In contemplating what having lived in China for three-quarters of the last decade means to me, I find it interesting that in a lot of ways I feel less sure or informed about this country now than I did in the past. It is, in the truest sense of the term, more or less “home”.

It is less home in all the ways you might expect it to be. Seven years on and I’m still consistently astounded and confounded by the way things are done here. Survival has forced a tempering of tantrums over every petty irritant and ignorance experienced here, but many things have also lost their “that’s so weird and cool” luster. Dirty and dangerous just aren’t as charming as they used to be.

What’s more, my Chinese language skills are still in need of a lot of work. I’ve spent next to no time in recent years improving my language abilities, and it shows. Like many an expat I’ve met, I hit the point where I could get by, and motivation was superseded by necessity. It has, in part inadvertently but in part intentionally, created a wall around my life here that prevents me from any hope of true integration with my adoptive land.

But as much as I still fumble with my tones and vocab, the toughest barrier to really feeling like China is home is that no matter how I feel about the place, I’ll always be a “laowai”. Granted, running a site called “Lost Laowai” illustrates my embracing of the term, but on a personal level, never fully being accepted by the community in which you live is tough.

Added to this is the constant pull of other “home”, the one which I now visit for a holiday, and where all my friends and family have been busily going about their lives for so many years without me. I can’t say I miss them in the ways I did when I first left Canada, I barely know their lives now, but I do miss being a part of it all. I miss things that I didn’t even really know or understand before I left. The value of holiday dinners, having family a short drive away in an emergency, people who have known you longer than your time in any one place.

But then, China is more home than any place I have ever lived.

It has become part of who I “am”. “Hi, I’m Ryan, I live in China.” It is the anecdote of my life. Whether I like it or not, my “foreignerness” has entrenched itself into my character. It is how so many of the people I know, know me. This blog isn’t about a Canadian, about a dad or about a writer cum designer. It is all those things, just as I am, but it is about a non-Chinese dude in China. I’m certain should I ever leave China, the disconnection with that identity will be a challenge.

It is also the homeland of my wife, and I cannot look at it or its people without seeing the reflection of someone I love so deeply. Through her, China has given me more patience and acceptance, as well as a much wider sense of the world and my place in it. Both her and her country have challenged me to grow and develop in ways I never knew I would.

Perhaps most relevantly though, it is the birth place and cultural identity of my son. The very fabric of me has quite literally been interwoven with China through him. Any chance that China wouldn’t forever be some sort of “home” disappeared the moment he cried his first half-Chinese cry. I love my wife, and I love my family, but I didn’t know love before my son — nothing in the world compares to that feeling. Apologies for the cliche, but creative literary devices are too complex to express how simple and true that is. And China, however indirectly, gave that to me.

And whereas Canada gets the distinction of being the place I grew up, the place I went to school, the place where I’m “from”; China will always be the place I became a husband, and a father — where I became an adult really. And for that China is definitely more home.

I’m not sure what the next seven years will bring. I barely expected to spend seven months in China, let alone the past seven years. But, for now at least, China is home, and I couldn’t be happier with that.

If being in the company of wild animals is a gradient; most Western zoos would be further towards “in the wild” and most Chinese zoos would be sitting much nearer the “waiting for slaughter” end of the spectrum.

However, after a very long, hot summer, the weather in Haikou is absolutely beautiful for getting out and doing some site-seeing. Conjuring up just enough cultural relativism to tuck away my misgivings and not ruin our son’s first trip to a zoo, we headed out.

The Haikou zoo is located in Golden Bull Mountain Park (金牛岭公园）Haikou’s largest park, pretty much dead-centre in the city. The entrance fee was 25RMB for adults and 10RMB for kids over 1.2m.

I’ve been to three zoos in my time in China: one in Jinzhou, a very small town that is essentially a suburb of Dalian; the Dalian Forest Zoo; and the Northeast Tiger Forest Park in Haerbin. The Jinzhou zoo was about what you’d expect for a 1RMB zoo in the corner of a small town’s central park. They had some shaggy camels, a bunch of hungry monkeys and one old sad-looking bear, which many years before had gotten loose and killed its keeper (but for a small zoo, apparently it was too valuable to euthanize). The Dalian Forest Zoo was actually pretty decent, and the tiger park was sad but impressive (watching a group of tigers take down a cow is something I’ll not soon forget).

