Shattered dreams of exotic lands
China, seen from Europe, is still a frightening, barbarous and exotic place, even for those who claim to know it well. Along with Japan, it is the favourite exotic 'other' for westerners, a point of reference against which to appreciate their own normality, and to question or criticise it.
It reminds them that there is an alternative way to live, with the inevitable, underlying promise of contrasting sexual codes of conduct - the ultimate exotica. In fact, the sheer blank-slate factor in what a foreign culture might offer is one of the core attractions of travel - even of the least adventurous sort.
We go away to experience a few memorable scribbles on the monitor screen of life's otherwise unremitting emotional familiarity.
The exotic element in a foreign country is fragile - especially illusions of the more naive sort, which are the most dearly held. The streets of America are not paved with gold, Thai women are not the uncomplicated sexual equivalent of Labrador puppies, and South Pacific islands do not resemble a set from Castaway, the Robinson Crusoe update starring Tom Hanks. They have traffic jams and air pollution.
The tourist industry is based on people's desire to get to know a place and its people. Yet, repeat business depends on maintaining a level of impenetrability and keeping certain illusions alive - illusions that appeal to the visitor.
In Beijing, one woman's cultural heritage is another woman's slum. Or take the Imperial Palace. It no doubt stirs some of the same feelings in everyone who visits. But there are also bound to be differences between the thoughts and emotions that draw me to the place and those that the Forbidden City stirs in Chinese visitors.
Their reaction would include some degree of identification and pride, and even piety, I would guess. You could argue that a provincial Chinese who makes a once-in-a-lifetime trip to see the capital has no more personal claim on the place and its historical meaning than I do. But our respective emotional realities would tell us otherwise.
Not that our respective responses are that easy to tease apart. They are mutually influential. As a child, I remember that my own reactions to one of my country's tourist attractions, Loch Ness, were influenced by what struck me as a rather odd sort of enthusiasm displayed by visiting Americans: they gazed out over the lake in the hope of catching sight of the monster.
One asked me what it was like to live in a place with such a mystical atmosphere. At the time, I thought it was only a certain kind of person who would ask a question like that - a culturally unsophisticated midwesterner, say. Now I know he was talking to himself as much as to me. He was caught up in the magic of the place and I was a bit player in his fantasy. I instinctively played along with his Brigadoon vision.
One thrill of a foreign country comes from experiencing something unfathomable from the safety of one's own cultural bubble. The charge, be it sexual, spiritual or otherwise, comes from feeling what it is like for your own basic pattern of repressions to rub up against another set of working assumptions. However, that contact fades, and ultimately extinguishes, the thrill factor.
The most potent exotica are, by definition, virginal. The questions then become: is it smart, wholesome or ethical to be in constant pursuit of the virginal; and, do we seek it out despite ourselves? Are we drawn to it because it makes us feel alive, or to know who we are, or to keep up our interest in the future? As the world shrinks, we may be in danger of finding out.
Jean Nicol looks at everyday issues from the point of view of a psychologist