early summer after the rain
Click! Click! Click! Once again, Ellie the dog and I have been immortalized in a Chinese photo album. The Eastern visitors in the park find us to be an object of fascination. I am uncertain as to why. Perhaps it is the sight of a defenseless woman having the guts (or the stupidity) to walk a fearsome black canine. While the Chinese tourists photograph Ellie, they indicate clearly that they’d prefer not to greet her.
Cultural attitudes towards animals run strong. A friend of mine from Paraguay reminds me of why I’ve never warmed up to cats. Growing up in developing countries with a lot of rabid strays around – deserted scavengers that hiss and scratch to survive – hasn’t cultivated a warm and loving instinct towards our feline friends.
“Whä di Chinaaa Palace?” asks one of the Chinese tourists while taking a snap of us. Bewildered as to why someone from China might have come all this way to see a Swedish King’s imitation Chinese leisure house, I point to the hill behind the long row of fountains. The tourist and his fellow travellers turn immediately and shuffle rapidly in that direction. I think of shouting out that it will be open for a few more hours (it’s only 9 in the morning), but sense that this piece of information may be in vain. The gaggle of tourists is already snapping its cameras half way up the hill to the China Palace.
It’s been a week of worries in the rain. Precipitation and cold as we pass into June is enough to send most of us in Sweden to the psychiatrist. The Euro crisis, the neo-Nazis in Hamburg, bisphenols in our packaged food and even global warming (although it hasn’t seemed evident during the past week) begin to seem like walls closing in on us.
Then the sky begins to break up and this morning the sun shoots through the linden alleys at the Palace. The lilac, which has been drenched in rain and now the goodness of the sun, lives up in its own sensuous perfume. The rhododendrons strike me as the underside of a ballerina’s tutu. In fact, it is not hard to understand why flowers are associated with women: their various shapes mirror the shape of clothing we have worn over time. Everywhere there are blossoms spilling over the fences and into places that are supposedly out-of-bounds. The early summer pushes out limitations and breaks them down. Everything is possible, solvable, doable.
The transformation of my week by the drying up of the rain and the return of the sun’s rays on the early summer blossoms is a reminder of how little we need to change our perception of things. Whole realities can be transformed by small adjustments. Sometimes our inbuilt volatility can be frightening: on one day the world can be black, and on the next it can be white. On the whole, though, I take our capacity to rapidly change the way we see things as hopeful. The greatest of all dangers lies, after all, in stagnancy and intransigence.
The Chinese tourists are done exploring King Adolf Frederik’s Chinese Pavilion, a small “birthday gift” to his wife Ulrika Lovisa. Each of them has got at least a hundred snaps of it. While I am quite sure that Ellie and I will quickly be deleted from the collection that gets shared with relatives back home in China, perhaps just one more look at the image of the friendly black dog will be enough to shift some attitudes. It only takes the memory of a little wag of the tail to move mountains.
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Living in Sweden? Take advantage of the special offer available on Julie’s books just now by visiting www.julielindahl.com. If you live elsewhere, visit the site to learn about where you can purchase her newest award-winning book, “Rose in the Sand” about a decade lived on a Swedish island.
Tags: attitudes, China, Chinese, Island, lilac, pre-summer, tourists, Transformation
It is also your blonde hair too that fascinates them. Blondes are very rare and so when they someone with the blonde hair they go a little crazy. Ah tourists….it is that time of year!
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Hi Julie, i’m similing to myself as I read how you descibe the Chinese visitors clicking away on their cameras! (I am an Easterner myself) From some personal experience, I noticed that they either like to take photos of a westerner, or request to take with a westerner
btw, I really enjoy reading your reflective articles accompanied by nice photos!
- an easterner from Singapore
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Dear Julie, I tried to work out why you would ridicule Chinese tourists with descriptions like “Wha di China Palace” or their duck like appearance as a “gaggle” of tourists”. Is it offensive that “hundreds of photo’s” are taken? Are Chinese generally seen as culturally silly or inferior deserving the same treatment as your native Sami people.
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Hi Dan,
Since I grew up often in Chinese cultures in different parts of the world, believe me, there is no disrespect here. I would find it quite fun if one of the Chinese tourists blogged about how they experience me walking my dog. Probably a bit manic and obsessed with canines, I imagine. I think we need to be able to laugh a little about these things. That is the way you get a multicultural society that functions. People are comfortable enough to joke a little about one another’s habits without taking offence and can laugh a little at themselves. Try it! It is a wonderful thing. By the way, I always call a group of tourists, irrespective of nationality, a gaggle since that is what I find we look like in tourist groups.
