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Q: Ever get lonely here?
I don't know about everyone else but I have a severe lack of foreign friends since a lot of them have gone home now, and my Chinese "friends" are well.....Chinese. Is it just me or can it get quite lonely being a foreigner sometimes?
It has been a bit so this year, as I am the only foreigner in my university right now and among the absolute few in the neighborhood I live in.
Sometimes my chinese friends will talk with each other in chinese, even though they speak english, so often times one feels like a pest for asking too many times "whad did they say" or excluded.
Usually these times pass however, and eventually some one comes your way (or various someones for that matter).
Hang in there!
Hulk:
Buddy, if I lived in Beijing, I'd take you on hulkfests or something, as often as you needed it.
GuilinRaf:
Thanks guys!
These things come and go, so no worries there. Just a matter of hanging in there, which is what i want the original poster to know as well.
I've never understood how bad loneliness can be until I arrived in China. It's ostracizing your soul "at its best" if I may say so. Do your best to never let that happen. Let people approach you, talk to them and learn to see friendship in the Chinese way and enjoy hanging out with them. This is what you have at this moment and it is the best you actually have...because you don't have other friends. So enjoy them and enjoy being with them.
Hulk:
Yeah, it... was worse back home for me. In China, I still have the option of exploring so many new things, so it took my mind off a lot of stuff.
I live rural in Canada, not many people. In China with so many around me, I don't feel lonely, sometimes left out when those around me speak Chinese. I only missed my dog.
TedDBayer:
My girl friend lost her Collie and has not found it. I could not bring my Collie to China. I only met her because I wanted to see her dog.
I do sometimes feel lonely but I can cope with it. I've got a Chinese family, but there's a culture gap. My son is more aware of my culture than my husband.
I don't frequent bars, night clubs, never liked those places. As for other foreign teachers here, they're all men, I'm always careful when communicating with men, I don't want to deliver wrong messages.
As for Chinese friends, I tried, it very seldom works out. Chinese are nice & polite but they force their way into your personal life. They do want to know what you eat, what language you speak at home, they do love visiting you & read your notes on your desk, enter your bedroom & touch everything around.
So, I'm on this site. Communication with other foreign teachers in between the classes or while on the school bus (we commute to the new campus) does the trick.
Several Chinese ladies tried to make friends with me, but our interests are so different. They wanted me to go shopping with them but shopping is not my cup of tea, they love Chinese movies, I can't appreciate them, they like eating out in a Chinese restaurant, i have a thing for Western food. Sometimes, I feel like their only purpose is to practice their English with me.
When I came to China the last two times, I felt horribly lonely. The first time, I made a girlfriend, but... we just didn't click. I loved her, but we were way too different, and her English was abysmal. People wanted to talk to me, but I couldn't since she was extremely jealous. That got lonely, since she was often distant and bitchy.
Second time, I came here with my ex-girlfriend (some Chinese girl I met back home). Total nutbag, but she wasn't as psycho-possessive as the last one. She gave me my space, but freaked when I talked to other girls, even though she agreed to let me do that before. In China, as you may or may not have seen, most guys don't speak English very well... but girls do.
Third time, I spend almost every single waking hour with my wife, so now I'm never lonely. We have a really good relationship and take good care of each other. I'm a guy who has spent the vast majority of his life being alone/lonely (didn't mesh with my generation; 95% turned to drugs and alcohol, the other 5% left the state), so now I'm pretty happy almost every single day... well, until her psycho mom got in the way. Nevertheless, I'm not lonely at all anymore.
Wish I had some foreign friends here, though. I had two, but only met one once (awesome guy, and a talented artist), and the other just went home a couple weeks ago. The only other foreigners aren't from countries where English is the native language... and we have way too many differences.
:
I am happy to hear how you put an end to your loneliness and that unlike the odds you didn't seek instant happiness through drugs and so. It is a bless to speak about your partner, hence your wife in such way. People get married for many reasons, but I found few saying how loneliness is not anymore an issue because they wake up every morning with the one they love. Many feel alone in their own family. Friendship if built in time will lead the life in two to a stable and harmonious family including through bad times.
