bkluvsNola

My sister is planning to move to Shanghai with her husband and two kids (soon to be three). Her husband is being moved with his work so many of the expenses will be paid, including an apartment, maids, servants, chauffeur, etc...

Neither her nor her husband have lived anywhere outside the American South. They both currently live in Dallas and are typical Southerners in pretty much every respect (he's an avid hunter/fisher who loves to crank A/C, she's an avid indoor mall shopper).

I, on the other hand, have lived extensively throughout the United States and am married to a Swiss woman, so I know a thing or two about the world, but I don't think they know what they are getting into.

Could some American (particularly from the Southern US) transplants to China, Shanghai in particular, describe their experiences in living in Shanghai.

Oh, by the way, the assignment would be three years.

I want to give them some ideas on what they are about to get into. I want honest pros and cons on everything from healthcare, climate, infrastructure, cuisine, expat community, etc...

Thank you.

kaneda

Buy a copy of :

Living and Working in China: The Complete, Practical Guide to Living As An Expatriate in the People's Republic (Paperback) by Andrew Williamson.

Amazon.com will have a copy if you can't get it locally.

easytraveler

You'll probably get omore answers to your questions if you posted to a website like

expatsinchaina.com

thursdaysd

You may find this blog helpful: http://meckleychina.blogspot.com/

Cicerone

Living extensively throughout the US will in NO WAY prepare you to live anywhere outside it, IMO, so your sister is not IMO at any disadvantage to you. The US is it's own little bubble. I have lived here in Asia (Hong Kong and Singapore) for many years (and have also lived in Switzerland which is also it's own little bubble). The only way to know what it is like here really is to live here. Doing some reading will help a bit and talking to others will help, but IMO everyone seems to have things they love and things they don't, and they seem to be a bit different.

If she has not already been to Shanghai, she should definitely take a reconnaissance trip there to make sure it is a city she would like to live in and have her children live in. It is a huge city, and while very safe (much more so than Dallas for example), ne drawback it does have IMO is that the air pollution is quite bad. If her children have asthma or allergy issues this city could definitely present problems for them.

She will have some shocks and some adjustment, she will also have some really pleasurable encounters as well. It's a trade off as with most things.

Get her a copy of "Culture Shock! China" as a good place to start. The books are part of the Culture Shock series of books published by Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company. You can buy them on line from Amazon or your local bookstore can order it for you.

Otherwise, if they love to crank the A/C and love shopping malls, they are heading to the right place, Shanghai has the former and the latter are already there and more opening literally every Not a problem. There is also plenty of shopping otherwise without the malls. She will be in absolute heaven with the bargains and the stuff she have can made: shoes, clothing, furniture. She should probably look at the American Women’s Club of Shanghai now, at http://www.awcshanghai.org/page2.html. I think her husband will find outdoor activates to be a bit harder to find close to Shanghai (just because the city is so huge), but will find some a few hours drive from the city.
Other sites you may find useful

www.expatexchange.com
www.expat-essentials.com
www.expatforum.com
www.expatnetwork.com
www.escapeartist.com/expatriate1/expatriate1.htm
www.outpostexpat.nl

nagiffag

I'd suspect that they can get all their questions answered at http://www.shanghaiexpat.com/ as it's quite a helpful community. Also, http://chinesepod.com/ is great if they want to start working on their Mandarin at their leisure.

bkluvsNola

Cicerone,

Thanks for your information.

My sister and her husband will be visiting Shanghai for 10 days next week to decide if they like it or not. So hopefully they'll know more then.

I realize that there are modern shopping malls in Shanghai, so my sister will be fine for that. Maybe she'll learn to shop at all the outside booths and stalls, to me and my wife that is always more interesting than mall shopping. But of course, like I said, we are totally different.

I don't think I agree that it would be about the same adjustment for her as for me. I have a passion for traveling and love to read about people, places, and cultures. When I visit a city, I want to visit all the important cultural sites. When she visits a city, she just wants to find the best shopping mall. That makes me think she just won't be able to appreciate living in China that much.

I've camped out in the desert in 120 degree heat, I've lived in apartments without A/C in tropical climates, I am not worried about people invading my personal space, and I don't have other American type phobias. For instance, I am not scared to eat anything from any cuisine (and I have gotten sick many times because of that lack of fear, but I still like the adventure of trying). She would never have even attempted half of the things I've done. So hopefully that provides some insight.

I am just a little concerned that they would not be able to adjust to the lifestyle there. Perhaps if they only hung out with other Americans and lived in a cacoon then they'd be okay, but something just makes me worry.

