Cultural Adaptation: How Does it Come About?
                                            Nevin Blumer
In the course of my extended stay in Beijing, I have come across many students who, out of fright, ask me to give them advice on how to adapt overseas, particularly in Canada, since I am a Canadian. The typical 
concerns range from social ones, like making friends, to more professional concerns, like cultural issues at work.
I have lived in 3 countries, China being the last one. My own experience has taught me that living overseas involves changing interpretations. The most common problem I have found with expatriates living here in China is that they quickly interpret their new environment and seem unable to offer themselves new interpretations in response to new events. They may quickly say, for example, that they think making friends is difficult, that the locals seem cold or unfriendly, without trying to consider what it is about themselves that is isolating them from the rest of the host society. They find that after living in a country for 2 years events are not so easily categorized and labelled, and so they are back to square one in their understanding, even though they thought they had figured out everything. Thus when we talk of the principles or do’s and don’ts of living overseas we must be careful. The all-embracing principles of cultural adaptation just don’t exist.
When I ask them how they would feel if they received these same responses and gestures, the answer they give is usually the same one that I would give. How would you yourself react to someone doing the same thing to you? The reality that will hit most visitors to a country who stay for an extended length of time is that people around the world are remarkably similar. And no matter how banal this truism may seem at first, it may take a visitor a good few years before it really begins to sink in.