Being an
expat is a funny thing. When you live in
a city with other expatriates there’s an automatic sense of community that
often occurs upon meeting. I would never
just join a random conversation in a bar somewhere in the States, but overseas
it’s a different story. Last week I
overheard an American guy talking in a mix of Polish and English and found
myself going over just to say hi, and more than once I’ve had someone do the
same to me. Sometimes this leads to
friendship, but often it’s just another expat saying hi and briefly connecting
with a fellow American. And it’s just
completely normal; as American expats we’re the minority overseas, so why not
at least be friendly to one another? Warsaw
is a busy European capital and there is quite an expat community. There are several American events that take
place here, like Superbowl parties and Thanksgiving dinners. Were I to feel particularly homesick, I could
easily reach out and meet with my fellow countrymen. I don’t, but it’s nice to know I have the
option.
This was
not the case, though, in Pingdingshan.
For our first month in the city (a city of somewhere around five million
people) Kristen and I just did not see other foreigners. Because Pingdingshan is not really a tourist
destination, it does not attract foreigners in the way that Beijing or Shanghai
do. Nor does it host big international
companies that often employ an international staff. We had been forewarned by our predecessor
that there wasn’t really an expat community, but we just didn’t fully
comprehend. It’s one thing to hear
stories of Americans in smaller Chinese cities where they are so noticeably
foreign (or laowai, literally
“outsider”), but it’s another to be the first foreigner a Chinese person has
ever encountered. Kristen had one Chinese
girl so overwhelmed by meeting a foreigner that all she could do was hug
Kristen and cry hysterically.
In a lot
of ways it was an amazing experience to fully immerse myself in a foreign
culture. Why go all the way to China if
I’m going to have only expat friends? I
could do that in Idaho and save myself the torture of that long plane
ride. And because of this sort of
isolation I really learned what life in an average Chinese city is like, an
invaluable experience. But still, there
is something comforting about at least having an expat community to reach out
to, to know there are others nearby who know exactly what you’re going
through. So when we heard of an American
girl living in Pingdingshan, we immediately reached out.
As soon as
we met Jessie we loved her, not just because she was American, but because she
was the coolest kind of American. Jessie
had purple tinged hair, a Chinese husband, and had been living in China for
several years. She speaks Chinese well
and was full of helpful information—you can sometimes find cheese in this
store, that store is the only one that actually sells deodorant, etc. She’s the kind of American every American expat
wants to be—open-minded, easy going, completely content living abroad and fully
acclimated (I never saw her struggle with chopsticks or even blink at the lack
of Western toilets at a bar or restaurant).
In a word, Jessie is cool. And more
importantly, Jessie was welcoming; as soon as she met us, we were a part of her
circle.
Also included
in this circle was Jessie’s husband, LJ, one of the few Chinese men we ever met
with long hair and beard; JiaJia, who became one of our most constant friends during
the year; Sam, who would later include us in his seaside wedding; Dandy and
Lizzie, a married couple who had been LJ’s friends in high school; and Peter,
or Piotr, who was our resident Polish friend.
Yes, we left Poland to go to the middle-of-nowhere China and our tiny
expat community included a Polish guy. I
have to digress here for a moment, in my travels I am constantly finding Oregon
fans/alumni and Polish people—seriously, Oregon alumni in a fjord in Norway and
a table of Polish guys behind me on an island in the Philippines so small that
large portions of the island disappear into the sea during high tide. My heart rejoices every time I encounter
either.
The first
time I met this amazing circle of friends was over dinner at a hotel
restaurant. Coincidentally this was
where I would ultimately meet with all them for the last time, too, but that’s
a different story. We gathered around
the round table with its lazy susan, debated over what to order, and that was
it; we were friends. By the time we
settled the bill and stood to go, plans were being made for the next meeting,
and it wasn’t a question of “do you want to come?” but “what time can you be
there?”
That first
night, as we got to know each other, Peter asked the classic getting-to-know-you
question, “What are your plans for the next year?” Kristen, who had been slowly losing the
battle against homesickness, told him this would be her last year of living
abroad. I quietly told him that I’d been
considering returning to Poland. Peter,
a long-term expat laughed and said things can change after a few months, after I’d
fully adjusted. I doubted it, but played
along. Eventually I did adjust, largely
in part due to my friendship with this teeny expat community. And Peter was right; a few months later I did
decide to stay a second year in Pingdingshan.
I’m writing this in Warsaw, so clearly things changed, but that’s a
different story.
Over the
nine months I lived in Pingdingshan, Jessie and her expat community became some
of my closest friends. They were without
a doubt the very best part of my life in China.
We had girls’ nights with smoothies Channing Tatum movies, taco night,
and pizza night with cards and naughty Pictionary. We had countless dinners and shared too many
beers to remember. We even shared a
roadtrip and met with several of our friends in the Philippines for a short
holiday that culminated in Sam’s wedding.
Over time we even managed to add a few more expats to our community, but
that too is another story for a different day.