I didn’t resist the idea of doing an “I’m back” post so much as I resisted making a big deal of it. Just as it doesn’t matter that so-and-so is leaving China, it’s not too important that so-and-so is coming back. If you think about it, that’s what we do. We come, we leave. We come back.
And we write about it.
Sometimes we produce interesting, original content while other times we produce irelevant bullshit for our 500-post a day RSS fuckfeeds. What we have in common is an interest in China, and a desire to share our interest with others.
Returned expat can’t shut up about China? Well, what of it? The big problem with readjusting to life in America is that not many people understand you. You can talk about the wonderful things you saw, the great experiences you had, you can try to make them understand, but without a common base, more often than not the people you’re talking to aren’t listening. They’re doing what most people do.
Waiting for their turn to talk.
Other though, others have questions. Wait, you actually lived over there? Get ready to be considered an expert. Yes, I can speak some Chinese. No, I am not fluent. Yes, you can eat dog and cat but you have to go to special places to do it, and no, everyone doesn’t do it all the time.
My students asked me, “Why do you come to China?”
My coworkers asked me, “Why did you go to China?”
And people now ask me, “Why did you come back?”
I’ll try to answer: my wife’s parents run a store in a small town. Her father gets up early to join the others in the farmer’s market, selling vegetables and meat. Her mother runs the store until he gets back, around lunchtime. Her mother will do manual labor; working all day, for maybe, 100 RMB.
Now, a couple weeks ago I tried to buy coffee. No real coffee here, it’s back to that gourmet Nescafe in a can. We went up to the cashier and I had my 100 RMB bill out, ready to pay.
My mother-in-law came over and handed the cashier a smaller bill. She said, “Take mine. You don’t have to give back so much change.”
Not a good answer. I wasn’t good at any of those questions, and not much has changed. Let’s leave it at this: I came back.
And I wrote about it.
An “I’m back post then? No. More like an attempt to summarize in a few hundred words what would take thousands. So let’s stick with seven:
It feels fucking great to be back.
