Clarinda Blais is a writer, filmmaker, and China Hand who originally hails from central New York. She started studying Mandarin when she left home at 18 to attend Boston University, where she majored in Chinese and Philosophy. After spending several years living in China and working in foreign policy, she began her graduate studies in film directing at the University of Southern California.
Clarinda has taught in Henan Province and is an alumna of the Schwarzman Scholars program at Tsinghua University, where her research focused on rural communities.
In this video interview, Danni Shuai speaks with Clarinda about cross-cultural understanding, freedom, filmmaking, and what living in China taught her about listening, empathy, and human connection.
What sparked your interest in China?
I grew up in a really small, white, working-class town, so I didn’t grow up in a very diverse city. When I left home to go to college in Boston, I was really shocked by how many Chinese students there were—and how little I knew about China.
I knew nothing. I think I had vaguely heard of Mao Zedong before, and that was it. We had a foreign language requirement, and I remember sitting in freshman orientation and seeing that the class sizes for Chinese were small—an average of about six students per class. That was attractive to me because I liked the idea of getting more attention from a teacher.
At the same time, I was really curious about all the Chinese international students. I felt like I didn’t know anything about them. They seemed very insular—they really grouped together and mostly talked to each other. So I was just a little bit curious about it.
I really loved my Chinese teachers in college. They were all quite old, probably in their seventies or eighties, and they were very sweet and hardworking. I remember one of my first Chinese teachers used to say to me, “Clarinda, your Chinese is very bad, but you are a very hard worker. Very hard worker.” She told me that almost every class—that my Chinese was bad, but I was a very hard worker. And it got a little better eventually. It didn’t get better until I lived in China for a while.
Can you describe your first visit to China?
I really liked that question because I haven’t thought about my first visit to China in a long time. It’s almost the most insignificant of all my China experiences—probably because it was the first. It was during a college study abroad program in Shanghai.
I was with a group of other Boston University students, and we were all experiencing China for the first time together. I remember being really excited by the liveliness of the streets—people selling food, fruits, and vegetables outside. Everyone seemed so friendly. I just remembered being excited by the energy of Shanghai when I first got there.
You’ve taught in Henan Province, which is more rural compared to Shanghai. Did you have any different experiences?
That’s why I think I rarely reflect on my time in Shanghai when I think about my experience and understanding of China. It really felt like a bubble of foreigners in a small pocket of the city.
But then I spent, like you said, a lot of time in a rural part of Hunan Province, where every experience felt very intense and memorable—because everything was so different. I was the only foreigner around, and for most people, the only foreigner they had ever seen.
On my first day in Hunan, I remember a little girl came up to me with a pair of scissors and asked if she could cut a piece of my hair to bring back to her grandma. At first, I thought I had misunderstood, so I asked her again. She repeated, “Yeah, I want to cut a piece of your hair to bring back to my grandma. She’s never seen yellow hair before.”
So I cut her a little lock and gave it to her without really thinking much of it. But before I knew it, I was surrounded by a swarm of eight-year-olds jumping up and down saying, “I want a piece! I want a piece!” I just stood there handing out pieces of my hair: “Here you go. Here you go.”
I think that’s part of why I developed such an interest in rural China—especially because I grew up in a small, homogenous town where everyone looked like me and shared the same customs. I really identified with that little girl’s curiosity about someone who looked strange and different. I thought it was really, really sweet.
You taught classes in Henan and were also a Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University. What differences did you notice between the education systems in China and the U.S.?
I feel like the biggest difference—in the U.S., and I didn’t even go to a very good public school—is that we are taught to question things. You’re in class with a teacher or professor, and you’re encouraged to voice your opinion, question their opinions, and have discussions.
In China, it felt very much about listening to the professor or teacher, taking as many notes as you can, and learning all of that information as much as possible.
I personally, as a learner, respond to both kinds of education. I think both are valuable, and both could probably benefit from being a little more like the other. I mean, God knows in the U.S. we could benefit from actually learning more.
