Deep Departing Thoughts (once again!)

Well, the time to depart China is rapidly approaching. One of the idiosyncrasies of working here is that, when your job ends, they revoke your Work Permit, and without a WP, you are required to depart the country in thirty days. In fact, your employer is required by law to fly you back to your Home of Record. And since my current job is ending in two weeks, I’m off to HK on July 26 and on a flight to the US on July 27.

I think by now, if you have kept up with my ramblings over the past 20-odd years, you will realize that International Teaching is a complex profession. Yes, you get to travel and see the world, make good money, teach amazing kids and work in a wide range of schools. And you certainly get to avoid a lot of the complexities of adulting in the modern world (taxes, home repairs, struggling with bad bosses or deteriorating neighborhoods, local and national politics). But on the other hand, you spend your entire life living in temporary homes, punctuated with housing crises when you are between jobs, starved for deep, long-term communities, and very vulnerable to the whims and peculiarities of different entities (heads of schools, laws, political and social forces).

The smooth flow of my career changed drastically over the past few jobs. Burkina Faso was too isolated, so although it was an excellent position for me, after two years I wanted to get a contract nearer to the USA and friends. Then I arrived in the Dominican Republic with personal trauma as two friends were murdered in Burkina Faso just after my departure, and it was a time of social upheaval at my new school, which made integrating a challenge. After three years, with stateside friends uninterested in a visit because of bad international press about the country, I decided to leave DR just as Covid hit, and found myself in a world in turmoil without a place to live or a job. That lasted a couple of years, during which time I spent several months freeloading off my brother (thanks, Ed!), staying at AirBnBs owned by friends (thanks, Margo and Liz), and just cooling my heels waiting for my life and the world to resolve itself. Then it was discovered that I had prostate cancer and I had another year to deal with that, physically and emotionally.

When the time came to find my next job, I had a lot working against me: at 63, I had aged out of most of the jobs in the market. After being unemployed for two years during the Covid crisis, school technology had advanced into a new direction that was unfamiliar to me. And having freshly weathered the emotional and physical shock of fighting cancer, I was more emotionally fragile than usual. I was facing a lot of challenges!

So it was with great joy and optimism that I accepted an interview request from this school in Shenzhen, China. And with even more optimism that I accepted the ensuing job offer, and started the long, complex, and bewildering process of navigating the bureaucracy to get to China. That alone deserves its own post.

Anyway, to be very blunt, unfortunately it didn’t work out: the school and I had very different expectations, and after one year, my contract has ended and I’m getting ready to leave. And boy, do I HATE to leave: if the option were available I would retire here, right now. In China. It’s that wonderful!

I assimilated faster than anywhere in my life. On my third day in-country, the housing agent dropped me at a local bar downtown after looking at flats during a very hot and humid day, and I immediately struck up a friendship with two men who play guitar on Fridays at that bar. Upon discovering that I play bass, I was invited to join them….so within my first week in town, I was on stage playing in a band! Through them (and the bar), I met a bunch of other musicians, and in almost no time at all I found myself sitting in at four different venues weekly, playing music with new friends. This has continued on all year, and now I am absolutely a ‘music local’….the guys in all the bands are buddies, when I walk down the sidewalk in town, the different bands wave, people on the sidewalk recognize me as the bass player, and I feel like I have found that ‘music home’ I have craved since college.

I know tons more people outside of work than at school. Though social media, I get constant invitations to dinners and gatherings. Shenzhen is a very young town (median age around 35) so a lot of these gatherings are at bars and restaurants and with a very youthful vibe, and it’s been a lot of fun. The bartenders and waiters all know me, and it feels like an episode of Cheers when I come in. And these are genuinely kind and good people…I have been amazed that people don’t give each other ‘sharp elbow’ jokes (where you take the mickey out of someone for fun) or anything like that….people are genuinely caring and open about it. In fact, last night when I told a small group of friends I had to leave permanently at the end of next month, one friend (the girlfriend of the guitar player in one of the bands) actually started crying because she didn’t want me to leave. That’s pretty honest emotion.

I have also really enjoyed exploring China. Now that the Zero Covid policies have lifted, there are no obstacles to travel at all. During Covid, you had to go through so many hoops and quarantines to move around, even in your own town, that it wasn’t worth traveling. But since then, I have made full use of the amazingly efficient High Speed Train (HST) system and explored much of the region. A few months ago, I took the train 1500 miles up to Xi’an to see the terracotta soldiers, and monthly I go up to Guangzhou to play MahJong with an old friend and 6-8 new friends. I also make regular jaunts to HK, as it is so easy to get there from here.

I’ve departed schools and countries before…plenty, but I’ve been soul searching about why having to leave Shenzhen hits me so hard, and of course it’s obvious: I’ve done enough global travel for any person, but my needs are now for a home and community. I crave a nest, a place to settle down with friends, things to do that I enjoy, a balance of newness/adventure and familiar/predictability. And China brings all those things, plus rock-bottom prices (this place is VERY affordable), lovely people, and rich complex culture.

I know China has a very bad image around the world, and it’s not entirely undeserving. But those large-scale political forces don’t affect anyone on the ground, especially not here in Shenzhen, so what is left is an amazingly well-run, super-modern, clean and interesting society. One that has welcomed me in with open arms and a smile. But I have to go, and I am not sure where I am going.

Of course, I can try to get another contract: while I am too old for 70% of the schools out there, there are still dozens of schools that hire people my age. And while Tech Coach jobs are few and far between (and overrun with young applicants), I could go back to teaching math and have all the job security in the world. But that would do nothing about my deep-seated need to settle down, except kick it down the road another few years. And I’d have to grade papers, and deal with an entire generation of students who are 2-3 years behind in math, and ChatGPT and other tech disruptions. So I’m not greatly motivated to do that at the moment (but that might change).

Then what are my options?

I have to return to the US this summer anyway to sign up for Medicare and Social Security, and renew my passport. My great old friend Margo has made an AirBnB available to me for 3 weeks, then I plan a road trip (or flight) out to Seattle to see relatives and friends. After that, my options include: hunker down in Maine for the winter (where there are friends and I have a place to rent), back to the DR for the winter (where I have a small community of friends, but no place to live), down to Costa Rica (where I don’t know anyone but have wanted to visit), or return to Asia. My good buddy Greg has a house in Siem Reap that he said I could stay at for a year; downstairs is my friend Mongkhean and his wife (who is a dentist and can do my implant), and I can explore more of SE Asia from there, including some visits back to Shenzhen. I will probably take that option, although it probably means I will age out of International Teaching altogether, and it also kicks the can of ‘find a home’ down the road another year.

Anyway, I have wondered for many years what the end of my career would look and feel like. I think I see it happening, and I never imagined this is how it would go down…no gold chain and watch, no big dinner party, no friends patting me on the back…just a fade into the gray and me being left with a lot of wonderings of “so what was THAT all about, and what do I do NOW?”