There is one things that will make your life in China much easier if you have enough of it. No, not money. Patience. This almost magical thing that seem to run away from you when encountering enormous differences or difficulties. Wikipedia says patience is “persevering in the face of delay or provocation without acting on annoyance/anger in a negative way”. During these past two days I’ve needed all the patience I’ve got while I was out buying products for my customer. Waiting was the big word no matter if I was at the bank, wholesale market or waiting for a taxi. Sometimes things just don’t work in a way and…

Yesterday I watched the two first episodes of a new Chinese TV series called Small Daddy 小爸爸. As I was watching it and later discussed it with my boyfriend, I started to think of the rapid transformation young Chinese adults have to go through when graduating from university. For my Finnish point of view, Chinese youngsters live quite a controlled life until right up to their university education. They will live in dorms that separates girls and boys, they might have curfews and lights go out at eleven. The campus becomes their second home and the staff their second parents. In Finland we live on our own when we go…

So you have just arrived to China and everything is new around you. New job, new house, new gym, but what about new friends? Culture Shock is way easier to deal with if you can share your experiences with others that are going through the same thing. I’ve realized this my self too during these three years in Guangzhou. There just are so many things about living abroad that only someone doing the exact same things could understand. If you want to connect with and make friend with other expats in China you should take a look at InterNations. It is the largest expatriate network worldwide, with over 930,000 members…