As Thor Heyerdahl wrote in his classic book Kon-Tiki many years ago,
Once in a while, you find yourself in an odd situation. You get into it by degrees and in the most natural way but, when you are right in the midst of it, you are suddenly astonished and ask yourself how in the world it all came about.
Boy, did he get that one right. After many years as an expat, I still have that sensation almost every day.
Paraphrasing that wonderfully suggestive passage, a much younger and far more innocent me became an expat accidentally but also “in the most natural way”. Like Heyerdahl, I am also astonished at the long chain of events that led me to my current situation.
It was never a conscious plan; mostly, it just happened. Along the way, I acquired a new wife and, a few years later, a son. A significant part of the marriage package included my wife’s family, immediate and extended, near and far, past and future generations. As one wag put it, “You love one person but you marry the whole damn family”.
Thus…
A Strange Tribe
My name is Randy Green. I am an American but I have lived as an expat, currently in China, for many years. In 2004, I was invited to be a foreign teacher at Zhengzhou University in China’s Henan province. In accepting that offer, I committed myself to a life both satisfying and mystifying. The original invitation was for only one semester but I had such a fabulous time that I taught there for 11 years until I retired in 2015. Part of that fabulous time included acquiring a Chinese wife. Currently, my wife, our son, and I live in the city of Chongqing. We love our life here… but we are a strange tribe, part of but different from previous generations.
Why do I call us a strange tribe? Really, in many ways, we are quite a normal urban family. On weekday mornings, we get up, dress, and have breakfast. Then my wife and son leave for work and school, respectively. Not me, though. I am a writer so I have the luxury of working from home. In the past, my office was wherever I opened my laptop, often at Starbucks or the library. Then, during the pandemic, for two years, my bedroom at home was my workplace. I finished the breakfast dishes, walked twelve steps to my “office”, fired up my laptop, and I was at work. My idea of variety in working environments these days is adjusting my standup desk higher or lower. This arrangement is safer, cuts down on travel time, and, if I do not connect to the internet or turn on my phone, it eliminates those pesky interruptions – except domestic ones, of course.
A strange tribe? Actually, we sound pretty normal so far. But there are a few minor differences between us and the average TV family. I have retired but my wife has not. She will enjoy that luxury one day but my wife is 22 years younger than me… and Chinese… and, she claims to be a traditional Chinese girl. (I remind her that traditional Chinese girls do not marry foreigners but her selective hearing kicks in and she fails to respond.) I offer a compromise. “You are a traditional Chinese girl… when convenient.” Selective hearing works to my advantage sometimes.
Before we got married in 2007, I insisted that we have several long discussions about children. I wanted to be absolutely clear on one point: No children. Zero. No next generation. I was approaching retirement age and had my dream of being free to travel, of living a clean, quiet, and orderly life, and, perhaps, even living on the beach on Hainan Island where I could hear the breakers when I woke up every morning. My reasoning was unassailable: One rarely hears the phrases “small children” and “clean, quiet, and orderly” in the same discussion. Besides, the idea of being responsible for raising a child for maybe 20 years, plus the financial burden accompanying that child, plus being unable to relocate on a whim to another city or even another country, was completely inconsistent with my vague retirement plans. Thus, I was unreservedly certain that I did not want children. But it was vitally important that my potential wife also had the same child-free values.
“No problem,” she said. “It will be just the two of us. We will go wherever you want to go.”
“Are you certain? Completely certain?”
“Yes, certain.” Thus, in 2007, we married and, for some time, were quite happy living in my small apartment on the campus where I taught.
But there came a day. Blame it on the old biological clock, blame it on societal norms, blame it on nothing more complicated than “I changed my mind.” However, I still think there was a traditional Chinese mother-in-law who wanted another grandchild. Somewhere in the shadows, she was whispering the values of her generation, “After you have a baby, your husband cannot abandon you.”
Marriage involves a lot of compromises but, on some issues, compromise is just not possible. You don’t agree to have half a child. Nor do you have a baby then pretend you don’t. We went through a very difficult period for the next few months. Chinese water torture (tears at breakfast) alternated with the silent treatment and a few days back home with mother. (I wasn’t too worried. Traditional Chinese girls descended from her mother’s generation don’t abandon their husbands. It works both ways.) But it was tough! As a wise old friend, retired in America, wrote me, “It is probably inevitable.” Prof. Appleman must have crossed swords with a few traditional Chinese girls in his long academic career. Anyway, he was right. Finally, realizing that her sheer persistence was going to outlast my resistance, I conceded defeat. Reluctantly, I agreed to try to have a baby.
And, of course, karma intervened. Almost exactly nine months later, our dual-citizenship, X-hybrid son, Chester Sidney, was born. Chester has been known as CS since birth because “CS” was easy for both his American father and his Chinese mother to say. He was biracial although, like many Chinese-American children, his appearance inherited more characteristics from his American parent. We now had a healthy, lovely, perfectly normal baby boy to start the next generation.
Well, almost normal. Aside from being an expat, I was a pretty typical example of my generation. My father was 21 years old when I was born. In comparison, when Chester arrived in the world, his father (me) was 62. Yes, after dodging the parental bullet all my life, I became a father for the first time at the age of 62. I now had a biracial child and his “traditional girl (when convenient)” mother 22 years younger than me. Don’t forget the bicultural and bilingual factors as this infant began the socialization phase of his life. A strange tribe? I’m getting to that. “Strange” may be putting it mildly
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Tune in next week for Part 2of this thrilling, unlikely, but true story of our family’s history. And, while you wait for the next installment, consider chipping in for a couple of cups of coffee. More if you are feeling intrigued and generous. Please visit my Buy Me A Coffee page and allow me to continue my daily ration of caffeinated brown water, my chemical sunshine.