We’re sitting in a tiny, but clean and modern, room at the Super Motel 168 at the Pudong airport in Shanghai. In about 8 hours, we will board a plane that will take us, perhaps forever, out of China.

I feel like this, my last night in China, should inspire intense emotions, but really it’s kind of hard to feel anything right now. In fact, the past few weeks since we decided to leave, have been a complete blur. I think we were fortunate to decide so late in the game not to return– it didn’t give me a chance to become overly sentimental about leaving China. Last night, following an awesome, and at times tearful, going away party, I kind of broke down finally and realized just what a big friggin’ deal this is to me. It was when I was walking home from our local pub (lubricated with quite a bit of whiskey and green tea) that I really started to realize just how strange this whole thing is.

I came to China immediately following college in 2005. I’ve never had a “real” job outside of teaching English, science, and computer science. I’ve never worked a 9 to 5 type job, or lived in a place that wasn’t designed for a student. I guess, outside of being a student, I’ve never had a “normal life” in the US, and that’s something I think Anne and I are both craving. China is many many different things, but “normal” (compared to my US background) has never, not even for a second, been one of them.

There are so many things that I’m so glad to leave behind. The staring; the little things that are so easy to do in America that are next to impossible here (eg. changing coins into cash or having someone understand a street address– taxi drivers almost universally flip out if you try to tell them an address to go to– hell, even HAVING an address for that matter, since our home apparently had no physical address in Nanjing); the water that is undrinkable from the tap; the food that is likely dosed with any number of horrible chemicals; the TERRIBLE, disgraceful censorship of the internet and media that occurs blatantly and at all times. Most of all though, I’m happy to leave behind the sense from the local people that I am not– and never will be– a part of the culture I live in. After four years here, I feel like I know a lot about China– more than 99.99% of Americans. I can speak some Chinese (not conversationally, but more than enough to get me around). I know about China’s history. I keep up with what’s going on in Chinese pop culture. Despite all this, though, and despite any desire to the otherwise that I might have, I would always be an outsider in China: a waiguoren (an out country person) or even just a laowai (which is literally “old out”). I think most of the time that I was unhappy in China is in some way related to this simple fact of expatriate life in China. No matter how involved you are here, how much you know, how well you speak Chinese– you will always be an outsider in this culture.

That’s not to say that people are hostile or mean to me. In fact being an outsider sometimes affords you great privileges over the other people around you here. I’ve also made so many wonderful Chinese friends. People who care deeply for me, and who I care deeply for as well. But I do mean, that as a whole, I could never be seen as a normal person here– but always first and foremost as an outsider to the culture.

There are also so many things that I’m going to miss here as well. An amazing farmer’s market that’s open all day every day; cheap DVDs of just about any movie you can imagine; a healthy upper-middle class lifestyle; people selling watermelons at the roundabout near my house; not tipping; bars and shops and restaurants where people know me and know what I like; my students, who have been some of the most amazing people I’ve ever gotten to meet. SO many things. Most of all, though, it’s the people that I’m going to miss the most. I’ve made friends from all over the world; I’ve made friends from China and have loved the cultural exchange our friendship offers us. To my Chinese friends, I could never express enough how much they have taught me and how much I appreciate that. To my “foreign” friends– the ones from the US, UK, Oz, New Zealand, France, South Africa, and so many other countries– I wish I could express how absolutely awesome they have been. Here’s a tested and true fact about expats in China: 99% of them are crazy. I don’t mean fun, lovable crazy either. I mean frightening, arrogant, racist, sexist, violent, pedophilic crazy. Most of these people, I truly believe, would be in jail in Western countries. Most of them, I am certain, came to China because they would absolutely not be tolerated in their home countries. This 99% of the foreigners you meet here is horrible. That final 1%, though– the people who I was so lucky to get to call my friends are the polar opposite. I’ve met some of the coolest, smartest, funniest, lovable people in the world in Nanjing China. Meeting those people is always strange– it really is like picking out a needle in a haystack. But when it happens, there’s this amazing connection that transcends countries of origin, age, race, sex, or any other thing that keeps people apart. God I’m going to miss these people.

The strangest thing about leaving, though, is all those things that I absolutely hate AND absolutely love about china. The traffic that is complete pandemonium; the thorough lack of professionalism at all times; trains and train stations; poor working men walking around with their shirts pulled up to their nipples; incomprehensible Chinglish; crowds that most people who have never been outside of a western country could not even begin to imagine. These are the things that I think will get to me the most when I get back to America. Though often they were the banes of my existence here in China, I think when they are absent from my life, I’ll find myself missing them, and I think more potently than I’ll miss things like cheap DVDs and also more potently than I’m going to enjoy having things like cheap cheese and tap water.

It’s definitely been an amazing 4 years, and I have no regrets about my time in China. I’ve grown as a person so much because of my experience here, and in so many different ways.

I have so many emotions about all of this that it’s hard to get it out. It’s also hard to actually feel so many conflicting things at once. And I’m sure I’m going to keep feeling these conflicting emotions for years and years to come– probably for the rest of my life. In the end, though, I feel nothing but extreme happiness for the time I’ve been here– extreme love for the people I’ve met and became friends with. And even a patriotic love for China itself.

So, all I guess I can say now is zaijian, zhongguo… and a big final xiexie for everything you’ve done for me.