My Asian Education

18 Jul My Asian Education

Recently I have been re-reading my old journals of travels throughout Asia in the late 1970s. They present a vibrant catalog of adventures and put into focus some of the fundamental and far-ranging lessons those travels offered me.

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My Asian education began in Japan, where I went to live for two years in 1977. Japan was different in so many fundamental ways from the world in which I had grown up that it confronted and overturned my own cultural preconceptions at all levels.

To present a mundane example, I had been raised to believe that slurping soup was impolite; my first lunch in a Tokyo ramen restaurant, however, immersed me in a veritable — and wonderful — symphony of slurping. On a more profound level, I had been raised to strive for individuality and self-reliance above all things; in Japan I learned that true interpersonal dependence is in many ways more difficult — and more desirable — than independence.

When I ventured beyond Japan into other Asian countries, I found more surprises.

I remember one ordinary but eventful day in Singapore when three new cultures came to life for me: In the morning I visited the excellent Singapore Handicrafts Centre and discovered the exquisite shields, carvings and drums of Papua New Guinea. At noon I wandered into bustling Chinatown, where fruit stalls, electric shops, shoe stores and festoons of laundry brightened and bedazzled. Later, just a short walk away, the vibrant batik stores and fragrant curry shops of Little India conjured dusty dreams.

After this crash course in Asia I slumped into a palm-shaded chair in the graceful green and white courtyard of the Raffles Hotel, and the world compressed as suddenly as it had expanded just before: Pool-side Europeans, all brown limbs, bikinis and bijoux, brought back the easy sensuality I had discovered and left in Europe the year before.

On the same trip, in the middle of a long, slow afternoon in Malacca, I was studying the ornate, brightly polished Chinese temple my guidebook identified as the oldest in Malaysia. A trio of wizened women approached, knelt before the incense-hazy altar and shook a can filled with numbered sticks. As they did so, they would periodically drop one or two red, half-moon-shaped pieces. Eventually each chose a stick and presented it to a man at a desk, who then opened a drawer and took out a rolled scroll. What does this all mean?, I wrote in my journal. And what would these women make of the Congregational Church service in my Connecticut hometown?

These isolated moments, full of mystery and resonance, crystallize for me the power and potential of Asia — and of travel in general: to teach and to transform. My journeys in this rich region have taught me — and continue to teach me — that compromise is an art and flexibility an attribute, that “civilization” is a product of context rather than content, and that unpredictability is travel’s — and the world’s — soulful surprise and joy.

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Don George

Don George is the Adventure Collection’s Web Editor in Chief. A highly respected and pioneering travel journalist for more than three decades, Don is the author of "The Way of Wanderlust: The Best Travel Writing of Don George," and of "Lonely Planet's Guide to Travel Writing." Don is currently Editor at Large for National Geographic Traveler and Special Features Editor for BBC Travel. He has also been Global Travel Editor for Lonely Planet Publications, Travel Editor at the San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle, and founder and editor of Salon.com’s travel site, Wanderlust. In addition to authoring two books, Don has edited ten literary travel anthologies, including “The Kindness of Strangers,” “An Innocent Abroad," and "Better Than Fiction." He has won numerous awards for his writing and editing, and he speaks, teaches, and consults at campuses, conferences, and corporations around the world.

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