We ended up dividing Casey’s first birthday celebrations into two. For his actual birthday we hit the local park and took him on the Ferris Wheel. It was funny to see Maggie tense up as we neared the top — I truly hope we get the opportunity to visit a real amusement park at some point and I can get her on a proper roller coaster. The park, only a few blocks from our apartment, is a frequent dog walk for me; however, this was the first time I really explored the different rides and stuff they have there. It’s pretty much a fully functional fairground, complete with games and everything.

On the way back from the park we stopped at a local bakery and ordered a birthday cake for his birthday party a few days later. We also grabbed a little cake for that evening, as a Wednesday or not, I didn’t think it was right for the kid to not have cake on the day of his first birthday. Quite unsurprisingly, his first experience with birthday cake was a huge hit.

A couple days after his birthday we did a small party with some friends, grabbing lunch and retiring to our place for cake and some mid-afternoon drinking. The downside to having a kid is that it severily truncates the lateness that you can stay up drinking socializing with friends. The upside is that it completely opens up the door to drinking in the afternoon.

I really wish all our friends and family could have been with us to celebrate this special day, but all-in-all it was good times. And as Casey’s not going to remember any of it but the pictures, we got lots of those too!

I leave in a couple hours to grab the shuttle from Suzhou to the Shanghai Pudong airport where I’ll collect what is sure to be a slightly achy and jet lagged version of my friend. I’m super excited. Of course because it’s been a year and a half since I’ve seen my friend, but I think the excitement has much more to do with the anticipation of sharing a part of my life that despite being friends for nearly 20 years, he’s virtually unaware of.

Much like when I brought Maggie home to Canada the Christmas after we got married, it was great for her to meet the parts of my family she hadn’t met, and it was good to visit home — but the most interesting part was sharing with her a whole side of my life that she had never experienced. She only knew “Ryan in China”, and had never met “Ryan in Canada” – his friends, his hometown, his memories, etc.

Cory and I up at his cottage in 2004, the summer before I left for China. The fish were small, but the beer helped.

Likewise, Cory and I grew up together. We weathered those awkward and painful high school years together. We witnessed each others first loves, first loves lost (still trying to remember where we left her), first jobs, first time driving, first time drinking, first time leaving home, etc. As a guy with two (wonderful) sisters, he is the closest thing to a brother I’ve ever known.

But since moving to China in 2005 our paths have run further and further apart. While four and a half years is a relatively short period of time, it’s caused me to miss out on a lot of things back home, and caused the people I care about back home to miss out on a lot of things in my life. As much as I do my best to stay in touch and keep up with what is going on, the pictures people paint for me become less and less vivid until they resemble little more than bullet points in an e-mail, and not the life-affecting changes that they actually are.

As much as I “know” life is moving on steadily without me back home, it isn’t “real” to me in a physical sense. And I imagine it is much the same for my friends and family back home with my life here. They all know I live in China, and presumably have some sort of life here; but I am guessing it doesn’t really exist for most of them because they’ve not seen it and been apart of that story themselves.

That’s really what it comes down to, and why this birthday is more exciting than any I’ve had recently — I’m extremely excited to have such an integral character in my story back in the plot — if even just for a couple weeks.

Fortunately for me, my job is mostly translational and I’ll not have to give any long and/or personal speeches. It’s not my great fear of public speaking that has me relieved, but the fact that despite having gotten to know this friend quite well, we’ve only been such for a little more than a year – a short time to come up with a scandalous collection of “this one time…” stories.

The odd part is, that year-friendship is long-term by expats in China standards. It’s the nature of the beast that most expats come to China for not much more than 6 months to a year and then return from whence they came.

It was on this topic that him and I got talking last weekend as we worked out a (small) guest list for his bachelor party. As he said best, when you know your friends are going to leave to go “home” in the not-so-distant future, you tend to keep them at arm’s reach, making more acquaintances than true friendships.

I’ve met some amazing people in my time here in China, and certainly feel grateful for those relationships, but it’s true that if put to a litmus test, most would likely fall into that “acquaintance” category. Though had we all been living “back home”, there’s a good chance solid and lasting friendships would form, as a stranger in a strange land, such things are fleeting.

Like my friend, I’ve noticed that I don’t spend as much time as I used to on developing a social circle with much depth, simply because I know that circle is going to be going through continual, and drastic, changes and require constant and vigil attention to maintain it.

Now, the obvious solution to this would be to befriend locals. However, it’s more of a challenge than it sounds. In my 3+ years here I’ve yet to have a true Chinese friend. By our very nature, us expats tend to attract a “special” kind of Chinese person – generally the type that is looking for free English practice, or some presumed 关系.

This, of course, is limited in scope due to my lacking Chinese skills, but is enough to have jaded me to the whole idea of making good Chinese friends that are just fun to grab a beer with, shoot the shit and wax political.

So, until I find the magic spot where all the hip Chinese hang out, expats it is.

It is, however, a bit of a cold, sad fact that one of the first few questions I ask after meeting someone new here has changed from “So, how long you been here?” to “So, how long you staying?”