Hello, everyone.
So today I'm taking you outside.
All right, now, you're on my phone again, I apologize.
I actually have my proper camera with me,
but I forgot to charge the batteries,
but I still wanna talk about it
because it's an important topic.
And that is, can you be too comfortable in China?
And how does that affect you?
You know, to some people who haven't lived in China,
they haven't lived in maybe in a big city in China,
they kinda think, well, that's a ridiculous question,
how could you ever be too comfortable in China?
It doesn't make any sense.
Well, it's not a ridiculous question
because it's actually quite possible.
For example, I go out, I leave my house
and I take the elevator down,
first floor, there is a convenience store,
there is a massage parlor, there's a restaurant,
there is a Mahjong place.
There is a...
And a tea house in the first floor of my building.
And then if I walk out of the front gate here
to the main street,
check this out, okay.
So the main gate, so I'm gonna show you around right there,
there is a, there are all kinds of things, for example.
There's a post office, right?
There is the commercial bank.
There's a Bank of China down that way.
There is a restaurant, there's a bakery,
there's a phone store.
There's two convenience stores.
And then actually just back that way,
behind this building, there's a hospital.
And just next door to my neighborhood,
there's a McDonald's,
there is a KFC just across the street over there.
Four or five bus stops away,
there's a really big size mall with an Apple store.
A real Apple store, not a fake one.
If I sit here just like this lady right here,
and I wait for maybe one to three minutes,
I can get a taxi or I can call a ride sharing app.
I can call, you know, any kind of taxi alternative apps.
There's a bus stop right there.
There's a bus stop right there
at the front gate of my neighborhood.
That's where I really live.
So, of course, I don't show you my building or anything.
Now, if I don't want to do that,
I could, of course, buy my own car or buy a bike,
or I could use this.
All you gotta do is scan the QR code right here,
put in a deposit.
You can use that bike for a one yuan for every half hour.
That just right there, right in front of my neighborhood,
within, you know, less than four minutes,
that is just a very small taste
of how convenient life in China could be.
And my arm is really tired,
so I'm gonna cross the street and talk a little bit more.
Anywhere you go, in any city, at any level,
there are bus stops everywhere that you can,
you know, once you've got a little bit
of Chinese under your belt,
you can use those, you know, to get anywhere.
Buses it's go everywhere in China.
And a lot of cities, not a lot of cities,
capital cities are building up subway lines.
And once you get a bus card, you just, there you go.
And that's it.
You just get on, charged every once in a while.
And you are, and it's fine.
There's so many little conveniences
about life here in China,
transportation just being the one I'm on at the moment,
but let's talk food, for example.
A lot of you know that I live in Chengdu,
it's the capital of Sichuan,
and this is a food city.
Food is a big deal here,
but not just here, all over China.
There are restaurants everywhere you could possibly imagine.
And not only that, delivery has taken off.
It's taken off, it's nuts.
You can use these two apps on your phone,
called Eleme and Meituan,
and you can get food from basically every restaurant
in your area delivered to your door.
All they do is they go there, they order the food
and they bring it you and you pay for it.
Magic.
And I haven't even gotten to things like money and work yet.
That's a whole thing in and of itself.
And for most expats here in China,
like that aspect of life is really
the best part of the deal here,
because it's not this way so much now,
it is to a certain extent,
like you could, as long as you are a foreigner,
and specifically, if you're a white foreigner
from an English speaking country,
pretty much, you are guaranteed to find a job
somewhere here in China with a good salary,
with a salary anywhere between, I don't know,
8,000 to up to 15,000 yuan a month
for doing not much more than like teaching phonics
or teaching numbers and colors,
and you know, really simple conversational patterns
to little kids at training schools.
You know, things are changing a little bit with that.
They are actually enforcing a lot of the rules now.
Especially here in Chengdu,
like it's getting really hard for some people
to come in here legally and teach in Chengdu.
So a lot of them kind of do it illegally.
But the fact is, if you come to China
and you're able to land a job in China,
you'll have a job pretty much forever
'cause getting over here could be the difficult part.
Staying here is really quite easy.
You could stay here forever and teach, and make good money.
You will always have a job in China
and you will have a comfortable life,
much more comfortable than the local Chinese people will
because you, as a foreign worker, will make a higher salary.
And sometimes you will also be given,
along with that higher salary, a free apartment.
And you'll be able to afford a much better lifestyle
than most people your age.
I'm like for me, I'm 27,
I'm doing a lot better than pretty much
all of my Chinese friends who graduated
about the same time as me from university,
I'm pretty much doing better than all of them, I think,
except for one, maybe two of them.