Hulk:
It was definitely tough. One thing I'd recommend to lonely folks is never to lower your standards just to avoid being lonely. It's much better to be lonely than to be with someone who makes your life miserable...
I married this girl because we were, and still are, in love, and because we wanted the same things in life: a family, to see our grandkids, etc. Plus she loves children, she's a good woman, and has a really good heart.
i only feel lonely when i don't have a gf. . i have about 5 true friends that i've made in china. but they are all in different cities. i call/ chat/ text with them all the time. they can talk to me about anything .
making real friends in china is very difficult but i've been fortunate.
Well, I'm about to get married, so I hope I won't feel lonely LOL. My gf works most of the time so it all balances out. There are about 45 foreigners in my Uni! But you don't want to meet all of them, believe me...
GuilinRaf:
Ha ha ha!
So true!
There were more foreigners in my university in Guilin. Some were truly wonderful people i was happy to know! Others....werent.
Thanks for all the answers guys. I wasn't sure whether to post this question or not, didn't know if I'd come across as a loser or not. Just to note, I speak Chinese, but I havn't found anyone I would call a true friend. There are people at work I chat with a lot, but not really friends. I guess I just need to adjust my mode of thinking and try and adapt a little to make more Chinese friends.
sorrel:
don't think you are a loser if you feel lonely. it is a normal reaction to what can be a challenging environment.
It could depends though. Back home I went to bars and played poker with up to 50 or so people and went to church meetings etc., Here there is nothing really like that so I don't socialize with a large crowd like I used to before I came here. The foreigners that I worked with seemed to want to sleep all the time or were not that sociable in the first place.
Just read all your posts,i find one thing in common,most of you don't think a Chinese could be your true friend,instead,you think they would just want to get benefit from you.I have to confess many Chinese are indeed like that,but still there are cool ones.Even for the ones who want to practice English with you,if you don't pay too much attention to that and just take it as a happy thing to help the others,you will finally get true friends even from these people.I don't know what friends mean in the other cultures,but Chinese usually wouldn't take the others as true friends if they don't know deeply about these people and this procedure to know the others usually takes a comparatively long time.We may refer to someone as our friend sometimes but that's different .If we really take someone as our friend,it means he/she is kind of like our families.We can totally trust him/her even if it does something wrong and we would try our best to help him/her if it has difficulties.So,my advice for you is to be more open-minded and active in communicating with the others,whether they are foreigners or Chinese.You won't feel that lonely then.
GuilinRaf:
Very true!
I have Chinese friends, mostly in different cities, whom are very dear to me. They have never tried to take advantage of me and even have been reluctant to ask me for help, which I am always glad to give.
To be fair and balanced, I have met foreigners who are willing to take advantage of others. Not all foreigners are "Saints" either!.
The wife's away on business in Shanghai at the moment (which is why i'm on here talking bla bla with you folks). Got her folks and my son here but the mother-in-law doesn't speak mandarin, my father-in-law is a very quiet man and my son is only one, so conversation is somewhat lacking. Not drinking so the pub's out, and yeh, I guess i'm feeling a rittle ronrey.
"OHH, I'M RONREYYYY, I'M RONREYYY, I'M RONREY AND FEERING ARONNNNE"
Nevermind though, she's promised to bring me back a meatball sub. Sweet.
mArtiAn:
That would be a 'Subway' style meatball sandwich and I love them. Unfortunately the last time I bought one it was to eat on the plane and I spent the whole journey sitting next to some dirty filthy bas***d who kept hacking like he was trying to cough up a lung the whole time. Totally put me off my sandwich.
I know how you feel Xunliang. When I first came here as a naive young woman I thought I could take on the world. I was confident and sociable. I don't know what happened over the years, but I find it more and more difficult to connect with people and my confidence has taken a hit because of it. I think there are a lot of lonely foreigners out there in China, but unfortunately the key to overcoming it is within you yourself.
I was the only foreign female in my Uni.
at times i missed having someone who i could talk to on a topic that was NOT shopping.
my closest chinese friend had lived abroad for 5 years.
friends who are foreigners are transient so i try to keep sane.
the feeling will pass,
