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Savoring Slow Travel: Lunar New Year, Russian Christmas & Holidays Abroad

Baby Abby meets the Kremlin.

My first foray beyond the borders of the United States was to Russia with a Christian organization over 15 years ago. We landed in Moscow two days after Christmas and were whisked away to a much smaller city. As a university student, this was my first exposure to Russian culture, and thus, it was also the first time I experienced the unusual (to me then) celebration of Christmas on January 7, rather than December 25.

I loved it.

This fuzzy picture from New Year’s Day a week prior is the best I have to remember this trip.

It was fascinating to me to learn that a different culture thousands of miles away celebrated my country’s biggest holiday weeks after we did–and so arrived a new facet of life abroad that makes it so awesome. It’s part of why I love slow travel, and makes spending weeks, months or years in a place–rather than a mere day or two–so satisfying.

Christmas & New Year’s in Thailand, 2011

Next on my timeline was experiencing a Catholic Easter in Buenos Aires, and years later, Christmas in Thailand. Since Christianity is not endemic to countries like Thailand and China like it is in the US, it tends to be more commercial, and I was overwhelmed by masses of people at the gorgeous shopping malls, while also seeing such fun sights as Santa holding Baby Jesus in Bangkok.

New Year’s Eve and Day were my favorite part of the winter holidays in Thailand, and were rung in from Chiang Mai by releasing lanterns into the night sky. The experience is meant to release the regrets and pains of the prior year in order to make room for the new, and it is technically different than the official Lantern Festivals that occur in November in Thailand.

Unfortunately, I didn’t photograph the experience, but it remains one of my favorite New Year’s Eve experiences of all time. Click here and scroll down to “2. Chiang Mai” to learn more.

Bangkok, Thailand, 2006: I’m especially a fan of palm trees at Christmas, which remind me of my childhood in Florida. ♥️

Holidays & Ramadan in Kuwait, 2018

Living in Kuwait also brought the fun of National Day and the beauty of Ramadan and other Muslim holidays, and living by a mosque, waking and sleeping by the calls to prayer. Ramadan, a time in which one had to be careful not to consume water, coffee or food in public (lest you be fined), was especially precious. The temporary discomfort was worth it for the pleasure of seeing how the entire country moved in the same rhythms together. Schools went to half days since most adolescents and adults fasted during the day and then stayed up late into the evenings to feast. Eid al-Fitr, the feast to officially end the holiday and break the fast, is a magnificent end to each year’s month of daytime fasting.

A box of treats given to students and teachers near the end of Ramadan in 2018–to be enjoyed after sunset during the day’s iftar.

Click here to learn more about Ramadan in Kuwait.

It’s worth noting that Kuwait is stricter about public observance than other nations; in Dubai in the UAE, for example, people were still permitted to eat in public; the city just put up walls around businesses serving food in public out of respect to those fasting when I visited in 2018.

Regardless, I loved living in Kuwait during this strange-to-me time. This experience of a world so unlike my own felt like opening a treasure box and stepping into Wonderland. While Kuwait was not a place I stayed for long, my year there gave me precious insight into the practice of Islam by nations and people around the world, an exposure vital to understanding the world as it is today.

Lunar & Chinese New Year, 2015-2024

Chinese New Year decorations from Beijing in 2015

What’s the point of all this? Well, even though I first moved to China in 2014, I–like many teachers–was often gone for the Chinese New Year. This went for me in 2015 and 2020, too.

Teachers here only get a day or two off for the Western Christmas Day and New Year’s holiday, but they get 4-5 weeks off of work for the Chinese New Year. As a result, I was out of the country for the event in 2015 and 2020, but I did enjoy the holiday in 2019 from Hangzhou Fuyang, a smaller city west of Hangzhou that is allowed–unlike big cities like Beijing–to set off fireworks as the years change.

Unfortunately, that year, the smog was so bad that I couldn’t get a clear photo of the fireworks! Regardless, it was a calm evening compared to the festivities going on now.

Side note: many people are under the decades-old impression that Beijing is still choked with smog throughout the year. In fact, since 2013, pollution in Beijing has steadily decreased as factories have been moved south1–tracking with the smog in Fuyang, where I lived for over three years. Surprisingly, I’ve experienced far fewer days over 200 ppm since moving back to Beijing in early 2022. To see more about how this happened, click here, here or here; or, if you love data, go here to read the University of Birmingham’s official report.

