A decade (or so) in China

This month, July 2010, marks my 5th full year in Hong Kong and 6th full year in China. This month also marks 10 years since I first moved to Greater China. All told, I've spent 3/4 of the past decade in this part of the world.

What brought me to Asia? And why have I stayed?

It all started in January 1998, the second semester of my undergraduate studies at UBC. Ira Nadel, my ENGL 111 (Non-Fiction Prose) prof, assigned the book Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now by Jan Wong, who is now a prominent columnist at the Globe and Mail. I highly recommend this funny and informative book, which is about the author's experiences of studying at Peking University in in the middle of the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s, then later working as a journalist in China in the 1980s (including June 1989 - she was watching from the Beijing Hotel, if I can remember correctly). Before reading this book, I knew very little about modern and contemporary China, so reading this book opened my eyes to China for the first time. The content and style of the book also differed from the readings (usually academic) that were assigned in the modern Chinese history courses I later took. What made the book so relatable to me is that Jan Wong arrived in China barely out of her teens and that as both she and I are Canadian-born Chinese, we share the same cultural upbringing. Reading about her experiences in China and seeing her vivid portrayal of a rapidly changing China inspired me to do the same thing: to experience China firsthand. Reading Jan Wong's China: Reports from a Not-So-Foreign Correspondent, her second book, only made me want to live in China even more.


In 2000, I hoped to spend the 2000-2001 academic year on exchange in China. I told Diana Lary, one of my Chinese history professors, about this desire of mine, and she suggested that I apply for a scholarship to study in Taiwan. To make a long story short, I decided that it would be better to let the Taiwanese and Canadian government pay my way to study in Taipei than for my parents to foot the bill for me to study in mainland China.

Though I complained a lot at the time, I now consider that year in Taipei to have been a positive experience. First of all, I learned to read, write, and speak Chinese. Secondly, I learned that I could take good care of myself in an unfamiliar environment, far away from home and from my family. Third, life in Taiwan prepared me for life in mainland China - though it's not as rough and tumble as mainland China, I nevertheless learned to expect the worst so that I could be pleasantly surprised by what I'd actually face. Though I didn't appreciate life in Taiwan when I was an exchange student there, I did come to appreciate the place a lot more when I did an internship there a couple of years later. If I told you in the past that Taiwan is a horrible place, then let me now state on the record that Taiwan is pretty pleasant and interesting. I'd also like to say that it's a lot more Chinese than Taiwanese people would like to admit. Much more Chinese than Hong Kong is.


Before I left Taiwan in August 2001, I visited China as a delegate of the China Synergy Program for Outstanding Youth. Even though we received red carpet treatment over the course of 2 weeks and were presented with a very mild form of propaganda (which I took with a grain of salt), I was nonetheless deeply inspired by what I saw. Even back then, which was long before it was clear that China was to become the juggernaut that it is today, I felt the energy and momentous changes going on over there, and I wanted to witness it, document it, experience it, and even play a part in it.


After finishing my masters degree in 2004, I didn't have a job and didn't have any plans, but I did have some money in the bank, thanks to a Teaching Assistant job at UBC and to scholarship money (and because I saved a lot of money by living with my parents). Having money, no plans, and nothing to lose allowed me to finally move to China so in July 2004, I packed 2 huge suitcases and moved to Beijing. I'll talk more about those experiences another time.

The following year, I jumped at the chance to earn a PhD in Hong Kong and five years later, I'm just about wrapping it up. After having experienced different cities in Asia as an exchange student, intern, graduate student, and very briefly as a low-level office worker, I will experience a different kind of life as I begin my career here. Pretty soon, I will start to bitch and complain about rush hour traffic, lunch hour traffic, long days at the office, bitchy backstabbing colleagues, wearing a suit to work, and who knows what else? Still, I'm pretty happy with how my life has unfolded so far, and I look forward to what's ahead, even the stuff I'll bitch about.


I'm 31 now, and I know and feel that it's about time that I settle down. Hong Kong is a pretty comfortable place compared to mainland China and Taiwan, and there are still lots of good opportunities here. Still, I look forward to opportunities to travel around the region, even if it's work-related. In fact, I'm still open to living in different cities, maybe Shanghai, if it feels right. In any case, I'm pretty sure that by the time I die, I will have spent most of my life in Asia. No matter what I do for a living, I hope that I will have the chance to allow Westerners to understand China better, and to let people in China understand the rest of the world better too.