He Reconnected With His Ex in China and Realized He Wanted to Stay

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with David Fun, 32, a Chinese American now living in China. His words have been edited for length and clarity.

I grew up happy in Boston and never thought about living anywhere else.

My parents immigrated from China, and before high school, I often traveled back with them to visit family. My mother grew up with eight siblings and believed in staying close to relatives. During vacations to southern China, where my parents grew up, big family gatherings were the norm.

I always knew I wanted to work in healthcare. Since I couldn’t stand blood, I chose pharmacy and finished an accelerated program at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy in five years.

I rushed through, eager to make money after growing up in a small inner-city home and envying friends with big suburban houses

Looking back, I wish I’d taken time to enjoy school.

The breakup that changed my path

After graduation, I moved to California for work, where I met my girlfriend. She was on an F-1 OPT visa, which let her work in the US for a year before returning to China. We both knew the relationship had an expiration date.

The breakup was hard.

In 2019, I quit my pharmacist job and took time off, traveling through Southeast Asia with friends. At the end of that year, I visited my family in Guangzhou, a bustling city in southern China, for the first time in seven years.

I was amazed by how much had changed. Places once filled with unpaved roads and water buffalo now had malls, apartments, and orderly train stations.

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A week later, the pandemic hit. My cousins urged me to stay put, so I took a job in Shenzhen as a systems manager for a high-end chain of clinics. That’s when I reconnected with my ex, who was living in Guangzhou. We got back together, and I decided to stay.

Three years later, we got married.

Adapting to a new work culture

The first year was a real struggle. I hired a tutor to relearn Chinese. The cultural differences were crazy. I had gone from an American professional setting to a Chinese company. Luckily, it was private rather than state-owned, and many of the physicians had overseas experience.

In China, people often say foreigners are lazy and inefficient. I disagree. I think efficiency can be evaluated in different ways. Here, nothing moves forward without a boss’s approval, so things often get stuck when the boss is busy. But the average worker is really good at the grind.

In the US, employees are empowered and trusted to figure things out. There’s also more risk mitigation from the beginning.

In China, people dive in and fix problems as they arise. It can take more time and money, but it works.

Once my Chinese improved, I saw the logic: many midlevel employees were content and avoided responsibility beyond their pay grade, preferring to wait for the boss to sign off. I realized it was pointless to push against the system, so I went with the flow.

Making friends abroad

Now, I’m the senior business development manager for Greater China for a multinational healthcare distribution company.

I socialize a lot for work, but I don’t see those connections as real friendships. Interest disappears without mutual benefit.

Roughly 30% of my social time goes to work, and 40% to family. I have a lot of relatives in Guangzhou, and in Chinese culture, you don’t just marry a person, you marry their family. I often do things for my in-laws out of obligation or for “face,” but I’ve also grown to appreciate that, because being pushed together creates real bonds.

Between family and work, I have to actively carve out time for friends. My social life was definitely better in the US, I loved inviting people over to my place to hang out. In China, people typically meet outside unless you’re really close.

Expats are more open to making friends, but most don’t stay long-term.

Showing love differently

When friends from Boston visit, my wife comments on how American couples show love differently from Chinese ones.

We’ve had some points of contention, like when we were preparing to get married. I had to pay a dowry to her parents. My white American friends here didn’t have to abide by these norms, but as an American-born Chinese, I was expected to. To her family, I was Chinese.

I paid it out of my own savings, though I wouldn’t want my kids to do the same. It would feel like buying a wife or selling a daughter.

My wife used to get annoyed when I didn’t put food on her plate with chopsticks. For her, it was a sign of care. In front of her parents, I had to do it or they would think I didn’t actually like her. At first, it felt strange. In the US, no one expects you to serve another person. But here, that is how you show love and care.

So instead of arguing, I adjusted, and now it feels natural.

Do you have a story about moving to Asia that you want to share? Get in touch with the editor: [email protected].