Returning Expatriates

Abstract

I left Shanghai in July 2007 and moved to the UK with my then husband (the man I had been longing for during that very lonely year spent in Italy while attending my MA and working for the UN, the one I thought destiny had confirmed to be ‘the One’ via a scholarship). Even though at that time I had moved on from the business field to academia and I was not earning as much as the ‘proper’ standard expatriates sent abroad by their companies (expatriate teachers/lecturers in China tend to have a lower social status in comparison to corporate expatriates), I still had a decent lecturing job, nice colleagues and friends (foreigners as well as Chinese people), and I absolutely loved teaching. After five years in Shanghai, I have to admit that there were things getting on my nerves about my life in China, but generally speaking I could have remained there a bit longer, and I knew that there was a lot of money to be earned with international organizations in loco. However, deep inside I knew that my Chinese adventure was not going to last forever, and that I did not want my hypothetical future children to grow up in China. I remember missing the comforting presence of old buildings, the European ‘al fresco’ lifestyle and the familiarity of Western values and manners.

Falling leaves return to their roots.

Chinese proverb