America is such a creature comfort type place, where everything has to be comfortable, and I am worried that they wouldn't fit in because things are not "comfortable" in most other countries. For me, that is the whole reason to travel.

As for him, I think he'll have to deal with not having his gun (not a bad thing in my mind) and just give up that hunting thing.

They also have children which will be going to an international school there. I'm not worried about them at all since children adapt the fastest.

Shanghainese

Don't worry too much about your sister and her family, they might just surprise you in their ability to adjust. Shanghai is such a cosmopolitan city, aside from the pollution and perhaps non-pottable water, not many people dislike it. With the company paid amenities, they won't miss too many creature comforts. Do they have maid, servant, chauffeur, etc. in Dallas? If they want to just hang out with Americans, that is their choice.

I am surprised they did not visit Shanghai before your brother-in-law accepted the job transfer.

marmot

bkluvs, I've lived overseas for 16 years, first in Hong Kong and now in Jakarta. We adjusted very well but our situation is a little unusual as I am the breadwinner and my husband is an artist. What I've observed among many, many families is the ability of the non-working spouse (generally the wife) to adapt and enjoy her new environment is what makes or breaks the experience.

Some wives plunge into the community -- make friends, get involved in the school and local organizations -- some (literally) mark the days off on a calendar until they can go back to their hometowns. The husband's job is usually very demanding and can often involve long hours, travel and loads of stress, so the wife has to be somewhat self-sufficient. Believe me, he's not going to want to hear that she's bored, that the maid doesn't know how to bake brownies or the driver's siphoning off gasoline.

Living with domestic help sounds fabulous to most Americans, but like any employees, maids, drivers, cooks, gardeners need to be managed and this can be very challenging the first time you're confronted with the task of giving instructions to people from another culture, whose English skills are limited,

Suburban Americans are accustomed to the freedom of getting in their cars and going where they want to go when they want to go. Having a driver is a privelege but also another responsibility that requires managing. Public transportation is difficult for expats and nobody has a driver 24 hours, so with a working husband and kids who need to be chauffeured around it's difficult to handle the logistics.

The lack of open space -- like parks or back yards -- is also an annoyance in big, congested Asian cities. The pollution and noise are overwhelming, especially for someone coming from a suburban environment, and it's hard to get away from it. Hopefully, there will be a club membership involved in the deal with some run-around space for the kids.

My guess is that with all the development, Shanghai has excellent expat support groups. Your sister needs to plug in early on and rely on others to help her with the ins and outs of adjusting. If your b-i-l is working for a large multinational with several other expats in country most likely they will have an official orientation program. Many companies get intimately involved in their employees' lives -- much more than you would expect at home -- and will help you find household staff, handle the maintenance on the (company owned) apartment, offer language lessions etc.

I wouldn't trust the health care anywhere in China and would make a solid evacuation policy my top priority.

I would also make sure that I had an iron clad exit clause, just in case things don't work out.

The international schools in China are very good and if the kids are nearing college age, the experience is a real plus in admissions. One thing that you have to bear in mind is that children with any special needs -- academic, emotional, or godforbid disciplinary -- have extreme difficulty in international settings. And if the kids can't get what they need from the school, the whole family has a problem.

Good luck to your sister. Let's hope that she'll be one of those expat wives who thrive in their host country. It's a wonderful opportunity for the whole family if approached with enthusiasm and sense of humor.

Cicerone

I know many wives living here whose only passion is finding the best thing to buy, believe me, they are in heaven here. I think it is a shame and a waste, but this place is nirvana if that is what you want. She may become an expert on Ming porcelains or something, so be prepared to be surprised at what her shopping skills may turn up....some women here with only shopping skills acutally have turned them into import export businesses...there are many hinese women who shop their entire days away as well. She will be in good company. You may be overrating the cerebral nature of people outside the US. You also may be underrating your sister who may indeed want to get out of the cocoon.

If she wants to live in a little expat cocoon, IMO she will be able to do that quite easily in Shanghai, and her "adjustment" will really not be that difficult, IMO. She will find all the Western foods she wants and many excellent French, Italian and other non-Chinese restaurants. She will not have to eat any strange foods or at any street stalls if she chooses not to. She can shop in air conditioned shopping malls and be taken from place to place by her driver, and have lunch and tea in the elegant lobbies of 5 star hotels. When she wants a vacation, she can choose from a myriad of luxury hotels in Thailand, Bali, the Maldives or other parts of Asia, do a quick shopping trip to Hong Kong or Singapore, or Tokyo, or a hop to Europe. Or, she can go the other way and choose to frequent street stalls, learn Shanghaingese, eat street food and trek the silk road on a camel. My point is that here adjustment will be a tough or easy as she wants to make it, as her location, IMO, is not going to be the deciding factor. I just don't think the "adjustment" to Asia in a place like Shanghai is really going to be difficult on an expat pacakage. Certain places, esp in the PRC, are still tough, but IMO, Shanghai is just not one of them. You may not realize quite how Westernized Shanghai is and that is is in no way a hardship posting. I think Beijing would be a harder place to live than Shanghai.

