One cannot fully understand one's own culture until one experiences something completely different. It is for this reason that I had always wanted to live in Europe for a few years. If I did, it would not be because I disliked China, but rather because I wanted to take away all the things that I took for granted everyday, in order to truly appreciate my surroundings. But even then, in the reformed and open China, in the 80's, it was difficult to do so.

I had a friend who went to England four years ago, and this summer he came back for his first visit. He changed my mind about things.

Chinese people could tolerate accented Chinese, but we Shanghaiians could not tolerate anybody with an accent, anything different to the norm. Even if this made us slightly peculiar ourselves, we did not care; in Shanghai city, everyone had got to go with the flow. Outsiders were isolated and looked down on. And even though the language that we considered ourselves speaking was really Chinese with a very bad accent, a dialect, we took pride in it nevertheless. When my friend came back, his Shanghaiian was stained with northern accents and he had his tones completely messed up; he said English didn't even have any tones. In the end, I said "gang-du" - "idiot" in Shanghaiian - and switched to Mandarin. He had a far better accent in Mandarin than I did, he said it was because, in England, he had friends from Northern China.

I went straight to the point. Did he feel that he could only appreciate what he had culturally when he was away from them? Because being completely Chinese, I acted so without ever thinking about it, everything about this country made so much sense to me. He promptly pointed out that he was also Chinese, and he acted Chinese too. I laughed at him. He could barely understand my slang, he was no longer interested in politics, his language had words like "please" and "thanks" scattered all over the place. Yet he still seemed to think he was one of us. I explained this to him, and he looked offended, "What's wrong with being polite?"

"You think this is polite?" I said to him, "you think words like 'please' and 'thank you' make you a polite man? What do they even mean? What difference do they make? We're friends, not freaking business partners, if you want to be polite you might as well shake my hands and bow thrice to me every time I say something. Those little words are hypocritical, not polite. They're unnecessary. Politeness is through action, not speech."

He looked at me in amazement. After a few seconds of pondering, he asked for my opinions about sex. And it was my turn to be astounded. How could he leisurely bring it up like that, as if it were an ordinary topic like the weather? Of course I had heard that people were more open about it in the west, but I didn't realise it was something they talked about in everyday conversations. He must have read my mind, and explained that no, it was not something like football which people just sat and discussed, but he only brought it up because he wanted to see if he had been westernised after these years. He said he wanted to check his moral values against mine.

I told him I had no opinion in the matter, and of course the mere fact that he thought it was something speakable showed how different we'd grown to be. He looked again in amazement. I waited for him to think of something else to say, but he didn't. Suddenly there was an awkward silence between us that I wanted to fill, with something more universal, something we could for once agree on. Music. Art. They may seem to be without frontiers but were in fact the most dramatic ways to separate people. I bet he liked some form of meaningless screamy noisy music and abstract art. I kept my mouth shut.

"So, uh..." He searched desperately for something to talk about. "So, what music doing listen to?" He asked finally. To avoid even more awkwardness, I tried my hardest to think of some foreign artists. Urgh. The Carpenters. The Beatles. The... It was rather difficult because their names made no sense to me, just phonic translations of odd-sounding words. I knew nothing about them. "Hang on," he said, "you do listen to music right?" I felt embarrassed and almost humiliated, "Of course I do!" And that was when I realised there was no need to think of those strange western bands to try and impress him, when I was the norm and he was the alien. I listed all my favourite singers and even started singing one of their songs.

"Whoa, that's my favourite song too!" He said. I stopped immediately. I felt extremely foolish, I was sure he only said it as part of his English "politeness". He enquired why I stopped. I said, "I'm tired. Why don't you finish it?" He said "fine" and at the same time did something very... Very much like what Europeans on TV do. He raised his shoulders and immediately dropped them again. Then he started singing from where I left off. I have to say, I was quite surprised but also impressed by this. He listened to Chinese music? I could not understand how or why.

"And before you say anything," he said right after he finished, "please listen to me. I mean, you listen to me. About what you asked me before - cultural clashes and those things. I can no longer recall how I felt when I first set foot in England, but as time went on I adapted myself to it, and that is what everyone ought to do in such a vastly different environment. But what has shocked me the most is the differences amongst us. You and me." He paused for a moment, "You are right about me being westernised, and indeed there is no way of avoiding it. But this visit so far has made me realise that I had failed to acknowledge a lot of western concepts stuffed into my head whilst I was there, and you have made me accept that unlike you, I am no longer absolute. It is only when I am on one side of the planet can I understand the other side of myself. But for now, why don't we walk to the bridge and watch the sunset?"

I nodded and walked with him, and we both decided to say no more. We walked along Suzhou River, shoulder to shoulder. Nobody looked at us because we looked normal enough, nothing more than two old friends, but there was so much more to the tale. I thought about his comment on being absolute, and decided that maybe I did not want to go to another country after all. I did not want to lose myself.