At the YMCA swimming pool today, I chatted with an 82-year-old friend who moved to the United States from Germany when she was young. She retired after years of teaching at the United Nations International School.
I told her that I would do some traveling next month. “We’ve traveled a lot since retiring,” she shared with me. But when I asked if she had ever been to China, she shook her head. “You know, it’s strange,” she said. “I never thought about going there while I was healthy enough to travel. Almost all our trips were to Europe.”
It struck me because today my own daughter is returning from Paris —her fourth trip there. She’s been to China many times, mostly to visit relatives, but never as a tourist.
Perhaps Europe is closer than China. Or perhaps both my friend and my daughter, steeped in Western culture, find Europe more within a cultural comfort zone—familiar languages, histories, customs, and even systems. Or perhaps, without even realizing it, they’ve been influenced by the West’s negative media coverage of China, which can shape perceptions and choices in subtle ways. After all, when time, energy, and resources are limited, people gravitate toward places that feel culturally more at home or geographically closer to home.
Ironically, though, Chinese tourists have ventured across the globe far more than Westerners have set foot in China—perhaps, at a greater openness on the part of the Chinese to explore beyond their cultural boundaries.
Finally, whatever the reasons, their choices by no means suggest that China lacks natural beauty, rich history, or vibrant culture. Nor does China deserve the overall negative image painted by the Western media. I only wish more Western-minded travelers would step outside their cultural comfort zone and see China for what it really is: a land and culture as complex and rewarding as anywhere else on earth.