Zaijian Means See You Again

Prior to leaving China, I was asked by my company to create a blog entry for their website. The following is the blog entry that I created:

The typical phrase to use here in China to say goodbye to someone is “zaijian,” which literally translates into “see you again.” My 3 year assignment in Shanghai, China is coming to an end in April, and needless to say, I will be saying “zaijian” a whole lot over my last couple days and weeks. It has been an amazing 3 years here in China, both personally and professionally, and there are going to be a lot of things that I will miss when my time over here comes to an end.

To put things into perspective, when I arrived in Shanghai just over 3 years ago, I worked in GT’s small correspondent firm, Pan Cheng Zhang, as the only non-Hong Kong expat in the office. In an office of about 70 people, I kind of stood out and many of my colleagues didn’t know what to think of the new tubby white guy in their office that sat by the microwave. Day after day I had the luxury of having my colleagues cook their lunches in the microwave right next to me, so I got to get a whiff of the various different Chinese style lunches being cooked, sometimes they smelled amazing, other times…is pungent a safe adjective to use?

After a year and a half of sitting next to the microwave and becoming a second hand expert on “what Chinese leftovers cook well in a microwave,” we merged with another local firm in Shanghai, Jiahua, and moved into a brand new office in a prominent building in the middle of the city…and happily my seat was no where near the microwave. By this time there were 3 other US secondees in the Shanghai office so I wasn’t the only “qiguai meiguoren” - strange American. Since then our office has grown, we gained a couple of other foreigners and we are in the midst of another merger with the new GTI China member firm, Zhonghua.

When asked “what is the number one thing that I am going to miss”, the people we have encountered takes the top of the list. From my gracious colleagues in the Shanghai and other China offices, to our friends, to just other random people that kept popping up in my life, these 3 years have been a great experience to meet new and different people. I am especially going to miss the everyday crowds piling into the bus and subway for my commute, I’ll miss my flower guy who sticks around at a corner near my house to sell me flowers to give to my wife ($4USD for a bouquet of flowers is something I will definitely miss) and the construction guys that aren’t wearing any shoes while they are jack hammering the road, the random people who run to take pictures of our two kids as we walk around…as if we are important, the people who comment that my English is better than the governor of California’s English (which is good since he is Austrian), the guys who carry open canisters of gasoline with cigarettes dangling from their mouths, the tailor who makes tailor made suits for a small portion of what you would pay in the US, everyone who shouts “Hello” at us in English while we are meandering around town, the guys riding around with 10 feet of trash piled high on a two wheel trailer attached to their bike, the people who ride around on their motor scooters in the morning with a freshly killed pig strewn over the back of their bike, and of course all the people who were so accommodating to us when the only way we could communicate with each other was with sign language because of the language barrier.

My family and I have established a bunch of great relationships here in Shanghai that we will never forget, and we have been mesmerized by the outpouring of appreciation that has been shown to us as we have begun our transition back to the US. Ultimately, my hope is that when I say “zaijian” it is not out of the common courtesy of saying goodbye, rather it is for its true meaning of, “see you again.”