petitepois

Many good suggestions and thoughtful posts here. Though I do feel that Shanghai's pollution and distance from the United States do make it a hardship post, it is true that life there can be very pleasant, even luxurious. I've now lived in Beijing as an "expat wife" for four years, returning to the States this summer. I've also been lucky enough to spend these four years working in a fulfilling job -- not the norm for many expat spouses, who are hampered by language, opportunity and other challenges. My biggest piece of advice would be to make an effort learn the language, in your sister's case Mandarin Chinese. But then again, I don't believe in living in a country and not speaking the language. Speaking Chinese has been difficult and humbling but it has opened many, many doors for me. Also, I want to add that the expat cocoon is not black and white -- ie your sister won't choose between A. the expat cocoon or B. totally immersing herself in local culture, but will fall, like most of us, somewhere in between. Living overseas opens up the world, it makes you question your home country's position in the world and so much more. If your sister and her family keep an open mind -- and that is *key* to the whole experience -- they will have a memorable, perhaps life-changing, experience. I know I have.

bkluvsNola

Cicerone, marmot, and petitepois,

Thank you very much for your very thoughtful and informative posts.

My sister seemed very open to the idea, so maybe there's hope. Perhaps this will be a branching out for her and her family into a new and exciting discovery.

When I was in Switzerland, I met several expats living there that just totally hung out with other Americans, spoke English, and didn't even bother trying to blend in. My wife said those people totally disgusted her, and I agreed. I guess my point of view is that if you are in a place, you should totally immerse yourself in it and absorb as much as you can. For instance, when I was in Switzerland (Geneva), I mainly hung out with French speaking people, spoke French, went to Swiss/French restaurants, etc... I tried to absorb the culture 100%. I would think it would be a pity if my sister went to Shanghai and lived in her own cocoon never really experiencing the culture.

Her children are young, around 6, 4, and one in the tummy... So they wouldn't get the benefits for college applications.

I also had a question about the winter. I hear that most of China experiences Siberian winters. I'm sure that's true of Beijing. What about Shanghai? I know it's around 30 degrees latitude, around the same as New Orleans, but I think the climate patterns are different there because of the Asian landmass. So my questions are "How brutal are the winters in Shanghai?" and "How widespread is central heating/air conditioning?" Just as they (my sister and brother and law) like to crank A/C in the summer, they like to crank heat in the winter. I read that below a certain latitude that there's no heating? Is there any truth to that? Since they've never lived in a colder climate, I'm a bit worried about that for them as well.

bkluvsNola

Is the health care system in Shanghai really that bad, even for wealthy Americans?

I know that in some countries, there are two tiers of health care for the haves and the have nots, I was wondering if it was similar there?

Cicerone

Take a look at weatherbase.com for weather info for Shanghai. Yes, they have cold winters. I have not lived there, but have traveled there for business and pleasure in the winter and have not found central heating to be lacking at all. As with Europe, rooms seem to be overheated in my experience. I would say the winter temps are generally on a par with New York, which of course is colder than Dallas, but then again she will have an excuse to get a fur coat. I don’t believe they get very much snow, but do have cold temps. I live in Hong Kong, where very few homes have central heating, as we have a subtropical climate with “winter” temps in the 60s/70s F, that may be one of the “lower latitude” places you have read about. That is not the case in Shanghai, central heating is the norm. It is extremely unlikely IMO that any housing they would be looking at would not have A/C, and if it does, that would be their choice to live in it as they may want charm or something over A/C (I would still find it hard to imagine that these places would not have A/C but perhaps). The range of expat housing is quite good from what I have seen. The amount of new construction far outpaces any US city. More than likely their housing would be new or a few years old, but even if not, would be fitted out with new items like air conditioning. (That’s one of the reason for all the air pollution, everyone wants their creature comforts, and there are a billion Chinese who want them...) The image you may have of barefoot Chinese in Mao suits and conical straw hats huddled over a charcoal brazier in winter just does so absolutely not fit modern middle-class Shanghai that I just wonder where you are getting the info.....it’s more like marble bathrooms with gold fixtures and the heated toilet seats that the Japanese love so much!

