Beijing Made Me a Better Mom: Reflections After Repatriation

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One year ago we spent Mother’s Day at Jing-A in Longfusi, where our kids made crafts and we enjoyed some of our favorite beers (Flying Fist, anyone?).

I came from another event and so met my husband and kids there, getting totally lost on the way. (If you know me, this is fairly normal.) My phone’s GPS was wonky and I ducked into cafes to use their WiFi, all the while attempting to stay in touch with my family so we knew where to meet.

On the way, I met theater students hanging outside of rehearsal, two lovely shop owners (plus one ornery one), and used Google Translate with my poor Mandarin to see if any residents knew where I should go. A few Elders later, a lovely pre-teen showed me the way to the hutong, at which point I saw my family tumble out of a DiDi and spot me.

I was a bit frustrated with myself, but my husband just teased me about my lack of direction. We made some educated guesses and found our way through the archway that led into a half outdoor, half indoor, breezy boozy lunch. On the way out our kids hopped over concrete circles in the street while we sidestepped street vendors and found our way home.

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It was a blast.

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We moved back to the US last July, and everyone asks the same questions about living in Beijing. They want to know what it was like (wild), how we liked it (a lot), how the kids liked it (they loved it, it was their home), do they know any Mandarin (basics), and are you happy to be back (not at first).

How do you answer those questions with small talk? It’s nearly impossible and no one goes much deeper or tries to get to the heart of why we wanted to live abroad in the first place. It’s no one’s fault, but it does reduce our time in Beijing to mere anecdotes and a penchant for hot pot.

The real question for any travel or living outside your home country is “How did it change you?”

The truthful answer is “More than I could possibly know.”

What I do know is that living abroad and in Beijing specifically, reinforced my and Dan’s commitment to our family, and made me a better mother.

Living in Beijing made me more adventurous and in the moment.

I spent our first morning in Beijing pulling out my guidebooks and Jingkids mags to find family-friendly places we should visit. By the time Dan woke up, I had narrowed it down to 8-10 choices. He stared at me, newly poured coffee in hand, and said I was stressing him out and we should start our adventure by living here.

I reflected on that statement often in our two years: just living here is the adventure. Every day brought new challenges and new words we had to learn just to get around. I didn’t rise to all of the occasions, but I do feel like we were more than passing visitors. And now I approach our daily life as a potential adventure every day.

Beijing also made me a braver mom and so a better example for our kids. Whether they saw me struggle to order my coffee in Mandarin or decided they wanted to try the zip line at Longqing Gorge, we had to be brave. (Full disclosure, our friend saw the blood drain from my face at the zip line so he took my youngest, but I was willing. That counts, right?). I’d conquered a fear of dangling from heights in order to visit The Great Wall a few times and get to that toboggan ride, didn’t I? I managed to do things that I’d never dreamt of before, and all because I wanted my kids to see that taking risks for fun and adventure was worth it.

I learned to trust my kids more. 

As much as I felt like a laowai most days, my kids went through that in school, a place where social tensions are already quite high. Making such huge shifts at a young age really helped when we repatriated. They both make friends quite easily now and transitioned into new schools without any trouble; I attribute much of their character growth to the experiences we had in Beijing and how we as their parents had to allow them to experience their own struggles without immediately jumping in to help.

Watching them navigate a city that is larger than any they remember living in was eye-opening. They also got more experimental with the foods they would eat and outings they’d request.

I get who my real friends are.

Making friends in middle age, and especially as a mother, is hard enough. Finding friendships that are built on more than just being expats together is even harder. When we first moved, I trusted someone I shouldn’t have, and my walls went up. I kept a glossy distance between other parents and potential friends, not trusting they were genuine because of that one bad experience. It took the knowledge that we had an end date – when I’d be moving back – for me to get vulnerable and prioritize those people who I honestly considered friends. Seeing who I chose as my confidantes helped me understand what real friendship can be and honestly made me sad that I didn’t make more of an effort to hang with them. I took that lesson into my true friendships here and make a bigger effort to keep my true friends close.

Beijing helped me learn the true value of a village while raising a family.

There are so many examples of this, but the one that stands out to me is when my kid came home from preschool with lice (nits) and I could not find the right chemical treatment. It took weeks of diligently combing until a friend of a friend offered up her extra hair treatment so we could finally end the cycle. I would have paid her in gold pieces by then. Whether we needed medical help or suggestions for parties or simply missed something unique to our home country, those WeChat groups were a lifeline. I aim to be as thoughtful and helpful to our neighbors here as I felt in those groups.

Dan and I made time for morning check-ins. 

Before we moved, Dan and I promised that we’d have regular check-ins to make sure we stayed on the same page. With me switching from a trailing spouse to a working mother while his job ate up the majority of his time, those 20 minutes we stole over coffee every day made a huge difference. We solved many family questions in the cafe, found some new ones, and stayed connected emotionally while managing the logistics of expat family life. We loved it so much that we make the space for that time before school drop-offs in the US too. It’s worth waking up a few minutes earlier (most days) to sustain a daily coffee connection with each other.

Leaving my comfort zones made me grow as a writer, which made me a happier mom.

Ever since I got pregnant eight years ago, I either worked part-time from home with the kids or not at all. Then one day Mina accepted my pitch about quarantine for this publication and asked me to apply for an open position.. There’s no efficient way to get into how working at Jingkids affected me positively, so I’ll end with how my oldest son described my job, which I now carry into all the work I do:

“My Mommy writes things that help people.”

Knowing that he supports my work because he saw firsthand how it helped people and how much it helped me love myself again, well, that means everything. It doesn’t matter if Mother’s Day is at Jing-A in a hutong or a brunch spot in the United States. We carry our time in Beijing with us wherever we go.

Images: Canva, Cindy & Dan Jenkins, a waiter at Hulu

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