Cross-Cultural Studies- Where Do I Fit In?

This has been on my mind for awhile: What am I? A future scholar? More specific: a person working on a bridge that connects one culture to another. More specific than that: a sinologist in training.

I'm a westerner-- and American-- studying Chinese language and literature in Hong Kong. All of my peers are from Hong Kong or China, studying Chinese from a distinctly Chinese method. What their research means to them and their field isn't the same thing as what my research means to me and my field. And yet we are, in name, the same. I know I'm different than them-- I have a different standard, a different obligation I should hold myself to. And yet how can I allow myself to be judged differently? Is this a fairness issue?

I read back on my research. Ugh. I sound like an academic, and a bad one at that. What about my research promotes --mutual-- cultural understanding? Am I doing my job, or am I -- desperately-- treading the same waters my Chinese peers easily brave and conquer? Am I holding myself to the wrong standards as I imagine myself to be pursuing the right ones?

I don't know! Perhaps Meiguo pengyou studying Chinese and writing about Chinese in English is enough to uphold that "mission." Is it? I don't know! Perhaps I can't judge-- only others can. And perhaps the judgement of others doesn't matter, anyway.

I'll just do my thing. Let's read James Liu's The Interlingual Critic today.