The Haikou zoo fits somewhere between the Jinzhou zoo and the Dalian Forest Zoo. I was happy Casey had the opportunity to see these animals up close (though he was more interested in throwing leaves in the fish pond than marveling at the tigers), but it wasn’t without its sad moments. Sad as in, “awe *tear*” and sad as in “did you really stuff your dead giraffe rather than acquire a new one?”

Yep. The giraffe exhibit featured one large, semi-encased stuffed giraffe. Other surreal moments of the trip were seeing an exhibit of chickens and one of dogs. I kid you not, caged up in between monkeys were a random assortment of dogs (a pair of spaniels, two dalmatians, a German shepherd and a couple others). It’s weird, and maybe it’s because most of the more exotic animals I’ve only ever seen in cages, but seeing the dogs there was the most despairing bit of the day. It’s been pointed out to me that this is actually pretty common in Chinese zoos — even the Shanghai zoo features dogs.

Watching the monkey’s play in their big enclosure was entertaining. I’m not entirely sure why some monkeys got to play in a big “yard” (with stuff to swing on) and some were stuck in little cages. And while sobering to watch, being only a few feet from an absolutely massive tiger got my blood pumping. I will give that to Chinese zoos, they allow you a dangerous amount of proximity to the animals. The zoo also has a (pair?) of tiger cubs born last spring. We didn’t get much of a view of them, other than to glimpse one loudly grunting while chewing on a bone as a somewhat nervous-looking girl cleaned its cage.

I think it’s obvious from my description that I’m a bit torn in my feelings of the day. It was great to get out, great to show Casey animals he had until now only seen in animated form, and great to dust off my camera. Chinese zoos, however, make it tough to forget where most animals sit in the scheme of things here in China.

Photos

Here’s a partial collection of the animals. Notably missing are the hippo and the jaguar — neither were overly cooperative in getting their photo taken — and the snakes/crocodiles, as you had to pay extra to see them. From the entrance of the reptile area, all I could see were cages of chicks and bunnies. We assumed that would be a pretty quick way to ruin Casey’s zoo experience.

Haikou doesn’t have a Starbucks. Or at least according to rumours, doesn’t yet have a Starbucks. However, unlike the rest of China, and much like India and Thailand, we do have branches of Coffee World and Pizza Corner.

The downtown Guomao Coffee World and Pizza Corner was the first Western restaurant we were introduced to after moving down to Haikou. I’d never heard of the chains before, but was looking forward to sampling something not steamed, stir-fried or boiled, and I wasn’t let down. Their pizza, while not earth-shattering and a far cry from the ‘za of home, was more than enough to subdue my comfort food craving.

Unfortunately, its distance from where we live made it a bit of a non-starter for regular visits. I think other parents with young kids will sympathize; when it comes to eating out with a toddler, close to home tends to win out almost every time.

We’re fortunate that where we live in Haikou has a variety of decent Chinese restaurants, and one crappy “pizza” place. As such, I’ve not really been left wanting, with the exception of not having a good spot to get a Starbucks-style coffee nearby.

But now we do. Not 10 minutes from our place is a newly opened Coffee World location, on Haidian Dao’s Wuxi Lu. This morning Maggie, the boy and I decided to take the spot up on its offer of 2-for-1 waffles and see if it was any good. It was.

Prices are about on par with what you’d expect at a Starbucks — iced coffee drinks run 25 RMB (med) to 35 RMB (lrg), and the waffles range from 22 RMB (plain) to 30-ish RMB for fancier stuff. Our berry-covered waffles were 27 RMB (and two for one!). The location is small, much smaller than the downtown spot; and lacks a Pizza Corner, so food is limited to waffles, NY-style bagels, some wraps, pasta, and other simple stuff. But still, it’s a nice addition to the collection of restaurants in our “18-month-old-meltdown-must-run-home” radius.