A Christmas tree in Beijing, December 2014.

The first year I lived here, from 2014-2015, was one of the worst on record. Glad it’s changed!

In years since 2019, of course, COVID kept us from having any big parties (I was out of the country for the ill-advised celebrations in January 2020). Last year, in early 2023, half the city was still suffering from COVID, so celebrations were relatively subdued. It wasn’t until the spring that the tourist attractions near my hutong siheyuan suddenly sprang to life, so this year feels like a reawakening of sorts.

While you can watch and learn more about Beijing’s (Chinese) New Year celebrations from this article in The Beijinger or popular Instagrammers like Rachel Meets China, I’m staying home on the actual day. As a “slow lazy adventurer,” what I enjoy most is physically residing in a city while these things happen. Rather than rushing into Beijing a day or two before, I’ve had weeks to take walks with “Felix the Furry Adventurer” around my neighborhood, which happens to be near a few “tourist attractions.”

Year of the Dragon stuffed animals available at a shopping street near me.

By living here, I can appreciate the lanterns hung from the trees and lampposts and see my street transformed into a glittering landscape at night and a crowd-controlled venue during the day (though I won’t be showing things closest to me for safety purposes). I can order Coke Zero from Meituan like I always do and admire the colorful dragon curved around the 330 ml cans, which are taller and thinner here than in the US–and I can even set aside a six-pack to take back with me for family, without having to rush to buy a dozen gifts in the precious few days I have allotted to this spot.

Tell me why I’m OBSESSED with these cans 😂

Since I choose to live in a smaller place in the center of the city, that is easy to do. It’s the equivalent size of a tiny home, but it’s big enough for Felix and me. Today, I ordered dumplings after a Chinese friend reminded me to do so2, wished others “Xinnian Kuaile!” (Happy New Year!) on my WeChat Moments, and enjoyed an onslaught of well wishes from groups as disparate as work colleagues, the woman who cleaned and organized the trash in my old neighborhood, and dear friends.

I got to attend a meeting at work and a cultural event this week and to feel the giddy excitement that we all had as we anticipated these precious days off. It’s a feeling that I treasure, and that (to be honest) teaching here was a bit different from–not better or worse, just different.

Since our vacations always coincided with Chinese holidays, I was often gone for the largest of them. But this year, in a new year where we take few days off overall–but escape the dreaded makeup days required of Chinese companies and schools–it feels good to be here, in the thick of it, with nowhere to run to and no reason to stress. I’ll do more fun things “out and about,” but today reminds me of why I love living in–and not just dropping, dashing about and hastily leaving–a country.

As someone who despises traveling at the same time as hundreds of millions of people, it had become a habit not to travel over these national holidays even when I was teaching, but this is my first experience in my new role as an “English language consultant” for a Western non-profit that requires work year-round, gives you just the official days off (as opposed to weeks at a time) and allows you to choose when to fly off and vacation on your own time–which I did, last month, to South Korea. It was fun to be in a country that has a Christian presence for a holiday with its origins in that religion, and it was also cheaper than traveling now. I look forward to doing this again this summer, when I will leave for my trip to the US a week before Chinese schools let out, and save hundreds of dollars in the process.

Staying in place for big holidays and living in a country is part of how I embrace “slow travel.” It’s not everyone’s style–or privilege, perhaps, as there is a lot of that at play here, being a single woman who can live, work and travel where and when I choose–but it’s mine. And on days like this, imbibing local treats as well as a dragon-festooned Raspberry Mocha from Starbucks, I feel deeply, profoundly grateful for my life.

Felix likes it, too.

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  1. When I left in August 2015, I was told that part of how Beijing planned to improve its air quality was to move factories and pollution-producing enterprises farther south and west, away from the capital, which tracks with my experience. Living in Hangzhou Fuyang, a southeastern city near Shanghai, I had far fewer sunny days than here–especially in the winter (not that Beijing is such a sunny place right now, but it has good days and bad). That said, I wasn’t able to find any articles that confirmed this point, so I focused on Beijing for this entry. ↩︎
  2. While it’s less common in the southern part of China, northerners often eat dumplings to celebrate the day. ↩︎

Dual Disappointments–OR–How *NOT* to Drink Coffee* ☕

* Spoiler Alert: Don’t buy it stale1.