And I think the Chinese education system could probably better engage students if it incentivized asking questions and having discussions. At least when I was in the elementary and high schools, I felt like there were just too many students and not enough teachers to facilitate that kind of classroom experience.
Were there any social norms in China that were hard for you to adjust to at first?
Scheduling. When I lived in Henan, I felt like it was really hard to make plans and know what I was doing with my day.
People would say, “Oh, in the afternoon we’ll go out for a meal,” and I’d be like, “Well… what time exactly?” Or I’d make plans for myself, and suddenly I’d get invited to a meal—and it would be considered rude to decline. I just felt like there wasn’t the same kind of commitment to structuring your day.
I also think American people tend to be more punctual. If we say four o’clock, we’ll usually be there at four or shortly after. But I think Chinese people have a much more flexible sense of what “four o’clock” means. That took me a long time to get used to—and it really frustrated me at first.
That’s interesting. I never noticed that before about the timelessness in China. Maybe it’s different in bigger cities?
Yeah, I think it’s probably different. In smaller towns, there’s just no strict sense of time. In places like Beijing or Shanghai, there’s more of a work culture where people have to follow schedules set by their companies. But where I was, there really wasn’t a “work culture” at all, so I think that made a big difference.
On the flip side, have you noticed any surprising commonalities between Chinese and American people, things that felt familiar or deeply human, despite cultural differences?
I really think we’re all quite laid-back. Americans tend to be a little more punctual, and Chinese people tend to pay more careful attention to detail when they do their work. But in general, I think both cultures really care about other people and their well-being. And we don’t take ourselves too seriously.
Like, you can sit on the subway and eat a snack, or walk down the street and talk loudly with a friend—and no one will look at you funny. But in countries like Japan, or even Austria, I’ve experienced cultures that—this might sound a little offensive—but they feel kind of uptight. There are so many unspoken social norms about how to act and behave.
Having lived both in the U.S. and China, I feel pretty comfortable just relaxing and being myself in both places. I really appreciate that.
The things that remind me how much we have in common are often the things that all humans share. We want to do right by our moms and dads. We want to find the right partner and get married. We’re not sure if we want to have kids, but we feel pressure to.
I had a good friend in Henan who was getting engaged while I was there. I remember her confiding in me a lot about the pressure she felt from her family, and the sense that marriage was a kind of transfer of ownership. She said she would no longer belong to her mother and father, but to her fiancé’s parents.
I found that really sad. But in the U.S., we have something similar—the father gives away the bride walking down the aisle, essentially “turning you over” to your husband. So you’re no longer your parents’ anymore.
I think that’s a really sad and scary thing. And when she shared what she was going through, I totally understood. Some of it was culturally specific, but a lot of it just felt like: it’s hard to be a woman. These are the trade-offs we make and the calculations we have to do.
Was there anything that changed your mind after visiting China—something you never imagined before?
I never imagined, and it sounds kind of silly, but Americans are very afraid of the word communism. That term conjures up all kinds of really oppressive and horrifying images in our imagination.
So, to go live in China, a communist country, I was quite surprised to find that day-to-day life felt safe, happy, and normal.
Of course, it’s a hundred percent more complicated than that. And the longer I lived there, the more my understanding of what it means to live in a communist country developed. But at first, I was just very surprised to experience communism and think, Whoa, this isn’t what they said it was. You know?
What are your thoughts on the debate over “freedom” between those two societies?
Yes. It’s funny. This is something I’ve actually been thinking a lot about. I just went back to China for a Schwarzman conference on local policymaking. I got back less than a week ago.
I was nervous going back because I had left right before COVID. Then came the global pandemic, Trump’s election, all the tension around COVID-19 and the fact that the virus was said to have come from China. Then there was Trump’s really vitriolic rhetoric about China, the trade war… I honestly felt like, going back this time, I’d be unwelcome—especially once people found out I was American. I thought they wouldn’t even be curious about where I was from because of the international tension.