I should mention that Coffee World isn’t the only Western-style coffee shop (not to be confused with the plethora of UBC clones on every corner). There is a cute café called Milli Coffee just around the corner from the downtown Coffee World, and a newly opened one a few doors down from the Coffee World by us on Haidian Dao. It’s the spot I want to love, but can’t.

Milli’s old-sofas and ambient interior have a bit more charm than Coffee World’s polished cookie-cutter chainishness. However, both times I’ve been there its staff seemed more interested in practicing invisibility than serving customers. What’s more, the drinks are over-priced, especially considering their decor couldn’t have cost more than a day’s worth of iced cappuccino sales. I have a hard time paying a premium to sit on dirty second-hand furniture in a dimly lit place — but that might just be me.

And it has no 2-for-1 waffles (at least until the end of the year). But maybe the near proximity of both locations will be for the betterment of both places, and ultimately us iced-drink lovers.

So Starbucks, this is just to say, we still want you to come to the island, but in making us wait you’re going to have some decent competition when you get here.

I would love to hear the rant on getting the citizenship card as I will be heading down that road in a couple months. It seems like a nightmare and I haven’t even started yet. I plan on calling the Canadian embassy (not known for being super helpful over the phone) to try to make sure that I at least get the birth certificate written correctly so we won’t have any problems there. We are in Xi’An so not exactly a hotbed of Canadians having kids. Anyways, interesting to read your experience and please do share on the citizenship card!

Thanks for the kick in the pants Cam!

It definitely could have gone smoother, but wasn’t as bad as I had braced myself for. The one credit I’ll give the Shanghai consulate is their promptness to reply via e-mail. I had several questions over the course of the process and they were always quick and thurough with their responses. But at the end of the day, dealing with anything “government” and “important” requires a boat load of patience, a lot of flexibility and a stiff drink — it’s actually a fantastic warmup for parenting.

The other thing we had going for us was the fact that Casey’s mom is Chinese. This basically means that no matter what we do with the Canadian government, until we leave China and return with a Canadian passport and Chinese visa in Casey’s little toddler hands, he’s regarded as being a Chinese citizen. This means that we had considerably more time to handle all this stuff than if Maggie and I were both Canadian citizens. Had we been, the Chinese government would have required us to get Casey a visa (and thus a temporary passport) within something like 30 days after his birth.

Also, and this probably isn’t true for all Chinese hospitals, our birth certificate was bilingual, so I didn’t need to have it translated and notified by a Notary. I did require it to be notified, but that was easy enough to have done. Not real cheap (especially considering how low-value anything “notarized” in China is) but not hard either.

The trickiest part was the photos. I thought we had followed the instructions to the T on the application, but there was a small issue and so we had to get them redone. Not a big deal, as there is a photo place right at the base of the building the consulate is in, but their machine was broken. Fortunately the consulate allowed me to submit the application and mail retaken photos from Suzhou, so we didn’t need to make an additional trip to Shanghai.

The site explains that processing times can take up to 18 months, which is just stunning to me, but I suppose on it’s on par with general government efficiency. In reality, it took about 1/3 that time. Unfortunately for us in that time we had moved across the country and were no where near Shanghai.

We had foreseen this and confirmed we could simply update the consulate when we moved and they’d have the citizenship card sent to the Guangzhou consulate instead — a much cheaper and quicker trip. This is where things got a bit frustrating, and time-bendingly confusing.

I updated the consulate in March, and they said no problem. A couple weeks later they informed me that the card had already been shipped, and so would be going to the Shanghai consulate. Asking what my options were, I was told that I could either have someone else pick it up, or have it shipped down to Guangzhou — which would take an extra 3-6 months.