Coffee brings sun even when the weather is gray.

Links may earn me a commission, but at no extra cost to you!

There’s a right and wrong way to drink coffee, but unfortunately, that standard starts before you even buy it. Read on to learn how to buy and drink it well.

A little historical background

I first fell in love with coffee as a teen with mono in high school. A friend had bought me Mark Pendergrast’s Uncommon Grounds the year prior, a huge tome meant as a joke due to my obsession with Starbucks and the cafe at Barnes & Noble. Bed-ridden for more than a month, I was drawn deeply into both the history of coffee as well as how it is made–and thus was born a lifelong obsession.

Thank you, mono–and Mark Pendergrast–for birthing my lifelong passion.

One of the most important things I learned from the book is that freshly roasted coffee beans give off gases, so unless they are left out in the open air to go stale for several days, they are complicated to ship. No matter what, whole beans will yield fresher coffee than ground since the surface area exposed to air is much smaller; this is always true, and it’s important to note that ground coffee will go bad much faster than whole beans you grind yourself, no matter how it’s stored.

That said, there are far better ways to store it than many realize, based on how the companies choose to package their beans. That plays a huge role in how fresh the coffee is. To be stored in a regular bag or can, coffee must be allowed to essentially go stale, or its gases would explode the can in which it’s stored. As a result, 90% of the affordable coffee you find for sale has gone bad (though not harmful!) before it ever appears on the shelves.

Higher-end stuff is stored via vacuum packing, nitrogen flushing (first used by Illy in 1963) or a bag with a one-way valve that expels oxygen. While vacuum packing was introduced in 1899, applied by the enterprising Hills Brothers to their coffee in the early 1900’s, and later bastardized by businesses to create disgusting bricks of “pre-staled” coffee, as Pendergrast explains it, the one-way valve came around in 19702.

If you drink coffee quickly and grind your own beans, vacuum packing can seal freshness in to a bag of a bit more completely than beans in a one-way valve bag that has not been vacuum sealed. Nitrogen flushing is even better because the coffee beans themselves are less in contact with the sides of the packaging and no oxygen remains, but none of this matters if the coffee has been ground and/or allowed to go stale prior to bagging it.

How does any of this relate to coffee in China?

2014: A love affair is born.

There are two brands that I especially like in China, but one has a special place in my heart. Shangrila Farms, founded by the daughter of a diplomat as an NGO over a decade ago, was the only coffee from China that I was able to find and enjoy when I first came in 2014. Back then, I had yet to become fiendish enough to grind my own beans, and what was available ground in the local April Gourmet or Jenny Lou‘s was fresh enough that I could still detect satisfying aromas and flavors upon opening the bag and drinking the coffee inside.

In fact, this was the actual coffee that led me to being able to drink coffee black, as milk and cream were harder to come by in 2014 than they are now. When I returned to the US a year later, I brought some coffee with me, and always had fond memories of the brand.

By the time I returned in 2018, coffee, like wine, had overtaken the nation. Yunnan Province is now brimming with locally grown and roasted coffee, and unfortunately, after a year in Kuwait discovering coffee made with cardamom, I totally forgot about Shangrila. I found a bargain-priced wholesaler that had a B2C presence on Taobao. Its name? Sinloy. For years, I enjoyed their coffee, detecting enough fresh flavor and unique aromas in the brand to enjoy my daily cup black and free of additions. I even roped my workplace into stocking it and set up an informal plan to visit the company and tour their roastery one day.

Sinloy, 2018.

Then… COVID?

A clarion cry from 2020 to late 2023 in China was 因为的疫情 (yinwei de yiqing; basically, because/due to the pandemic). It was a catch-all phrase to describe the myriad ways that the virus and the zero-COVID policy had led to interruptions in our daily lives.

Whether for that reason or others, to my serious chagrin, the quality of Sinloy Coffee seriously degraded by mid-2022. When I got the bags with their tantalizing one-way valves, I’d press down on the bag–a way to smell how fresh the beans inside are as any oxygen inside is expelled, and instead of a flowery bouquet of delightful, complex scents wafting out, it smelled… flat. Just okay. Essentially flavorless, with none of what had endeared it to me for years.

