I didn’t go to China expecting to be shaken by culture shock.
I’ve spent some time around Asian families and shared spaces so the rhythm didn’t feel foreign. People speaking directly, food being something you gather around instead of something plated just for you, small gestures of respect for elders, haggling prices when shopping… There was a familiarity there that settled me more than anything.
Even the things that might catch people off guard, like squatty toilets, no toilet paper, and sometimes no soap, were already taken care of before we got there. The group from the year before, and our team leads, had made sure of that. Come prepared. So I did. Antibacterial travel wipes and little packs of Kleenex overflowing from my suitcase. It all ended up feeling practical, not shocking. Just another way of moving through a place.
I was fully prepared for the food (I loved it!), the crowded streets, the noise, the pace, the way people move around each other without much pause, the different rhythm of meals and daily life. None of that felt unfamiliar.
And having grown up in the 1980s, the cigarette smoking literally everywhere wasn’t unfamiliar either. It was kind of nostalgic, even.
What stayed with me was something much more subtle.
Something I already knew, but hadn’t really brought with me.
My Biggest Culture Shock in China:
The not automatically offering a smile to every passing stranger.
I knew, in that surface level way, that in many cultures people don’t automatically smile at strangers the same way we do here. But I hadn’t carried that knowing into my body. So I’d be walking, make eye contact with someone, and my face would just do what it’s always done. That quick, soft smile. The one that happens before you even think about it.
And nothing would come back.
Not cold. Not unkind. Just neutral.
And every time, there was this small, private moment of feeling a bit out of place. Like I had reached for something that didn’t quite belong in that exchange. It felt a little embarrassing at first, in a gentle, humbling way. Like catching yourself speaking too loudly in a quiet room.
It made me realize how automatic that gesture is for me. How much of what I think of as friendliness is actually something I’ve been taught, practiced, repeated until it feels like instinct.
And then, slowly, it started to make sense in a different way.
In a place where there are so many people, constantly, everywhere, it would be a lot to meet every passing glance with a signal. To acknowledge every tiny crossing of paths. There’s something respectful about the neutrality. A way of letting people move through shared space without asking anything from each other.
And warmth wasn’t missing at all.
It was just placed differently.
It lived more in real interactions. In conversations, in shared moments, in relationships where something actually exists between people. It wasn’t scattered out automatically to everyone, all the time.
There’s something steady about that. Something intentional.
It made me aware of how many of my own “normal” behaviours are actually just local habits I’ve never had to question. How easily we confuse what we’re used to with what is universal.
I didn’t feel like I needed to change myself. But I did feel myself paying closer attention. Catching that reflex as it happened. Seeing it for what it was.
And respecting the fact that the world around me was moving according to its own quiet logic, one that didn’t need me to understand it right away to still be worthy of that respect.
It’s funny what stays with you.
Not the things you prepare for.
But the small moments where you realize you’ve been moving through the world one way for so long, you forgot there were other ways to be in it.