My experience of traveling and living in US was likely more easier and less complex than in Europe. From Silicon Valley to New York, Indians are wide spread and have a good reputation.

When I first moved to Europe, language was essentially a major problem. Maybe I was overconfident after living in US, that I could deal anywhere else, but how wrong I was!

Present: I just had a dinner date with one of my Chinese friend (from Sichuan region). I was introducing her to South Indian cuisine. Most of the time you get Indian food abroad, its likely North Indian. All those tasty butter chicken, tandoori chicken, palak paneer and naan’s are mainly from North India. I could argue, that south Indian pallete has very much different dishes and techniques of cooking, but at the end, to be fair, India is like a continent itself — sub continent as they say, with each state having its own techniques and spices.

Flashback: I met this girl, maybe during like the third week after being here. It was pretty hard for me to calibrate with people, on my initial days here. English was not the first language, and people preferred to use their regional language as communication over English. (Being a brown Indian guy, makes it harder too!) During my initial conversation with her, I felt like a connection with her. She was amazing, open minded and fairly practical. She moved here, few years back from China. I remember even on her first day, she bought up statements and questions like:

“Do you eat food with hands in India?”

“Do you speak Indian?”

“Is it safe for women in India?”

“I’ve heard Indian people are really good in mathematics”

“You speak really good English! I didn’t know, people in India, had good English conversation skills”

“Do you have proper sanitation in India?”

“I always thought Indian people are not clean and smell, you’re an exception”

“I didn’t know, Indian people are this cool!”

To be honest, my thoughts were muddled after the first date. From being the largest democracy in the world, to producing more movies (Bollywood) than any other country, I always thought people, around the world had some idea of India or Indian people, but this experience among quite another few, changed my perspective. After thinking straight, for few hours, my mind made this decision: she was not wrong, she didn’t basically know anything much about India, being a native Chinese girl.

I had an other experience few weeks later, while meeting another Chinese guy at university. He asked me, some of the earlier questions mentioned, but this time I learned one interesting thing — he loved ‘curry’. He would ask me, if I could teach him on how to make curry. (Btw, I make decent curry!) I had quite a few similar experiences in the next few months on my interaction with native Chinese people who just moved here.

Some said its beautiful and the food is spicy, while others said poverty is central and has alarge population. This was centrally the idea they had about India.

It got me thinking. Being neighbors in Asia, people in China (at least, the young generation) knew very less of India and Indian people. This hit me pretty hard. I‘ve had a large set of Asian friends while living at US, ranging from Koreans, Chinese, Cambodian, Phillipines and Vietnamese, but I’ve never felt this feeling before. (I’m pretty sure many Indians can relate to this.)

I felt deeply s̵a̵d̵ confused, that even after being in a digital era, where the emergence of technology has created a lot of miracles and fixes to most of humankind’s problem, people still had such stereotypes or very much information about their neighboring country. I decided to do the first thing someone would do in this generation, opened up my laptop and did a Google search “What do Chinese people think about India?”.

I started digging through different articles, Quora posts and Youtube vlogs. I recognized one thing, they didn’t hear much about India. I came across this reddit post.

I understood few facts from the articles I read and watched. The media didn’t cover much about India and if they did, there were many misrepresentations. There were comments and statements from people thinking India was dirty to people liking curry (again).

Something that amused me was Aamir Khan apparently had a great influence in China.(even few of my Chinese friends quickly recognized Aamir Khan on the videos). His movie 3 idiots was a blockbuster in China, compared to other Bollywood movies. During the last few years, his movies like P.K and Dangal has also gained a wide audience and fan following in China.

I found this interesting comment on Quora

I’m Chinese. I just watched his PK in the theater yesterday. I, among the most people I know, am not a fan of Bollywood, or any Indian film. I assume language and cultural differences are the major barrier, especially the singing and dancing out of the blue during the movie is sometimes confusing. But Aamir Khan really attracted me and my friends, from his Three Idiots, where we found a lot in common: the resistance against authority, pursuit to truth, and other universal traits in humanity. So his movie really resonates with us.

I found the bold words pretty much cardinal in the whole comment.

The world has had a bad past, which we can do nothing about, but we can definitely work on a better future, especially with the emergence of technology. A world without war, a world where opportunity doesn’t slid away from you because of your race, nationality, economic status. A fair world, which was dreamed and sacrificed for, by a large number of people in history. Appreciate good things, work together in solving unpleasant things.

Borders have dissected world into many parts with different countries and states, but as a human being our sensitiveness to things remains the same whether the person is Indian or Chinese or European or American. We all share similar feelings and respond to situations likewise.

I don’t know if Aamir Khan, himself knows, how much of a big influence he has in China and can use this opportunity to be a big ambassador of Indian culture, values and reality.