Spring Festival

Every year, my friends ask me what I plan on doing for Spring Festival, a lot of strangers also ask me.

Chinese go to see families or old friends, and usually travel a lot in the process.
For an expat, it is different.

Expats don't have friends here from their childhood or in different parts of China.
Expats don't have family that they can travel for a day or two and then visit for a week.

Westerners are also different about what they think is fun. If you ask them to visit your Aunt who lives up in the mountains so that you can have a week full of food and interesting conversations... you already forgot the first rule of expats. They generally don't speak Chinese. That means that a week in the mountains with complete strangers that they can't even talk to... does not sound like fun or happiness to them.

They will be lost, they will be unable to do anything that they like to do. Expats have very few things that they like to do with them which are available. You might find a few things they like in their apartment. It is hard for us to plan a Spring Festival because we can not read Chinese and can not speak it either. That means that we can not find out what to do.

Normally, we stay home, with the things that we like. Maybe we have books, a computer, a television. If we want to go out, we will find other expats and go to a party. It is not common that we will want to travel for three days to spend a week isolated from everything that makes us comfortable or happy to be surrounded by things that make you comfortable or happy, but which we can't understand or appreciate due to the language or culture barrier.

We also like sleeping in our own beds. Our beds are comfortable, and we usually have some kind of heat in the room. Your aunt might not have heat, might not have warm blankets, might not have a soft mattress that is clean.

Now you can understand some of the reasons about why foreigners decide to spend their Spring Festival at home, or with other foreigners. For us, our conditions are very different. If we understood language, we might actually enjoy a weekend away from the few comforts and the few things we have that make us happy.