The roasting date is on every bag, and the company’s customer service on Taobao is still quick and reliable, so I don’t doubt that the beans are roasted fresh. As a result, I must surmise that the coffee itself has declined in quality…a real bummer.

As such, I recently decided to try Shangrila again. I stumbled across it on Meituan at April Gourmet, was delighted to see it, and ordered it. Since it was the evening, I had to wait until the next morning to try it, and boy, was I ready!

To my chagrin, it, too, tasted poorly. Even worse, unlike Sinloy’s one-way valves and roasting date, the bag I received didn’t even have a valve on it, essentially ensuring that the coffee was left to go stale before being packaged :-(.

I know that their bags used to have valves, which suggests a certain decline in quality. In addition, the field is now thick with competitors, so I have a whole new smorgasbord of options to choose from. Even so, I am saddened by the fact that two brands I have loved for 5-10 years are no longer good. #thedeathofadream

As I type, a part of me is wondering if COVID affected my taste buds for longer than I’ve realized. In December 2022, as all of Beijing burned with fever, I got COVID for the first time and experienced a discomfiting but short-lived inability to smell or taste coffee.

I already mentioned that I forgot about Shangrila for years, so it’s possible, right? #adhdbrain

Thankfully, I have had positive experiences since then with tasty coffee, in both the US and South Korea as well as China. Most pointedly, I have enjoyed the wonder that is Oak & Bond Coffee. After indulging in my coffee obsession for years, I got into American whiskey while living in Florida, and this company marries them both in a delectable coupling. My favorite one is the bourbon barrel-aged coffee; they also offer blends and roasts without any alcohol influence or barrel aging. Go forth and enjoy! You can find out more about them here (and none of this is affiliate-linked… I just really love their stuff).

Love at first sip: 2018 to the present

I miss it right now; I brought back several bags from the US, but used them up well before winter… but I digress.

I knew before I went home for the first time in four years in August 2023 that my love affair with Sinloy was over, but I persisted until this last bag, sure that if I just tried a new coffee grinder, made sure to store it in a cool place, and just kept trying, it would be good again.

Alas, I was wrong. I am excited to try new brews but sad to see these faves fade into the ether. In any case, the Beijing coffee scene has a whole lot to offer, and I’m excited to share the good, bad and ugly in future posts.

So, how to drink coffee well?

  1. Buy coffee in whole bean form that has been recently roasted. If you don’t want to roast it at home, then buy ground coffee that has been recently roasted. Check dates on the bag, buy directly from roasters OR simply press on the bag to smell what comes out. Do it enough, and you can tell if the coffee inside is fresh or not. Good quality coffee beans or grinds have smells, just like wine, tasty food and brewed coffee.
  2. If you buy whole beans, grind them with a burr grinder. You can buy models for good prices here; this is the one that my go-to coffee expert in Beijing recommends.
  3. Store the coffee in a cool, dry place. Avoid adding moisture, light, heat or air (oxygen)–this is why the one-way valve is so important.
  4. When you brew the coffee, use room-temperature, filtered water, if you have it. It can be helpful to use an unbleached cone filter and a stainless-steel carafe, if available, if you take awhile to drink your coffee.
  5. When you go to brew the coffee, if you are making it via pour-over or Chemex, let it sit for a bit after boiling so that it’s slightly cooler. If it’s in the coffee maker, I recommend 1 ounce of coffee per 10-12 oz. of water.
  6. If you are making coffee manually, pour slowly over the grounds until they are evenly coated… and then do it again until the water is gone and the carafe is full. The key is to go slowly.

And, that’s it!

For now, if you wish to geek out about coffee, check out the resources below!

Coffee Packaging & Storage

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  1. “Stale” = ground coffee in a bag without a one-way valve….among others. Please keep reading! ↩︎
  2. Pages 311 (“pre-staled”) 117 (vacuum packing) & 308 (the one-way valve), respectively. ↩︎

Is Uber or Lyft in China?

(Last updated January 2024)

Many people wonder if Uber or Lyft operates in China, so here is your answer! It’s a wild story, but ultimately, the answer is NO; that said, Uber used to be here. So, what should you use to get around China instead? Read on (or scroll down) to find out!

A lil’ snip from the Library of Congress.

