It’s tempting to build a narrative.
And it almost got me, a few years ago. In 2018, I moved to Japan, and 2018 after all was ten years after I first moved to China, August 2008 vs November 2018. The circumstances were different–millennial enjoying an extended adolescence versus a millennial dragged kicking and screaming into middle age–but I thought I should say something about it. Just recently, a couple on Facebook shared their “Chinaversary”, Hainan their home since 2005. Seven years seems to be a pretty decent marker too, and I started to make some attempt at acknowledging it.
My heart just wasn’t in it. I didn’t care. I mean, what’s the point? Though I’ve made several return trips since, I was ten years removed from that environment. This year makes twelve. The students I taught back then have gotten jobs; some got married, and now have kids of their own who can now inquire as to whether their foreign teacher likes NBA or how his chopsticks skills are faring.
There was a time when I could have seen myself going back to that life. Adjusting to life in America and the Navy was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. You go from a relatively bohemian lifestyle, no responsibilities, this quasi-college lifestyle where you can drink every night, play computer games all the time, show Frasier to your classes and play All Things Considered for their final exam. Buy a crate of Singo from the shop, maybe a dusty bottle of 5 RMB baijiu. Extended adolescence doesn’t do it justice.
There’s a persistent question that keeps demanding an answer: what would have happened if I hadn’t left China? My wife and I moved out of China on December 30, 2010. The ten-year anniversary passed and I forgot about it till she brought it up a few weeks later. Even as we celebrated the New Year by watching a livestream from Kyoto, I didn’t think about our first New Year in America, mini-golf in Jackson, TN, the visit to the recruiter a couple months in the future, boot camp over a year away, our daughter’s birth and our decision to treat as a career what is in reality a limited period of service. One enlistment, two, twenty, thirty years, at some point the Navy kicks you out and it would behoove you to face it with dignity.
In the year 2021, would I still be in Wuhan, teaching English? I don’t know about Wuhan. The expat community back then was less connected: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube worked for a time, and free VPNs did work. No one was rounding up religious minorities for their “reeducation centers”, one man’s reeducation center is another man’s concentration camp, but I would still be teaching English. What else could I have done?
Out of all the people my age who went to China in those recession years, I don’t think any of them are still there. Some left after one year, some after two, three…but all the same, they left.
The older people present a different challenge. In the original Seven Year Laowai posts (inferior to my Seven Year Laowai book, available at a low price here) I concluded it by calling China “The Graveyard of All Ambition“. I gave it that name because for us, that’s exactly what it was, so long as you stayed. Oh, they sing that gospel with their hands to the heavens, don’t they? Let’s see…
– I’m starting my own school
– I was a millionaire before coming here
– I’m starting my own restaurant
And my personal favorite: I’m going to do real teaching. Yeah, real teaching; I accompanied another teacher, an older Englishman who was in the inspiration for Jack Stearns (in The Seven Year Laowai, available for a low price here) to a high school where he was interviewing to teach Chemistry. Know what they really wanted him for?
This post was brought to you by the letter E.
And the schools and the restaurants, the future businesses, it was coming next year, next year, two years from now, ten
Never.
What happened to those guys? Are they still in China? Are they okay? The fate of those teachers (and if you’re wondering, the real-life Jack Stearns is still alive, now in Thailand) has come up over the years. What are they doing today? Well, we know what I would have been doing.
So I think we can guess their fate too.
