A Soggy Farewell to Shanghai, and Hello to a Troubled America

Most of my recent days in Shanghai have been days when I wished it would just stop raining. Today, however, I leave the rain behind to return to the United States for the summer. There are a lot of things to love about Shanghai, but the weather isn't one of them. There are a lot of things to love about America, too, but much also to give me cause for trepidation as well as anticipation at my fast-approaching if temporary return.

I arrived in Shanghai from San Francisco a little more than ten months ago, and on the day I arrived, too, it was raining. There have been nice days in the months since my arrival, however, and there have been days I'll never forget. It has been an interesting ten months, to say the least, the greatest part of which has been teaching at Shanghai International Studies University (SISU), to which I'll be returning in September following my summer in the States. This is my second stint as an expat educator in China, and it is a life I sorely missed during my last several years in the States. The expat life has a lot to recommend it: it is a relatively free-and-easy life, with a largely tax-free foreign income, rent-free housing at least in my case, and a distinctly global flavor unavailable at home. At SISU are faculty members from more than 20 different countries, most of us live in the same building, and many of us are friends. Beyond SISU the city of Shanghai hosts tens of thousands of expat professionals and entrepreneurs from around the world. One's social circle in such a setting encompasses the globe, but also includes other expat Americans, most of whom tend toward a liberal or progressive point-of-view on politics and social issues. Among other Americans teaching at SISU is a fellow native of my home state of Arizona, and together we've had a lot of fun ragging on sheriff Joe Arpaio, governor Jan Brewer, and the state’s absurd new immigration law. While in China I’ve been active with Democrats Abroad, the official Democratic Party organization for Americans living overseas, with many thousands of members around the world.

As I've said, there are a lot of things to love about Shanghai. In a matter of mere hours now, however, I'll be touching down again in the USA, and I can't help wondering what to expect when I get there. From America, owing to my country's overwhelming sense of psychological isolation, the rest of the world always seems small and distant, but from the rest of the world America always seems big and close; and America's current problems seem almost as big and close from China as they seem at home. As I prepared to depart the United States for China in the summer of 2009, we had a new president with a new progressive agenda, and the afterglow of the 2008 election was still warm and fresh. Since then I’ve watched from Shanghai as so many of our hopes from 2008 seem to have faded; as the bold progressive renaissance we imagined in 2008 has turned to a tragic conservative resurgence much sooner than any of us expected; as Barack Obama's joyful new America has in little more than a year become a Tea Party Nation of bitterness and hate; as the economy has failed to recover, the Arizona of my birth has become a no-go area for immigrants, and the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico have turned an oily black. I'll be spending much of my summer, not in liberal San Francisco, but in various regions of Sarah Palin's seething and stifling "Real America," where I'm all but certain to see and hear things that will make my stomach turn.

Not that I dread my summer in America: I look forward to seeing loved ones and old friends, to the mountains and tall trees of California, to the rolling green hills of Mississippi, to "walk" signals at intersections that actually mean something, and to weather that isn't rain. I look forward to walking the streets of San Francisco and Berkeley where I've spent the greater part of my adult life, to the fog rolling through the Golden Gate, and to all the familiar food items I’ve missed over the past ten months in Shanghai. Thankfully, my family no longer lives in Arizona, so like many of my fellow progressives in America I'll have no trouble faithfully boycotting the state of my birth, and honestly I won't miss it a bit. Joe Arpaio can have Arizona, and if President Obama would like to trade his birth certificate for mine, I'd be happy to say I was born in Honolulu instead of Tombstone. Nor, save a brief flight transfer in Dallas between San Francisco and Birmingham, will I have any need to mess with Texas, or for Texas to mess with me. Even as I steer clear of Arizona and Texas, however, I’ll certainly be treated to more than enough of Palin’s “Real America” to last me for another year. The xenophobic rage that has risen in volume and shrillness among these so-called “Real Americans” since Obama’s election is one of the very ugliest aspects of American life today, and couldn’t stand in sharper contrast to the liberal expat world I have grown to love.   

One day, sooner or later, I'll be returning to America to stay, at least for a good long while. For this summer, however, I'll be glad to have a ticket back to soggy old Shanghai.