3-6 months? WTF? Apparently, consulates (or, indeed, embassies, I would assume) cannot inter-ship, and so the card would need to be sent all the way back to Canada and re-sent to Guangzhou. If that sounds especially retarded, you’re feeling what I felt. I was told this is due to “security”, but cannot for the life of me work out why it is more secure to send something across the globe and back again than it is to send something by registered overnight delivery domestically.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that it takes so incredibly long to travel between China and Canada. The only method I know of that takes that long is regular post, which is shipped. They can’t possibly be sending identity documents by regular post, can they? Maybe all consulate-bound documents wait until John Baird or one of his crew are headed over, and they all get stuck in their carry-on? You tell me.

Whatever, the Guangzhou trip would have been faster and cheaper, but going up to Shanghai was a nice break from Haikou’s summer heat, and an excellent opportunity to visit friends we hadn’t seen in a few months.

Overall, much smoother and easier (if not slower and more expensive) than organizing visas for Maggie to visit Canada.

Nothing came. Day after day we had beautiful blue skies, fluffy white clouds and only short, scattered showers. Getting closer and closer to the end of September and still no rain, we thought maybe we skipped the rainy season this year.

But then a week ago typhoon Nesat hit, and it hasn’t stopped raining since. The 24-hour period from this Tuesday and Wednesday past saw more precipitation fall on the city than ever in recorded history (333mm). So yeah, we’re wet.

HAIKOU, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) — Heavy rains have flooded 57 villages and triggered excessive high water levels in six reservoirs as of Friday in Haikou, the capital of south China’s island province of Hainan.

Over 5,000 residents in the affected villages have been evacuated to schools and other temporary shelters, and the local government has distributed blankets and other relief materials.

The city has experienced record rainfall, receiving 236 mm of precipitation between Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon, according to the city’s flood and drought prevention office.

Dozens of the city’s small- and medium-sized reservoirs are discharging water to ease pressure.

According to a provincial weather forecast, the downpours will continue to pound Haikou and other eastern areas in the province over the next two to three days.

This morning the rain had stopped (more, slowed to a sprinkle), and so I took Casey and Button out for our regular walk around the neighbourhood (read: chance for Maggie to sleep in). After dodging some large puddles and getting most of the way around the block without problem, we came across an odd scene. Two men were standing in the bike lane with a bucket, picking up fish.

Trying to puzzle out what was going as I walked past them, I then saw that the small pond/reservoir–that usually has at minimum 4-5 feet from surface to its concrete lip–was overflowing and the small minnows were swimming out with the stream and down the storm drains on the road.

In the first photo above you can see the water level nearest the foreground is about 12″ from the concrete edge, there is usually a 3-4 foot drop before the water here. The next photo shows where the edge drops down a bit, and where the water has begun to overflow.

We seem to be fortunate where we are though, as our friends Nicki and Erik are only a few blocks away and this is what the road outside their apartment looked like a couple days ago:

See more photos from Nicki and Erik here

As I write this, the rain has stopped, the road outside our apartment is drying and the sun is trying its best to make an appearance, so perhaps we’ve seen the worst of it. I love rain — the sound of it, the smell of it — and even these extremes haven’t really bothered me. But with a week of no sun and no dryer, I am quickly running out of dry clothes.

The first casualty of Nesat was our papaya tree, which had fallen before dawn yesterday. I say “our” papaya tree, as it’s right outside our kitchen window, but really it’s the community’s — a fact made ever evident by the endless stream of people who walk up and grab some unripe fruit while I’m washing dishes or preparing dinner.

The wind continued to pick up for most of yesterday until it hit hard mid-afternoon. Our water was shut off with little explanation, and while our power flickered the whole duration, friends of ours had their power completely cut off.

Here’s a little video shortly after the typhoon made landfall on the island, it got steadily worse for a couple hours after this:

Business Week: Typhoon Nesat, the strongest to hit China this year, forced the evacuation of 300,000 people, grounded flights and closed markets as it swept past Hong Kong, slammed into the Chinese island of Hainan and headed to Vietnam.

The typhoon, which killed at least 39 people in the Philippines earlier this week, made landfall in Hainan province at 2:30 p.m. local time yesterday with winds as fast as 151 kilometers (94 miles) an hour, the China Meteorological Administration said. In Hong Kong, the storm felled trees, ripped bamboo scaffolding from buildings and forced the city’s stock exchange to halt trading after the highest storm warning in two years was issued. Trading will resume today.