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Also wanted to thank the others and Janice, in particular, for her comments. She takes things in the right way. There is no way that we can grow together if we cannot laugh at each other, as long as it is in a benign and friendly manner and we are also willing to accept a bit of light humor about ourselves as well. So, please, Chinese tourist, send me your funny blog entry about the crazy woman with the salivating black dog in Sweden!
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Dear Julie, eveyone has their own sense of humour but the description of negative stereotypes for the purpose of personal entertainment, the entertainment of others or derision cannot be applauded. Muticulturalism is based on respect for other races; applauding and celebrating their differences. It is an interesting fact that many senior Nazi officers loved animals – particularly dogs.
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Great article about melodifestivalen (eurovision), we are pleased to find so many quality articles which are promoting Sweden and our new melodifestivalen 2013.
Cheers
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Hi Julie, love your article especially the description of Chinese tourists. Thats exactly how they are here in Australia and again the same in New Zealand when I lived there. I can only imagine if we were to tour their great country we too would be described as a gaggle of tourists taking hundreds of photographs to the bewilderment of the locals. Thank you for writing such an interesting and entertaining article.
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Kate must be one of the 10% of Australians who support Pauline Hanson. Making fun of people on the basis of race is shameful.
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I don’t understand what the big fuss is about here that is what they sound like when they are speaking English, they have difficulties in saying some of the letter sounds. It is no different than if I were in Sweden trying to speak Swedish and I didn’t pronounce or enunciate something correctly in Swedish then I would expect someone to laugh or even giggle at me it is natural.
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It seems as though we have hit upon an important issue here, everyone. Glad for all your comments, although Dan may wish to elaborate on what he means by his comments about Nazis and dogs. I don’t see the relevance.
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I agree with Julie. I think it’s really funny hearing Chinese trying to speak English. It seems like they’re retarded. I think they travel in such large numbers they also remind me of a hoard of animals. When I see them get off their buses looking like penguins in bad clothes, yakking away and taking pictures of every stupid thing possible it always makes me laugh.
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Mavis, Thanks for your comment, but I wouldn’t want my thoughts to be interpreted in that way. I think we all sound a bit strange to one another, particularly when we speak languages that are not our mother tongue. I am quite sure I sound very funny speaking Swedish. I have in fact been imitated by Swedes who think I sound funny on a few occasions. Then the business of tourist groups and how they behave – well, I find that to be fairly universal. The thing that is unique to the Chinese, however, is the number of photographs they take. I’ll likely raise this issue again in an upcoming blog.
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Good Lord! I am only too aware of how us brits are seen abroad, and I think it’s hilarious! Maybe English isn’t Dan’s first language? Or he has had a humour lobotomy? The japanese, too, are always taking thousands of photos. So much so that I have frequently wondered if they actually ever see the building that they are standing before, or if the first glimpse they have of it is when they get home and look at their photos.
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Hi All,
I have to admit that I winced a little when I read Julie’s attempt to put Chinese English pronunciation into print figuring it would stir up comments on political correctness racial stereotypes etc. I’d like to point out the the great American author Mark Twain used this same device to give the reader a sense of connectivity to time place and to those who were being written about. His book “Tom Sawyer” is a good example. I work at a University in California where political correctness and cultural sensitivity is rampant.
I’m all for multi-culturalism and cultural sensitivity but I also want to be able to have fun in life’s experiences. I strongly reject the political correctness police as another group of facists whose goal is to make everything bland and boring. Be respectful and sensitive to people and their cultures but if you see something funny don’t be afraid to laugh…it’s okay. Life is too short to worry about the small stuff. “Life is like totally awesome dude but you got to to live it to the max fur sure” Now I gotta go check out the temperature of the brie and chardonnay before I climb into my hot tub. How’s that for California stereotypes?
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Julie,
I agree with you, what a big deal. I laugh at my husband trying to speak Swedish, and I often do not make sense in English myself after many years in the US.
Yet in Swedish I still sound like I came from Sodermalm.
Gave your books to my sister-in-law i Colorado. She loved them.
Kepp on writing!
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Hello All,
When I write my blog entries they are from the heart and very spontaneous. Not designed to stir up comments at all. However, if they do hit upon something important like this, I am pleased. I think this could be one of the most important issues we need to sort out today. Multiculturalism is a fact of our societies today and we must find ways to enjoy it rather than be afraid or become tongue-tied. We are all different and we all express ourselves differently. Why not recognize it?
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