confident and have a strong sense of “rights,” a feeling that they own their own turf and can do whatever they want. Although sometimes that means you have to pay the cost of a cigarette cloud hitting you in the face from time to time, it’s also a blessing to be able to reside in such a comfortable and welcoming society.

I felt that, underneath the expat bubble, normal Japanese people in Tokyo were honestly very localized people, not necessarily curious or interested about the world outside their country, manifested in their lower rate of passport ownership. I’ve heard this expressed where, Japanese people traveling abroad would come back to find that no one else was really curious about where they just went. I became conscious of the fact that Chinese Americans are fairly international due to nature and self-selection, which can make it hard to get along with never-leavers who don’t care about foreign countries.¹ In contrast to Chinese people, who always seem to be trying to escape from China, I got the impression that Japanese people love living in Japan and never want to leave. The Japanese diaspora, too, have a habit of returning to their homeland, much more than can be said for others I’ve seen.

During my travel, I also stayed in Osaka, and I felt that the stereotype of this city as being more open, friendly, and chill were absolutely correct. I had positive encounters with local people that made me feel that their culture was pretty similar to Chinese people’s, and I felt like foreigners and locals mingled more readily in this city. Personally, if I wanted to have a friendly ordinary life and completely assimilate to Japanese society, I would choose Osaka.

Living in Wonderland

Tokyo, with its delicious food, great night life, and international scope, can enchant a person for many years. Wonderland is a fun place to be a customer, but it’s exhausting for the employees who live there, who are always wearing masks and working themselves to death. Becoming a long-term resident means that the foreigner who was once treated as an esteemed guest now finds himself scrubbing the floors in the backstage of the show.

Tokyo is full of these bubbles and contradictions, of “International” vs “Local”; “Fun” vs “Reality”; and “Surface” vs “Truth.” It seems to me that if you really love the Japanese nation, you probably don’t like Tokyo. And if you only love Tokyo, you may not truly be in love with Japan. And yet Tokyo is what got you here in the first place.

Even though Chinese Americans face certain problems when living in America, I think that they are overall more integrated into general American society compared to expats living in Tokyo. Foreigners who move here might have a hobbyist interest in eastern culture. But if they aren’t willing to actually become Japanese, then their life is in contradiction, especially during the most important matters when you have to test the strength of your assimilation to its deepest level, such as giving up your own ego for the sake of communal harmony, an ordinary occurrence for the Japanese but which can be like pulling teeth for Americans.

Diving deep on Japan helped me to understand more about myself, the parts of me which were more American than I’d realized, as well as the Chinese perspectives in my unconscious that I hadn’t quite comprehended. I love Japan and I appreciate what this nation has offered to me during the struggles and joys in my life, but now it’s time to stop being a guest in someone else’s house and to make a real commitment. And to that end, somewhere closer to China would probably be a better pick.

From East to North

After traveling in Japan, I’ve always been on the search for a “Chinese Tokyo” — a bustling city filled with lively activity, a mix of Eastern and Western culture, walkable and dense, with epic western skyscrapers and neo-Asian historical buildings, and “vertically oriented” with cool shops stacked on top of each other. Does it exist?

On the flight from Japan to China, my heart was full of adventure and delight, and I’d gotten used to speaking in Japanese (and Chinese!) in daily life. It had already been quite a few years since my last time in China, and it had been a life-changingly good experience at a Chinese language program. With Tokyo fresh on my mind, and old China in my memories, my expectations could not be any higher for this trip.

Even still, it was a tough landing and not easy to settle in. My first destination was Beijing, and it was like running into a brick wall. While the Eastern Capital of Tokyo had been a smooth and friendly journey, the Northern Capital of China was proud, aloof, and difficult to understand.

Some questions I had in mind during my travels:

“What’s daily life like in China?”

“How isolated is China from the West?”

“Are Chinese Americans really Chinese?”

Plugging in

After some struggles and tediousness, I “plugged in” to the modern Chinese system, with a phone number, payment apps, navigation system, and everything. Since my previous visit, everything had been locked down with phone number requirements. If you don’t have this, you can’t even connect to the free wifi at Starbucks.

