Locked inside, I fall in love with my second home

China is a revolving door for most foreigners. In just a little more than two years I've seen scads of expats come and go and have attended more going-away parties than birthday bashes with them.

Another fresh batch of global nomads has recently appeared in Beijing, so I'm doing another round of meet-and-greets. One of the first things they ask after introductions is when I plan on returning to the United States. Most are surprised when I tell them I don't.

Like most other foreigners, when I first came to the country, I had planned on doing "my year in China", a pit stop for adventure and experience on the journey to life's next destination.

But when that year ended, I wasn't ready to go. Some time ago, I came to realize I may never be, that perhaps when I stepped off that plane I was unknowingly stepping through a trap door rather than a revolving one.

China is a place of superlatives, where the suffixes "ist" and "est" apply to nearly everything, and the country's sheer extremeness render the line between hyperbole and understatement either blurry or non-existent.

Beijing offers a particular appeal. The city seethes with energy and I would now find it difficult to feel so alive anywhere less sizzling. The capital changes so rapidly that I don't even have to move to live in a different city every year.

Also, China is a place where you should always expect the unexpected - and when you least expect it. And you can't expect the expected, especially when you most expect it. It's bewildering, paradoxical and oh so delightful.

The longer I live here, the more I understand the country - and the more I realize I don't. I knew China much better after my first three months than after my first year, and am afraid of how ignorant I will become 10 years on, when I will probably know 10 times what I do now.

All of these are ways in which the country has captivated my attention. But it's the people who live here that have captivated my heart, locking the revolving door and throwing away the key.

I have learned so much from the way people here treat one another - that is, with a veneration for cooperation, harmony and the collective good that bears little semblance to what I knew in the United States. And I have so much more to learn.

People often ask if I consider China home. I still don't know how to answer that. But perhaps I could say the United States is my homeland and China is the land that has become my home. However, it will never be home to me in the same way it is to the Chinese or how the United States was to me but could never be again.

Having undergone the personal transformation that comes with living here, I today feel equally comfortable and uncomfortable on either side of the ocean. My way of thinking has been influenced by both my host and home culture, and in some ways has become like neither.

In the end, I believe the old adage, "home is where the heart is". I feel that way about the United States. But I also believe that the heart is where home is. And that's how I feel about China.

(China Daily 10/22/2008 page20)