Fear and loathing in China?

The world is afraid of China and for good reason. China is big, smart, poor enough to be desperate, governed by fast and decisive Communists, lax in its legal structure, sometimes draconian in its punishments, and rich. It saves and invests, saves and invests, and it knows and is proud of its strengths.

Coming to China as an expat gives you a sense of superiority over all of this though. We feel protected by our American passport, multinational employers, Western education, high salaries compared to locals, Westerner-run grocery stores, and the knowledge that we’re just one plane ride away from home. We feel that by having confronted the beast head on, we’ve somehow conquered it.

However, I’ve recently felt a resurging awareness of China’s strength, specifically over my own life. It was a challenging week for me. My husband and I were engaged in that endless, nobody-wins game of who’s right and wrong, and the crux – China. My husband brought me to here so that I could finally have the life I always longed for in New York – lower stress with time to just write and be a mom. He had a classic prince on white horse vision, so he just couldn’t understand why I was not a more grateful princess, thrilled to be rescued. My response: that uninterrupted white beach of peacefulness my prince thought he dropped me off on – it is indeed beautiful and full of potential, but the shoreline is also dirtied with litter, the beach has too many visitors during the day, and no one is able to sell me a decent umbrella in English.

We finally agreed to a truce of understanding around three in the morning on Thursday, after which my mind had time to reflect. He is right – here in China I have everything I want. I have time, money, help, and his work lets him come home every night to support and comfort me. I never had these things in New York. It should feel idyllic.

Yet, I’ve continued to be bogged down by a sense that I should be doing more, specifically, I should be working, for money. (For the record, motherhood is work, horrifically underpaid work. Make no mistake about that.) This weekend, I finally realized it’s partly because I am afraid of the same thing other people are – the bigness of China. I am afraid of not learning enough Chinese, not continuing some sort of money-earning career, and not meeting enough professional people outside my mommy-circle because I worry China will take over the economic world in ways we can’t yet imagine. I don’t want to wake up on my second child’s first day of school and feel I missed an immense opportunity to prepare myself for the endless hours ahead of me.

However, likewise, I’m afraid of committing to too much work outside of writing and motherhood. I don’t want to lose this precious time with my children and my creative self. Plus I’m pregnant; I want to be relaxed and accepting of the gifts God has given me in the now. So where to draw the line? Find balance?

I still wasn’t sure until last night when my husband and I went out to listen to some jazz music together. A few years back, when I used to live in London and he in New York, we met in Paris for a long weekend. It was winter and grey, but it was still Paris – French, adorable and painfully romantic. We were still just dating, hadn’t yet changed one diaper, and we finally had enough money to really enjoy the city. We drank hot chocolate at cafés where great writers used to sit, walked through art museums hand-in-hand, ate warm stews in fire lit cafes, drank at expensive cocktail lounges, and walked endlessly through the streets stopping occasional for coffee or crepes whenever we needed a snack, and listened to jazz, lots of jazz every night. In Paris, living well is a purpose unto itself.

At the time, I was a banker and I left the city with a longing (as so many others do) to just stay there forever, to never return to my drearier office-bound life in London with the stiffer English. I vowed to myself that after that, whenever given the chance to enjoy life’s beauty, I would drink it in as I did that weekend. The vow stayed for years – I soon quit my job to be a writer. I took a month off to travel to Spain with my brother, I got massages, I walked New York with no purpose, I didn’t worry about anything, and I absorbed enough sunshine daily to give my face its life back.

Yet somewhere, between my first abrupt move to and from China and my second uprooting, I lost that attitude entirely. I became afraid for my mortgage, my nanny’s salary, and my ability to guide my daughter through all the changes. I blamed China wherever I could. First it sent my life into turmoil and then, right when I’d gotten resettled in New York, it sucked me back. It made my life harsh, cold, and difficult. But while I sat in the music on Saturday, I realized that those were all excuses; I’d just given in to the difficult circumstances. I’d let too much fear in - fear that if I don’t live in fear, something big will surprise and take over my life again. Worse, I’d come to believe that with fear, I would be protected.

But it simply isn’t true. In fact, I see now that fear has been doing the opposite. As a motivator, it has been tortuously illusive, making me think one route is a solution and then, once I choose it, pointing out the flaws and spreading me thin in another direction. It has served to exhaust me, and make me pursue nothing wholeheartedly. It has made me believe, time and time again, that as a writer, I will ultimately fail because it is not practical, most people cannot do it, and that with more money (that one cannot have with writing), all problems can be avoided.

So I’ve vowed to turn back the clock in my mind, and with that in mind, I actually see China in a different light. China is not to be feared, it is to be embraced because it is a shining example of what a country can do if it is not afraid. China does not run on fear. It runs on adrenaline. It’s in the frenetic shopping mall lights, the all night construction efforts, and the grand displays of pride every chance it gets. It uses the hardships of its past (damaged culture, poverty) as opportunities to create a brand new future. It knows what it wants, its people see the possibilities and it is making all efforts it can to get there. I think we can all learn from it. It as an example of what a nation can do when it puts its mind to it, and what can be accomplished when people look forward and not backwards.