What makes me want to stay in China?
Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about those foreigners that come to China and not only stay here for a while, but make their permanent home here. I know more and more expats, or shall we call them immigrants, who have been living here for more than 10 or even more than 20 years. A friend asked what keeps these foreigners here? Do they have similar characteristics? And indeed I think they do. Chinese spouse or family member All longtime expats that I know here in Guangzhou are married to a Chinese spouse. It’s natural that you settle in here if you have found your love here as well. This…
Spring greetings from a very unusual Spring
When 2019 turned into 2020 none of us had an idea of what kind of a year this would be like. In January I still visited the Huangpu Old Village with my daughter and had a great time without having to wear a mask all the time. End of January we started to realize how serious the situation was and I wrote about living in China during virus outbreak and then about our 29 days of staying mostly at home and avoiding others. In March I was writing down all the things I wish I would have done if I knew a pandemic would hit, not long after that the…
This is how I would prepare my family and my business for a pandemic
I woke up to the situation of new coronavirus late, only last day of the Chinese year we started to realize this was going to be serious. Still we thought it’s just going to be one month and things can get back to normal. Now more than two months later China is slowly getting back to normal, when rest of the world are struggling or beginning to struggle with the pandemic. Now if I was living in Finland where we still have less than 100 cases (or could go back in time 2 months), this is how I would prepare my self, my family and especially my business. Home and…
Day 29 of mostly staying at home due to outbreak
We aren’t under quarantine, our city is not under lockdown, but it’s been 29 days since there was any type of normalcy in our lives here in Guangzhou, China. Now finally we are starting to take steps back into our everyday lives. But first lets take a loot what precautions we have taken during these weeks. Wearing masks whenever we go outside, if we are somewhere alone we take the masks on and put back on if someone comes. It’s not that we are worried them infecting us, it’s a sign of “I care about you, so I’m going to protect you and me by putting my mask on”. We…
