Now, FOUR Years in China

Guess what folks?  After 3 years, there are no FAQs.  

Your friends and family don’t want to hear about your life overseas.  They either a) Don’t care b) Don’t understand or c) Are tired of hearing you complain about your housekeeper, driver and cultural idiosyncrasies encountered on your holidays.

This is OK. There’s not much more to report after three years because your life will become very similar to the one you had back home after 3 years.  It’s just like transitioning from one neighborhood to another but with a longer adjustment period.

Upon reflection, it’s funny is how we thought we were “settled” after six months…what a delusion! Everything we knew after 6 months, 1 or even 2 years was pretty much a delusion and I’m probably delusional right now.  These periodic FAQs are really designed to plot this trend. So here’s my current take on what its like between year 3 and 4.

Same same

We are now living just as we would back home.  We only eat out twice a week and rarely go into the city thanks to new developments in our part of town.  Our exotic, wide-eyed travel to places like Bali and Europe has been scaled back to comfortable spring break vacations in China’s economical equivalent to Cancun or Cabo - Thailand.  

Basically, we are back in a mode of living where we feel that saving some money right now is more prudent than seeing a new country.  Our sense of adventure is being replaced with a longing to get back to Atlanta and live the big, fat American dream with oversize boxes of Taquitos from Costco. 

If this seems like conflicted sentiment; it sort of is.

What do you like/dislike about living in Beijing now?  

Aside from the awesome food, we like being here for reasons not necessarily related to the city, geography and whatnot. The schools are incredible and my job is allowing me to develop skills that I couldn’t develop back in the states.  We have some really good friends and I’m getting more involved broader social circles.  

Lisa is still annoyed with the lack of western grocery products and/or the price of them here despite a significant improvement over the past 3 years.  I actually like being forced to try imports from other countries.  This is where my positive is her negative.

In a positive note, the Olympics and the sheer pace of development in Beijing has led to the opening of some great new restaurants in neighborhood and in the city.  We no longer have cravings for basics like burgers and Mexican food and will, in all likelihood, miss the food here when we move back.

We, along with most other expats agree that if it wasn’t for the air pollution, they could live here for a long time. It’s not that it necessarily  hurts (despite dealing with a 3-week sore throat now) to breath but it affects you psychologically.   It amplifies any seemingly innocuous issue you may have here. 

Things are also more expensive here as prices have gone up and the RMB to Dollar has gone down from $1 to 8 RMB to $1 to 6.7 RMB.  A dinner costing $15 dollars now costs $20.  We’ve stopped ordering soft-drinks which saves us about $10 each meal because restaurants are pricing them around $3.50 a can. 

Is every expat as negative as you?

I think for some people who move from places which are cold, overcast, and/or expensive (read Northern Europe), they really enjoy living here because it gives them access to a lifestyle that they couldn’t access or afford back home.  I have co-workers from England who are loving it here.  So don’t read to deeply into my negativity…it’s just that our quality of life in Atlanta USA is really good.

Theory of “Near Perfect”

Life here is fine.  It has it’s ups and it’s downs but we’ve gotten into a comfortable groove that works. It’s still not as easy as living in a big U.S. city but I bet it’s better than living in a small, remote town in the U.S.  where the only restaurant was a Sizzler or Fridays (which ironically were the only western options in Beijing in 2005).  

When the grocery store runs out of a product or doesn’t carry a particular brand, Lisa gets really upset. Her last tearful outburst came when they ran out of Libby’s canned pumpkin.  To non-expats, this probably sounds nonsensical.  I even thought she was crazy until the day I decided to cook dinner and couldn’t find a key ingredient. Things like this make you miss the (sometimes embarrassing) convenience that we Americans are used to.

I truly believe that we are at a tipping point with Beijing being on the cusp of providing everything we want and need.  Either something will change in Beijing or we will finally change our expectations. But I really believe that having Beijing be so close to having everything a fat and lazy American could want is more troubling than if they didn’t.  It’s a “western context” which causes us to judge it according to western standards.  This is my theory of “Near Perfect” which states that the closer something comes to being perfect, the more critical we become of it not being perfect.

But in general…Beijing is fine.