I am romancing the stone, if that counts.

I was a bit worried that I was romanticized home, before being back home. It was one of the thing that held me back for a while, actually. What if my whining about life in China are just me and ridiculous expectation ?

Now, I'm back home, and went through the whole relocation process.

What turned out to be my imagination

* Administration is slooooowwww (budget cuts, understaffed)

* Housing market is not as rosy as expected : renting a home with a garden is a thing of the past, people buy those things, they don't rent them. It's specific to my current area.
* Laoganma sauce is 4x the price it is in China.

And that's it, after close to 2 months...

Why would one want to romanticize stuff like clean water ? I actually don't do much "promotion" of "the West", but whenever someone comes to me and say "Oooh, I was in New York and lived in a hotel where the tap water was drinkable", then I will promote the concept of clean water being present pretty much everywhere outside of China (and the places in India and Africa where it isn't I am sure someone is working on it, unlike in China where everyone is going to the extreme to ignore the problem. Hmmm, just thinking about clean water makes my pants a bit wet.... Shit, I knocked over a glass of water, gotta go. 

I thought about this a lot before I decided to plan to leave China and... nope.

I still remember what pisses me off about home and in a lot of ways China is a better place to live.

Nowhere is perfect and I really have enjoyed living in China but overall I know where I'm better off and that's not here. I'll take the bullshit back home over the bullshit here because the bullshit at home is mostly on a much smaller scale and easier to deal with, and I can at least do the things I like to do at home. I can't here.

I don't have rose colored glasses on regarding home or Western countries, I'm just weighing the positives against the negatives.

I am asked all the time about when I will go back to the USA. My answer is that I do not know. It is not that I hate my country. On the contrary. i love America. I am not exactly happy with the direction that some agendas and social issues are headed. But, if it was not thises things, I would find something else I did not like about America.

My thinking is this. At my age, I have spent enough time in America to have seen and do the things I wanted there. Since leaving America, I have discovered that the world is a much more interesting place that needs to be explored with the time I have left on this planet. I will stay in China for a few more years, trying to see all the worthwhile things to me. Then, off ot perhaps another asian country to work for a couple of years and explore. I would like to get to Europe sometime for a few years. And, eventually, I see myself retiring in South America, exploring those countries.

I like doing comparison charts to help my dtough decision making. I made one recently about my staying in China or leaving. The positives outweighed the negatives for me. Perhaps, once the negatives outweigh the positives, it is time to leave. Notice I used the word "outweigh" versus "outnumbered". I believe in using a comparison chart you should focus on weight of issues more than just the number of items in each column. Just a little help if you try to do a comparison chart in the future.

Living abroad is addictive, the last thing that I want is to go back home. We might move to another country after I marry my Chinese girlfriend but probably not back home.

Sure I do.  'Home' aka the 'West' is just such an abstract remembrance of mine.  like a few others on this board (is this a 'board'?) I have lived away from 'home' for so long now that it is just a ...... memory.  And , yeah, that memory is comprised mostly of the good stuff I lived thru whilst living in the West (in my case mostly America). 

my rational mind reminds me that it is just a place, with good and bad things about it,,, but I tend to remember and focus on the good parts.

ok,,, for balance I will list 3 things bad about where I lived, spent time in the US in the 80's 90's.

   1.  seemed there was a 'drug culture' amongst my peers.  *why do/did relatively affluent white kids turn to drugs??  weird...

   2.   a bit of the old working your life away, but not really ever knowing what for.  sure, had a nice house and a nice car, but still seemed a fair amount of angst over where Life was taking us.

   3.  ok,  can only think of those 2~

The big annoyances of China have made me forget the niggly annoyances of my home country, that's for sure.
But, people can be interesting in my country. Not necessarily friendly, but worth getting to know. And they can be helpful and intelligent; worth listening to.

What I probably romanticize the most, is depth of character. My country has people posting selfies and food pics on FaceBook, 'sent from my iPhone', while they watch reality shows or singing/dancing/performance contests. There is some spitting, shouting and boorish behaviour too.

And the streets can be dangerous at night...

No, I know that no matter where I go on Earth, everything is a farce.

From the start of my time outside my home country i have kept in close contact, via the internet when it is not being 'harmonised', of events and issues at home.

I am not under any illusion that it is Utopia, but when i back there I am not always having to question the reliability of the people/answers i encounter.

There are many problems at home, but they are ones that people are actively trying to resolve, not just ignore or say 'there is nothing i can do' and stick their heads in the sand.

I definitely have a much higher appreciation for clean drinking water, clear skies, (mostly) safe food, good public transport, free healthcare, quality goods and general accountability than I used to. Those are practical things, not romantic.

On the other hand, Australia is seriously boring. Even the biggest cities are boring after Asia's mega metropolises.

All I need to do is remind myself of the time that I saw eggplants for $8 each at the supermarket. Here they cost 1 yuan - over 40 times cheaper. Lettuce is 25 times cheaper here. My power bill is one tenth of what it would be back home. The cost of goods and services has spiraled out of control in some Western countries.

As a single man it was different, but I realize that having a mixed race child in China would be simply cruel, and I say so for the following reasons.

1) Pollution. I had horrible allergies and asthma as a child. A child with my genes here would likely be ill all the time, even worse than I was.

2) TCM. TCM is a lie. It is crap. It should not exist. It wastes money. The government supports it. This makes me ill. No woman should do the stupid stuff they do here, no washing hair for a month...What's that for?

3) Education. Schools have mandatory brainwashing. All Creativity is crushed. I work in High School, so I see it.

4) Future. I do not enjoy certain benefits of living in China but I pay taxes. From credit cards to work visas, YOU DON'T BELONG HERE! The government doesn't mind letting you know it. How many countries don't allow a wife to provide a work visa/green card/ immigration rights.

5) People. I have lived here five years, even Chinese people who speak English fluently are all either obsessed with money, sex or power. They have no hobbies or interests. The men ask me for advice to sleep with white girls. The women either hit on me, or get jealous since I make more money than them.

6) Relatives. My future in-laws seem to do nothing for their daughter except guilt-trips, and yet she keeps sending them money. What's up with that?

7) Charity. From Yang Yue, to the latest kid bashing stunt, to car crashes, to what have you, the lack of interest in your fellow man is not normal. Even Ming Zi knew that a normal person would be upset to see a child in a dangerous situation.

8) They won't let me read the NYT.

9) The foreigners who think China likes them. It doesn't. It is the third Reich, but actually it is worse than the Nazi party, because at least the Nazi party wasn't the largest economy in the world.

10) The utter lack of intellectual curiosity, concern, or idealism of the people. They are truly sheep led to the slaughter.

11) For everybody who says the US, France, the UK, or Japan, is worse, at least you can think. You can go to the library, and read a book, and write a letter to a senator, and not have some two-bit mafia member burn down your store, cause a local developer wants to build a high-rise on it, like happens in China. We have a little law called RICO in the US

12) For people from parts of Africa, Central Asia, or other poverty stricken places, I understand the attraction. But like at South Korea...they have a much better society than China. Oh it still makes me puke, but at least they only censor North Korean web sites.

13) Rant over

14) And yes, I'm working on leaving with my wife. And I will immediately join every human rights organization I can if I get to the US. China has taught me the horror of political apathy.