Uber in Washington, D.C.: Summer 2014

I still remember the first time I used Uber in the US: it was a rainy night in 2015, and I was studying at the Library of Congress in Washington and decided to go out with some new friends from the program. When we prepared to leave the hotel my new colleagues and I were staying at, a teacher a few years younger than me told me to download the app and helped me figure out how to use it (I was young myself then, but this was cutting-edge technology at the time ;-)).

Then, voilà! A nice black car pulled up (this was 2014, when perhaps that’s the only kind of car that they offered?). We were whisked away to our destination, and I became accustomed to using the service before leaving for China in August.

Eager Abby on her first day apartment hunting (it’s common to hop on with the real estate agent & get whisked around the city).
Eager Abby on her first day apartment hunting (it’s common to hop on with the real estate agent & get whisked around the city).
Eager Abby on her first day apartment hunting (it’s common to hop on with the real estate agent & get whisked around the city).

Uber in Beijing, China: Autumn 2014

My first experience in Beijing, during the brief window in which Uber operated there, was quite different.

At the time, “black taxis” were still common in China. They were a risky proposition; getting into a random black car with a driver meant few of the legal protections afforded by taxis or what people use today. You might be taken on a long journey to reach a nearby destination and charged five times the price, for example.

I knew this but was so comfortable (and in fact enveloped in a kind of braggadocio, excited to show my new colleagues how to use Uber) that when I ordered an Uber and a black car pulled up, I got in immediately, failing to check the license plate like an idiot.

Always check the license plate! Taken in 2014, during my love affair with Mini Coopers.

As I opened the door, another black car pulled up behind the one I was entering and began to lay in on his horn like a fiend. With a sudden start, I realized that I had almost gotten into the wrong car!

And thus concluded my experiences with Uber in China. While the correct driver did a good job at getting my attention, it shook me to think I’d almost gotten into a random car. I stuck to taxis and the (excellent) metro after that.

Uber Today: Nonexistent in China, 2018+

When I returned in 2018, Uber had failed; it tried to use the same predatory practices here that they had used to dominate Lyft and disenfranchise US taxis, but it failed miserably. Chinese drivers beat them at their own game in a fun tale you can hear here (about 25 minutes in). As a result, after a long, drawn-out fight, Uber slunk away. Unfortunately, taxis still occasionally charged extra fees, refused foreign customers or pretended not to understand when I would ask them to go a place in Chinese. (To be fair, since foreigners are less common here than other countries, it can be hard to see past the unfamiliar face and listen to the Chinese, not to mention the fact that there are also many foreigners who never bother to learn Chinese to begin with, and Chinese taxi drivers have no desire to learn it).

Things took a turn…
Things took a turn…
Things took a turn…

Uber Replacements: Didi, Gaode, & Taxis Ordered through Meituan & Alipay

Not an ad–click to see and download on iOS.

So what remains? Something better! Didi in English has excellent customer service and offers several levels of service, but still charges less than Uber did. It also lets you order taxis, and if they overcharge, you can complain directly to Didi’s customer service and often get a coupon (though they won’t directly penalize the driver).

After some customers were harmed in the late 2010’s, similar to Uber and Lyft, Didi developed extensive security protocols to protect customers. In general, China is far safer than the US due to the cameras everywhere and severe penalties for violent crime, so please don’t mistake the past issues for present danger. (In fact, due to the “bubble” effect of the Zero COVID Policy and recent tales about Chinese people being tricked into slavery abroad, as well as the frequent reports of gun violence in the US, some local citizens now think it’s safer to remain in China. I had several high school students ask me seriously when I taught high school if I thought US college campuses were safe enough to attend due to past mass shootings.) When it comes to day-to-day physical safety, I am far more comfortable taking a Didi late at night than I am elsewhere.

When you sign up, you can designate an emergency contact, and you can even set an alert for that person to receive notifications when you travel after a certain time. It’s a great idea to get a local friend’s number if you live here and add it so that they know when you leave and get home, particularly if you tend to stay out late. (I’ll do a more in depth post about Didi later, but it’s important to know that when they had the security issues, they responded aggressively and even shut down their late night service for a week while getting “all their ducks in a row.” Now, the most important thing for inebriated drivers to do is to make sure that they don’t accidentally call the police from the app–not that I’m speaking from experience! *Ahem*).

