How Long Are You Staying?
Dan’s departure introduced me to the temporary nature of friendships abroad.
Dan had spent three years in China without returning to the United States. Increasingly, though, he talked about going home.
He missed familiar food and everyday comforts. Things I was still discovering with curiosity had become frustrations for him. He wanted to build a career back in America and settle down.
When he announced that he would leave in April, I began to understand the advice I had received in Shanghai about making local friends.
Until then, I had been busy arriving. I hadn’t given much thought to other people leaving.
Dan was a reassuring presence. Andy spoke Chinese and had a wife and daughter here; Chris Yu was from Hangzhou. Dan, by comparison, felt closer to the world I understood. His departure meant losing part of my small circle just as I was beginning to feel comfortable within it.
‘How long have you been here?’ was one of the first questions expats asked each other. It was usually followed by: ‘How long do you think you’ll stay?’
Sometimes the conversation sounded almost like comparing sentences: how many years served, how many left to go. Yet people’s answers changed. A year became several; others left sooner than they had expected.
I had once been astonished by anyone who stayed longer than two years. Andy’s eight had seemed inconceivable. Now I was enjoying Hangzhou so much that I rarely stopped to consider an end date.
I was occupied, making friends and finding routines. The question of staying or leaving belonged to some later version of me.
For Dan, that question had become immediate. Andy tried to persuade him to stay, but he submitted his resignation.
After he left, Andy passed on a gift from him: a large bottle of Baileys. It was the first bottle of alcohol anyone had given me. I discovered that I liked it, including in coffee. Between that and the White Russian, Dan had helped me identify a distinctly sweet taste in drinks.
The compass keyring stayed with me too.
Our friendship had been brief and occasionally confusing, but his leaving mattered. China was beginning to feel like home, and I was learning that the people who made it feel that way might not stay.