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Q: Do you ever forget you're living in China?
I sometimes forget I'm living in China for days at a time. Chalk it up to my introverted personality and work schedule:
I go to work where I sit in my little cubicle all day, read on the subway with my earbuds in, watch American TV and cook at home most nights. On top of that, on nights when I'll go out, it's to expat bars in trendy expat neighborhoods of Beijing.
Note meaning to complain about this; these are my own choices after all. Just curious if anyone else ever "forgets" temporarily that they're living here?
What happens to me is that I see my life in China as something normal and ordinary, but from time to time I see something that makes me realize how far away from home, and I feel like...wow, I'm in China!
I don't forget I'm living in China, but I often forget how lucky I am to experience this
Forget? Nope, never. However this is where my family are, this IS home, I go for weeks on end without seeing another foreigner, and tbh, I quite like that.
All the other nations I've lived in I've lived in an expat bubble, constantly comparing it to home. This time it is home I make no comparisons it just IS.
No i never forget im living here
What with all the craziness, and the good and the bad points, don't think i will ever forget where i am.
But also as erokose said i do forget how lucky i am for this experience.
Nope. My job and hone life don't allow me. Even if they did, going to and from work would sure as hell remind me where I am. I'm curious as to how you commute to work.
:
I take the subway.
I guess maybe what I'm trying to say is more along the lines of what erokose mentioned--I'm so used to the daily grind of the commute and working and my social life here that it often forget "oh sh*t, you're living in China! That's awesome!"
Lately, I've been trying to get out and do more interesting things, but I cannot help but feel that I could be working the same basic desk job anywhere else in the world and it would be mostly the same.
Sorry all. I must be in one of my "dejected" phases this afternoon.
xunliang:
In that sense I do know what you mean. Sometimes I doesn't click that I on the other side of the planet to my home. Sometimes I think "What would I be doing if I was back in England"
I also agree with Erokose...its not that I forget I'm living in China, so much as I become ludicrously complacent about it.
Being an expat here, as we all know, can lead a person to become a tad jaded, but we really do need to take the time now and then to appreciate how thoroughly, bizarrely, surreally memorable this fandango of an experience should be.
I guess I could possibly understand, given that you're living in Beijing. But living in a 4th tier city, it really is impossible to forget you're living in China, even for a moment. It's something I'm constantly aware of, and there's no escaping it (other than actually physically escaping in China, lol). Next week 
Not only I don't forget but it becomes an increasingly obsession that I am in China. Even when I try to run in my imagination away from China, I hear somebody spitting nearby that wakes me up and makes me return feet on the ground. Running away from this reality it's become an onward Creative exercise trying to make up my world of beauty and Oasis of peace. I am still working on it. In the meantime, "this is China" it gets me older at faster pace than usually or naturally it should be.
I never forget I'm in China, but it sometimes starts feeling like home. I just chase those thoughts and feelings away. I'm slipping, though...
Every night I forget .....
after 4 beers
artdio:
It takes a hell of lot more then 4 beer for me to forget I'm in China, lol.
I go to KFC almost every day. Thus I cannot forget where I am.
Yeh, I forget it often. Sometimes I wake up and think i'm in the south of Spain, which being English means I have to go out, do some building work, then get drunk and start a fight with a stranger. It's a very confusing time for me.
I don't think I ever forgot I was in China. I got used to living in China so (mostly) everything just seemed normal at times. But those times would only last a few days at most before something would happen that would remind me that I was a stranger in a strange land.
China, in my opinion, doesn't let foreigners ever feel like they belong. I was always reminded that I was an outsider and would always be an outsider no matter how hard I tried to adapt and fit in.
I can be home alone watching a movie with the subtitles turned off and not remember where I am until I hear "hhhhuuaaacktooo" coming from outside six floors down.
NOt me it's like night and day literally. Also, back home I probably live in one of the cleanest state or city back home in America so everything is the complete opposite. The dvds are like 10 times cheaper here, the pollution is worse, they have a better public transportation system here, haven't been to any public libraries here.
I never forget even if I stay at home!
Wait...you mean I am actually living in China? I thought this was Richmond BC.
Shit...ok..this explains sooooo much!
