Shanghai is a good place for immigrants. (And I have feelings about it.)

Travelers waiting in line at immigration at Shanghai Pudong Airport. Image source.

Because of everything happening with the coronavirus (which has now been named COVID-19), I'm thinking about how it's good I live in Shanghai instead of another city in China. Shanghai has only had around 300 cases of the coronavirus, and the majority of them have already recovered. I feel confident in how the city of Shanghai is handling this. The government extended the Chinese New Year holiday by 1 week so that people would stay at home, and now that we're back to work, seems like the majority of people are actually working from home anyway.

I have feelings about how I'm glad I'm in Shanghai instead of elsewhere in China, but maybe that doesn't make sense. I don't actually know the situation in other places in China- except that it sucks in Hubei province. As for other places, I've just heard a few anecdotes on social media but I have no idea what the overall situation is, and whether it's better or worse than in Shanghai.

Nevertheless, I have feelings. And they're not really feelings about the coronavirus situation. They're feelings about being an immigrant. And culture. And boundaries. And giving up everything for Jesus.

Because, here's the thing. Here's the reason why I live in Shanghai: When I first moved to China in 2013, I lived in a "small city." In China, a "small city" means it "only" has 4 million people. And I met Hendrix and we started dating- and he lived in Shanghai. So after a while, I moved to Shanghai to be with him.

That's it. That's the reason I moved to Shanghai.

When I first came to China, I didn't care what area I lived in. I just wanted to be somewhere where they spoke Mandarin. That's it; that was my only criteria. I was totally willing to be "out in the middle of nowhere." It didn't matter to me; I didn't view my own culture as something I should value and hold on to, and so I did not care AT ALL if there was not one single international person living there and not one single Subway restaurant.

I wanted to experience China. Totally immersed in a foreign culture. I was highly skeptical of any talk about "here is where you can go to meet other English speakers" or anything like that- anything that suggested I would want to have connections with people and things from my own culture. I didn't want that; I wanted to experience the "real" China. Not be "coddled."

I was fine with giving up everything. Because all my life I was taught that that's what Christians are supposed to do. Giving up everything was talked about in church like it was totally normal and expected.

I didn't know about culture. I didn't know about boundaries. I didn't know that what's mine is mine. My culture and my identity. That I'm allowed to keep those things and not give them up.

And then, accidentally, because I happened to be dating a boy who lived in Shanghai, I came to Shanghai. An international city. A very good place for me as an immigrant- well, it's good for me now because now I'm connected with the international community here, and it's so good and life-giving to have friends from the US and also a diverse bunch of other countries too. But at the beginning, when I first moved to Shanghai, I didn't seek that out at all. I even felt bad for talking to my psychologist in English, when I was in therapy for depression. 40-minute sessions with a psychologist who studied in the US... and I felt like it meant I wasn't good enough. We're in China, we're supposed to speak Chinese. I didn't know that my native language is mine and there's nothing wrong with holding on to it. I have that right. It doesn't mean I'm failing as an immigrant.

Shanghai has a big international community. It has restaurants with every kind of international food. It has international hospitals; I have experienced the Chinese medical system and I'm not willing to do that again. It has Pudong International Airport, with direct flights to the US. It has a US consulate- which I've had to go to a bunch of times.

All things that are extremely good for me, as an American living here. But when I moved here I truly believed that none of that mattered.

I learned about cultural differences several years before I learned about boundaries. Way back when, the first time I came to China, it was for a summer mission trip, and we had to do training beforehand about how to accept the cultural differences we would encounter. That training was extremely useful and eye-opening for me; before that, I never imagined that there could be places in the world that do things so incredibly differently from how I'm used to.

The basic idea was, we're going on this mission trip to China, and whatever weird thing gets sprung on us, we just have to accept. Eat the food we're given without acting like it's "weird." If our Chinese friends tell us we have to wear rubbery sandals in their home, well, then we have to.

And I'm not sure how to talk about this, because all of that is true. If you're in a foreign culture, you don't know what behaviors might accidentally come across as rude. You don't know if the "weird" thing you'd rather not do actually has a huge amount of meaning attached to it.

But where do boundaries fit in here?

My answer, now that I've lived here for 6 and a half years (and known about boundaries for maybe... 3 years?) is this: I've adapted my lifestyle so that there are some Chinese things I do and some that I don't. It's sort of an equilibrium based on how big of a deal the thing is for Chinese people, how much I do or don't want to participate in it, and how much of a hassle it is for me to opt out.

For example, I don't eat seafood. Yeah, Chinese people see me as unusual for not eating seafood, but it's not a big deal. It's easy for them to understand that perhaps as an immigrant, I don't like Chinese food, so they are accepting of whatever food restrictions I tell them I have.

Another example: Apparently when someone visits your home, you have to stand up to greet them, and also stand up to say bye when they leave. We were at Hendrix's mom's home and one of her friends came, some stranger I don't know, and I was doing my own thing in another room, and they popped in with the visitor to say hi, and I said hi but didn't stand up, and APPARENTLY THAT WAS HORRIBLY OFFENSIVE OR SOMETHING. Okay, whatever, if it's a big deal to them, then I can stand up. It's not a problem. But see, it's important to know how big of a deal it is to other people before I decide "nah I'm not into that."

And I guess for that mission trip, because it was the first time I had ever been in China and I didn't have a CLUE about ANYTHING, just accepting everything was the right approach. But when I'm living here long-term, it's not. It's definitely not. And when I'm married to a Chinese man, it's not.

See now that I have a baby, I'm in a bunch of online mom groups for international moms in China. Some of the women are married to Chinese men, and they talk a lot about how difficult it is to raise kids when the parents come from such different cultural backgrounds.

