But of course, a foreign culture is not an object. It's an experience, and it's a whole world of things that you have to make sense of and learn to navigate.

For example, if you're going to China, you may need to learn how to use chopsticks or buy a ticket for the Shanghai Metro. But if you want to learn about, quote, unquote, the culture in a deeper way, then that is just the beginning.

Because you will need to interact with people to learn how things work, how people think and learn Chinese. And all of those things will depend on where you are in China and who you are with. There are many regions and cultural communities within China. And so, of course, there isn't really a single culture. And cultural learning is really a complex, never-ending challenge.

And yet, people talk about learning the culture in very simple, almost casual

terms. And that does raise some questions. First of all, what does it mean to say that culture is complex? We will dig into that. And then, when we are faced with this cultural complexity, why do we often talk about it or experience it in such simple

terms? We are going to get a bit geekish in this episode. We'll talk about complexity theory because understanding complexity can help in making sense of culture. And because, frankly, complexity theory is cool.