Crossing borders

Fall break is on our doorsteps. Having finished midterms and papers, we finally emerge into the first University holiday of the year. A four-day weekend (five-day for some!) stretches out in front of us—we could do anything. Technology and economies of scale have, in this modern age, joined forces to make the most improbable trips possible. For a few dollars I could be on a bus out of the state, and for a few more I could be on a plane to almost anywhere. Why not travel?

In past years, I’ve crossed county lines almost as often as I’ve crossed country lines. The experience has given me two things: A better knowledge of other people’s borders, and a worse knowledge of my own.

Don’t get me wrong—my geography is still mostly rubbish, and I couldn’t name half of the United States by just looking at a map. But in regards to travel, knowing where the lines are drawn has less to do with cartography than with psychology. On some borders, you have travel advertisements. On others, travel advisories. I loiter around airports and bus terminals and train stations—liminal spaces—and learn about a country’s needs, fears, and makeup.

In America, passing border control is sometimes like attempting to breach a fortress. As an international student, green card-less and foreign, I don’t like to cross the invisible line drawn around the United States. Leaving is easy, but coming back is a trial by paperwork. Immigration procedures are inquiries less about who I am as they are about what I’m worth (Will I be paying for college? Will I be taking jobs away from citizens?) and where I’m from (Based on how I look, should I be stopped and asked questions?). It comes with fingerprinting, photographing, etc.

The case is the same in other countries. In England they don’t look much at me at all (Singaporean passports, incidentally, being among the most valuable in the world for the sheer number of no-visa bilateral arrangements the country has set up). In Japan they wonder if I speak the language, and in Hong Kong they simply assume I speak the language. Any “foreigner” I see in multinational Singapore I still mark as Tourist, Businessman, Other. With every border crossing comes some new kind of categorization that is applied like a stamp to our passports.

On some level the immigration process operates on national, racial, and all sorts of other prejudices, but it would be unfair to think that the evaluation runs only one way. Before I “went to see the world” (came to America), I thought I knew everything about my own country. Perhaps I did know something about our history, but I didn’t know how it related to me or how I related to other people. More importantly, I didn’t know if I was Chinese—I didn’t know what language ought to qualify as my mother tongue, and I wasn’t sure what I felt about my government, culture, or politics. It wasn’t that I was confused about those issues—it was because I never needed to face up to their realities and hold firm to them. I could afford not to think. I could afford not to know.

It is said that we should travel when we are young and that it will humble us, teach us more about ourselves, culture us, and affect us more deeply than anything else. I don’t debate the essential truth that I believe underlies that piece of advice—that the world isn’t about just one nation, and to live in it you have to know more than just your own people.

But I challenge putting travel on a pedestal. The change that travel can bring you is not automatic. Travel won’t culture you. It won’t open your eyes, it won’t teach you about yourself—at least not any more than you’re willing to be taught. Quite a lot of travel can be displacement. It is the act of putting yourself in new situations, one after another, because the act feels profound even if it results in no additional personal profundity. Ultimately, what ought to be well used is your mind, not your passport.

The irony of the globalized world we live in, in my opinion, is that we can be globalized long before we’ve set foot outside of our own doors. The richest resource in my learning about the world has been the people to the right and the left of me. Columbia presses you up against a student population of incredible diversity. You cannot hold personal prejudices against an invisible, easily targeted “Other” on a campus where you’re likely to be standing in line next to the people you once had preconceptions about.

So travel this break. Or don’t.

Po Linn Chia is a Columbia College junior majoring in East Asian Languages and Cultures. She is involved in CIRCA and the Global Recruitment Committee. Ever the Twain normally runs alternating Tuesdays.