Foreign After Three Years

We've lived in China for over 3 years now. China is a very different place from America in many ways, and we still stand out like sore thumbs. Chinese people do not have blonde hair or blue eyes. Chinese people do not hug. Chinese people do not eat cheese, or Mexican food. We do loads of things every day which mark us as foreign, something we have gotten entirely used to.

It is only with this move that I have realized how much China has normalized for me. When moving into a new expat community, the best way to make new friends quickly is to get to know the other newbies. But I don't quite fit into the newbie category - although I'm new to Shenzhen, I'm an old hand to China, and not looking around with glassy-eyes like the other newbies. Conversations with a particular friend make this very apparent to me. The things she raves about, as wonderful or as particularly odd, I have trouble sharing her enthusiasm on. She raves about her ayi - I watch her ayi, and think she is mediocre at best. She feels guilty having the driver take her daughter to school - I look on with envy, remembering the simple life with a driver. She hears people honking on the street, and feels they're honking at her. She pays way more than things are worth, because she doesn't know where or how to dig around town.

She's new, and I sounded the same way when I was new. She'll normalize too, and that list will embarrass her someday.

But even after so long, things happen in my home that throw me. Ayi cleaned the bookshelves a few days ago, and they look fantastic. She organized every book by size. But upon closer inspection, you see that a third of the spines face either up or down, and some of them face the back of the shelves.

T.I.C. Some things will always be foreign.