nearly every of our generalization is wrong
are you the only sacred one who don’t hold any stereotypes?
how often do we generalize things? have we ever say something like “ohh russian people likes to drink vodka and fight and not afraid of bear” , “ donald trump is a bad person” “ bali and chiang mai is such a good place for traveling”
after you read my article, you will realize non of our generalization/ conclusion is correct.
storybackground: i’m eric a nomad in russia, sometimes people call me a journalist because i write articles, recording people’s thoughts, interacting with stranger. recently i hitchhike from vladivastok to siberia( krasnoyarsk).
i was planning to write an article about siberia( middle russia) people closeminded
i was going to conclude that people in siberia are more closeminded than vladivastok(the very east of russia, coastal city near korea and china)
because i have been talking/greeting to more than 300 people approximately in irkutsk and krasnoyarsk. however, 80 percent of the people completely ignored me when i say “ hello, how are you, may i ask you a question” in russian language. as for people in vladivastok, i have only maybe 2 percent of times being completely ignored.
of course, i won’t be drawing the conclusion or generalize things too easily, i want to be as objective as possible. but since there are still a lot of factors like, irkutsk and krasnoyarsk people speak lesser english than vladivastok, and irku-krasyrsk people don’t know my hometown-taiwan.
but what happened today alter my perception towards russian reality
i decided to procrastinate my article about siberia people are more closeminded because i haven’t been to enough places like novosibrsk or barnaul yet.
but the critical point that makes me holds totally different opinion about close mindedness in krasnoyarsk is,
THREE PEOPLE WANTS TO MAKE FRIEND WITH ME TODAY WITHIN 30 MINUTES
usually i need to wait 1 hour for one high engagement conversation.
1st group of people i’ve encountered is a mom and daughter, they weren’t ignored me like most of the siberian people do, but they stopped walking for me! before we separated they even bought me soooo many food, when i revealed the truth that i only eat one bread for yesterday.
2nd group of people is a girl waiting for a bus. i spent time with her waiting for her bus arrival. she love naruto as me, she even put Nidaime Hokage on her phone. she furthered said yes to me about my proposal of watching netflix with her.
3rd group of people, is a single mom, who originally ignored me when i asked her “may i make friends with you(in russian)”, but after she walked a few steps away from me she turned her head back then yelled “where are you from”. instead of answering her, i wanted to focus on my goal, i said“ i would tell you but only if you want to make friends with me:))” she then said: “Давай(Davay) ( lets do it)”. her name is tatiana.
tatiana — the person who originally ignored me, now she is the person who enlighten me
as usual, i told her “ you are so unusual, i am very lucky to receive your friendliness( in russian)”
then she said: “i dont think i am so friendly, i am actually a close-minded person, its my first time talking to foreigner on the street, i decided to talk to you because i dont know why my heart felt more opened after i returned back to the city, i visited a big lake 3 days ago”
i was enlightened because since 2019 i had a theory about “if city people spend more time with marvelous nature, like super big ocean, lake, mountain, people would be more open minded for awhile because of realizing how tiny we are”
the second cool part of her is that she was studying chinese for awhile, we were chatting in chinese for 4 minutes:))
the third cool part of her is that she automatically invite me to her house for having lunch!! but i am so happy that i refused her, because i know completing my unfinished articles is my priority.
now the coolest part is that i asked her if i could sleep at her house for two nights she said yes!! (the picture below)
so now if you ask me, is Krasnoyarsk people close-minded? instead of saying “no”. i would say, although i encounter a lot proportion of people who ignore me, but there are still some super friendly and interactive people, maybe there are even more, it’s just i havent spend enough time on finding them
we cannot easily generalize things or people because our data are mostly not enough
take myself as an example: i have heard sooo many people said: russian people likes to drink vodka . russian people are not friendly to asians.
first of all, these conclusions are not so correct in my personal experience, i have asked “ do you like to drink vodka”to more than 600 strangers in russia, only maybe 20 of them say yes. of course some of them lied, but still, these little proportions are not qualified to judge russian people like to drink vodka.
as for russian people treat asian friendly or not. this is a very complicated topic. even me, a asian who interact with more than 3500 russian cannot tell the whole truth, the bigger picture. but what we could do is to provide my own experience as opposed to using a angle of summarizing every asian’s experience in russia. i personally would say a lot of russian are more interactive, talkative, independent than my taiwanese surroundings. soooo many russian invite me to eat meal or drink juice or alcohol with them, sooo many people give me free ride(hitchhike), countless people, give me money, food, allow me to sleep at their house, tell me direction, answer tons of my questions. sharing their daily life with me.
and even though i have relatively more experience than every of the asian that ive known, but ive only known probably 0.00000000069 percent of asians, and 0.00000000000096 of russian people, on top of that, to truly know a person’s experience is very hard. in another words, even though one of my asian friend told me that, “russian is not friendly to asian because one russian threatened me to give my money to him”
maybe my asian friend was having low self-esteem?maybe my asian friend interpreted wrongly because his russian is not good? maybe his mood was bad? or maybe this russian guy really need helped but because of cultures differences so that he accidentally make my asian friend feel like being treated unfriendly?
in conclusion
@1 the experience we had in one day cannot determine what will happen next in another day, because very likely you were only experiencing a tiny corner of the reality.
@2 anyone/anything if you spend enough time, or enough chances, you could succeed, just like firstly stranger ignore me, but later they turns out to be the person who save my day.
@3 our universe, even just our earth is way more bigger than we could imagine, in order to enjoy full experience of our reality, we should not generalize things or people too easily
@4 there is no such things as russian or asian, we are all the same species, but even if you force me to classify
eric: “russian people is amazing”
i want you to share my article to your friend if you have learn something from this article, leta make our earth a better place ?
20207 by eric(naruto) krasnoyarsk
