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Raising an Expat Kid in China: The Early Years

October 1, 2015 by Blue Heron MacCormack Leave a Comment

Early years

The Series: Raising an Expat Kid in China

This is the second in a series of articles, here you find the first: Raising an Expat Kid in China: Who is a Third Culture Kid?. The next two articles will explore: Children during the grade school years, and how teenagers adapt as third culture kids and their thoughts on going to school in China vs. their home country.

This series is written with the voice of TCK adults, expat parents, children, and young adults all currently or recently living in China.

If you make a conscious decision to become an expat anywhere in the world, it’s best to adopt the philosophy, “embracing where you live”. You and your children will get so much more out of the incredible experience of living abroad if you do!

Let’s get started!

Having a baby is stressful!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s probably the most memorable experience in a parent’s life. Have you ever noticed how soon-to-be parents seem to glow when they’re expecting? They kind of seem like they are floating around on a cloud of bliss.

But still, it’s full of huge decisions that could influence you and your baby’s health. Luckily, you have have family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and a few random strangers that can all tell you how wonderful their obstetrician was, and where they bought the “must have” stroller. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Society, Survival Tips Tagged With: Work in China

Raising an Expat Kid in China: Who is a Third Culture Kid?

June 29, 2015 by Blue Heron MacCormack 6 Comments

Who is a Third Culture Kid
“Imagine there’s no countries…it’s easy if you try…”

These are the words of self-described dreamer and world traveler John Lennon; but also a reality for every child, because for them, there aren’t any countries, there is only their world, and their surroundings. They learn from birth through their own experiences, their parental upbringing, their extended family, from their lessons and teachers at school, their society’s rules and morals, and their peer groups to identify themselves as (insert nation here).

But imagine your child’s school has an international or foreign curriculum. Imagine that the society that surrounds them is totally foreign. Imagine that their peer group doesn’t have a single child that is from the same country as them. When parents decide to live in a another country they don’t have to imagine these situations, they must deal with the reality of raising a “Third Culture Kid”.

“Third Culture Kids”

Third Culture Kids, or TCK, the term for children that grow up in a foreign land, was first put forth by David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken in their book Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds. Pollock and VanReken offer a wealth of data, stories, and information on a variety of different types of TCKs, and there is a lot of data! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Society, Survival Tips Tagged With: Work in China

My Big Chinese Wedding

June 8, 2015 by Sborto Zhou 10 Comments

my big chinese wedding

Today’s article is dedicated to all the people who have asked me what a Chinese wedding is like, if it really lasts a week, what the bride wears, is there a dragon dance, and thousands of other questions I can’t remember.

No, I’m not going to tell you about my wedding. Why would I want to talk about how ridiculous I was during my wedding when I can talk about other people?

The invitation

My story starts on a random November day, when I get home from a “hard day’s work” and Luna (my girlfriend), comes up to me and tells me:

“The first Friday in December you’re not going to work!”
“No? Why?,” I respond.
“We’ve been invited to a wedding and we’re the godparents!”
“OK, who’s getting married?”
“My best friend from my hometown is getting married!”
“Who’s she marrying? The last time we visited she didn’t have a boyfriend, right?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s a guy she met five months ago.“ [Read more…]

Filed Under: Society, Stories, Survival Tips Tagged With: Travel in China

What’s it like to work for a Chinese boss?

May 18, 2015 by Blue Heron MacCormack 4 Comments

work for a chinese boss

Have you ever been at a point in your job/career when you thought, “I wish I could reinvent myself,” or “restart my career on a different path”? What if I told you I knew of a place where a construction worker became a director of marketing, a sales manager became a journalist, a real estate opportunist started a school, a student became a university economics teacher, and a graphic designer became a CEO (if only for one night).

Such are the opportunities of an emerging market like the big cities of China. But, before you quit your job and throw yourself a going away party, just remember the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence.

If you have read a newspaper sometime in the past ten years, you may have heard China is quickly becoming the financial center of the world. Obviously, opening a market of this size creates many opportunities. And although we are talking about a 5,000 year-old culture, China only “re-opened” its doors to the business world a mere 35 years ago. This creates an interesting relationship between a very proud nationalist people and what they literally refer to as “outsiders”, or the rest of us non-Chinese folks. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Business with China, Society Tagged With: Business with China, Work in China

Zodiac signs and the Chinese horoscope

April 20, 2015 by Furio Fu Leave a Comment

Chinese zodiac

After years of continuous requests, here’s an article about the Chinese Zodiac : )

The Chinese Zodiac, or shengxiao (生肖), has twelve symbols, just like the western one (given to us by the ancient Greeks). And, even in this case, each sign is associated with particular character traits. The difference is that while in our Zodiac each symbols corresponds with a certain month, the Chinese Zodiac corresponds with a particular year, For example, 2015 is the year of the Goat!

