My Last Post

I read a book recently called China Wakes about the experience of two New York Times journalists in China during the 1990's. When asked if they enjoyed their time in China they pretty much said it was interesting, not enjoyable. In many ways I'd agree. Living abroad is fascinating. I learned basic Mandarin and a great deal about the culture and history of China as well as the cultures of other countries we visited. I saw places I never even heard of let alone planned on visiting.

I went to Tainan, Taipei, and Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Tokyo, Japan. Seoul, South Korea. Bangkok and Koh Chang, Thailand. Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Udaipur, and Mt. Abu, India. Siem Reap, Cambodia. Hong Kong and Macau. Bejing, Xi'an, Harbin, Guilin, Yangshuo, Xiamen, Nanjing, Huangshan, Souzhou, Huangshan, Hefei, Tongli, Xitang, Jiaxing, Zhu Jia Jiao, Kunshan, and Moganshan, China. Danny also went to Lijiang without me. Not bad for three years, especially with the baby slowing down travel plans for the past year. We made friends from China, as well as England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Mexico, and Malaysia and learned about their hometowns too. I saw the Great Wall, Terracotta Warriors, karst mountains, the Taj Mahal, and Angkor Wat.

Our time in Shanghai is finally over. Living far from family, friends and everything I'm familiar with was hard. It took me about six months to really adjust and feel settled. Once I came down from the culture shock in day to day life we have our family and friends and our jobs and life isn't that different wherever you go. The small idiosyncrasies of a foreign culture make things challenging at times but after a while they become routine like anything else. I'll miss the travel but we are happy to leave behind the pollution and Chinese manners and return to the benefits of a first world nation. Most importantly we are happy to bring home Jonah and start a new chapter of our life as a family.

End of Blog... (Unless we move abroad again.)

Why China Eastern Sucks

I have been dreading a flight back to the states with an infant since before Jonah was even born. The week leading up to it our very cranky teething baby spent most of his time crying because I didn't let him grab every item I was attempting to pack. The packing also coincided with Jonah developing his crawling and cruising abilities... it was a stressful couple of weeks.

Jonah trapped by our luggage.

I made sure to reserve a bassinet with a window seat so I could discretely breastfeed Jonah in semi-privacy. When we finally arrived at the airport check-in after our frantic day of last minute packing, a lovely sendoff from our friends and an hour long car ride Jonah was slightly hungry and fussy. The seats assigned to us did not have the bolt heads for a bassinet. The check-in person's excuse was they only promised to reserve the bassinet, not one of the seats where it could be bolted. Seriously! Is Jonah supposed to hang out in the bassinet in front of someone else's seat while Danny and I got our window and aisle seats elsewhere? At least the manager admitted that excuse made no sense. What the manager didn't do was apologize or try to accommodate us. They kept just saying they didn't make the reservation so it wasn't their fault. Awesome customer service. Not once did I hear any sort of apology for not honoring this request which their company promised us in writing a month and a half in advance. I don't usually argue with service people but this is 15 hour flight holding a seven month old... I hate China Eastern. Also they had the crappiest plane I ever flew internationally. It didn't even have personal entertainment centers. Stupid China Eastern.

Jonah sleeping on the airplane floor.

Jonah actually did way better on the plane than I had anticipated. It was a red-eye and he ended up sleeping for 10 of the 15 hours. Part of the time we put him on the floor on his bear mat, part of the time we held him. The other 5 hours he hardly fussed at all, I fed him under my nursing cover during takeoff and he didn't even complain about his ears popping. I'm still mad about the bassinet though.

Angkor What?

I had been hearing about how amazing Angkor is throughout my three years in China and it was the last place I really wanted to get to before leaving Asia. I tried to convince Danny we could go to Cambodia as our first big family holiday but he was nervous about taking Jonah to a country even less developed than China. Eventually we agreed I would go without them and take my first trip away from Jonah.

My friend Emma and I spent three nights in Siem Reap. I think for the most part being away from Jonah wasn't as hard for me as I thought it would be. I knew he would be fine with Danny. I mostly worried Danny would get bored being alone with Jonah and having minimal adult interaction for three and a half days, which he did.

I'm not sure how well known it is among Americans but I never even heard of Angkor before moving to Asia. Not sure if that just means I have a weird gap in my knowledge or it is because Asian history isn't really taught much in the states. In case you are like me and never heard of it Angkor is the most beautiful archaeological site I've ever seen. It was built from the 9th to 15th century by the Khmer empire in what is modern day Cambodia.

It is a huge site made up of many beautiful temples. The three most impressive are

1 Angkor Wat

2 Ta Prohm

3 Bayon Temple

 




There were a bunch of other minor temples that were also really beautiful. We enjoyed taking it slow and wondering through the sites. Emma and I brought along our sketchbooks and stopped to draw and just relax and enjoy the view now and then. We hired a tuk tuk driver from our hotel for two days and he took us around to all the temples for about $15 a day. The third day we road bikes to the temples. A few tours went by while we were there and we were both very happy not to take one and to go at our own pace.

