Take me hoooome, country roads...

It's Thursday evening, we've just wrapped the April issue and I am sitting at my desk appreciating this New York Times op-ed about homesickness. It starts by citing a Gallup poll: 25 percent of earthlings wish they could move abroad, maybe permanently.

Hold your horses, earthlings! The grass isn't all green out here in expat-ville: studies show that foreigners living in foreign lands experience anxiety and depression at a much higher rate than their folks back home.

The hard data ends there and isn't exactly shocking, but I liked this part: 

"Today, explicit discussions of homesickness are rare, for the emotion is typically regarded as an embarrassing impediment to individual progress and prosperity. This silence makes mobility appear deceptively easy."

and this part:

"The persistence of homesickness points to the limitations of the cosmopolitan philosophy that undergirds so much of our market and society. The idea that we can and should feel at home anyplace on the globe is based on a worldview that celebrates the solitary, mobile individual and envisions men and women as easily separated from family, from home and from the past. But this vision doesn't square with our emotions, for our ties to home, although often underestimated, are strong and enduring."

I'm not exactly a "solitary, mobile individual" but I was for six months, until my main man James moved to town. It was tough! Actually, I might even call it one of my prouder achievements in life so far: moving abroad by myself to a city where I knew no one. It's empowering, but Lord it's not easy. James likes to joke that I put in all the leg work and he got to arrive on the ground with a group of friends; that's basically true. 

Everyone wants to hear the wacky tales of international tomfoolery. No one wants to hear about the nights you come home and have absolutely no one to keep you company. You don't want to call home and burden them with your blues. I read a lot of books in the bath those first months. 

And about that 'cosmopolitan philosophy,' I love my life here in Shanghai, but the prospect of making it permanent - away from the mountains and the ocean I grew up with - is not something I entertain. It's impossible to quantify this feeling, but the best way I can describe it is I wake up a lot of Saturday mornings and think: it would be nice to go walk on the beach or take a hike ... in America.  

The Sun!

Today I woke up and, for the first time in just about forever, sunlight was streaming through the curtains that separate our living room from the enclosed balcony. Hurray!

Before I went to work, I moved my vegetable into the kitchen. For months now we've been using the balcony as a surplus fridge. We have the lamest, smallest "full-size" fridge known to man. But the balcony stays so cold in winter that it keeps beers the perfect temperature and keeps veggies fresh. But judging by the morning sun, our surplus fridge is no longer.

I also sneezed all the way through my Chinese class and joked to my teacher "with the sun, also comes allergies." She laughed and taught me an ancient Chinese proverb that basically translates: "Fish and bear. You can't have both."

Right. An English-language equivalent doesn't readily come to mind, but basically the idea is if you catch a bear you probably don't have time to catch a fish. Or maybe your bear will eat your fish. And similarly, when the sun comes out you will be happy but you will also sneeze a lot and your beers wont be cold.

Happy Monday, y'all!

So many rainy days

A picture of me in warmer climes.

It rained 18 days in February and we've had the longest stretch of gray days in 32 years. Last week I kept rambling on to whoever about how this winter in Shanghai made me feel like I could really empathize with the hypothetical denizens of nuclear winter. Those people who had to live on earth while they were trying to relight the sun in Sunshine? Yeah, I get it.

Right now you might be thinking: 18 days of rain ... didn't you spend 18 years in Alaska? Correct. But Alaska has this super awesome thing called central heating and I didn't have to commute to work on a bicycle.

In other less-than-brilliant news, I'm two assumed rejections deep into my grad school application results. I could use some sunshine.

But since it ain't coming for at least another 5 days, according to the weatherman, I'm ordering heaps of Greek food for dinner. I plan to fill the gaping hole of non-acceptance with dolmas.

How to be happy

Brand guru/market research dude Martin Lindstrom wrote this article for Fast Company about his 300 days of world travel looking into what makes people happy. It isn't exactly breaking news - we've all heard stories of happy communities supported by strong family ties in regions of abject poverty, but this section juxtaposing rural Australia to urban China was especially resonant:


"Another journey took me way into the Australian bush to a place where a toilet capable of flushing would be a novelty. Kids were busy kicking around a football on the street, but almost all took time out to speak to me, curious about who I was and what I was doing there. A young man told me that he felt happy when he helped others. He tried to perform one act of kindness a day. This young man had only seen television twice in his life.

But it was when I got the chance to visit some of the 60 million newly built homes in China that all this really hit, well, home. Each new home was wired for the 21st century. Every room had television screens hooked up to high-speed Internet and each home came equipped with the latest in electronic gadgetry. In fact, the entire block was connected to a community intranet designed to help the neighbors stay in touch. I couldn't help noticing that there was an important element missing: smiles. I didn't see one of them.

I pursued my questions of happiness with a young Chinese family who had only been living in the city for two years.  There responses were measured. They said, "We're doing fine, but there is still so much to achieve before we will become truly happy."  It seems the family aspired to all the things they were seeing being won on the daily online video shows. "I've seen what you can get, and we still don't have many of the things. So, we need to work harder. Then, I'm sure, one day we will get there."

The city was orderly. There were no children playing outside. I'd been instructed to wear a mask, wrap my shoes in plastic, and sit on a cover on the chair.  Everything was to stay clean and uncontaminated. Almost all the homes I visited around Beijing and Shanghai shared the same idea that sanitary living meant living a longer life."


I don't have much to add to that, except that his research corresponds with my personal experience. Shanghai lacks smiles. The economy is gangbusters but it's buoyed by a lot of people who work incredibly hard and aren't having a good time because they literally have no time to have a good time. It's a strange place we live in: I have more vacation time than I would in the US, I can afford things (like a cleaning lady three times a week) I'd never consider in the US, and I'm surrounded by Chinese people my age who are under tremendous pressure to buy a house, buy a car, support their parents and generally get ahead.

I like the occasional reminder to be grateful for the choices I have and to enjoy life wherever I am.