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Q: How hard is it to adjust to back home after living in China?
Reverse culture shock is real. A lot of people miss the craziness of China after returning home. Others struggle to find employment after being out of their country's job market. Personally, I've found adjustment pretty smooth. I've been reconnecting with old friends, found a low paying office job after a few weeks and am about to get a raise and full benefits, found an online part time side job with flexible hours and am enjoying improved physical and mental health. I have heard stories of people returning home only to find themselves in a crappy situation and returning to China within months. I'd go back to visit my wife's family but could never see myself returning to live there. Life is good back home. Clean air, good beer, great co-workers, room to move up the career ladder. My only regret is not returning home sooner. Teaching in China for 4.5 years after college didn't make me unemployable. It just delayed my chances to move up as I am working alongside recent grads. How about you? What was it like to transition home?
Now that I can sit on my balcony every morning with a coffee and breathe fresh sea air and watch squirrels and hummingbirds and deer going about their business I suddenly realize how anxious and emotionally frustrated I had become towards the end of my stay in China. That was a long sentence.
It's true though. I arrived in China in 2009, just out of school, super eager to experience a new culture and all that crap. Fast forward seven years, various lines of work, travel to forty cities, intense studying for HSK 5, a divorce, three litters of kittens, ten bouts of severe food poisoning, pickpocketings, rage, fear, joy, att-hattery, baijiu and a gang beating... among other things... and I was changed.
I became a hateful, aggressive and insecure. I hated the peasants with their soulless eyes staring at me in the street and I wanted to bash them all with a hammer. I hated the garbage and the mold and the dust and roaches and the terrible music and the brainwashing and the ignorant morons flooding in and out and in and out of malls day in and out and in and out and the sex with psychotic women in and out and in and out and so on.
I hated myself for being hateful. That's just not me.. I'm normally quite pleasant and treat others with kindness.
Go home, guys. You think you're too self-aware to be affected by that place, but it really is poisonous to your soul. Go home and see your family and friends, have a meal without shitting the bed, have nice conversations with nice people, and yell LAOWAILAOWAI at Chinese people you happen to cross paths with.
Years ago for me, it was no longer being able to feasibly walk anywhere that I needed to go. No subway, no restaurant close enough to walk to, and definitely no cheap cab to a theater. That was the materialistic aspect - and I was pretty much helpless in those terms. Not a good feeling after having experienced the "I can go anywhere I want" capability offered by advanced infrastructures like the subway, cheap cabs, and high rails. At home, there was a new bus system which was a recent godsend, but it stopped operating late afternoon. That meant I had a convenient lifeline to getting groceries, going out to a restaurant, or the movies, but also that I had to get it done before late afternoon. This really is comparing apples and oranges though, which most of us don't ever realize we are doing - If I were to compare that tiny town to a Chinese village, I'm sure I'd have thought the Chinese village was 200 years into the past by comparison.
I was surprised at the strong sense of polarization that had taken root in nearly everything imaginable for discussion - people were either too dumb or too "smart", or everything was either "awesome" or "messed up" somehow. As for how things were messed up, it was always political. TV, movies, sports, life in general would devolve into political discussions. I guess it didn't help that I went back during the election year. In retrospect, that definitely was not the best time to choose to go back.
Did you do anything "constructive" or enriching while in China other than earning the ¥? IE, classes, picking up employable skills, self academic study you could possibly use in the future? I think that people can transition easier if they invest more time in the latter...
Now that I can sit on my balcony every morning with a coffee and breathe fresh sea air and watch squirrels and hummingbirds and deer going about their business I suddenly realize how anxious and emotionally frustrated I had become towards the end of my stay in China. That was a long sentence.
It's true though. I arrived in China in 2009, just out of school, super eager to experience a new culture and all that crap. Fast forward seven years, various lines of work, travel to forty cities, intense studying for HSK 5, a divorce, three litters of kittens, ten bouts of severe food poisoning, pickpocketings, rage, fear, joy, att-hattery, baijiu and a gang beating... among other things... and I was changed.
I became a hateful, aggressive and insecure. I hated the peasants with their soulless eyes staring at me in the street and I wanted to bash them all with a hammer. I hated the garbage and the mold and the dust and roaches and the terrible music and the brainwashing and the ignorant morons flooding in and out and in and out of malls day in and out and in and out and the sex with psychotic women in and out and in and out and so on.
I hated myself for being hateful. That's just not me.. I'm normally quite pleasant and treat others with kindness.
Go home, guys. You think you're too self-aware to be affected by that place, but it really is poisonous to your soul. Go home and see your family and friends, have a meal without shitting the bed, have nice conversations with nice people, and yell LAOWAILAOWAI at Chinese people you happen to cross paths with.
