Home, Not Away

By Heather, Foreign Trainer of Wall Street English Beijing

I’ve been a teacher at Wall Street English since September, 2015. It’s a curious thing: my students and other Chinese people I meet day to day are quick to ask how long I’ve been in Beijing and how long I plan to stay. Friends and family in America, on the other hand, invariably ask when I plan to come “home.” To my Chinese friends I respond that I’ve begun my third year in Beijing and plan to stay. To my American friends and family I can offer no assurance other than a somewhat vague pledge to buy a ticket to Washington sometime fairly soon. Love my family in the U.S. though I do, in over 2 years I’ve haven’t yet bought that ticket

It’s my Chinese students who ask the questions I love to answer; both their inquiries and my answers focus on the present and are forward looking. After I’d been here six months or so these queries kindled a question of my own, an existential one: Am I home or away? By the end of my first year I knew the answer.

“Home” to me is my work and WSE family of students and colleagues here in Beijing. Though late at night I lay my head at a cozy apartment in Xicheng, I spend most of my days and evenings at my center, BJ12 in Zhongguancun. There’s nowhere I’d rather be.

How did this come to be? A brief history:

After earning my TEFL and exam-preparation certifications in Peru in 2009, I returned to America and spent seven years teaching English at a small language school just outside my hometown of Washington, D.C. The owner and director, an American named Paul, was perhaps the most dedicated Sinophile I’d ever met or will ever meet. His main line of work is creating educational partnerships with China; over the years our small multinational, multilingual student population grew to include many Chinese students and even a few Chinese language teachers, who valiantly strove to teach the rudiments of Mandarin to a small “pilot” group of Chinese learners, among them me. My director’s love for and abiding interest in Chinese people and culture proved infectious; I found myself increasingly drawn to the idea of moving to China to teach. When in May 2015 I was offered my job at WSE and told Paul the news he couldn’t have been happier.

In the late summer of 2016 my former director came to Beijing; we agreed to meet for dinner. Determined to treat me to the best and most famous roast duck in the city, he proudly squired me to Quan Ju De, where over a panoply of Peking duck dishes that exceeded my most extravagant expectations, we talked about our teaching lives and, specifically, my students in Beijing. He leaned forward and asked “do you have any adjectives?” I needed but a few seconds to offer the first few; those that followed came more slowly but strikingly.

Our students are canny — some are astonishingly astute and perceptive.

They are the most loving students with whom I’ve ever worked. I’ve been embraced as a foreigner as never before, and I return their love and interest.

Our students are unfailingly savvy and resourceful: to date no practical issue, no life problem I’ve presented, however thorny, has been beyond the acumen and willingly applied experience of these students.

They are curious; they’re keenly interested in the various quirks and foibles of their teachers and it may be said without exaggeration that many truly thirst for growth and improvement in English.

Many possess remarkable senses of humor; they love to laugh. Humor and its expression is directly tied to intelligence and a certain plasticity of personality; students who see the “funny” in the world are often excellent learners of English.

I’m home now. Each of us makes his or her own Beijing; my Beijing is a work in progress. Where can I find shoelaces? I don’t know today, but chances are excellent that I’ll know tomorrow, likely with the help of a student. Where is a cozy place to share pizza with a friend? That’s one I was able to answer early. When I need medical help, where shall I go and who will help me? My colleagues supported me and helped me find my way to an excellent orthopedic surgeon at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital. Where shall I move when my lease is up? Wherever that new place may be, it will contribute to my life here, my Beijing. Wall Street English is the most vital component of my Beijing. To my students and my colleagues, in particular my wonderful SM Camellia, I say thank you for being that and for making Beijing my home.