With regard to local friendships, I lived in Switzerland (Zurich) and actually found that the Swiss were not the most welcoming to strangers. I believe you may have had a different experience because you had a Swiss spouse which is the best entree into Swiss local life. You probably know a lot more Swiss people than I ever had the opportunity to meet. I think your wife may not have realized this, and having an American husband, she may be more open to meeting foreigners in the first place. I did not find this to be quite the case with most Swiss. I found it the hardest place of all my non-US postings to meet local people. On the other hand, I believe your sister will find a very large and extremely friendly expat community of Europeans and Americans to mix with. Whether local Chinese are in the mix will be a question. I find that this is not the case here in Hong Kong, but was the case when I lived in Singapore. I cannot explain the difference. I think some of it has to do with better-educated Singaporeans having to travel aboard more and so are open to meeting foreigners, I don’t know. Perhaps people living in Shanghai can opine on whether they have local Chinese friends. However, the opportunity to meet and befriend Europeans, South Americans, Indians, Indonesians, Africans, etc is a very great one, which I feel can make up for the lack of local Hong Kong friends. Of course, in my experience people from the South of the US tend to be friendly and social in the extreme, so she probably will mix with a very broad group of people.

I believe the private health care system is OK in China, as you said, people who can pay for it get good care. I don't know that much about it. The public hospitals are quite strained from what I understand.

petitepois

To some extent of course your sister will be trapped in the "expat bubble." Life as an expat in China is nothing like life as an expat in Europe. For one thing, if she is non-Asian than she will NEVER blend in. She and her family will automatically stick out and be labelled as foreigners at first sight! But this does not mean she will not experience local culture. If she's open to new experiences, as you say, than they really shouldn't have any problems. They probably won't immerse themselves in Chinese culture -- but what does that mean anyway? You say that she likes to seek out shopping malls -- in this regard she's not that different from many Chinese people. My husband and I speak pretty good Chinese and have many Chinese friends and we still don't feel "immersed." On the other hand, we're in our 30s and aren't about to go live with a Chinese family!

In fact, most of my friends are other expats, some American, but also European and Japanese. I have many Chinese friends, but language has been the biggest barrier to forming these friendships!

Re Health care -- I can't speak specifically to Shanghai but if it's anything like Beijing (and Shanghai is more developed than Beijing in almost every way...) than they will find excellent medical facilities that will probably be covered by their US insurance. For surgeries or (god forbid) more complex medical problems, most people here go to Singapore or Hong Kong.

nagiffag

Shanghaiexpat.com is a more appropriate forum for this discussion as these questions are common there and you receive responses based on real expat experiences in Shanghai.

We are American dual-expats living in Shanghai for over 3 years. We both work and also have a newborn. It sounds like we have similar expat packages and it is indeed considered a hardship location by our company. We call Shanghai "China for Beginners" for a reason; it's more westernized and there are lots of services and groups geared toward expats. It makes this the easiest location of the 3 expat assignments we've had.

Healthcare: We CHOSE to have our baby at Worldlink Clinic in Shanghai via scheduled c-section. Another American had a baby and another had heart catheterization done here. The doctors are trained in the US or other foreign country and lots of equipment is foreign brand. Their pharmacy orders medicines from UK upon request. Of course you pay for this dearly but I assume their insurance will cover it.

Housing: Expat families tend to live in compounds in Pudong opposed to Puxi (downtown)as that's where expat schools are. (And schools better be good as they're around US$ 20,000/child/year.) Many compounds are Americanized with small back yards, clubhouse, indoor and outdoor pools, playground, guards, etc. Many compounds host social events.

Help: In my experience in a lane house in Puxi and compound in Pudong...
- Gardeners are usually provided by landlord.
- Having a driver is not as great as it sounds as they're probably used to having 2 vehicles and going places when they feel like it. Imagine now sharing a single vehicle with the entire family and having to wait for the driver before you can leave with the children. One either has to plan well, be willing to wait for driver to arrive or be ok with making driver sit at ur house in case you want to go somewhere. (I assume taxis are not an option with young children due to needing a seatbelt.) Make sure the driver speaks English and has driven previously for foreigners in Shanghai or be prepared for major frustration.
- Maids ("ayi's&quot are inexpensive so it's common to have one for cleaning and one for the children. One can pay a premium for a Filipina ayi, but don't expect they fully understand your english. Live-in is common (expat quarters usually have an extra room or 2 for them) but it takes a little getting used to. And I've not found one that cooks western food well.

And if they're ever homesick just pop into CPK, Papa John's, Cold Stone Creamery, Starbucks, ... you get the point.

It's important that they have the proper expectation that they'll go thru phases of loving it and hating it throughout their entire assignment. Again, see ShanghaiExpat for detailed questions.