Thanksgiving Cometh!
Thanksgiving is being celebrated in households across America. I want to take the time to reflect and add my own voice to this holiday as an American living in China.
When I was a child I learned about Thanksgiving in grade school. Thinking back it was very simplified and quite cute. We learned that there were some pilgrims that came from England to America, and because they were having a hard time living there, the Native Americans (Indians) gave them turkey and corn and let them survive a little bit longer for the cold winter in Boston. For those of us who were visual learners, we were given paper with Indians and Pilgrims drawn on them, and using colored pencils, we were able to exercise our inner artist and color the pilgrims and the Indians as we pleased.
Moving forward to High School, we haven’t really focused on these historical events that we focused on before. We did learn more about how many times the American Government mistreated and murdered the Native Americans, but in true American fashion, it always sounded much better on paper (US history textbooks) than it was in reality.
During University, I believe I had a compulsory course in American History, and we examined this specific Thanksgiving event with different lenses. First, the Pilgrims were not the friendliest people, and not the easiest to get along with. This is why they left England in the first place, they weren’t welcome there either. Second, the “Indians” that helped these pilgrims didn’t help these pilgrims. The newly settled Europeans murdered hundreds of Indians in New England, and enslaved many more. There was apparently one Indian named “Squanto” who escaped slavery from British settlers that was able to speak English and teach these settlers how to hunt and provide for themselves.
As you can imagine, my idea of Thanksgiving changed dramatically as I learned more about the actual incidents of the time as opposed to the happy Pilgrims and Indians that I colored in my grade school years. I have noticed that Thanksgiving has become more of a holiday of commercial activity than of any real meaning. But all facts aside, in America we do gather as a family and eat delicious food with our friends and family members, and celebrate our good fortune with abundance and a feeling of togetherness.
I believe that the underlying theme for thanksgiving is that of immigration and the struggles that new immigrants feel when moving to a new land. This theme has been persistent in the history of the US as new waves of immigrants came in from different centuries and added to the culture, economy, and way of life. In China, I am an “expatriate,” which is basically an immigrant worker from a first world country, I guess “expatriate” sounds better than immigrant.
With globalization expanding and continuing to allow talent markets to seamlessly travel between markets, economies, countries, and cities, it is more important than ever to continue the exchange of ideas and open up markets and economies to each other in order to keep competitive and continue to mutually benefit from each other.
Is your company growing in China?
Looking for a partner in HR?
+86 21 6190 7588