Can expats have real friendships in China?
SIMHA’s President, Christine Forte, interviewed about foreigners making friends with locals while working/living overseas.
While expat friendships are challenged by the transient nature of the expat community, they are advised to keep a good attitude and keep trying reaching out.
One day in 2012, Michael Evans was sitting on the bus in Ji’nan, Shandong Province, thinking about buying a new cell phone to make his life easier as a newcomer to China. He wasn’t sure what kind of phone he wanted, so he looked at the Chinese guy sitting next to him who seemed to be holding a pretty nice cell phone.
A little curious and a little nervous at the same time, Evans, who didn’t speak much Chinese that time, asked, “How do you like your cell phone? What kind of phone do you have?”
The two started talking, and so began a friendship.
Evans, 30, an American freelance writer who came to China four years ago, told Metropolitan that as an expat, he finds making true friends a challenging mission, but he has been blessed with a few.
“It can be difficult to make friends in Beijing, especially making real, lasting friendships,” he said. “One of the biggest reasons for this is that very few [expats] really settle down in Beijing. Most people are passing through. They leave.”
He lived in Ji’nan for two years and is in his second year of living in Beijing.
For many expats like Evans, making friends is often an important but challenging part of their lives. With the cultural differences, language barrier, and the added fact that many expats are always on the move, making genuine and lasting friendships, with either the local Chinese or their fellow expats, seem particularly difficult for many.
Fleeting friendships
After meeting on the bus, Evans and his new Chinese pal kept talking and became close.
“We spent a lot of time together, and we got to know each other better. We got to share our thoughts, feelings, and troubles,” he said. “Maybe our hobbies are not so similar, but I think our values, the important things, are very similar.”
In 2014, Evans became friends with an expat in Beijing, a British man who came to the city about the same time he did. “We arrived about the same time. So both of us were new and unfamiliar with the city. I think that’s what brought us together,” he said.
“I am a quiet person, and he’s a bit louder and outgoing. The differences helped us get along together a bit more.”
They met at one of the events frequently held by an online social network for travelers to get together.
However, not every friendship survives. Due to the transient nature of expat life, expat friendships, whether with another expat or a Chinese person, seem especially fragile.
Evans met some good expat friends in Beijing in his first month in the city and formed a pretty close circle of friends who “would see each other three or four times a week sometimes.”
But, roughly six weeks later, about half of them moved to different places. “The two or three of us who are still in Beijing just kind of drifted apart,” he said. “I still keep in touch with some of them, and every once in a while, we still have very deep, meaningful conversations. But a lot of them, we just say hi maybe every couple of months, or just don’t talk at all. I think it really depends.”
Good Chinese friends hard to find
Evans and his friend in Ji’nan still talk, and he goes back to Ji’nan to visit. “I feel like the connection is still there. We do feel as open and honest as we did before,” he said.
But not all his Chinese friendships are like this one. In fact, his friend from the bus is perhaps the best Chinese friendship he has.
Evans thinks it’s easier to make friends with other expats, especially close friends, “because there is the common bond which sort of keeps us together.”
“Being here in China, they face the same challenges. They have the same problems and frustrations. Having these shared experiences really brings people together,” he said.
For many expats like Evans, even things that are “small and silly” could contribute to closer bonding among expats.
“Like if I have this friend who just arrived in China, and he complains about how he can’t read the Chinese characters on the menu when he goes out to eat – this is something that all of us expats experienced at one time or another. We know what that feels like,” he said.
As for Chinese friends, Evans said cultural differences play a big role in the quality and length of the friendship. “It can be hard to make that deeper connection if they don’t have things in common to draw people together,” he said.
Potential friends would need to have similar interests, a similar sense of humor and similar personalities, according to Evans. So it’s usually more common for expats to find good friends in Chinese people who are fairly Westernized and have an international outlook.
Yue Xu, a Chinese-American TV host and producer who currently jumps back and forth between Beijing, Los Angeles and New York city, also finds it easier to make friends with expats than local Chinese.
“Local Chinese are very friendly and welcoming. However, it is harder for expats to deepen friendships with them,” she said.
“I am much more comfortable speaking English than Chinese. I also found that I have more in common with expats.”
However, she is able to make several very close local Chinese friends. Xu’s closest Chinese friend is a former coworker.
They both love fashion, food and getting philosophical about life. They also were able to teach each other a lot of their respective cultures.
Xu’s friend gives her pointers on how to deal with Chinese office politics and Xu helps her better understand Western culture. “She is very much Westernized in outlook, and I am very Chinese in family values. We are a nice complement to each other and instantly bonded,” Xu said.
Finding true friends
Xu met her best friends in China mostly through work and through expat events where she actively seeks out people who share a similar background with herself, as well as those who live close to her, which, surprisingly, turns out to be an important factor.
“I believe neighborhood has a lot to do with friendships. If you live in CBD [Chaoyang district], you’ll probably not be as close with people who live near Dongsi [Dongcheng district],” she said. “It’s just much easier to keep consistent face time with people who live near you.”
For Xu, it’s also important to have a friend filter, knowing “the difference between close friends and peripheral friends” and “how to set the right expectations about the friends” around her. While now she can pinpoint what sort of friends would stick around as close friends, she remembers spending her 20s in New York “not being able to deepen friendships,” mistaking hanging out as bonding, and trying to figure out the kind of people she wanted in her social circle.
For making friends with the local Chinese, Xu’s advice is to share and ask to peek into their lives.
She finds that if foreigners are more willing to share nuggets of their background and upbringing, their Chinese audience will be more likely to share their lives as well. “When you ask questions and want to get to know someone better, they feel that you care and respect them enough to get to know them,” she said.
“Ask questions! Be curious!” she said. “Invite them to check out your favorite band, eat at your favorite restaurant. The time and effort you put into the friendship will be reciprocated.”
Friendships that last
Like Evans and many other expats, Xu also felt discouraged after many of her friendships faded. But she has come to accept the fact that forging lasting friendships will always be challenged by the transient culture of the expat community.
“Whether friendships survive departures depends on how you met and chances for a reunion later,” said Xu.
She bonded with a few colleagues while working in a terrible working environment and has remained in close contact with them. “We felt like survivors together, so our bond really deepened even after we all left China. And luckily, we’ve all been able to visit each other since then because we had the opportunity to travel.”
Christine Forte, a mental health counselor at Balanced Heart Counseling in Shanghai, reminds expats not to be discouraged by the possibility of fading friendships.
According to her, meeting a true friend is a lot like dating; it takes a good attitude and time to find the one.
“You have to keep meeting people. Don’t expect that you’ll instantly meet your best friend but don’t get discouraged by that either,” Forte said.
During her sessions, she finds that this is a challenge for a lot of expats. “It’s challenging for them to keep reaching out if their old friends are leaving, and also very sad.”
Another challenge, according to Forte, is that sometimes people become friends because of a shared circumstance, such as living in the same compound, but not necessarily because they share much in common.
“They would often meet friends very quickly, but most of them are only acquaintances,” she said. With a lack of [meaningful] connection, friendships can be easily formed but hard to deepen, said Forte.
She advised forming realistic expectations in the initial stage and encouraged paying attention to and embracing the differences that may arise between friends, regardless of whether they are local Chinese or expats.
“Be open-minded,” she said. “Be willing to listen and learn about someone else’s experiences. Take an interest in that, and try to find it stimulating rather than discouraging.”