But when I got there, it felt like nothing had changed. People in Beijing were just as warm. In fact, I expected people there to be even less willing to talk to me, but every café I sat in, every park I visited—someone would sit down and ask, “So, where are you from?”
We had the same conversations I’ve always had in China, and I was so relieved. People still wanted to talk. And when I told them I was American, their first question was, “How are things in Los Angeles? It looks really scary on the news.” Not hostility—just curiosity.
To your question—something that always comes up in those conversations is this: people often ask me, “Do you feel more free in China or in America?”
Chinese people are thinking about freedom in their own way. And many of them truly believe that China is the freest country in the world. They point to things like being able to drive on the wrong side of the road or get away with things you couldn’t in the U.S.—and for them, that’s a kind of freedom.
I think Americans are now starting to come to terms with the fact that “freedom” is part of our brand. It’s how we market ourselves: freedom of speech, freedom to protest, to chase dreams, to criticize the government. But I think we’re learning that we don’t always have those freedoms to the extent we thought.
We’re seeing the federal government try to control school curriculums. We’re seeing statues being taken down, public media being defunded. So no—I don’t think we’re as free as we think we are. And I also don’t think Chinese people are as unfree as Americans like to assume.
That said, if I’m being honest, and not trying to censor myself, I do feel grateful to be American, especially in my line of work. As a filmmaker, I still feel safe to explore what I want to explore, and to share it openly with an audience.
I don’t know if I’d feel the same if I were a Chinese citizen. I don’t even feel entirely safe doing that as a foreign filmmaker who has lived and worked in China and wants to make films about China. That makes me very nervous.
So yes, I think America is freer. But not as free as we think we are. And I think Chinese people are freer than we give them credit for.
Looking back, how have your cross-cultural experiences shaped you, and how did they lead you to pursue filmmaking?
It’s hard to know if I was drawn to China because of something in my personality.
I’m not the kind of person who makes a lot of assumptions. In that way, I think I’m a little “stupid.” I really had no preconceived ideas about what China would be before I went. I wasn’t scared of anything, but I also wasn’t particularly excited. It was just kind of like, “Yeah, let’s go to China.”
So it’s hard to know—if I had a different kind of personality, maybe I never would’ve gone in the first place.
But I think, having lived there as long as I did, and having to form really deep cross-cultural relationships—which, by the way, is really hard to do—changed me. Making close relationships with someone who grew up in a completely different world isn’t easy.
I think it’s much easier to say, “Oh, we’re different in that way, so let’s not touch those topics,” or, “We’re different, so we’ll just go our separate ways.” It’s harder to do the actual work of learning to appreciate someone else’s point of view.
I had to do a lot of that hard work in China, and I’m really grateful for it.
I feel like we’ve gotten to a point in the U.S.—and I think this is a broader phenomenon—where it’s really difficult to listen to each other, to imagine that someone with a different opinion might still be coming from a good place. We’re so quick to write off people we disagree with. It’s like we’re in one camp or the other.
But because of the time I spent in China—falling in love with people, both romantically and platonically—I had to learn how to listen. I had to really put myself in someone else’s shoes. And that skill is invaluable. I think it’s made me a better person.
And I want more people to be able to experience that.
It’s a cliché, but I want people to be able to step into someone else’s shoes and see the world the way they see it. That’s what makes me want to make movies. I feel like you can do that through film. You can show someone the world through a different perspective—and help them really learn to empathize.
Houlang Media is a video-based project driven by a diverse team of media students located around the world. The project features a series of documentary interviews with American and Chinese youth who have lived in each other’s countries, aiming to offer audiences a more nuanced and multidimensional view of the cultural differences and shared experiences between the two societies.
The views and opinions expressed in this video are solely those of the creator and do not reflect the views of any affiliated organizations, institutions, or individuals.
