Five years in

Five years ago today I checked two bags, boarded Air China flight 986 in SFO, and was on my way to Beijing. When I landed in Beijing Yang, Aidan, and Lydia met me at the airport to welcome me. I remember seeing Yang put Aidan on the ground, place a a flower in his hand, tell him to run to his father.  Aidan ran straight to Jim Courier – the tennis pro – who also happened to be on my flight. Yang smiled, perhaps at Courier, and then it didn’t matter as I was reunited with them. It had been just over two months since they moved to Beijing and as you might imagine both Aidan and Lydia had changed a lot during that time.

Yang and I had been open to moving to Beijing since 2001 but life and work made it an unrealistic fantasy. Then we had our two kids (Elisa wasn’t quite on the radar yet), the a startup I was going slower than I liked, life had generally settled, and we had recovered enough finances where I could do the one thing I really wanted to do. Stop working. For six months, perhaps for the entire two years we planned to be in China.

The new Chaoyangmen condo we purchased in 2004 wasn’t quite ready, so we moved in with Yang’s mom for the first six weeks or so. It was fine, minus the toilet and the shower, and Yang and I got to work on setting up the apartment. Which is to say I followed Yang all over town and nodded my head at furniture and made very helpful comments such as “no, i don’t like that one”.  I spent my mornings at starbucks and savored the coffee and read one great book after the other. (and one really over hyped book that wasn’t very good which shall remain nameless – ok – the da vinci code). We moved into our new apartment as the second tenant in the building. We remained the only tenants for the entire first year.  I signed up for Chinese lessons and rode my bike to school. It was the only time I made any real progress with my Chinese learning and even then it was slow going. At one point my class of six was split into two. I was left with what I like to call “the deep learners”.

One of the reasons I wanted to move to china and take the break from work is I really didn’t know who I was outside of the context of work. My entire adult like I had worked, worked hard, and been reasonably rewarded for it (for that matter I worked in college, in high school, even in primary school as a paperboy. Paperboy still being the toughest job I have had). So, at about month two of not working a couple of things became clear. I wasn’t super happy not working even though I now look back on that time fondly and would gladly stop working again. I told myself then that it was just a phase while I figured out what I wanted to focus on and I think that is mostly true, the same phase people go through when they retire which for me should be around the age of 95. The second thing I realized was cash flow is really important. That spending money doesn’t really stop and savings look a lot smaller with out that incoming paycheck to pay expenses. This was no surprise of course – we had done the math on how long we could maintain without income – but it’s a lot more real when its happening. So it was time to get a job of some sort, both for mental and financial health. I first went for the mental health approach, taking a job to teach engineers how to conduct conference calls in English. I developed the materials and lesson plans I believe are still used to this day. I wasn’t much of a teacher on my natural ability and they fired me after my second class. I got paid something like $40 for 20 hours of work.

After six weeks of job hunting – in between runs and afternoon reads – both Yang and I landed jobs. Yang wasn’t really happy with the title of her job but it paid really well. Mine, well, it didn’t pay so well. But it was a new experience and we had positive cash flow again.

We (or at least me) was still planning on returning to the states after two years when I accepted the job. And then that reset the clock for another two years as I internally made a commitment to my new employer.  And then that time was very busy with us both working and two small kids. The time flew by and then we had to make the decision – stay or go. I was pretty adamant that we had to move back when Aidan went to school, that I could not put up with the Chinese school system. Then someone clued me in that kindergarten is really just advanced pre-school, it is first grade that matters. So that pushed things out one more year. Then at a random Christmas dinner in Shanghai we met an Aussie/Chinese couple with kids and the husband made the case that there is no way they will learn to read/write fluent Chinese outside of China. That they need to stay at least until high school. And that the Chinese school system does lay a strong foundation academically that will serve them well long term. The trick is to switch them to a western education at some point so they can learn the things western students do well. So that got me thinking a bit longer term and then…

And then there was Elisa. And Yang’s business. And visions of Yang being a minivan mom in the northwest. And visions of early retirement if the business goes well. So we are here as much as we’ve been anywhere. And the easter egg candies the kids hunted yesterday sure tastes good when they are sleeping.