It has been a little over a year since we (my wife, our daughter, and myself) returned to the United States after living in China for seven years. As I reflect on this milestone, I find myself with somewhat mixed feelings about being back in the U.S.
To be fair, on the whole my feelings are positive. It's nice to be in a place where I don't (usually!) have to worry about being understood (I can speak Chinese to an extent, but sometimes in China my language skills failed me). It's nice to be able to eat things I like to eat without having to travel half-way across a major metropolis (Beijing) to find them. I am happy to be in a country where people accept that "No Smoking" signs apply to them, not someone else!
More seriously, I am thankful for the freeedoms that we have in this country. In China, I sometimes had to engage in self-censorship with regard to topics that I knew were not supposed to be discussed in that country--like the human rights record of the Chinese Communist Party or the political status of Taiwan. Here I am free to express my opinions on controversial subjects--if I choose to.
Moreover, I am thankful for the religious freedom that we have in the U.S. In China, I had to show a passport in order to attend church (the church, which was authorized by the Chinese government, was prohibited from allowing Chinese citizens to attend its services). A student of mine at the university where I taught was (I was told) arrested for belonging to the Falun Gong religious movement. A local (Chinese) church my wife (who is Chinese) occasionally attended was raided by the police one Sunday (fortunately, she was elsewhere that day).
I am also appreciative of the fact that here in the U.S. the average citizen has at least some say in who his or her leaders are--something that is certainly not true in China.
Nevertheless, there are some things about China that I miss. For example, as a history buff, living in an ancient city like Beijing could be quite interesting. Also, in some ways my life there was less complex than here.
In addition, there have been some developments in the U.S. in the past year or so that I find disturbing. One of them is mainstreaming of homosexuality in American society and the increasing tendency by many to stigmatize those (like me) who raise moral objections to it. What is especially ironic to me is that, given current trends, it is likely that same-sex "marriage" will become the law of the land in the predominately "Christian" United States sooner than in officially atheistic China, where traditional notions of sexual morality still predominate despite Communist ideology.
Another development that I have witnessed in the U.S. that concerns me is the apparent effort of some (including our some of our poltical leaders) to narrow the scope of our religious liberties. It is astounding to me that a baker or a photographer who has religious objections to homosexuality can be penalized under the law for refusing to provide his or her services to homosexual couples. The reaction of some to the Supreme Court's recent decision in the Hobby Lobby case also unsettles me. The insistence of some that the owners of a family-owned business (we're not talking about a large publicly-traded corporation with millions of shareholders) must pay for something that violates their conscience is quite incomprehensible to me. Apparently, many in this society believe that the "right" to engage in any sexual activity of one's choosing is absolute--it even trumps religious freedom, which has long been one of the hallmarks of this country. So, while it is true that religious believers are much, much freer to practice their faith in the U.S. than in China, it does seem that the U.S. is in danger of moving toward some government-imposed restrictions on that freedom, like in China.
Still, overall I am quite happy to have returned to "my own, my native land." I have long felt that loving your c0untry is like loving your family--you might not always agree with your family members or be happy with them, but you still retain a strong affection for them. Watching the fireworks a few days ago on Independence Day--my first Independence Day in the U.S. in eight years--I certainly did feel I was home.
Image of American flag from commons.wikimedia.org