They

I was sitting in my friend's dorm room bathroom in Hangzhou China today. We are studying Chinese language and culture at Zhejiang University via Friends World Program an American four-year traveling global studies program. I looked at the sliding wooden door and noticed the bottom was corroded by water, and thought “why do they make bathroom doors out of wood?”

In China most personal bathrooms are quite small and have a shower head on the wall that sprays directly on to the floor, the whole bathroom getting wet instead of just the floor by the shower-I am able to tell when my room mate has showered by sitting down on a wet toilet seat- since everything gets wet when you shower and this is bound to create water damage I wonder why they make bathroom doors out of wood.

I thought of the way I phrased the question....

The word they: my friends and I use it often being in an unfamiliar environment and being students of culture. They are, They like, They wear, They think..... They. It's vague and creates a separation, a distinction of: yourself, your culture, your friends from what you are addressing-from them.

They creates a dangerous (in it's rigidity) vantage point; defining us, sometimes with a pompous air. Different. Not to be measured with the same ruler. They can be a scape-goat --I refer mainly to casual conversation—on which our assumptions, judgments or current definition of Them, is conjured instead of a deep explanation of who they are and why we need to define ourselves, breaking the bridge of understanding. In conversation use of they can go unnoticed as sometimes there are no other words that can be used to explain, but They can also evoke powerful distinctive images to each person, in every context.

I felt pretentious when I said they. I felt as if I was encompassing the entire-1.3 billion-Chinese populace in that one word. Would I have said They if I was in America or was this a remark in jest of Chinese construction? Can the word they foster understanding of others? Or only blind spots?