I was also brought face-to-face with the fact that my Chinese reading is quite slow. In Japan, I had used English for the 80% of tedious grunt work — like navigation, ticketing, and logistics — and I used Japanese for the 20% of truly essential cultural tourism — like ordering in an izakaya and chatting with locals. But in China, I really had to use Chinese for absolutely everything, including unfun tasks such as paying for food at a restaurant, managing my mobile data, and purchasing tickets on the high-speed rail. My eyes had to take some time to adjust to reading all these characters on my phone 24/7. On the other hand, actually speaking with local Chinese people was an absolute joy, whether it was chatting about my day or asking for help (and the help would be tremendous, like a 180 degree change in what I had thought was the right direction). In the USA, you never get a good excuse to speak in Chinese because everyone is so good at English.

In Beijing, I struggled with solo tourism since the city is so spread out, almost like Los Angeles, with various districts that are far apart from each other. I also didn’t like how many areas were not particularly walkable, with a single shop occupying some land, then trees, followed by another shop. It was also a pain that getting anywhere interesting would still require you to walk 15 minutes from the nearest subway station, in contrast to Tokyo where it was more like 3-5 minutes. Shanghai and Shenzhen, which I visited later, were much easier and more walkable by comparison.

Reconnecting

I spent a lot of time talking with people in China — old friends, colleagues from work, family friends, extended relatives, random locals, and expats too. I was surprised at how much I had in common with the people I talked to. It felt like the Chinese coworkers who remained in the US were just pushing forward with their work assignments and doing what others told them. The ones who relocated back to China — which they did of their own choice, not because of immigration hurdles — seemed much more lively, creative, energetic, and normal. They had a healthy ambitiousness in their lives and wanted to pursue something higher and greater. I also felt that hardly anyone was nerdy at all. People were pleasant extroverts or cool introverts, and they had a sunshine in their personalities that they brought with them in social situations. The locals I randomly spoke with were friendly, welcoming, and warm.

A few people had some “grass is greener” admiration for life in America. Many complained about the local economy and weren’t fully happy with the work they were doing. In fact I did not meet anyone who really could tell me with a straight face that they loved their work. People disliked that every industry was becoming too competitive and involuted (卷).

The Chinese Americans that I met in China were overall incredible people with perhaps a hint of adventurous craziness. They had put tremendous effort into self-studying the language, learning the culture, and proactively seeking work that would let them remain in China. Whereas entrepreneurship seemed to be somewhat rare among Chinese Americans in the US, it was not uncommon for me to meet people of that background operating their own businesses in Asia.

Daily Life

Daily life was incredibly convenient: Scan your phone to pay, order food deliveries to your house, call a taxi for less than 5 US dollars, micro-rent a phone charger if you run out of battery. After fumbling around with a giant wallet and stacks of cash in Japan, I was surprised that I could just walk out the door in China with nothing but my cellphone. Cities had quite a few 24/7 convenience stores — not as many as Tokyo, and not as well-supplied with fresh food — where you can buy tasty snacks, soft drinks which didn’t particularly appeal to me (lots of sweetened iced tea but no seltzer water or canned coffee), and some pretty good canned cocktails (my favorite was the calamansi citrus cooler). I particularly enjoyed walking to small local shops, ordering some 10-15 RMB meal by pointing at the sign, and eating some steaming-hot buns or pancakes. As an American, I also couldn’t resist visiting Pizza Hut and KFC, which had delicious localized abominations like a Durian white sauce pizza and Beijing-themed spicy chicken wraps.

I really enjoyed visiting the giant supermarkets in China, walking around the shelves and seeing what familiar and unfamiliar products were available for sale, trying to imagine what it would be like to live here, and seeing if anything was missing that I needed for daily life. Nothing was missing. I didn’t see any sign that the Great Western Decoupling had happened…yet. I could purchase all the things that I needed to survive. I could find olive oil, coconut oil, organic beef, western toiletries, Japanese instant coffee, and even what I’d assumed was a fairly obscure contact lenses cleaner — without much effort. The only thing that really stood out, though, was that it was hard to find high-quality vitamins and supplements. That was a bit of a shock.

Anything else that might somehow be missing could usually be resolved by ordering from Taobao. For fun, I ordered some frozen steaks and Chinese manga on Taobao. The steak was tasty and came in a frozen refrigerated box (they asked me to return it later). The manga turned out to be a cheap counterfeit, and I was greatly disappointed.