The guides kept talking in thick accents about temples where Tomb Raider was filmed. Siem Reap hasn't taken it as far as Udaipur though. When Danny and I were in Udaipur every hotel had regular viewings of Octopussy, but they seem pretty proud to be the site of a Hollywood movie. I have to admit, it isn't a bad gimmick. After visiting Angkor Wat I wanted to watch Tomb Raider just to see the sites we'd visited.

We also stopped at an artisan workshop where they made crafts including stonework similar to what is found inside the temple. Apparently, in addition to selling their work to tourists they used their work to refurbish the temples. I'm not sure how I feel about renovating archaeological sites as compared to preserving them but it was a cool place and they trained locals  in an impoverished country to have a skilled trade.

 

It is a very poor country and I was worried it would be really unpleasant and we'd be hassled for money non-stop like in India. People there were way more laid back and friendly. There were beggars and sales people but they weren't pushy or rude. If you said you weren't interested, they pretty much left you alone. It also may have helped that we went during the rainy season so it wasn't very crowded. I'd heard stories from friends about naked children begging for money, and it sounded awful. There were naked babies but people there just don't bother with baby clothing if they can't afford it, it is pretty hot there so whatever...

The city of Siem Reap was also way nice and more developed than I expected. Our hotel was really cute. I picked one with good reviews on Agoda. The restaurants and bars were very globalized and built up to accommodate tourists. I was a little sad nowhere had local food to try though. We ate pancakes, Tex Mex and ice cream instead... We actually were able to find some western goods in the touristy area of Siem Reap a lot more easily than in Shanghai.

I'm glad we went in the rainy season and there weren't too many other tourists. I brought rain ponchos and we wore them for about an hour a day when it poured. The rest of the day the weather was beautiful. 

The only bad part of the trip was I felt a little bit like we were being scammed when we did a tour of the floating village. They offer boat tours for $24 when right below there are water taxis locals take for $1. It is a tourist boat so I guess that makes sense but it is quite a markup. The guide tells you a bit about the village then they try to sell you ridiculously overpriced $40 bags of rice to donate to the school and he got mad and sulked when we didn't buy any. He just didn't speak to us after that... It was still interesting to see how people lived. Their homes are on boats, the school and stores are on boats too. There was no electricity but people bought generators if they could afford it or used batteries. There was no running water and they bathed in the very polluted lake. The life expectancy was low and there were lots of problems but it didn't seem that horrible. People looked fairly happy and well fed at least.

Cambodia is a poor country with a terrible history but seeing Angkor Wat definitely was worth it and is one of the most incredible places I've visited in all my travels.

Ayi

Domestic help (or an ayi as they are called in China) is considered a luxury in the western world, but it is pretty standard in Asia. I never wanted to hire a nanny and always was uncomfortable with the idea of a stranger caring for my baby. When the high end of an ayi's salary is only a fifth of mine it just makes sense to hire an ayi and continue working. Less expensive ayis are available for a tenth of my salary.

Coming from the states where only the extravagantly wealthy have full time help I found it hard to get used to having an ayi. I grew up in a wealthy neighborhood where I knew some people who had full time help but I always felt uncomfortable witnessing a blatant class divide in people's homes. For me the reality of having a domestic servant in my home is that I feel awkward and uncomfortable. The ayi we hired turned out to be very warm and loving towards Jonah. I still find it tough to have private family moments while someone is waiting on us. At the end of the day when I got home from work and just wanted to relax I never knew what to do with myself while ayi was washing my dishes or tidying up before leaving. Even if ayi is being paid to do a job, I feel lazy if I'm not working when she is.

I also have to say, it is hard as a parent to see your child depend more on someone we hired than on me. I am glad he bonded with her but I can't help wanting him to come to me for comfort before the ayi. In the states even if I go back to work we are more likely to send Jonah to daycare where several people will care for him rather than one ayi. I feel a lot more comfortable with that setup. In a classroom or daycare kids don't tend to bond with caregivers as closely as to their parents. I feel more comfortable with that setup. Even though our ayi was great with Jonah I am very relieved I'll have some time home with him for a while.

Living in Shanghai the division of wealth is more obvious than in the states and most families we know hire an ayi. Migrant workers from the countryside come to the cities to earn money. The money goes far in the migrant workers' hometowns but while in Shanghai or other big Chinese cities they often live in awful conditions. They don't have a huko, a residency permit that gives them access to numerous government services like housing, and many of them live at their work, be it a construction site or a factory dormitory. Locals here more openly look down on migrant workers than Americas do; Chinese locals seem comfortable yelling at service people indiscriminately. Once when a cleaning ayi at my work tried to tell me something in an indecipherable Chinese dialect I asked one of my students what ayi said. My sixth grader at the very privileged private school where I taught said it didn't matter what an ayi said and made the somewhat disturbing comparison of the cleaning ayi to an insect buzzing around her ear. Americans prefer to tell ourselves that people are people and every man is created equal, that sort of thing. We mostly frown upon insect metaphors.