Shortly before dinner the wind died down, the rain stopped and everyone went outside to stretch their legs. The community was a mess. Bits of trees and random building stuff from the construction going on down the road were all over the place. Our community is full of purchased-but-not-lived-in apartments, and it appears someone’s window was left open, which caused a pane of glass to blow out and shatter all over the road.

Mild, by comparison, wind and rain returned after dinner but by late evening it was quiet again. This morning I took Casey and Button out for a walk around the neighbourhood, as is our routine, and was surprised at how much damage the typhoon had caused to the trees both in and around our community.

Here are some photos — apologies for the graininess, I only had my iPod with me:

The road in the photos above is a road a block or so away from our place. The road right outside our community was completely blocked off by fallen debris. I am guessing that most of the trees that have fallen are trees that have been planted for aesthetics, and perhaps aren’t local, or just didn’t have enough time to properly lay down roots. Interestingly, all the recently planted palm trees out on the newly constructed coastal road north of our community were still standing.

The clean-up crews are out in full-force, our water is trickling out of the tap now (unfortunately not quite strong enough to get hot water running, so cold showers for us), dragonflies are filling the air en masse, and the sun is doing its best to reappear.

Only 96 hours until Nalgae arrives.

I’d have to be more than a bit ignorant to move to a tropical island and not expect to cohabitate with the creepy crawlies, but it doesn’t disturb me any less. For the most part though, Haikou isn’t too bad. I’m sure there is a six-legged sea of ‘sects just waiting for me outside the city, but here among the concrete and tile, it’s relatively calm.

But though we live in a new apartment, and it appears to my untrained eye as well-sealed; drop a piece of food (a 15-month-old does little but), and within seconds a ration line of ants has formed with a tin cup and bowl. Leave some fruit out for more than a few minutes and a squadron of fruit flies gather — their tiny little wings a buzzing cadence that if you listen closely enough sounds like Ride of the Valkyries.

Our nightly R&R in front of the TV is routinely interrupted when a big fat flying beetle dive bombs our thought-to-be-secure position on the sofa.

Twice now I’ve been sitting, again in front of the TV, and felt a tickle on my neck and arm. Absentmindedly scratching while hypnotized by Gordon Ramsey’s red-faced rants on Hell’s Kitchen, I was startled to come away with a hand full of legs from a millipede that had made its way up the back of the couch.

Moths, glowbugs, bright-green clingy beetles and a hodge-podge collection of other insects have also sought refuge in our ground-floor apartment.

Spiders of various sizes and behaviors also are common guests, but you know the old saying — the blood-sucking predator of my enemy is my friend (geckos fit in this category as well — really, the more endoskeleton allies I can amass, the better).

But then there’s the f’ing cockroaches. They’re frequent, they’re resilient and they’re massive. I know they’re relatively harmless, but there’s no quicker way to get my arm hairs on end than to catch one of these little suckers speedily crawling through my peripheral vision.

We’ve had roaches in a couple apartments here in China, and they’ve always been the little 1″ long guys. They don’t much bother me. However, something changes when a bug gets to the size where I can hear it walking across the floor.

It’s funny how quickly my otherwise quite rational mind melts and flushes out of my skull with a chill when I see these 3″ long, winged critters scurry across the kitchen, out of the bathroom, or up the bedroom wardrobe. Somewhat remarkably, all of that I’m learning to handle with a bit of grace and a well-wielded shoe.

This morning, however, brought a new level of violation. As is our a.m. routine, I hang out with Casey and a crinkled collection of flashcards on our bed while Maggie heads to our en suite bathroom to brush her teeth. This morning she was in the bathroom for a minute or two when I heard her startled shout. It’s the same noise she makes when she sees everything from an ant to an elephant, so tough to judge.

“What’s up?” I mutter.

“There’s a cockroach in our toothbrush mug!”

