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Yibin is the first place in which I've understood and really related to the old saying that "everything changes and everything stays the same." I went walking last night down nearly every street in the city, the same as I used to do when I first arrived here. I was amazed at how most of the shops I didn't recognize: they were different than they
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It's endlessly debatable, but I'm sure that modernization wouldn't completely erase all the cultural values of places like Yibin. Billings is certainly more American than it is anything else, and someone who spent a year there would have an easier time adjusting to American culture than someone who's never been to the US. On the flipside, someone who spent the same amount of time in New York would be totally out of place in the countryside. You saw it yourself - you had a much easier time getting along in Beijing and Shanghai than you did in Yibin, but if it had been the other way around Yibin would feel like a country you'd never been to.
p.s. I expect big chopsticks when you get back. Also, can you see if they got any more of those metro shirts in, if that store still exists?
THX
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metro shirts = MEIYOU.
The thing that's up for debate is what do you call a metro area? Yibin is definitely metro, but still the rural smalltown head-up-its-own-ass metro area that you find in the country side. So to put these people in the same living class as Beijing/Shanghai would be FALLACIOUS! Perhaps the same is true with [small city X in rural Ohio that's still metro] and New York.
Yes, my point was that maybe i've learned more about China on average, but how much of that will be useful as i'll never live in this type of situation again? The main question to me is how much of it is cultural and how much of it is rural:urban?
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