[Last modified: October, 23 2024 10:17 AM]
This time, I would like to explore the effects of my privileges through some field experience reflections. I am a man and from a relatively economically stable household in China. This is likely to make me insulated from many issues that women struggle with in different parts of the world, including where I am from. This may lead to my lack of awareness of the everyday or even more fierce oppression against woman and instead ‘naturally’ focus on other aspects in my research. I need to constantly reflect on my ability to stay up to a progressive feminist research approach.
Similarly, my class privilege would likely affect my ability to understand and resonate with my potential interlocutors from worse-off economic backgrounds. I had a unforgettable experience is when I set foot onto the most affordable (green-cover 绿皮) trains in China I would normally encounter the long-distance travellers who work in remote and economically more developed regions. I had to spend a night sitting with them on the green-cover train. On that journey people were ready to sit in the train for dozens of hours to travel across the countries, with some constantly seeking to lie down when there are spaces or sit on the floor for a nap. Most people prepared a big plastic bag of snacks with sometimes instant noodles for food. And the smokers would light up there cigratte in the conjunctions between carriages even though smoking is not really allowed on the train. But those places became a social space for men who smoke.
Shocked and annoyed by the smell of cigarette, I still noticed many things I did not even get to see before. I saw people easily find topics to discuss with each other and bond with the commonalities especially through the word Laoxiang 老乡 which means ‘people from the same place / old countrymen’. I was touched also by the fact that staff members working on the train were very friendly towards the people they likely identify as ‘Laoxiang’ and there is not the common professional coldness I would expect to see from perhaps any train staff.
Still, I found the train experience uncomfortable and I very much did not like it at all. This really speaks to me about how a certain kind of comfortableness is normalised in my life and I had only started to enter into a world that certainly deserves a lot of social and academic attention. After all, it was the same people who built up the China we see today.