Letter: Small Doubts

Dear friends,

As far as I'm concerned, 6 months in China is not a long time. And my first year here flew by quickly. But now that I've been here for a year and a half, I can tell you: that's a long time! The latest news is that finally, after a lot of trouble and anxiety, I've managed to arrange another 5 month visa. Yes, I'm not ready to go home yet, but a few small doubts have started to creep in.

"Here I am in a new place where I don't know anybody and don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing." That's what I wrote when I first arrived in Qinghai. Perhaps there are some people who actually like new beginnings, who thrive in an unfamiliar environment facing fresh challenges every day, but sadly I'm not one of them. I could barely keep up with the pace of life in Perth! Sure, it's not like I go to pieces, but I find myself longing to establish a routine, make some close friends, and every now and then lock myself in my room and play guitar. Come now, you can't expect me to suddenly turn into an exciting person just because I'm living in a foreign country!

On the whole, I'm satisfied at the moment. But I'm a long way from having the same feelings of comfort, independence, and self-realisation that I had before I left Perth. I guess that what I have instead is the interest of learning, since every day I continue to improve my chinese and discover new things about chinese culture. It's a bit like growing up all over again.

I'm a little bit homesick. I miss my family, which they will probably be surprised to hear since I seldom contact them. In the last email I got from my mum, she reminded me that I still hadn't told them my new address and phone number. It took me a year and a half to figure out, but family are worth putting up with! I don't know when I'll be back in Perth to stay—at the moment I find myself in a distant country doing something I consider worth doing—but my parents are only in their 50s, so I'm sure that I can spend lots more time with them and the rest of my family in the future.

Home for the Holidays

Despite the prominent role of the family in chinese culture, and the reluctance of many young people to leave their family and friends, it is nonetheless not uncommon for chinese to move away from their home town. The reasons are often economic. People (especially men) from the country travel to urban areas to find work; students go to far away universities to study; competition for jobs forces professionals to move to distant cities. Yang Ying was planning to go all the way to Guangdong to look for work, until she was offered the job at SDA. At Chinese New Year the trains are packed with people making the journey back to visit their family. Often the hope is that the situation is temporary, and one day the family will live together again, if not in the same house then at least nearby.

Work here is sometimes busy when my boss announces that there's a deadline that we need to meet, but most of the time it's not too stressful. I have time to study chinese, which was one of the things I was hoping for when I took this job. (The job, for those of you who don't read my website, is volunteering at a grassroots development agency in western China). I like the work, and I'm really glad to be a volunteer and contribute my little bit to society. It's something I've wanted to do for some time.

I don't know many people here, but then again I'm not alone either. I live with my boss, which is a bit like a sitcom (The Odd Couple perhaps?): he's the one who flirts with the security guards and goes out late at night to buy alcohol as a remedy for his upset stomach, while I'm just the straight guy. There's also a woman called Zhuoya who we often see. I get along well with her, and I help her learn some basic English sentences while she gives me some pointers on my chinese. Her husband is studying in Hawaii, and she plans to join him there soon.

Hopefully, once I've settled into a routine and made some more friends, all my doubts will vanish. In any case, it goes without saying that there are a lot of things that I will miss about China when I eventually leave.

Love Todd

The housing complex where I live
My home in Xining is a first-floor apartment in this very new and very flash housing complex, unassumingly named "Splendid City".