In addition to Didi English, you can use Meituan, Alipay and a myriad of other more general apps. “Mini-programs” in which separate companies pay a fee to have their apps made available within the more popular Chinese apps are common, so even if you don’t have a specific app, you can hail taxis through Meituan, Alipay et al. An honorable mention goes to GaoDe Ditu (ditu, or 地图，is Chinese for “map”), an all-Chinese app that typically hails a cab or assigns a driver much faster than Didi; you just need to be comfortable translating screenshots with Baidu Fanyi or read Chinese enough to use it.

🚨 Important Tip!

No matter which app you use, the driver will want to confirm the last four digits of your (Chinese?) phone number with you when you get in. This is how they avoid getting the wrong passenger.

Don’t stress; just memorize those four digits, and you’ll be good.

Click here and/or here to read how to say phone numbers in English (basically, it’s the same as normal 1-10, with each digit pronounced separately, except that 1 (“yi,” pron. “ee”) is stated as “yao” (pron. “yow”) to avoid being confused with 7 (“qi,” pron. “chee”).

In Conclusion

I’ve mentioned 2014 and 2018 me, but now, in 2024, what do I use? I prioritize the metro since it beats the terrible traffic, but on less busy days, I use Didi English and Gaode. Try them yourself–see below! (Not affiliate links–just useful to have.)

Nothing beats the metro if you’re trying to beat traffic.

🔗 RELATED APPS & LINKS:

Didi English: Didi has a presence outside of China in different forms, so be sure to choose the “Didi: Greater China” app for each i/OS:

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August 1, 2014: China Day 1, and the 1901 Cafe

  • After years of hiding away, I am shamelessly monetizing my past experiences in the hopes that a) I might help others, and b) there might be some record of the life that I’ve lived, while earning an income for the effort. TL,DR: if you click on a link, it might make me money ;-).

My first day in a new country, I wake up paralyzed, perplexed by where I am and the choices I have made. I chastise myself a bit, thinking, Why are you like this? Why can’t you just enjoy living in the US? Alas, it seems a habit of mine to reside elsewhere.

The China Southern flight I took into Beijing from Seattle on July 31–>August 1, 2014.
The China Southern flight I took into Beijing from Seattle on July 31–>August 1, 2014.
The China Southern flight I took into Beijing from Seattle on July 31–>August 1, 2014.

August 2 in Beijing, China was no different; I was thrilled to have fulfilled my lifelong dream of living in China, but the first day there, my new school’s HR liaisons had provided generous hand-holding. Waking up alone, knowing only numbers in Chinese, the idea of leaving my temporary home–a dorm room in the teachers’ wing of the school’s main campus–was petrifying.

The window out of the teachers’ dorm room
The window out of the teachers’ dorm room
The window out of the teachers’ dorm room

For a moment in a new country, especially if you do not know the language, there is–for me, at least–an inkling of pure terror, the sheer unknown-ness of the world outside enough to keep me in if I don’t blow past it. Thankfully, I had rehearsed this moment in previous countries, and gathered up enough courage to overcome the weighty feeling on my chest.

I got up, though not without effort–I had just endured something like 20 hours of flying, after all–and made my way around the little space. One secret weapon that I use when I travel is the humble plastic cone to make pour-over coffee, with coffee and a travel mug from a place I love to serve as its carafe, and this day wasn’t any different. (While I loved my time at UGA, and much of my teen years in Georgia, I will always claim Deland as my hometown. Boston Coffeehouse–particularly its historic spot downtown–is one of my favorite places in the world, and I have brought its coffee beans to many places.) Throw in some cone filters, or the reusable kind if you like a stronger brew, and you have a bit of home from the jump.

The other thing that steadies me in a new place is my journal. While it’s hard sometimes to force myself to stop and write, it has proved cathartic time and time again. It sounds cliche, but sitting down with a cup made my favorite way, with my favorite pens and journal that has been continued on from the day prior, wherever I was then, is simple but compelling ritual that has acclimated me to many homes.

It helps that now, a decade later, I have a concrete record of events.

I can remember it even without that old journal, though. On August 1, 2014, I arrived at PEK, the older of the two Beijing airports, a full two-and-a-half weeks before I needed to come for onboarding. I wanted time to acclimate myself, to grow used to Beijing’s rhythms and customs before plunging into a new job. And so, perhaps, due to this early arrival, I got first-class treatment: my new school’s HR liaison picked me up at the arrivals gate, and we immediately stopped at a little China Mobile–or was it China Unicom?–store inside the terminal. They scanned my passport, and then I had a new SIM card (and phone? I can’t remember) in a quarter of the time it would have taken at T-Mobile or Verizon in the US. It cost less, too, though the exact numbers escape me.

