Last month, when I was on the train from Urumqi to Nanjing, I had some small talk with other passengers. When we learned that a young man is from an ethnic minority and he went to Shanghai to go to college, a middle-aged woman who is from a big city asked him: “After graduating from university, you won’t go back to your hometown, right?”
This question has been in my mind for a long time. I’m not Chinese, I did my master’s degree there, and I’ve got this question a lot. A lot of people asked me why I didn’t stay there. Some people even said it very directly, living in China can bring me a better life and I should live there instead of going back to my home country. Perhaps I’m quite sensitive, but to be honest, I feel that they are implying that Vietnam is a poor country and people here live in underprivileged conditions. And I’ve heard the superiority in their voice. How they can easily judge an area and a country when they have never been here? Even if we come from an underprivileged area, it also has its own beauty and advantages. For example: I personally don’t like big cities. I don’t like crowded and noisy places. Furthermore, in big cities, the workplace is super competitive. Employees spend most of their time on working and it’s hard to balance between work and life. I prefer to live in a small city where is more peaceful and you can have more time to enjoy life.
Besides home country and hometown, people also judge others based on their jobs. I strongly believe that all legal jobs are equal. No certain job is better than another one. I’ve known some professors who behave as if they are superior to other people. But they did really bad things, such as sexual harassment of students. Therefore, being a doctor, lawyer, or scientist can not ensure that this person has good moral qualities. Furthermore, studies show that the more well-educated, the less happy you are. It means that a person who has a PhD or master’s degree tends to be less happy than a farmer or a worker.
In conclusion, in my opinion, you can dislike a country, dislike its culture or people, but don’t look down on others or think that you are superior to other people.
I find your writing thought-provoking. Keep it up! It made me think of whether or not I have made such assumptions before. I think I might ask questions about where someone would settle simply out of curiosity. I might also guess that they would settle at more developed areas due to better employment opportunities . However, I understand that each person has their own preference, and each place has its merits and drawbacks.
And I guess there is also the problem of assuming that the entire country is more or less developed than another. A country is huge, and you can't just measure how good one is compared to another definitely.
Hi @dolphinbunny
Thank you for sharing your opinions. It also makes me think twice before saying something.