The White Noise

Arriving in Shanghai was a somewhat surreal experience. I can never anticipate how culture shock is going to affect me, but I seem to go through some distinct stages.
Upon arriving in this metropolis, the first thing that struck me was the chaos of it all. An underlying buzz, a pulsating vibe, a constant white noise rung in my ears. The whir of traffic, rivers of shuffling feet, cling-clang of money, hum of televisions, and the loudly chewing, talking, arguing shanghaiese, all resulted in total sensory overload.

Shanghai is an assault on your senses. Buildings scream at you with neon lights, smells on the street alternate between the mouthwatering and the putrescent. The clothes are vibrant, mismatched with stripes, dots and florals. The sounds are the most overwhelming, as cars, bikes and mopeds zoom by, babies cry, old men cough and spit on the streets, and horns honk, resulting in an orchestra of white noise.

When I first arrive in a country, the first stage of my own personal culture shock is always numbness. Nothing feels different. Nothing is unusual. This in itself is an odd feeling. My mind completely ignores everything that it doesn’t understand, and just accepts it as is. I don’t notice how strange it is that there are mopeds on the sidewalk, street vendors pushing meat sticks at me, or toddlers walking around with buttless pants. My brain says to me, “same old-same old” and fails to recognize any of the telltale signs that I am not in Kansas anymore.

My brain fills with the sound of white noise as the city hums around me, and walks my body around like a marionette. No questions are formed, no conclusions are drawn, I simply absorb the world around me like a seeping sponge, letting it all mix together to be figured out later.

I don’t even blink when I pass an open-front store filled with full, hanging, rotting cows, blood draining onto the sidewalk- right next to a convenience store. My brains says “Hey, a 7-11, maybe they have chocolate!”