Some of them married men from the Chinese countryside, and apparently when they go visit their in-laws out in the middle of nowhere, there's no heat, people there don't use soap when they wash their hands, and so on. I don't know how to say this... well, it's about the habits that people who are poor and less educated have, and I don't want to live that way. But I don't know how to talk about it because I don't want to sound like I believe I'm "better" than them. I'm not "better" than anyone, and there's no reason I "deserve" to have a nice always-had-enough-money American background. It's just the randomness of where I was born. That's privilege.

And now, because of boundaries, I believe it's okay to "not want to live that way." To be unwilling to go there and live like that. But ... I have that choice, and other people don't. That's privilege.

And in the Christianity I used to believe, it was definitely NOT okay to "not want to live that way." We had to be willing to give up EVERYTHING if God "called" us. We weren't allowed to have boundaries with God.

But when I started dating Hendrix, I didn't care about any of that. When I first visited his hometown, I was 100% ready to accept whatever "weird" things I might encounter. (As it turned out, there wasn't anything too "weird." Seemed pretty typical by Chinese standards.)

When we started dating... I didn't even care that he could speak English. He could speak English well back then, and now that he's been talking to me all these years he's totally fluent with barely any accent at all. (Or rather, he has an accent which has greatly puzzled many people as they try to place it ... they ask, are you Chinese or not? did you study overseas? are you from Hong Kong? are you British?) But I thought it would be fine for me to date a guy who didn't speak English. I'm in China; I should speak Chinese. I would be a loser if I needed to speak English. I didn't understand that I had a culture and that it mattered and it isn't healthy for me to give that up.

So yes, I am now really glad Hendrix speaks English so well. We visit my family, we travel in the US, we meet international friends in Shanghai, and all of that is no problem for him.

But recently my mom said, she wishes she could talk to Hendrix's family. She wants to have a good relationship with my in-laws, but they don't speak English. I never considered that. I ... well, to put it bluntly, I thought it was a sin to want things. That's the core of the issue.

Some of the moms in these groups talk about the totally-not-true "medical" "facts" that their in-laws believe. Like "after the baby is 6 months old, you can't breastfeed anymore because your milk is basically just water with no nutritional value." Or "if you smoke, you won't get the coronavirus." And ... imagine trying to raise a child in that environment. Having to deal with all these wrong beliefs and Chinese traditions that they want you to do. Oh, and did I mention yuezi (月子)? Yuezi is the month right after a woman gives birth to a baby, and the woman has to just lay around, wear way too many layers of clothing, and not wash her hair. (Okay, that's my extremely biased description of it...) People in these mom groups talk about "before my baby was born, I made it VERY CLEAR I will NOT be doing yuezi." That's boundaries.

Hendrix's mom lives with us now, because we need her to help take care of Square Root. And I have had disagreements and boundary problems with her. Fortunately nothing as bad as what some of these moms in the social media groups talk about. The "weird" things she believes are not that bad. Mainly she's just irrationally afraid that the baby is cold, when he is clearly not cold.

But my point is, I did not consider ANY of this AT ALL all those years ago when I was like "I am attracted to Chinese men." And I don't know how to talk about this, how to talk about culture and compatibility in a relationship. The fairy tales are always about "love conquers all" even when the two people come from very different backgrounds. Or about how interracial relationships are apparently going to end racism.

Is it okay to say I'm glad I didn't marry a man who grew up poor in the Chinese countryside and has a bunch of weird superstitions? I don't know how to talk about this, because the fairy tales say that all that matters is being in love, and it would be wrong to consider something as "superficial" as money.

And another thing: I've read a few news articles about babies who tested positive for the coronavirus, and so they were hospitalized and their parents weren't allowed to see them. That's how the system works in China- if a child has a serious problem and is hospitalized, they're separated from their parents.

I don't want to live that way. And again, I realize that I'm incredibly privileged; I can just "opt out" and go to an international hospital and pay scads of money for my health insurance plan that covers it. (Even so, there are some situations where an international hospital would need to transfer patients to a Chinese hospital- so yes, there still is a possibility that I wouldn't be able to see my child if that happened.)

So... where does this leave us? How do I sum this up? It's about privilege and boundaries and culture and babies and marriage and giving everything to God. It's about luck, how I'm connected with the international community in Shanghai even though I didn't value it, how I'm married to a man who can speak English and isn't trying to get me to do any unreasonable Chinese traditions, even though I didn't care one bit about that when we started dating. How I've learned to not just "accept" all the cultural differences and "give up" everything I want; no, I am allowed to have my own culture, my own language, my boundaries. And how this whole thing is wrapped up in privilege, every single part of it, but maybe that's not a bad thing.

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Related:
Culture, Objectivity, God, and the Real Reason I Moved to China

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All my posts about COVID-19:
I'm in Shanghai, and I'm concerned about the coronavirus (January 23)
An update on the situation in Shanghai (January 28)
About Compassion and Reading the News (January 29)
Welcome Baby Square Root! (February 3)
Remember the old days when we used to go outside? (February 4)
So we're (sort of) back to work here in Shanghai (February 12)
Blogaround (February 13)
Blogaround (February 20)
Shanghai is a good place for immigrants. (And I have feelings about it.) (February 24)
Blogaround (February 27)
Well *now* I'm glad I stayed in China (March 8)
The Weirdest Deja Vu (March 15)
Blogaround (March 19)
I'm an American in China. I CANNOT BELIEVE Some of You Are Still Going Out. (March 22)
Blogaround (March 25)
China Bans Foreigners (Like Me) From Entering the Country (March 29)
List of People Who Are Not Allowed to Call Themselves "Pro-Life" (April 2)
Blogaround (April 3)
... all right now I have way too many posts to keep updating this list. You can find them all on the COVID-19 tag.