I was excited, I was photographing everything, and I had an iPhone, so these photos have stayed with me. Oops/yay?

With that, we took a taxi to the main campus of the public school, where both student and teacher dorms were. Since I would be working at the international campus, I wouldn’t live there full-time, but it was a starting place while we looked for our new homes. I learned the hard way that the dorm’s doors locked at 10 PM, but I was soooo deeply into the ether that I didn’t care. It was all part of the story! I was living the dream! Besides, I soon found my ideal spot, and perfect it would be–up until December, with the advent of winter and a construction project next door.

But I digress.

That first day, there was nothing wrong. The woman who would later give me my Chinese name–郝悦，a reflection of my ridiculous enthusiasm and joy at having fulfilled this lifelong dream–took me on a walk. When I stepped into the street faster than she would like, she grabbed me, and then said, “Do not step into the street without looking carefully both ways!” While this is common sense, in the US, you’re usually somewhat safe if the green “Walk” sign has flashed on–but not so much here, at least not in 2014.

“I worry most about this with new foreigners to China,” my guide told me, a wry smile upon her face, “that they will step into the street and get run over by a motorcycle.”

This proved prescient, as in 2018, I was hit roundly by a motorcycle on Halloween.

After her careful warning, we headed first into a grocery store, and she showed me popular treats that you could buy, which were arranged in large bins. After that, we walked on towards a former church that had been renovated into a coffee shop and dubbed the 1901 Cafe after the year that the church was built.

I instantly loved, and still love, this place, which reminded me a bit of Argentine cafes, where alcohol, caffeine and simple food are served all day for practical fees.

I loved its dissonant menu, which served sandwiches, cocktails and espresso drinks, and ended up returning there often to contemplate that chaotic first year: at times, to tutor while drinking an Americano; at others, alone, to process some significant shifts that had gathered speed inside me. I loved its Long Islands, a drink mocked by the craft cocktail sphere (I ended up there for awhile, but not yet! Not back in 2014), but made excellently here.

The regal coffeehouse is still there to this day, a testament to the businesses that do survive the whirlwind pace of life in an ever-changing nation. It no longer serves cocktails, but there is still a little sting with each sip, because I ended up hurting the woman–and the school–that brought me there.

But that first day? Even before I woke up paralyzed by my new life? It was perfect, and remains enshrined in my life forever, much like the pews-turned-seats in the 1901 Cafe.

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👋 Hello, Travelers!

My name is Abby, and I’ve been traveling and/or living abroad for more than 10 years. In that time, I’ve been in China the most, and that kind of experience fills your head with a lot of random information. One day, I thought, “Hmm–this might be useful to others!”

China–and the entire way it does business–has changed massively since I first came in 2014, so this site and my YouTube Channel are how I can share what I know with anyone it might help.

I was also a teacher for (*gasp*) 15 years, so I have a curriculum store on Teachers Pay Teachers with an array of resources for secondary English learners. Most resources relate to literature or note-taking, but there are some older ones that also touch on English as a Foreign/Second/Academic Language, for those interested.

A book on travel tips to China for visitors is about 80% done–to be put on the mailing list and know when it’s finally ready, click here.

In the meantime, leave any questions you have about #Chinalife below–I am happy to help! I am no expert on the “big picture” issues, but I can tell you how to use AliPay or how much to pay for a bottle of water. And the more information that gets out into the world about this ancient, complex place, the more that people can make informed decisions while living or visiting here.

As for me, I am originally from the United States and have stumbled by lazy way around the world. Why “stumble” and “lazy”? I tend to stay in one place longer than my expat acquaintances, was diagnosed with ADHD late in life, and have an unusual kind of introversion where I can turn on a talkative self in the right contexts but also stay home most of the time. As a result, I often go to new places only when someone I know has gone first, when I have done an obscene amount of research, or–conversely–when I have a random desire or opportunity and jump on it. The latter happens only 10% of the time, but when it does, it’s chaotic fun! Thus, the unusual description.

Homebodies with a thirst for adventure, unite!

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