I feel that the Asian consumerism you get in the United States seems a bit fossilized in the 1990s, and you don’t easily get to keep up with the cutting edge new stuff that comes out from the mainland. Chinatowns in the USA, even the very large ones, are not really “holistic” city centers that have a wide range of activities for you to do, but just quick stopovers that you go to pick up food or maybe a Chinese festival once in a while.

Chinese and American

After getting somewhat used to life in China, I got the sense that literally everyone considered me to be basically Chinese. This somewhat “obvious” fact is important, since many first-gen Chinese immigrants in the USA gatekeep their nationality during encounters with ABC’s. I’ve also seen negative people online say things like “Chinese Americans will never be accepted in China” which I now think is completely bogus and incorrect, as I never encountered this sentiment even once. As long as you come to China with a humble attitude, eager and willing to learn, trying to speak Chinese and improve on it, and don’t treat locals with a condescending attitude, people will be very friendly beyond belief. And if people say “Wow, your Chinese is so bad!,” you need to reply: “Yeah, I know!” with a smile on your face — That’s the Confucian way!

People in the big cities were extremely accepting and accommodating to me, and I was very “welcomed in” during my encounters. In Japan, people treated me like an honored guest, but in China, I felt like a family member myself. China, as a large country and civilization-state with many diverse provinces, has a vast sense of self-identity that can accommodate almost anyone. If you like graffiti art or hip hop or anime or robots, there will inevitably be millions of people here who have that same interest, just due to the sheer size of the place. In the cities, you get a ton of people from all sorts of provinces (especially Dongbei) roaming around in the pursuit of a better life, so there really is a Pan-Chinese identity that is quite broad and accepting. I suspect that even Koreans, Japanese, and Vietnamese people who speak Chinese could find a comfortable home within the vastness of the Chinese national mind. In many ways it’s kinda similar to what America is for Europeans.

Even the most nationalistic person I met in China, who disliked Japan but had some curiosity about the west, did not say “Americans GTFO” but told me “Never forget that you are Chinese; this is where your roots are.” In the end, it seems like only first-gen immigrants are the ones who try to gatekeep ABC’s out of China. Think about it: If European expats can live in China for 10+ years without speaking the language, then why should ABC’s, who do speak some Chinese, feel ashamed about visiting the land where their own parents or grandparents were born? Do you know that there are millions of Chinese nationals who don’t speak perfect Putong Hua?

At the end of my travel in China, I felt like I had become conversationally fluent in Chinese, and I could easily see that living there for a few years would be a sure-fire way to become excellent in the language. Fluency in Chinese — something that had seemed like a vast chasm that I could never surpass — suddenly seemed to within reach, and I was filled with hope. In the USA, studying Chinese is almost a useless hobby that doesn’t increase your access to anything tangible or interesting. In China, it unlocks new adventures and friendships, and you genuinely need to employ it for high-stakes use cases where misreading a single character can be a disaster.

China is a normal country, and it doesn’t have gargantuan differences with the west. Chinese people are confident, not afraid of anyone, comfortable in their own skin, and walk around doing whatever they want. That’s awesome.

Conclusion

I visited Japan, an alien land that’s close but not the same as home, and China, the place where my parents came from, separated by years of time, during which the country greatly changed to become one of the most civilized and developed nations on the planet. The combination of distance and closeness helped me learn a lot about myself.

I always recommend Asian Americans to learn a third language. Don’t just settle for two. English is the daily language of America, and Chinese — or maybe something else — is a heritage tongue you use with parents and grandparents. But learning the third language, which was Japanese in my case but perhaps Korean for others, gave me a different perspective that allowed me to reflect on the subtleties of my home cultures. I realized that whatever dumb things I didn’t like about China, but which were shared by Japan, must be a general Confucian principle, not a modern PRC invention. In the end, spending some time in a “third culture” ultimately supercharged my Chinese learning in a way that hadn’t happened at all during my lazy days in Chinese school.

With that in mind, I continued to dive deeper into mainland Chinese cities and other places in East Asia, which I’ll discuss in the next essay.

This article is the first part in a series that will cover the lessons I learned in different cites in Asia. If you’re interested in following along, please consider subscribing and checking out my Twitter account and YouTube videos. Click here for the next article.

1. We have these people in America, too, but Chinese people don’t usually choose to live in those places.