Home for a year – a retrospective on things we miss from China

I can hardly believe that a year ago we rolled all our earthly possessions onto a plane and took our last flight from Shanghai to the United States. The auspiciousness of today, February 5th, being Chinese New Year 2019 is not lost on me. (Happy year of the pig, by the way!  新年快乐！) One year…

Displaced repatriation

The idea of home is rather foreign when most of your belongings are packed up in one state two time zones away…

A Farewell to Fapiaos

Goodbye Suzhou, Jiangsu, And Jinji and Dushu Lakes. Adios to every single one of my Chinese language mistakes. Goodbye to using tissues as napkins; Goodbye to no napkins at all. Goodbye to taking my own toilet paper to the bathroom stall. Goodbye, freezing at my desk; Good riddance, short-people sinks. Goodbye insufficient heating and tap…

Between breaths

The time leading up to our departure came very slowly and then all at once. Two weeks ago I stayed inside all day on a Saturday because of the bad air, complaining of nothing to do. Now that it’s less than a week till we fly home, I can’t make enough lunch and coffee dates…

Things we’re looking forward to

It’s a busy time of year no matter which way you slice it: the holidays, the end of the semester, the end of the calendar year… But we’re extra busy planning for our departure from China. That’s right–if you didn’t know already, we’re moving back to the U.S.! In the first few months of 2018,…

Long time, no see

The winter is slowly settling in Suzhou, with its white skies and particulate haze. With cold wind outside and the roulette of even colder air or blasting heat inside. It’s the hardest time to be here. This time of year, it’s dark by 4:30 and the air quality is consistently bad. This time of year,…

Things we (still) miss: one-year retrospective

We’ve lived in China for one year, and even though we have visited home twice, we still miss quite a few things from home… (Catch up on things we miss I and II as well as things we don’t miss I and II.) Here’s the one-year retrospective of “things we (still) miss:” TRIXIE DOODLE –…

How to lose at Chinese bingo

Chinese bingo takes place at the bank. To enter, you go to the bank with all your official documents so you can do an international money transfer, then you fill out some papers with your account number and passport number and a few other details. You give them to an international bank teller, who stamps…

Cultural impediments

I often receive questions from current and former students, either by email or through WeChat. Sometimes they’re about something specific at the university, others they’re about a muddy grammatical rule, and still others they’re in pursuit of culturally-specific usages within English. The last kind are my favorite. But regardless of the type of question, I…

For when you gotta go

When was the last time you dried your hands with toilet paper? I’m sure it wasn’t your first choice for a just-washed-my-hands-after-using-the-toilet situation, but perhaps it was all you could find in a public restroom. But what if it was the norm? What if paper towels weren’t provided, air dryers weren’t provided, and maybe even toilet…