Two Bottles of Water

In 2002, I took a job as Head of School at the New School of Collaborative Learning International School in Beijing, China. It was a three-year contract that could be extended indefinitely. I retired from the Greeley Public Schools. My husband quit his job. We arranged for one daughter to live in our condo. Another daughter took our dog. We set up automatic bill pays. We packed up. We shipped belongings. We moved. We spoke three words of Chinese – ni hao, xe-xe, and wo yao (hello, thank you, I want). We knew Great Wall, Mao, and fortune cookies. We walked into a period of confusion, anxiety, fear, missteps, learning, accepting, engaging, and hard-earned accomplishments. We made some fine new friends, both American and Chinese, and we learned the basics of a new language and culture. And, perhaps most importantly, we affirmed that there is no place like home, no matter how intriguing the place you are living! We lived in Beijing, China for a year and a half at the beginning of the century. When I say “we”, I speak of myself and my husband. No children – all grown. As you might expect, it was both a fascinating and unsettling experience. We did not speak much Chinese. Unlike the bulk of westerners, who lived in the west side of town, we lived in a district of the city that was almost entirely populated by Chinese. We did not have western stores at our disposal. We were surrounded by Chinese signs and symbols, so for a while, everything we did or bought was based on “best guess”. We were the only non-Chinese residents of our apartment complex. Not even the taxi drivers that frequented the taxi stand at the entrance to our complex spoke English. This memoir recounts my first impressions of our experience. Other’s perceptions may differ from mine, but I haven’t misrepresented our experience. It was a difficult, confusing, sometimes unfriendly, place for any westerner, and especially for one plunked down in a totally unfamiliar setting, unable to communicate, with a minimal support system. Perhaps expats who lived in more westernized areas of the city enjoyed a life more like that of back home. In spite of all the difficulties we encountered in our stay, I’m glad we did it. It was the experience of a lifetime to be an immigrant and learn firsthand what it was like to be a stranger in a strange land. It also provided great insight into culture shock, unconscious bias (mine), and racism (theirs). As I was writing, I discovered I needed to use many of the phrases I learned while in Beijing. I have endeavored to share them at the beginning of each chapter, along with their pronunciation and meaning. Note to any linguaphiles, intonation is not added.