When I worked at this training school
that I worked at a couple of months ago,
I was there for maybe half a year.
I made about like roughly the same amount of money
a high school teacher in America does.
And that was just for really simple ESL work
for a lot less hassle, a lot less paperwork.
I didn't have to get a teaching certificate,
I didn't have to do anything.
Minimal preparation.
And I could have done that for years and years and years.
And so, things are really, really good for me here in China.
They are really, really good for me here.
And particularly, since moving to Chengdu,
you know, I work at one of the top universities
in this country.
I work at, I think it's number 13
and who knows if I'm actually qualified for that or not.
I think I do a pretty good job teaching but,
you know, having that really great job
and also having a second job that I have,
I'd rather not talk about or, you know,
doing all these little side gigs or meeting,
just there's so many little aspects of life here
that make things so comfortable.
And I get a little worried that I get too comfortable here,
and will I get stuck in a rut here?
And will I not be able to move on if the need calls for it?
And that's something I'm gonna talk about in a second.
And let's not forget about how westernized
and how modern and international China is becoming,
particularly in cities like Chengdu.
Now, of course, outside of a lot of capital cities,
you won't see too much westernization,
you won't see too much of this internationalization,
but here in Chengdu, it's really, really obvious.
Like you could live your life here in Chengdu,
pretty much the same way you could back home.
You could eat foreign food every single day of the week,
every single meal of the week
and not really get tired of it.
It is expensive, yeah. (laughs)
But you can absolutely do it.
You can create bubbles around you
with just all these other expats
and never make any Chinese friends,
never learn any Chinese, never eat Chinese food.
You could do that fairly easily in big cities in China,
Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, of course.
Guangzhou, you could probably do that.
I'm not familiar enough with Guangzhou to say that,
but you probably could.
And you know, it's incredible
that things have become like this in China in some places.
And so, it's very comfortable here.
All I have to say, it's very comfortable
living here in China.
And it's awesome.
But the thing is, what if I need to move on?
Some of you are asking, "Austin,
"what the hell are you talking about?
"What's this moving on business?
"Are you leaving China or something?"
Well, probably not, well.
Oh, look at this stuff.
Okay.
Anyway, no, I don't think I'm leaving China,
not just yet anyway.
But what I am thinking about,
what I am kind of rolling around in my head
is the idea of going back to school
and going back to school, of course, is really expensive.
Where am I gonna get the money to do all that?
And also I'm married now.
And it's about that kind of age
where a lot of people start thinking about children
and God knows, I don't want any children
but I married a Chinese woman so I gotta do that.
So, you know, whatever.
And so yeah, going back to school
and get a master's degree,
maybe even a PhD a little on down the road.
I'm learning Chinese again.
I'm just trying to kind of up the ante a little bit.
I'm trying to figure out where I can go from here.
And, you know, it's really kinda tough
'cause I've built up this really super comfortable life.
And do I kind of, do I sacrifice a little bit of it?
Do I, you know, pinch those pennies
and bite the bullet and go back to school?
Or do I just keep doing it?
Where am I gonna end up?
Am I gonna end up in the USA again with nothing?
Or am I gonna stay here?
There's a lot of things kind of going up in the air
and I'm gonna talk through this a little bit later.
I have a podcast in which I talk through this issue,
I talk through what's going on in my head,
what has gone on in my head over the past five years.
And that should be up within a day or two
of this video being posted.
Or I'll see if I can get that posted before you see it.
What is it that I wanna do later?
I mean, I've always wanted to teach history
at the collegiate level.
But is that going to be really useful to society?
Is there anything that I can do to add really to this world
besides teaching a few history classes?
Or do I do that here on this channel
and then do something else with my academic career?
Because I do love academia, I do love study,
I do love university life.
And so, yeah, that's kind of where I'm at.
I've tentatively decided to go back to school,
but I'm also scared about this whole thing of like comfort.
I have this really comfortable life,
this really awesome life,
but school is expensive.
You know, school is really expensive
and where do I get the money for the tuition for that?
And then what do I do after that?
That kind of thing.
So there's a lot of things going on.
You know, who knows, maybe a baby on down the road
and then, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty right now.
So who knows what's gonna happen
and how this kind of balance is gonna be,
you know, how this problem of balancing things out
is gonna be solved, but we'll see.
I think that's my bus.
Nope, no it's not.
But either way, I think I am gonna go now
and just kind of leave you with that question.
Would you choose comfort
over searching for something more,
or would you take that leap?
Do you have any advice for me? (laughs)
What are your thoughts?
Let me know down below.
I'm done talking.
It's your turn.
I'll see you all next time.