Reflecting on My Four Years in America

Xingdi (Cindy) Zhou

I arrived in Seattle in late 2016 but due to extensive international travel in 2017, I only started my full-time living experience in the US from March 2018. Covid wiped out two years of all our lives so now I am shocked to realize that my four-year anniversary of living in America is coming up.

Four years is the typical length of time to pursue an undergraduate degree. My time in Seattle reminds me of my university days. Both times I left my old life and came to a new, unknown environment. I felt lonely when I first went to Wuhan (now everybody knows that city) for my university education. I arrived at the dormitory so early that I had to spend the first night by myself in the 6-person room. Loneliness gnawed at my heart. I was so homesick that I decided to write a letter to my parents (this was in the days before email). I went to the stationery shop to buy letter paper, envelope and glue. The saleswoman behind the counter (nothing was self-service in China back then) only brought out the first two items but failed to bring the glue. I kept repeating the word for glue while she was losing her patience with me. I suddenly realized that I was using a word for glue from my village dialect which I thought was Mandarin (“pu3 tong1 hua4”). Coming from the countryside, I did not speak proper Mandarin at that time, and I embarrassed myself on day one of my four years’ life at Wuhan University. Here in America, my English is by no means that of a native speaker, but I am no longer embarrassed if my wording or pronunciation is not exactly right.

In Seattle the coolness or difficulty of making friends, called the “Seattle Freeze”, was the first negative issue I encountered. It made me wonder whether leaving China in my middle age was a clever idea. However, just like the bad start of my university days things could only get better – right? And that is true of my experience in Seattle. I have grown fond of my new home over the years. Four years ago, I authored a piece about the Seattle Freeze which was my first article posted to LinkedIn. Now coming to the end of the fourth year, I have penned this article, like a dissertation written in my senior year of university, I think it is an appropriate time for me to offer some observations of living in the US (specifically Seattle) and outline the things I like about living in America and also the negative.  

What I like (in no particular order)

National parks and the great outdoors, trails

Food, especially quality seafood, and the varieties of ingredients – everyone has the potential to be a good chef.

Clear skies

Innovation, talent, and diversity

Never need to think that I am too old to change my career - it would be hard for me to imagine to switch career track in China.

Work ethics

Public library system

Quiet surroundings – I do not miss the noisy cosmopolitan atmosphere in Shanghai at all.

Not so much peer pressure and easier to focus on my personal and internal needs. I feel freer while living here.

What I do not like

Guns

Homelessness

People seem to lack of interest in what happens in the rest of the world and take for granted about what they have.

Ridiculous Healthcare system – expensive, not transparent billing systems

Every service requires appointment-making

Pressure to tip 20% at restaurants because the staff are so poorly paid

Utilities are extremely expensive – water, sewage water, electricity, phone bills, internet, and cable.

Divided public media opinions – my husband chooses to pay a higher cable fee to access to BBC because he cannot stand the politics of the media in the US   

Call Centers – it  takes forever to talk to a human and rarely do I receive a satisfactory answer to my questions. It is obvious that the training of call center staff is inadequate.

Wealth Management Systems - The system around money is just too complicated – I had assumed this was only an issue for immigrants, but I am surprised to learn how little everyday American people know about it,  whether it is related to tax, investment, trusts, insurance, etc.

Even though my “negative list” may be longer than my favorites list, I embrace my life in this country. It is a beautiful nation (this is how we call America in Chinese “mei3 guo2”), also creative, entrepreneurial, and full of opportunities.

Assimilating in Seattle

Xingdi (Cindy) Zhou

Recently, I read the novel “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” by Seattle based author Maria Semple. I immensely enjoyed the book which tells the story of family who moved from California to Seattle (and intriguingly, they lived in Queen Anne my new neighborhood). Antarctica is a big part of the story, which further intrigued me as I have visited there twice in the past three years. It’s rare to read a book where almost every scene and plot described in the novel draws so closely upon your own personal experiences. As a recent immigrant from China and a non-native-English-speaker who takes three times longer to read a novel than my US born husband I completed the book in only a couple of days, a new record in my life. 

