Living in China as an expat is like going to a jack-of-all trades vocational school. You’re building quite a resume for your next career.
1. Medical Doctor
You’ve become a pro at figuring out what ails you, mostly because you want to avoid joining the masses holding IV bags on laundry poles at the local clinic. Between WebMD, Where There Is No Doctor, and video chats with your mom, you generally get the diagnosis right.
2. Pharmacist
Along with the self-diagnosis comes the self-medication. Back home, that refers to donuts and whisky; here it means OTC amoxicillin. (And yet you’ve still managed to have far fewer rounds of antibiotics than the general populace.)
3. English Teacher/Tutor
Because no matter what you came here to do, there is a good chance this made it onto your resume at least once.
4. Plumber
Amazing how you never gave much of a thought to pipes before you got here, huh? But now you’ve cleared out sink drains, un-gucked faucets, installed shower heads, filled water traps, re-routed pipes and plunged toilets like never before. Extra sparkles in your crown if you’ve installed a bathtub yourself. Bigger, brighter sparkles if you’ve found a way to fix the sewer stench leaching into your bathroom.
5. Hipster Chef
Before coming to China, you honestly didn’t know certain things could be made in your own kitchen, like sour cream or apple butter. You’ve blown past all that, and now even your kombucha-brewing friends back home are impressed. You’ve made your own sourdough starter, cultured your own yogurt, ground your own wheat berries, and even made brownies without a mix. You’ve roasted, smoked, basted, and baked more than you knew was possible. And you’ve done it all with an oven the size of carry-on luggage.
6. Electrician
You’ve gotten quite the education on 110V versus 220V, how to replace breakers, and why you can’t run three appliances at once if they’re on the same circuit. After living here a while, it’s not such a big deal to rewire a switch, run cables all over your apartment since there aren’t enough outlets, or install a light fixture to replace the unlicensed Garfield + Tinkerbell one.
7. Counterfeit Currency Expert
Sure, when you were fresh off the boat, you may have gotten slipped a few fakies. That was before you realized someone would actually make the effort to counterfeit 10 kuai bills. Now you know all the tricks: tilt the bill to see the iridescent strip, hold it up to the light to look for the watermark, rub Mao’s collar and the wavy bumps on the side, and, finally, glare suspiciously at the shopkeeper who just gave it to you before flicking it around a few times to test its crispness. Governments around the world need these skills.
8. Butcher
You’ve learned more about cutting apart a chicken carcass and identifying its internal organs than you ever wanted to know. You’ve bought a whole rack of ribs just so you can cut them “the right way,” and you’ve possibly even cured your own ham.
9. Tour Guide
You get to practice this one every time friends or family come to visit. You know which places are tourist traps, which parks are hidden gems, what time to get to the restaurant to beat the crowds, and, as a bonus, how to bargain a souvenir T-shirt down to a price even the locals are impressed by.
10. VPN Salesman
You know the pros and cons of every VPN out there, and have probably convinced new China arrivals on the virtues of your favorite. You have a system for which remote server connection works best at which time of day. (USA via Singapore in the morning, Dallas 2 after lunch.)
11. Economist
Never before have you paid so much attention to exchange rates, or understood so intimately how the price of pork can affect everything.
12. Celebrity
You know what it’s like to have an entire restaurant stop and stare when you enter, to be “secretly” followed by groups of giggling teenage girls, and to have elderly men give you big smiles and thumbs-up just for being you. You’re now used to the paparazzi who photograph you everywhere you go, and the random strangers who want your opinion on everything from fashion to food to politics. You just need to practice your Jimmy Fallon lip sync battle songs, and you’ll be all set to join the ranks of the Uber-Famous.
13. Taobao Personal Shopper
Please, oh please, let this be a real career.
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June 11, 2015 at 5:58 am
Oh how I love every word of this! #1 was the result of taking our son’s stitches out ourselves because the doctor refused to do it if we stayed in the room with him (so I flounced out and we did it while he slept that night). One you didn’t list which I suppose would only happen to some people is veterinarian. From figuring out how to humanely euthanize a paralyzed hamster with baking soda, vinegar, a jar and a tube, to giving cats antibiotic injections and removing their stitches after surgery (still wouldn’t do the surgery myself yet).
As for #2, I learned early on never to tell them what you want the medicine for or let them see the afflicted child, or you’ve won a long lecture on proper care and opinions about what the illness actually is, along with boxes and boxes of Chinese medicine, but not the one medicine you know you need. I used to end up buying what they gave me and sneaking away to another pharmacy to try again. It took me three pharmacies to get Prednisone for my son’s croup (can you believe you can get that OTC?!).
#5 All of the outlets in our house are on one circuit! I can’t even get my head around that. Yet I am usually able to bake in my luggage-sized oven and run the ac and blowdry my hair at the same time. (The lights are on different circuits according to room.)
