Hello Kim,

I just discovered this forum. Have you already made your decision? I do not live in Hunan Province. I life south of it in the very large city of Guangzhou. But, I may be able to address a bit of your question. I came to China with two teenagers.

Life as an expat is exponentially more complicated with children, but more especially with teens in tow. The short story is their world consists of life in their peer group outside the family: friends at school. And though I realize there's conventional wisdom that Canadian university admission is less "competitive" than American ones, the educational issues become more complicated. I mean, I never had an electron microscope or capacity to do DNA sequencing, which is the current level of instruction in typical 2nd year biology classes these days.

I personally would not bring teens to China unless I could find an expat school that would give them a large enough peer group to supply their social needs. One of my canadian friends just moved back to Canada with her 14 and 12 year olds, in spite of loving her life here, because she and her husband were simply not able to meet their educational or social needs here. They couldn't afford the private schools, where tuition runs $16,000 plus U.S. per child, and Chinese schools simply were not adequate or appropriate.

In terms of social life, I'll just say that (in addition to the language barrier) your children most likely will not have very much, if anything, in common with Chinese children of the same age. They are just raised differently. My children experience them as being very immature, very superficial in how they think. (Critical thinking and analysis are -- guess what -- not valued here or taught in the educational system.) I don't mean this in a judgmental way; it stems from how they are raised. This is a huge generalization, but Chinese parents structure their children's lives 100%, right down to telling them what to wear each day. They don't make any decisions, they are not aware of the outside world, they don't have any free time to speak of. A child raised in the west has been raised very differently and will just have very different world view, expectations, and exposure.

Finally, if you do accept the overseas assignment, you mention you don't know what to ask for. Let me just say,that you don't want to live in china on a Chinese standard of living. That's also a huge generalization, but suffice it to say that you do want heat in the winter, more than one light bulb in each room, transportation, and perhaps even for each child to have his own bedroom or to have an oven in your kitchen rather than one or two burners on a stove (and some people don't even have a kitchen). Some expat benefits you should expect are: housing allowance for a furnished apartment in a SAFE area of town that is also near other expats (crime is rampant, it's just not reported), relocation there and back completely paid for, look-see trip as well as all expenses paid to repatriate, at LEAST one international air fare per year for each family member to visit home (two is nicer), language tutoring and / or classes, western school tuition for children, car and driver devoted to your use provided by company (you won't be able to drive, and public transport is not always adequate), excellent medical insurance along with medical evacuation coverage (yes, the worst case scenario does occasionally happen, and it's not worth your life).

All this said, life in China can be a thrill if your family is 100% "on board" and adventurous, especially if you have an adequate level of support from your company. Part of that really does depend on whether you and your family are adventurous and also very flexible. Here's one example. Dairy products are about four times more expensive here than in my home town. Like, a 1/4 pound slab of cheddar cheese costs about $6 U.S. At least in this city of 12 million people there are stores where I can buy cheese. In a smaller town, you may not be able to get cheese at all. No one speaks English, and only "four star" type restaurants and hotels (read, expensive) will have English on the menu, so likely the only way you'll be able to order in a restaurant is to pantomime and point to what other people have. Often, the chicken dish will include the head and feet, and the bones, all nicely chopped up into bite size pieces. Could you take this in stride?

The other thing to be prepared for is pollution. One of my friends did live in Changsha, and she calls it the left armpit of China. I was at a place near there a few months ago, and the haze was always present even way out in the country. There simply are no pollution controls, and the economy is going great guns. The government has made a decision to pursue development no matter what the cost to the environment (or the local population).

Hope this answers some of your questions. I'm not trying to be frightening, but just want you to be prepared!

Post a Reply

00abuse