Why does each sign correspond with an animal?

It is said that Buddha, when he was near to dying, gathered all animals of the earth. However only twelve bothered to come say goodbye. So he – being magnanimous as few others could – decided to reward them by baptizing each lunar phase with the name of one of the animals that came. The first to show up was the mouse (never trust the rats). After that, arriving in order were the buffalo, the tiger, the rabbit, the dragon, the snake, the horse, the goat, the monkey, the rooster, the dog and the pig (the usual latecomer). [Read more…]

Filed Under: Chinese History, Society Tagged With: Chinese History, Travel in China

Chinese New Year Gastronomy

March 23, 2015 by Sborto Zhou Leave a Comment

chinese new year gastronomy

A few weeks ago, Chinese New Year festivities came to an end, and today I would like to go over one of their most important aspects: food. What do people eat during Chinese New Year and why?

This article is an adaptation from a series of articles on Chinese New Year written by Luna Zhou recently published on the webpage EsChina Space (Spanish). [Read more…]

Filed Under: Chinese Food, Society Tagged With: Chinese Food, Travel in China

This is not your grandmother’s Tai Chi – A trip to deepest China in search of the original Taiji Quan

November 10, 2014 by Furio Fu 1 Comment

Taijiquan in Chenjiagou

This article was written by Luca Magnabosco who, with a degree in sociology from Trento, lives and works in the remote province of Vicenza. His interests are Chinese culture, folklore, martial arts and social sciences, sometimes simultaneously. When time and money permit, he reads and travels. On his blog, Cambaluq, among other things you will find a more detailed version of his adventures in China.

Once upon a time in China

Take a group of old people, the sleepiest you can find, bring them to a public park and make them do exercises of, um, synchronized gymnastics or something of that sort. I recommend: sloooow! This is the image of Tai Chi popular in the west, where it has been widespread now for decades. Some will tell you it is similar to Yoga, others that it is a form of meditation, the rashest that it is an exotic form of dance.

This is because Tai Chi is the victim of a long series of misunderstandings, starting with its name itself: the most correct transcription would be “Taiji Quan”, generally translated as ”boxing of extreme polarity”. The most important word in this translation is actually Quan, which reminds us how Taiji Quan might be considered a martial art and have self-defense among its original principal purposes, the modern and politically correct way of defining the ability to give somebody a beating. Those elegant circles your grandmother traces in the air with her hands while she’s trying to keep up with the rhythm of her Tai Chi group? It’s really a series of hooks, leverages, thrusts, and blows to the throat and scrotum. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Chinese History, Society, Survival Tips, Travel around Asia Tagged With: Henan, Travel in China

China’s Third Gender: The Woman PhD

September 1, 2014 by Sborto Zhou 2 Comments

Third chinese gender

Note: this is a satirical story and therefore may be rather offensive. If you think that you will find it offensive, this will surely be the case, so don’t read any further.

In the past months, I have had a lot of problems getting a good night’s sleep. This is the first time in my life that something like this has happened to me, so I’m completely obsessed with knowing the reason.

My fantastic neighbors

In the beginning, I thought that my insomnia was to blame on my neighbor, who was training to be the starring actor in the Chinese remake of Indiana Jones.

Each morning around five, I wake up all of a sudden, thinking that something has gone wrong in the conflict between Japan and China over a handful of islands in the middle of nowhere and that the Japanese have started to bomb Beijing. I wake up, take a look out the window, and I see him with his whip. I can’t believe that this god-damned whip manages to make so much freaking noise. Compared to it, New Year’s fireworks seem like nothing but a noisy kid’s toy.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Society Tagged With: Travel in China

Enter the Mantis: Interview with Will, a traditional kung fu practitioner

June 16, 2014 by Cristiano Mei 2 Comments

traditional kungfu in China

My name is Cristiano and I’ve been living and working in China for ten years. In my spare time I love writing and outdoor exercise (PM 2.5 permitting).

I met Will Wain-Williams three years ago, and we immediately became friends. Will is a vigorous martial artist, as well as a tea expert. One of our favorite pastime was spending long hours sipping Chinese tea while discussing about travels or, sometimes, bitching about China.

