Not from around here? Yeah, We know.
Among the many wonderful words in their language, the Italians have one that I particularly like: figuraccia. It literally means “big, ugly figure,” but it can be best translated as “a bad impression.” As in, if you go to another country and know absolutely nothing about how you should act without making a spectacle of yourself, that would be a figuraccia.
Leaving my mark
Unfortunately, I can say that I’ve been guilty of leaving this bad impression almost as many times as I’ve been abroad, even here in Italy where our western cultures have a great deal in common. I was stopped from entering a cathedral just last weekend because my shirt was deemed “inappropriate.” I was wearing a tank top because it was 35 degrees celcius (about 95 F), but I should have known that it is not acceptable in a church.
It also happened in Thailand, when I dropped a coin under the table and used my foot to bring it closer to me. “Stop!” My friend yelled. “Feet are dirty and disrespectful, and the king’s image is on that coin. You don’t want to send the wrong message.” She was an American living in Bangkok, and had undoubtedly encountered a few of her own figuraccie in the last few months, so I trusted her. I sheepishly crawled under the table to retrieve my coin, and considered staying there to avoid the disdainful glares when I emerged.
It had happened in Taipei as well, where the subway system is one of the cleanest, best organized I have every seen. People waited patiently in line as other passengers got off, never shoving to be the first one on. The seats designated for pregnant women, the elderly or injured people would be used by their intended occupants, or not at all. And most importantly, people did not eat, drink or chew gum on the subway. I however, did not know this.
I was waiting to get on a train one day soon after I had moved into the city (chewing gum, naturally), when an employee of the subway came over and said something to me. I was essentially useless with the Chinese language at the time, so I kind of smiled and said “ok,” and turned my attention back to the countdown for the next train. He came over again and repeated himself, and I gave the same response. Yeah sorry, still don’t understand you, buddy. I thought. The subway finally came, and I got on. I had the feeling that a lot people were looking at me, but being a tall white girl in Asia I had that feeling pretty much everywhere I went. It wasn’t until I got off that I finally understood—a woman put her hand on my arm, said very clearly in English, “there is no gum chewing on the subway,” and walked away.
So should I just stay home?
The above-mentioned, and many others figuraccia experiences are normally followed by intense shame, and the acute feeling of being an awkward, oafy foreigner. But what I like about them is that you are aware of the fact that you’ve made this bad impression. Even before your face returns from the current “burny red” to its natural color, you have officially become one step closer to understanding the culture of the place you’re currently visiting.
That’s why I think there is an idea here for people planning to travel overseas. There are plenty of travel agencies and organizations that advocate “sustainable tourism,” and I believe “culturally aware tourism” is a natural extension. If sustainability focuses on leaving as little impact as possible on the ecological environment of a particular country, cultural awareness seeks to do the same on the cultural 
environment. Walking down Khao San Road in Bangkok, the epi-center for European, Australian and American backpackers, I could see how much this would be useful. In a country where most women would not leave the house with bare shoulders, here it was not uncommon to see non-Thai girls in tube tops and no bra. And where alcohol is consumed in extreme moderation (and not often by women), the foreigners come here to party and drink to excess. There are signs advertising “We do not ID” so that you know can drink freely even if you’re underage. And when I saw a tall blonde guy vomiting violently into the street one night, I wondered if he too, in his drunken haze, somehow felt the burning disgrace of the figuraccia.
But I’m a foreigner! How am I supposed to know?
Imagine that you’re a waiter or waitress in an American restaurant. You serve dinner to a table of people from a different country, and at the end, they pay the bill and walk out without leaving a tip. You would be less than amused. Maybe your coworker tells you that in their country they don’t leave tips, so they probably just didn’t realize. And you might think, “But why didn’t they look into this before they came abroad? They should really know how things work if they want to travel here.” And that’s exactly right. For that drunk guy in Bangkok, for the non-tippers, and for all of us who have made asses of ourselves abroad because we didn’t know any better, I propose that we explore the idea of culturally aware tourism. We need a way to prepare and enable travelers like ourselves to experience another country without vomiting or cheapskating all over it. I believe that the wide majority of travelers don’t want to act like idiots, but we just don’t realize that what is acceptable in one country may be a huge offense in another. Or at least something that makes the locals shake their heads in disapproval.
Now I’m not saying that we should always wear turtlenecks when we travel, resign ourselves to only drinking juice and iced tea, and keep our personalities tightly locked up in the safe at the hostel. Being different is good, and it’s a great way to strike up a conversation with people while traveling. But we need to keep in mind the culture of the place we’re in. Just like with the non-tippers in the American restaurant, we should look into it before we go. All it would take is a little pre-departure research, and we might just be able to keep the figuraccie off the itinerary.
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Tags: cultural awareness, rome, sustainable tourism, taipei, thailand, travel
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