China

I did it! I moved to China!

I have so many thoughts about this place; most of them are probably boring and won’t add a single thing to anyone’s life but mine, but I’m going to tell you all of them anyways. Buckle up.

I’ve been here two months and one thing I’m utterly fascinated by is which American movies and television shows made the cut to be allowed in China. To understand this, you need to know that China is particular about what is healthy for a person to watch and what isn’t. For instance, there are no sex scenes here. I watched The Notebook and Spanglish the other day, and in both, they just cut the sex scenes. This is a huge plus for me. I’m not interested in watching people doing it. You can insinuate what happens without us all seeing that stuff. There’s some violence, but not nearly what we see in our movies there in America. Almost no stories with drug use as the main plot make it into circulation here. It’s all very … purist.

There’s a large selection of movies from America though. I’ve decided that China must be huge fans of Denzel Washington, Adam Sandler, and Tom Hanks. I haven’t found one of their movies not listed, including Man on Fire, which, let’s admit, is one violent, if not satisfyingly so, movie. As for television shows though, I only have all the seasons of Friends (gag), a couple of seasons of Vampire Diaries (no thanks), Two Broke Girls (mystifying that this one made the cut), and the first three seasons of Young Sheldon. It’s so weird that I can pick stuff like Children of the Corn or The Godfather but I only get a few seasons of Young Sheldon.

It’s been an adjustment being in a family again. It’s strange that you can forget how to incorporate yourself with others over time. However, we have a nice rhythm now and overall, I’m loving it. I live in a city with 10.5 million people, but it is almost silent after 11pm. There isn’t the constant sound of police and ambulance sirens, and the crime here is almost non-existent. I feel safe here, which blows my mind because I’ve always been taught how dangerous living in a Communist country would be. I haven’t found that to be true at all.

I’ve had quite a bit of dental work done lately, and yet we’ve spent the equivalent of $140. The food is to die for and they have vegetables I’ve never seen before. Everyone has been very kind to me. In March, I will be going to school to learn Mandarin. Right now, people use the little English they know to communicate with me. I’m even picking up some of it already.

I’ve taken a million pictures and will share with you soon. For right now, I’m still settling in.

~ Bird