The word ayi is Mandarin for Auntie. It is a term used to respectfully address any female adult, sounds very communist and equalizing to me. Danny says it is just how Chinese etiquette works, you refer to everyone based on their familial relationship to you and all women are call Auntie. Danny thinks it has nothing to do with communist ideology that all cleaning women are called Aunties. Meanwhile Chinese higher ups seem to frequently be referred to as Madam, a French term which brings to mind associations quite different than that of an Auntie. For a "communist" country the class divide is pretty intense and with a very basic knowledge of China's history I can't imagine it any other way. There have been emperors for so many generations, as far as I can tell the communist party is just another empire. Chinese workers are culturally expected to very dogmatically do what the boss says and not question it, even if your boss says to do things that make no sense.

America somewhat comically seems to hide its huge class divide so that the wealthy don't spend much time exposed to people who aren't wealthy. Instead of hiring a staff to wash our clothing and dishes Americans buy machines. It is funny because it sort of tricks us into forgetting that we are more wealthy than the majority of people in the world. I didn't grow up with a houseful of servants, I grew up with a laundry machine and a dishwasher. Members of the wealthiest 10% in America often don't even realize they are wealthy. Visiting slums in India or even west Philly are a pretty stark reminder that poverty definitely does exist. In China, and many developing nations a lot of the work we use a machine for is done with backbreaking physical labor. I've never done it, but hand cleaning all my clothing with a washing board sounds pretty exhausting. I never gave much thought to how most tasks I use a machine for are done by hand most places around the world.

Having an ayi was an interesting experience but I'm pretty happy to be home with Jonah instead for a while.

Tainan

We finally took Jonah on his first trip this weekend! Staying home with a baby has been quite a change from the constant travel we did our first two years in China. We were nervous Jonah would cry when his ears popped, or be fussy about sleeping in a different place and not following his normal routine but things went surprisingly smoothly.

We spent all our time in Tainan with family; mostly at restaurants and Danny's grandma's home. It was fun being around family, we definitely miss having family around while living abroad. Visiting Danny's family was a lot less overwhelming than my visit three years ago. Now I can understand a bit of mandarin and things don't feel quite so foreign. Taiwan is noticeably calmer and more orderly than mainland China. It was a shame we didn't have a chance to fit in any sightseeing unless you count the temple we stopped in for two minutes on the walk from our hotel to Danny's grandmother's place.

Jonah was pretty happy to meet his great grandmother and his extended family. Everyone was so eager to see him; he had his personal paparazzi follow him around all weekend snapping photos. It was really cute how excited they all were about him. If anything Jonah was happier than usual with all the extra attention. I do think he got a bit overstimulated at some points but overall he handled the trip really well. I'm hoping he will do equally well with our move to the states this summer. We are moving back at the end of July.

Ready for his close up!

Jonah's camera crew!

More Jonah photographers at lunch.

Jonah and his great grandma.

We have been here too long...

Today it was finally spring weather and I decided we need to get out of the house more. We went to Qibao with our friend Laurene. It is a little neighborhood of Shanghai that is sort of a tourist trap. I have been there twice before. It has traditional Chinese architecture and a very dirty river. You can take a boat ride for 10 rmb a person, under $2, on said dirty river. There are tons of tourist knickknacks and street foods for sale. The pollution index was 160. The highest it ever gets in Philly is about 100, the average there is about 30. Qibao was ridiculously crowded. People were shouting and pushing. I walked through the street in this picture with Jonah in his carrier, shielding him from ridiculously large crowd with one hand and eating my snack in the other. I was reflecting on how incredibly overwhelming all this would have seemed to me two and a half years ago when we first arrived in Shanghai. I think the fact that none of it fazes me anymore or is at all overwhelming may be a sign we may have spent a long enough time in Asia...

Day to day life here has become normal, I understand a lot more about the history, the culture and the problems in Shanghai. I understand bits of Mandarin and don't have to rely on Danny for translation as often. I manage to bargain when necessary and can get through most day to day tasks pretty easily. My Mandarin is becoming passable, I talk to our ayi in Chinese everyday after work and I usually at least understand the gist of what she's talking about. It may be better if I don't understand all the old Chinese ladies on the street when they try to tell us Jonah is too little to take out of the house and that he isn't dressed warmly enough... whatever. I'm not hiding in the house for months. Also, it was like 70 degrees out today and I saw babies in snowsuits. Jonah wore a sunhat and a long-sleeve t shirt and still got hot and sweaty. Why do people keep telling me he needs to wear more layers. It is like common sense doesn't exist here. Anyway, I still have a few places I'd like to travel around Asia but I'm starting to think it is time to return home already. I miss the clean air and the food. We are looking for jobs back home next year, we'll see what happens...

 

Bus Buddies

In college I took a really boring sociology course from which I took one concept I found interesting called involved indifference. Involved indifference is a phenomenon that occurs in big cities with an overabundance of stimuli. People actively ignore one another and do not make eye contact in order to avoid over-stimulation. I have an incredibly annoying hour long commute which requires taking a two buses and a train. Usually I avoid talking to anyone on my commute but in Shanghai since I'm a foreigner I stand out. As a pregnant foreigner I stood out even more. For some reason recently strangers I frequently see on my commute seem to want to make small talk with me. I never would have even guessed they knew any English but it seems they learned enough to ask me how the baby is... weird.