Plus Three: March 2025

Farewell, China.

Well, farewell for now. This isn't the first time I've left China, but now that I'm married to someone from there, I will certainly be back. But amazingly Ella's visa was granted, and we are starting our new lives in Portugal. Before we get to that, I need to say a (temporary) goodbye to this place.

When I first left Mainland China back in 2012, I never really expected to return here. But along my journey of moving onto Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam (briefly) and Thailand again, I met the most amazing person ever, who just so happened to be Chinese. I would have followed her literally anywhere, but with both of us feeling we wanted a change from Bangkok, we settled on Guangzhou.

It was an interesting 2 years there. We met some amazing people, and some lifelong friends. But at the same time, it never really felt like "home" to us. I think we both knew early on this was a temporary stopover. Ella especially changed a lot during that time, learning a lot about what she wants, and especially doesn't want, career wise. The one highlight of Guangzhou for us was the Xiaobei District, which is a working-class neighborhood full of immigrants mostly from Africa and India. It's not a place that tourists usually go, but we found ourselves spending almost every weekend there. And maybe this island of a different culture in the middle of a Chinese city let us realize what's important to us - we like international places. Certainly Bangkok had plenty, it being one of the most visited cities in the world. Guangzhou wasn't it, but we still had a lot of great memories.

I mean, getting married was the #1 memory.

Loved Nansha Temple

So pretty!

When mom and dad visited.

Good folks. All of em.

We fit in much better in Shanghai. It is maybe the only place other than Beijing where you can have some Biang Biang Noodles from Shaanxi Province, then walk across the street and get a taco. We met people from all around the world there, and it felt like home. There was a thought in the back of my mind that I may spend decades, or even the rest of my life here. And it would be possible. It does have the ~~largest~~ 2nd largest metro system in the world, a title it constantly trades with Beijing. The weather is usually nice, it's well connected, has lots to do, and is overall a nice place to live. But everything changed when the Fire Nation atta... I mean, when COVID happened. I don't want to dwell on COVID and the lockdown, I've certainly done plenty of that. But I think like a lot of people, that was a bit of an inflection point. We certainly had a lot of time to think. And that maybe China wasn't the perfect spot for us. Or at least, we needed a backup. Ella was quite taken with eastern Europe during our trip last year, so that seemed like a good enough place to try. After a lot of research, we found Portugal's visa was possible, and the rest is history.

Another wedding!

Many of our weekends

Zhujiajiao is really beautiful

The last night before lockdown

The first picture of freedom. My long hair!

More good people

Will miss this crazy crew

The "potentially deadly" hotpot

Sort of. I think I could also count Qujing, Yunnan as another place I've lived. We planned on moving here for a month or two to sort out the visa, but it turned out to be 8. Crazy to think that I lived in Hangzhou and Taipei only 4 months longer than here. But while I had been here many times to visit family, it was never a long trip. It has been interesting living with the mother and father in-law all that time. They are lovely people, and we had some great moments together. Hearing stories of young Ella, making people laugh when I speak the Qujing dialect, and since I'm probably the only foreigner within a 100km radius, I'm the "foreign diplomat" to explain whenever the US does something weird. But Qujing is too small, too quiet, for us - I mean, the extent of international food is one of two McDonald's in the city. It is a very chill place though, and working a few years in a western country or Shanghai may give you enough money to retire here. I mean, rent is $250 a month, and a meal in a local restaurant is $1.50. To process the visa, we had to make a lot of trips to the capital, Kunming. And I do mean a lot. But Kunming is a super cool place. Part of it is just in comparison to Qujing, but similar to Guangzhou's African community, it also has its own pocket of "internationality" with the Southeast Asian community. In truth we didn't really do much that was notable in Kunming - ate and drank, went to a few museums and temples. It even snowed one day, which was actually really lovely. But there's just something unique about Kunming, maybe because Yunnan itself is unique. For example they eat a lot of goat cheese, flowers, and all sorts of mushrooms, which is unusual even for China. There are countless wild mushroom hotpots, packed with people, and we gave it a try on one of our visits. It's a bit daunting, because they don't even give you utensils at first - you have to wait 18 minutes before eating to make sure a bad one didn't slip in. And they take a sample of your food, with your phone number, just in case. So, that's an experience.

So while we liked Kunming, at the same time we acknowledged it would be too small for us, and be only a year or two stopover. I think finally, it is time to move on. Certainly I will be back to Yunnan. Ella's parents aren't going anywhere. But I'd like to end with some of my favorite photos of my time here, to remember just how special of a place China is to me. See you again soon.