You know what my overwhelming impression of the expat scene in Beijing is?



Baby carriages.









I don't actually live in Beijing, I live an hour or so away, but I visit frequently. As I write this I'm having breakfast in a popular expat breakfast nook. There are about nine tables occupied by expats; five of them are couples with small children.





And I'm talking young-ish expat couples -- Americans, Italians, and Russians by the sound -- not a Chinese wife nor a bloated former whoremonger father in the bunch.



This trend is also in view at my workplace; most of my colleagues are married and have young children or babies, and only a couple of them are married to Chinese women. (The ones that are married to Chinese women tend to be married to ethnic Chinese raised in a western country.)



There are some former hellraisers in the bunch, guys who have been in China a long time, and they talk about the old days with me over quiet after-work drinks. The usual stories: "Whores and English groupies everywhere." "Drunk every night." "All the teachers were bedraggled old whoremongers or young dudes on the prowl." "Our salaries were low but everything was dirt cheap."



And then around 2009, 2010, 2011, things changed, they tell me. Also a familiar story -- it became harder to get Chinese work visas without qualifications, while more and more qualified non-alcoholic teachers poured into Chinese international schools as it became harder to earn a good living teaching in America, England, and Australia. The cheap and cheerful and boozy hutongs were bulldozed and replaced with shops and malls and modern apartment blocks.





e amount of time I've spent studying for my Master's Degree in Education has limited my going out, but as I walk around, what do I see?





Baby carriages and healthy sober good-looking young couples.



And they are untroubled by the ghosts of the drunken old whoremongers and off-the-rails young party dudes.



But where did they go, the ones who couldn't or wouldn't sober up? What country do they hide in? The lucky ones who have pensions probably retired to Thailand (which, when I visited in February, looks to be turning into the world's largest retirement home.)



And the others? Probably working out in the sticks someplace, away from major cities where there are a lot of expats.



But what will the boozy whoremongers do in a bold new world without booze and whores?





Learn Chinese in Tianjin 🎓 Easy Language will have you speaking 中文 in no time!









Anonymous said...

Fascinating issue, essentially unanswerable since the true burn out cases won't be reading this. Still, I would love to hear some stories.



An ESL teacher has to be fairly well-educated, a cut above the military/contractor grunts, despite what X might claim.



Scenario: A burnt out case moves back to his home country and after a bout of near homelessness becomes a high school substitute teacher.



Scenario 2: The burn out moves home and gets some horrible disease he can't afford. Ends up living in sort of state funded accomodation. Inherits a house from a relative. Continues to drink heavily, dies.



Scenario 3: The burn out moves home, sobers up, pays rent with a retail sales job, gets a degree and moves back abroad as an international development specialist.









Is Sixth Tone "propaganda"?





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