We are leaving China

Big decision in the Ringmar family: we are leaving China! When we came here two years ago, we really thought we would stay for the long haul. That I would work here, if not until the end of my career at least for some good 10 years. But this is not going to happen, and this is why:

1. the air quality in China is hazardous to anyone and terrible for me. I had cancer five years ago and my mouth has never recovered. Breathing the Shanghai air makes me hurt. Most of the time I sit inside like a prisoner. Shanghai is wonderful but I can’t enjoy it. China is poisoning me. 
2. the schools are no good for my kids.  Rima, my youngest, is being bullied by the “popular girls” in her class: “we don’t like foreigners,” they tell her and hits her during the breaks. I can’t stand it.
3. In general, Chinese schools destroy any love of learning. There is constant math homework intended not to teach math, but to humiliate the students and to separate out the top 10 percent that will be able to go on to university. The teachers instil discipline by telling the students they are stupid.  My kids are not stupid, but they are not good at math.
4. my university has tremendous problems. Lets simply say that teaching and research feature very low down on the agenda of big professors and deans.
5. Diane isn’t happy with her job. She’s basically an English teacher and it’s not a job she enjoys. There are no proper jobs teaching sociology.
6. Shanghai is too expensive! We have double income, the smallest of apartments, engage in next to no nightlife and rarely buy clothes, and we can still not scrape together enough money to go visit our families in the summer. My mother is 83 years old and she has Parkinson’s disease. She cannot wait to see her grandchildren and they cannot wait to see her.
7. There is no future in China. This is not a place where you can make a life for yourself. When Saga turns 18 she will no longer be allowed to live here and the other kids will have to leave one after the other. I’m an “honored foreign expert,” but to be a foreign expert, even an honored one, is not to have a life. We need somewhere to call home.

So we are leaving. It’s scary returning to Sweden after close to 30 years abroad, but at least in Sweden we will be able to breathe. I like breathing.