Will runs Monkey Steals Peach, a website full of information on China, where he talks about his experience with traditional kung fu and his passion for Chinese tea.

Today, in this first article I publish for SDC, I’ll interview him. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Interviews, Society, Stories Tagged With: Travel in China

Why people hate Chinese tourists that travel on a group tour?

May 5, 2014 by Furio Fu 21 Comments

Chinese group tourA Chinese group tour (the guy with the flag is the tour guide)

Last year I spent some months in Chiang Mai, Thailand. But China follows me everywhere. Or at least, this is the impression I got: there were Chinese tourists at every corner, every restaurant and every coffee shop. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Society Tagged With: Book Review, Travel in China

The singles market of People Square, Shanghai

October 7, 2013 by Furio Fu 3 Comments

singles market shanghai

After publishing The Chinese Sex Symbol: What are Chinese women looking for? we received several messages of people claiming that if twenty years ago it was true that in China there was some pressure to get married as soon as possible, nowadays the situation has changed, especially in the big cities.

Really?

Even if I acknowledge that the Chinese society has evolved tremendously in the last years (I’m not blind), the reality is that the pressure to get married is still there, even when it comes down to the so called international metropolises such as Shanghai and Beijing.

But I’m not here to waste your time with my theories. Today I’ll only expose facts. If there wasn’t any pressure to get married, how the hell are you going to explain the photos that I’m sharing today? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Society Tagged With: Shanghai, Travel in China

“Brothers” by Yu Hua: A glance at modern China – Book Review

September 9, 2013 by Sborto Zhou 1 Comment

Brothers by Yu Hua

This article was born last week after I went to a private gynecological hospital in Beijing.

The damned association phenomenon

The fact is that at the doors of this luxury hospital (beside the bathroom that was, as usual, awful) hang up the panels with the specialization of each doctor.

Given my mixed feelings of boredom and curiosity I went around reading a bunch of them. And I was quite surprised when I stumbled upon the following one:

Specialization: Hymen Reconstructive Surgery

I suddenly thought about 兄弟 (Brothers), the novel of Yu Hua. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Books & Movies, Society Tagged With: Book Review, Travel in China

On celebrating Chinese New Year with a Chinese family

March 11, 2013 by Furio Fu Leave a Comment

Chinese New Year

This article was written by Marta Lovisolo, who studies in an high-school at Nanjing since September 2012. She lives with a Chinese family so, when she refers to her dad, mom, sister and so on she’s actually referring to the family that is hosting her.

Click here to read my interview to Marta, an insider point of view on the life of Chinese high-school students.

But I stop here. Let’s Marta do the talk! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Society, Survival Tips Tagged With: Shanxi, Travel in China

Five reasons to love China

February 9, 2012 by Furio Fu 4 Comments

chinese marketChinese Merchants.

The markets

“kuai kuai kaui!” is the mantra you hear along the streets of Beijing, where there is not a market: Beijing is a market.

Luxury market at Xidan Square, Wang Fu Jing or the Village in San Li Tun; antique market at Liu Li Chang; fake market at the Ya Shou or at the Silk Market in Guo Mao; farmers’ market through the secondary streets full of villagers that come at night riding their horses and run away every time the police arrives; sex market inside the red light massages parlors. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Society, Survival Tips Tagged With: Beijing, Travel in China

Five reasons to hate China

February 5, 2012 by Furio Fu 9 Comments

>hate chinaHow to pee on the street…

The daily savageries

Where do I start from?

The Beijiners that every summer wander with the t-shirt rolled-up on the stomach to get some fresh air; the Qingdao people puking in Pijiu Jie (Beer Street); the hygiene (?!) of the restaurants kitchens among the draining of dirty waters, garbage of epic dimension and fishes beheaded on the wet floor; the loud spits, so popular all over the Middle Kingdom; the parents that push the little children to pee on the sidewalks; the free burps at office or the followers of Schwarzenegger that arrive at the gym without t-shirt and let a ring of sweat on each bench?

The traffic

In Beijing even the taxi drivers get lost. Then they scream: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Society, Survival Tips Tagged With: Travel in China

Prostitution in China

January 25, 2012 by Furio Fu 7 Comments

Prostitution in ChinaAn example of business card you may get walking down Nanjing Road, Shanghai.

In Shanghai there are so many prostitutes that I got curious and I did some researches about prostitution in China. One of best source of information on the topics is Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China.

According to the local police, in China there are seven categories of prostitutes (see N. Dougherty’s master thesis for details): [Read more…]

Filed Under: Society, Survival Tips Tagged With: Travel in China

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