60 People, 60 Stories

Whole new world

By Alexandra Pearson (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-30 08:29

Expat life in China has changed a great deal since I first came here in the early-1980s.

I was the daughter of a diplomat and there were very few expats here at all then. The ones that were here were mainly from the embassies.

You were actually something of a curiosity when you walked around the streets and sometimes people would come up and try and converse with you. There wasn't the range of bars and other activities there are now so it is was very much a case of making your own entertainment then.

I went back to the United Kingdom in 1986 to study Chinese at the University of Westminster in London and returned in 1992 and have remained here ever since.

Since then I have witnesses a gradual evolution. I think when you are here all the time the change is not so obvious, you morph with society. By the end of the 1990s, the type of expat changed. Instead of just embassy people, there was an influx of people working for foreign companies. There were also a lot more younger people coming in to teach English, which has meant overall a more youthful expat community.

I think on a social level with the wide range of bars and restaurants you can pretty much find in Beijing and in other cities what you can find in the West. Culturally, though, there are limitations, particularly with cinema, concerts and the opera, but that is changing. Chinese cultural centers, such as museums, are becoming more foreigner-friendly with signs in English and so on.

It is a totally different place now than it was nearly 30 years ago.

Alexandra Pearson is the owner of The Beijing Bookworm, a bookstore cum cafand one of the city's most famous expat haunts.