Dispatches from an Iranian American Expat: May 9th, 2025
A delayed departure from a worthwhile journey abroad.
So, I lied. This thing won’t drop into your inbox as we’re hurtling through traffic toward our hotel in DC. No, we’ll be in a flying tin can above Jackson Hole. As fate would have it, our departure from the Chinese capital was slightly delayed. What are ya gonna do?
When I first learned we were going to Beijing, I wanted nothing to do with it. In fact, it was on my list of places that were absolute No’s. That list had two cities, and I bet most of y’all could guess the other one.
While my experience there has changed my preconceived notions of the Chinese capital, nothing, not yet at least, will change the way I feel about that other place.
But I digress.
My point in all this is to say that I’m glad I went. Yeah, I’m writing this from Beijing and writing about it in the past tense, because (see above).
I’m serious. What I’m about to say isn’t some canned response, something I’ve been trained to say by diplomatic protocol governing the trailing spouses of actual diplomats.
The last two years have been both rewarding and challenging. It has changed the way I view China, generally, and Beijing, specifically. Two years in any place will do that.
This wasn’t a two-week vacation where I only saw the touristy stuff–the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Terracotta Warriors…you get my point. It wasn’t some experience where I mostly stayed on a compound and never mixed it up with the locals. I lived there in a mixed neighborhood. I drank with the locals, watched them fish unsuccessfully for hours in the Liangma River, cheered for their local soccer team, and sent my daughter to school with their kids.
Let me clear, though, I’m still an interloper. A definitive laowai, I mean my beard kind of makes that clear, and having arrived with very little cultural IQ, I’m not sure I’ve left with much more. Not that I’ve not learned anything, but the last two years have been such an informative period for me that I’m not sure I’ve been able to fully digest what I’ve witnessed, and thus take action on what I’ve supposedly learned.
Don’t worry, folks, I’m not going to come back to the States and start pulling random U-turns in the middle of a busy two-lane city street. And I’ve still not sorted the whole hot and cold food thing yet. If it looks or tastes good, eat it, that’s my motto. I suppose my growing waistline suggests I should alter that ever so slightly.
Over the last few weeks, as we launched headlong into an impending move, I found myself overcome with melancholy. Except maybe that’s the wrong word, as I know the reason for the waves of sadness: I am going to miss that place. I said it last week, too, and I’ll say it again down the road.
I spent some time looking back at some of the photography I took early in my stay, remembering the moments back in the summer of 23, when we fumbled our way through sorting our lives in the city. Then, amid the hottest heat wave in nearly sixty years, I couldn’t have imagined what two years would feel like. We were living day to day, week to week. And then at some point along the way, the fog of finding your way in a new land started to disappear.
Locals started saying hello. Baristas started making my order the moment I walked through the door. And the friendly green grocer patiently waited as I fumbled my way through answering his questions in Mandarin.
I made friends with some non-diplomat expats. We watched the footy together, and despite cheering for different teams, we bonded over the difficulties of living here.
Sure, okay, no one is saying that China, or Beijing, has a monopoly on difficult living for expats. It was more or less an exercise in bonding over shared experiences. But what, if anything, it has done is make me appreciate what immigrants go through even more than I do now. How could anyone do this for a decade or for the rest of their lives? I suppose you just persevere.
It is ironic, too, maybe fitting is a better word, that I’ve basically finished my novel. Like the first draft is done. Editing is still necessary, but the fact is, on the cusp of leaving this old imperial capital, I’ve finished the thing I set out to do from jump, even though I hadn’t started in earnest until this time last year. If my debut novel ever becomes a bestseller, then certainly Beijing will have played its part.
But as we move into the home leave phase of this whole experience, I look forward to seeing friends and family. Having drinks at old stomping grounds. And grilling out again for the first time in way too damn long. And by grilling I mean, I will literally stand at that damn fire and cook some meat all day long. I’m serious…actually, no, I have kids, I can’t do that. I’ll just have to settle for a handful of meals–steaks, pork chops, spatchcock chicken, and anything else I can rustle up.
In the back of my mind, though, I’ll be thinking about the friends I made and processing my experience over the last two years. One, I never really wanted, but one, I’m glad to have had. And, somewhere along the way, I’ll sit down and write the thing that needs to be written.
Say goodbye to China for the long term?
I know! In Beijing, even a BBQ is done by electricity. My friends still living in our hometown have pitied me for this. They often send me photos of fire and meat, with a note--Don't get lost there.
Looking forward to your novel!!