#10 made me laugh, and I’m pretty sure #13 IS a real thing. I know someone who’s going to use a Taobao agent when she moves to Hong Kong. (I’ve often wished I could charge for it, too.)
June 12, 2015 at 4:19 am
We also removed a child’s stitches ourselves, but haven’t yet had to play vet like that. I didn’t know about the prednisone. Whoa.
It’s good to know becoming a Taobao agent is a viable future career! I suppose it’s more lucrative if you live where there’s a Sam’s Club or IKEA, right?
June 12, 2015 at 8:57 am
Emily, I’ve so enjoyed finding your blog, it’s like reliving my years in China again. I lived in China in the middle 90’s, way before the interwebs or VPNs or even email. So I experienced things like waiting for 6 weeks each way for letters to come and go to find out smallest details of family life back home. But I sooo can relate to most of these others. I used to tell my friends that my life in central China (there were 12 waiguoren in a small city of 6 million) was just like being Brad Pitt whenever I went out, with fan-girls, paparazzi and TV & movie offers! And I loved to cook and eat out and bike around and take taxi rides in a motorcycle side-car and use my enormous height advantage (I’m 6’0″) to help my friends get on the bus and push my way to the front (haha as if there is a front) of the queue at the post office. In those days, housing was assigned for laowai, and big brother always had an ear at the door, so we used to turn up the TV really loudly when we wanted to chat privately. I return every couple of years with my wife or leading groups – and I miss it! Thanks for sharing and writing about your life t here now! I love it! Cheers!
June 12, 2015 at 12:27 pm
Hi, Charles! I’m so glad you are enjoying the blog, and glad you can relate. So much has changed about China in the past twenty years, and yet, so much has stayed the same. 6’0″ is still “enormous.” 😉
June 28, 2015 at 9:33 pm
I have mentally written this list so many times! Love it! I am a big city laowai but there are very few westerners where we live (I think my kids may be the only white kids in a city of 5 million) so I can relate to loads of your experiences – we still take photos with people in the park and taobao has changed my life! I also make yoghurt and cure ham and now even make m own sausages (with a sausage machine bought off taobao!) What a fun life!
June 28, 2015 at 10:30 pm
Wow, Catherine, that’s pretty unique to be both in a big city AND have there be so few Westerners. It sounds like you are doing great there! I’m very impressed by the Taobao sausage machine. 加油！
July 29, 2015 at 7:35 pm
YES! Oh my goodness. When your Taobao-shopping startup gets off the ground, would you please hire me? I think 90% of my motivation in literacy is from Taobao! 🙂
July 29, 2015 at 10:52 pm
You got it, Samantha! And, hey, we’ll take any motivation we can get for learning characters.
October 27, 2015 at 7:56 am
Oh man, this made my entire day to read this. I spent 6 months in Shenyang, and I can so relate to many of these things. Especially the celebrity one! Too good.
I stumbled upon your blog when an expat friend posted your extrovert article to Facebook. Don’t be alarmed, but I spent the last 30-45 minutes reading many of your posts. I plan to frequent this blog now that I have found it. Spending time in China, even just for 6 months, changed my life in so many ways. I rarely get to read about it or talk about it with anyone in the States, so it is refreshing to read and reminisce on those memories. I’m sure you can relate. My husband and I are making a trip to Chengdu in April, we will most likely move there in the next 5-6 years for business purposes. I have vivid day-dreams of my jiaozi eating days, and am consistently unimpressed with the American substitutes. Just not the same, ya know?
Anyway, all that rambling to say, from one celebrity to another, thank you for your open transparency about life overseas. Cheers.
October 27, 2015 at 4:52 pm
Thanks so much, Mackenzie! It truly is a challenge to talk about overseas experiences with those who have not gone through something similar. It’s hard to explain unless you’ve lived it. I’m very glad if my blog can help you reminisce and process your time in China, and you are welcome to spend as much time here as you like. 🙂 You’ll be in good company. (Apologies if it makes you miss real jiaozi, though!)
I hope your trip to Chengdu goes well. I’ve wanted to visit that city for a while now, but it hasn’t worked out yet. Say hi to the pandas and IKEA for me!
January 10, 2016 at 3:42 am
Squatter – never touching a toilet has its advantages outside China, too.
Intl Sign Language/charades expert – when broken mandarin isn’t working.
Model – if I had a nickel for every time I had my photo taken.
Trade show attraction – we passed out fliers at a pesticide trade show for a few hundred dollars our first year.
We work at SIAS Univeristy with 195 expats living in hyper community, this has prepared us for roles as mediators, lawyers and pastors when we least expect it.
January 10, 2016 at 6:19 pm
Good additions to the list, Aaron!
January 12, 2016 at 3:12 pm
Loved it although as an Asian American woman I got looked over several times. I did become an expert toilet unplugged though. I’ve had to open the tank and replace the broken chain with twine or a paper clip. Whatever works.
February 7, 2017 at 9:51 pm
salut