Apparently mid-brushing she noticed the critter hanging out at the bottom of the cup we put our toothbrushes in. We’re not talking about a little bug at the bottom of a cup — the thing nearly filled the mug. As is her way with such things, Maggie calmly left the bathroom as if it had been handled (even returning her toothbrush to the overly-occupied cup) and expressed in no uncertain tones that I would need to man up and take care of it.

Two toothbrushes in the trash, a cockroach in the toilet (two flushes, just to be sure), and a VERY well-scrubbed mug later; I’m now officially at war with the sonsofbitches. Mess with my house, mess with my family, but do not fucking mess with my toothbrush.

I know it’s a battle I can’t win. I know that they gather in the walls, drains and other dark cool corners plotting. I know that it’s only a matter of time before one induces the purchase of plane tickets when it finds its way into the mosquito tent that covers our bed. But I’ll be ready. They may be fast and gross and able to survive a nuclear holocaust — but I have pretty big feet. And while this post may work to disprove the idea that a man with big feet has equally big manhood — he does have big shoes. Bring it, fuckers.

When I mention to people in China that I live on Hainan I almost always get a, “Really? that must be great.” And it is. Everything that sold us on moving down here this past March has held its shine. Similarly, the things we steeled ourselves against are also ever present — one of the largest being the unrelenting heat.

Summer in Haikou is hot. Damn hot! But, and this is a bit surprising, it’s cooler than summer in Suzhou/Shanghai.

I can only chock it up to the unrelenting weirdness of China that I can travel 1200 KM south and find cooler weather (and, obviously, not be in the southern hemisphere).

As I’m sure is true with most who move to tropical islands, we migrated here for the environment and the weather. I’ve never been a fan of extremes in temperature, and after half a decade I couldn’t imagine going through another cycle of Suzhou’s bi-polar seasons — hotter than tropical-island-hot in summer and freezing (literally, as there is usually snow) winters. To be fair to the city, Suzhou does have very pleasant spring and autumn periods, all three weeks of them.

In a lot of ways Haikou’s summer is similar to Suzhou’s. Extreme heat with extreme humidity. Where Haikou pulls ahead (in addition to that couple of degrees less of mercury) is that we have the beach, and swimming pools, and lots of sunshine. Suzhou gains most of its summer heat by trapping it in a mass of grey that near-permanently covers the city, Haikou gets its heat from brilliant blue skies and a whole lot of sun. Though the temperature result is the same, emotionally, I’ll take the sunshine every time.

Moving here on the wrong end of summer, the other thing we prepared ourselves for was the rainy/typhoon season. Running from April to October, we’re smack in the middle of it, but according to Wikipedia, the worst of it arrives August-September. Aside from a few full-on rainy days, so far the “rainy season” has amounted to a clockwork-like shower in the mid/late afternoon and sun the rest of the time. If two months of damp is the price we pay, I still think we’re getting a bargain.

Undoubtedly some, if not most, of that feeling of age relates to being a parent now. Nothing forces you to look at the world in more “grown up” terms than when you have someone’s life depending on your ability to make the right decisions. Really impossible, I think, not to mentally age a bit due to the responsibilities being a parent endows you with.

But I don’t feel as old as I thought I would. I’m sure this is common, and I’m betting we’ve all awoken one birthday morn and said, “Huh, when I was 10 I thought 34-year-olds were really old… but I don’t feel like I thought that guy would feel.”

I guess what we don’t see when we’re 10 is that the 34-year-old still has that 10-year-old in them. They’re wearing adult clothes, have adult jobs, and talk about adult things, but they were 10 once and so know how to be a 10-year-old if and when the opportunity arises.

And so as much as being a parent has made me feel my age more than anything else ever has, having a kid also creates those opportunities. I get to sit and watch cartoons, play with blocks and snack on sugary cereal. Sure, I have to pay bills, stress about money and generally just speak adultese, but I’m damn sure that when I turned 25 I wasn’t walking around with “Dance your cares away (clap clap) worries for another day…” stuck in my head (thank you Jim Henson and bit torrent).