Shiqian: the happiest place where no one smiles.

My travels from Weifang to Shiqian were as follows: a taxi ride, a two-hour train ride, a 27-hour train ride, another taxi ride, a three-hour bus ride, a two-hour bus ride, and a partridge in a pear tree. Two non-stop days of traveling. No shower, no internet, no privacy. It was smelly, uncomfortable, and honestly pretty fun. Seeing the backroads to the Chinese countryside was fascinating and traveling through passes and tunnels in the mountains of Guizhou was absolutely stunning. You forget that you’ve been siting for hours and hours when your jaw freakin hits the floor. I certainly wasn’t complaining. Plus, our extended journey ended with a pot at the end of a gloomy rainbow: the Shiqian Hot Spring Holiday Hotel. This is a magnificent hotel, likely one of the nicest I’ve gotten the pleasure of staying at. It is situated riverside, and takes full advantage of the natural hot spring that the city is seated on. Highly impressed.

However, it was in this hotel that the emotional toll of moving to the other side of the globe started to settle in. I was anticipating being homesick but this feeling cannot really be put into words until you experience it yourself. I always considered myself to be an independent person. I’ve always been very capable of making decisions for myself and getting out of my comfort zone. Honestly, I have been confidently telling myself for the last four or five years that I could live on my own without too much trouble. However, I took for granted the amount of tremendous support I received from all of my friends and family. The copious, overwhelming, and fantastic amount of support. No matter where I was, what I was doing, there was always someone who had my back. There was always someone who would tell me I could do it, there was always someone who would give their time and resources to help me obtain my goals, there was always someone to pick me up when I fell flat on my face. This I did not realize until I was in a city in China, alone and mildly terrified, without any clue as to where I was and not a single soul that could’ve helped me in that moment. I am forever grateful for my family and friends and I apologize for not realizing how much they do for me sooner. As cliche as it is, you don’t know what you have until it’s gone (or until you move to the opposite side of the globe.)

This thought got me a thinkin’. I now know what I don’t have- but what do I have? What do the people in this tiny mountainous town have that makes them happy? So I set out on my first day of work with this in mind. The 20 minute walk from my hotel room to the school is littered with sidewalk shops, scooters, and stray animals. The city is clean but there is an obvious mark of borderline poverty. It was on this walk that I noticed, not a single person in the city was smiling. Children, babies, adults, the elderly- not a soul was smiling. Everyone was walking around with a bitter distaste saturating their complexion. Well dang… are they too poor to be happy? Is this entire community of people struggling to make ends meet? Is everyone just pissed off all the time?

Well…no. I think. Honestly I’m not sure. I am aware that contentedness, peace-of-mind, and gratitude are forms of immediate happiness that don’t necessarily warrant smiling. A person can be happy and not smile. But this community of people did not look content, at peace, or grateful. They looked unhappy.

Okay, I also am aware that my minuscule sample of people (being the 20-odd city-dwellers I passed while walking down the street) is not representative of the whole town. It was also early in the morning and most of these people were at work or headed in that direction (much like I was). But it still had me puzzled. If I had done the same experiment in Georgia would I have seen different results? Do people just smile at strangers on the street? And if they don’t, does that imply that they are unhappy? My efforts toward finding gratitude through this approach were unsuccessful.

So I began listing things I was grateful for. My hotel (a bed, running water, internet, safety, etc.), the school and supporting teachers, the money I have to pay for the things I need and want, the moral support I get from my family and friends in America (even when I move to China, you guys rock), and so much more. Of course this helped me. It always does and I recommend that more people take the time to think about this. But I am a foreigner who can’t speak the native language of the country I am dwelling and I can find happiness in the things that I have. Why can’t the locals? Why are they seemingly so unhappy?

This is a hard question to question to answer, especially because I can’t sit down and have a real conversation with any of these people in question. But I can speculate on human behavior. I know that people desire increasing complex things based on their needs that have already been met. These people have food, water, shelter, and safety. Sure they are poorer than the average American, but it’s not a dying village. It’s still a city and they are not starving. My guess is they take solace in relationships. They express their happiness within their families and use this to feel belonging. Grandparents are frequently seen raising children with equal effort as the parents. Children are taught to help out with work and cleaning without complaining. Parents provide food and monetary support to the others while maintaining order. I especially think this because of the family-dominated way of living in China. It is a safe way to live. And it is an easy way to find purpose within yourself- falling into a role that best benefits the family as a whole. You can find a sense of accomplishment and belonging when you see that the people you love are better off because of the work you put in. They, in turn, are more likely to put in the work to support you and the cycle of love and support continues. With this in mind I can see why people wouldn’t smile to a random stranger on the street- they are putting the work in and reaping the satisfaction of it later, with the people that they love.

While I am on the topic, I realized in this train of thought that the individualism that is so prevalent in America is a subtle mark of the high level of privilege we experience. Most Americans (emphasis on “most”, I understand that no statement can apply to all people) are guaranteed safety and physical needs. Most Americans also experience enough support and structure within their families that they have the freedom to move on to the next level of Maslowian needs: esteem, and eventually self-actualization. The idea of individuality and “self” is very alluring, but only to those who are fortunate enough to be able to leave the safety of family with starving or tripping on their shoelace and falling face first into poverty.

(I think some of the more dedicated religious monks around the world actually forsake some of their lower-level needs to obtain an extreme concept of self-actualization but this isn’t common enough to influence the theory or the statements that I made.)

Also please note: I understand writing about any kind of social phenomenon is inherently risky. I also understand that there are many many exceptions to the statements I’ve just laid out (even several I can think of myself). I am a young person who is just trying to make sense of the world around me while also staying in touch with my family:)