“People say Seattle is one of the toughest cities in which to make friends. They even have a name for it, the “Seattle freeze.” I’ve never experienced it myself, but coworkers claim it’s real and has to do with all the Scandinavian blood up here.” Bernadette’s husband Elgie, who is a top SVP in Microsoft, related in the beginning part of the novel. 

Now, on a gray January Seattle Sunday morning, my husband asked me to read an article – “Gather Around, People” - from the Seattle Times’ Sunday edition. It came as no surprise to me that the author, Christy Karras, who moved to Seattle from Salt Lake City with her husband, wrote about her determination and execution to “find her people” after experiencing deep depression of being alone. 

“I’m just one of many, new comers and old-timers alike, facing the same question: How do you make friends in a city renowned for its standoffishness, and in a world that encourages division and isolation?” 

At the end of her article, Christy Karras said: “I’m hoping this column will remind us all that we’re not as alone as we might think.”

She is absolutely right. 

I experienced the Seattle Freeze immediately after I moved here in late 2016. For the first six months it seemed to be the major theme of my new life. I missed my mother back in China who I had nursed through chemotherapy for the previous twelve months. I missed the rest of my family, the frenetic pace of Shanghai and all of the friends that I left there.  I also tried hard to contact old friends who moved to America much earlier but without much avail. I even doubted my decision to come to the US. My husband, without any previous ties to Seattle could not offer me too much support after having spent three decades living in Asia. 

Thanks to my countryside childhood experience – I went to a boarding school at age of 11 and then off to university and employment in the big city far from my country town – I knew I could eventually find friends and create a new life – Seattle Freeze be damned.  

As a serious yoga practitioner, I started with yoga. Luckily, I found the best Ashtanga yoga instructor in the city very quickly. However, even after two years of practice I haven’t created real new friends in part due to the individual nature of this particular style of yoga. 

In April, 2017 I had an opportunity to have coffee with Gary Locke, the former Washington State Governor and the former American Ambassador to China. Mr. Locke (or “Mr. Luo” as he is known in China) gained wide popularity among the Chinese people during his term in Beijing. Chinese people were attracted to his humble style. They recognized that no government leader in China would be willing to fly accorss the Pacific in economy class as Governor Locke did when he became ambassador. I was thrilled about the opportunity to have a one-on-one meeting with him in his office. When I mentioned the Seattle freeze he encouraged me to create my own community to counteract the phenomena citing the example of starting up a “book club”.

Inspired by his idea of “creating one’s own community”, my husband and I decided to establish our own society which we named “The Seattle Shanghai Expats Society” to assemble people with a shared Shanghai connection now living in Seattle. We’d hope that this group would provide both a social and intellectual purpose to help us adjust to our new life as well as to serve as a forum to stay current with developments in Shanghai as well as in China. 

We launched our first event in September 2017 and we have routinely held our monthly gathering ever since. Our group is composed of Chinese immigrants who have made Seattle their home, US citizens who have lived and worked in Shanghai in the past as well as Chinese people who are working here on temporary assignments (often for some of Seattle’s largest companies who have operations in China). We have had a number of China experts – authors and well known China commentators as speakers and we have also had our own members tell their stories of their lives in China or how they assimilated into life in the US. 

As the founder of the group, I am proud and happy that our members find value in the Society and that I have found “my people”. 

I don’t think that I have entirely conquered the Seattle Freeze but I feel more integrated into this evergreen city and increasingly enjoy my life here.  As a new transplant with only two years of experience here I still have lots to learn about the city before I can really feel that I am “of Seattle”. However, through building my own community I am more comfortable to cope with any difficulties in front of me. 

In the end of Maria Semple’s book “Where’d You Go, Bernadette”, she listed some questions and topics for discussion, one of which is “When Bernadette relocates from Los Angeles to Seattle, she must cope with being a transplant in a new city. Have you ever moved, or even stayed put but switched jobs, and had to adjust to an entirely different culture? What was it like?”

This little article is my answer to this question.