No Chopsticks Required

Expat Women's Interview with Katrina

Expat Women: Katrina, in expat terms, one year is usually quite a fast turnaround. Given everything you witnessed, did your year in China seem like a lifetime, or did you feel that you had only just recovered from culture shock when you were then facing the reality of repatriation?

Katrina: It was a shame that we only had one year in Shanghai, but it was an enormously significant year for Shanghai and China that had so many highs and lows that the whole country, and those expats like us sharing the experiences, tumbled a little shell-shocked out of 2008. We had been witness to an extraordinary time.

When it came time to leave, we were torn and felt we had unfinished business in China. We had only just developed that confidence where you know you are going to cope and enjoy each day (well, most days), rather than feeling that we were lurching from chaos to crisis. We had only just started being able to direct taxis without ending up on the wrong side of the river, and ordering dinner without fear of getting a pot of bullfrogs.

I think an upside of only having 12-months in Shanghai, though, was that we were still at the point where all the differences and challenges we experienced were as thrilling as they were puzzling, and we left wanting more.

Expat Women: How did your family cope with the transition to life in Shanghai? Can you share with us some early anecdotes?

Katrina: We were so overwhelmed from the very start, by all the sights and the smells, the food and trying to communicate. And Gary and I were both engulfed by that expat-parent sensation where you are trying to hold it together to be a beacon of normality for your kids, when you are totally floundering and out of your comfort zone.

On our first day we all rugged up against winter, a cold we had never experienced, trapped in smog clouds like we had only ever seen on TV weather reports, and tip-toed down the street avoiding the phlegmy puddles of spittle deposited by the locals – only to be mobbed on the first corner by Chinese women who were wildly impressed we had both a boy and a girl (because the Chinese one-child policy was very much at the forefront of Chinese life), but were equally appalled at how few layers of clothing I had wrapped them in and started pulling at the kids jumpers and jackets. We felt like bolting back to our apartment and hiding for a week.

Despite such an intense first outing, we summoned the courage to go out to dinner that night at a local restaurant. It was left to me up to try ordering dinner so I called on all my charade abilities, even resorting to clucking, in an attempt to score anything with chicken (except feet). We received unidentifiable food and it was delicious. Finally we saw a head in the bottom of the pot. We concluded it was duck – close enough! We might have been exhausted, utterly confused, and a bit humiliated along the way, but we claimed it a wildly successful day.

Katrina: I was employed by the Chinese newspaper company Wenhui Xinmin, as a foreign expert and answerable to my bosses at the Shanghai Daily. It was a newspaper with a female editor and very strong women in senior positions. Working in the Chinese Communist Party-owned media was entirely new and very challenging for me (having always worked previously in the Western press), but it was great to be able to see these women and talk with these women about how they made their careers and their home life work in the framework of Chinese social structures and a Chinese work place. Actually, they were fierce and I concluded there was a fair chance they would have made it to senior positions in any workplace in any country. I think they were baffled by some of my ideas though, like choosing to work at night so I could spend time with my kids instead of putting my kids into school all day, every day.

Unfortunately I also learned first-hand about the extent of the Communist Party Propaganda Department’s control over the media in China. I was banned after writing a column about China’s great gold medal track and field hope at the Beijing Olympics, the 110 meter hurdler Liu Xiang. The Chinese Propaganda Department one day decreed that the “One World One Dream’’ theme of the Games meant that the Chinese people would not cheer for Chinese athletes and were happy whomever collected the gold medal. My column discussing the weight of expectation of more than 1.3 billion countrymen on the shoulders of one slim hurdler inadvertently defied this edict. And I suffered the consequences.

Expat Women: What did you learn as a mother, from your Shanghai experience?

Katrina: I found living in a foreign country with kids gave a heightened intensity to the experience. I could not gloss over any element of day-to-day life. It was not just about me, it was about my whole family. I became very familiar with the health system, the kindergarten and school system, and what not to buy for food (not only to ensure none of us became sick, but because I was obsessed with getting maximum nutritional goodness into my one and three year old). It meant I spent a lot of time in local markets, which I may have ditched in favour of restaurants if I was not shopping for the whole family. I became very familiar with bean curd and lotus root.

Being in Shanghai as a mum helped me learn to trust my own instincts more, even if they were at odds with the prevailing views of the society in which I was living. It also taught me to embrace my children’s ability to adapt and even lead me, as they discovered new and exciting ways of doing things in a new country. And it brought my family even closer together. It is a feeling difficult to describe, but it was the four of us just being together amid the chaos, challenges and excitement of China that was our own little sanctuary.

Katrina: I would absolutely travel abroad again with my family. After the Chinese experience, which was so different and so challenging for us, we feel fortified and able to cope with just about anything, so would be prepared to go almost anywhere. One thing we learned that was very important (and that we had no real concept of before we went to China) is the strength and warmth of the expat community. The sharing of experiences, troubles and triumphs from so many friends and acquaintances who really understood the expat life was a lifeline during our time away and has given us friends we will now have forever.