Charlie Flint 【 赞（259）获赞最多的答案】
Isuppose it depends on how you feel about Beijing, and how long you were there.
我觉得这取决于你对北京的感受以及你呆的时间长短
I was in BJ for over 5 years, from late 2007 until early 2013. Moved backto the US not because of any lingering issue withChina - although the smog, lack of taxis, increasing cost of living, etc allplayed a part - but because I found a better paying job stateside. Moneytalks, at least for me.
I miss Beijing everyday. I miss the vibrancy of Ol'Chokey. I miss the hustle and bustle andfeeling that on any given day, anything could happen (good or bad). Imiss the booming, if chaotic, restaurant, bar and livemusic scenes. I miss the food - obviously the Chinese food - the tons ofamazing regional cuisines (whereas here in the US, more often than not, its alljust "CHINESE FOOD" mostly made up of kung pao chicken, sweet n' sourpork, and all the other Americanized dishes)... but also the large selectionthat living in a booming international metropolis brings - great French,Italian, Latin, etc, etc that you don't get in the US except inthe biggest and most metropolitan cities like NY, SF or others.
Most ofall I miss the default camaraderie that comes with being anexpat. You meet people and instantly have a common bond that makes iteasy to strike up a conversation, make friends, and have people to do stuffwith. Back in the states its freaking hard to meet people and makefriends. There's just not that same sense of common ground that you havewith other foreigners in BJ. You have to actively hunt out groups -parents usually find friends through their kid's classmates or after schoolactivities, I know people who've joined Meet-Upsaround subjects they find interesting to try to meet folks, etc. But ingeneral, its just harder.
My Chinese wife and I go to the part of Atlanta that's heavy with Chineseexpatriates, restaurants and businesses nearly every weekend. There's a huge grocery store that is just likebeing back in China - its loud, packed with pushing and shoving people, smellsfunny... just like back in Beijing. You couldn't have paid me to go to aCarrefour on a Sunday afternoon in BJ - it's chaos embodied. Here, I LOVEit. It feels like "home." I often tell my wife that myfavorite moments here are in that crowded store, getting bumped around by some'lao taitai' as I pass the stinky tofu stand.
Oh yeah- when I go out to dinner and want another beer, or ketchup for my fries, orthe check... I miss screaming "FUYUAN!" at the top of my lungs, andinstead having to wait politely for someone to happen by.
Enjoy the experience while you can. You'll undoubtedly cherish it whenyou do eventually return stateside. China gets into your blood and itssomething that never comes out. In a few years, when its time to job huntagain, I'll look at China again and see what opportunities exist. And itsvery much a part of my long-term retirement plans.
Brendan O'Kane
I thinkthis will probably vary so much from person to person that you're less likelyto get an actualanswer than to get a range.Here's my data point:
我想这个问题没有标准答案，取决于不同人不同角度。我的观点如下：
I first visitedBeijing when I was 18 and fresh out of high school, and moved there right afterI'd turned 20. My first visit to Beijing was for a summer study program atBeida, and it happened to be a week or two after it was announced that the cityhad won the right to host the 2008 Olympics. For the next seven years there wasan incredible excitement and optimism to the city, a sense that anything waspossible. I haven't found that to be the case in the post-Olympics Beijing, butit's entirely possible and maybe even probable that the problem is with me.
I leftBeijing on August 1, 2013, and have been back in a major-ish East Coast US citysince then. (Philadelphia.)
我与2013年8月1号离开北京，回到美国后一直呆在东部沿海城市（费城）。
I miss food. I miss being surrounded by 北京話 -- thoughthese days that's rarely even thecase in Beijing anymore, and in any event I'm still pretty immersed inChinese back here in the States. Once the weather gets warmer I'll probablymiss some of the nicer features of spring in Beijing, but there isn't a wholelot to miss about Beijing winters other than the 糖葫蘆.
I miss friends -- but many of myfriends, Chinese and foreign, are leaving Beijing too, or have already left, orhave been priced out or smoked out or forced out by tightening visa policies.There are places I miss -- but there's no chance of returning to many of those,either: one of them got knocked down in late 2005; another few changed unalterablybetween about 2007 and 2010. I miss the city that I fell in love with in 2001and 2003 and 2005, but it's been gone for a long time, and the city that tookits place is, I think, a lot less lovable.
Mike Cormack
I leftBeijing in June 2013, after 3 years in Beijing and 6 years in China.
我在北京呆了3年，在中国一共呆了6年。我于2013年七月离开北京。
I miss
我怀念的:
The sense ofpossibility everywhere
到处都是一切皆有可能的氛围
So damn easy to geta job
太TM容易找工作了
Too easy to meetpeople
非常容易与人交往
Vast culturalpossibilities
深厚的文化
Loads of smartpeople doing cool things
有许多聪明人做酷酷的事情
The openness andlack of cynicism (in a personal way)
开放，不愤世嫉俗
Xinjiang/muslimrestaurants
新疆/穆斯林餐厅
People striving toimprove themselves
人们努力奋斗改变自己
Easy to cyclemost places
很容易骑车去很多地方
Street food (sweetpotato in winter, for example)
路边摊美食（比如冬天的烤红薯）
Ireally don't miss
我不怀念的:
Pollution
污染
Public transport
公共交通
Ugly buildings
难看的建筑
Food anxiety
食品安全
People with littlesense of personal space
人们缺乏私人空间概念
Common attitude of "fuckeveryone else, I got mine"
普遍的“各人自扫门前雪，哪管他人瓦上霜”态度
Smoking everywhere无处不吸烟
Hard to make realfriends
很难交到真正的朋友
Vastly overpricedhousing
房价高的离谱
Overpriced importfood
进口食品价格离谱
Frank Fradella
I onlylived in China for a total of 6 months, but when I arrived,it was with the intention tostay. That kind of defined my mindset — that this was a permanentmove — and the sudden departurewas horrible and cruel and unwelcome.
Coming back to theStates when I'd just gotten accustomed to life in Beijing was really jarring.Everything was too expensive, the politics here drive me nuts, and I miss thefood like crazy.
But… as others havesaid… from the time I first visited China in 2007 to the time I moved there in2009, there was already much about China to be missed. It's tobe expected in a place that's changing so rapidly, but I suppose mymessage here is to think of Beijing like Earth in Haldeman'sForever War. Leave for just six months and whenyou return, it will be as though 50 years have passed.
David Schoonewolff
Firstof all, let me just say that I am not either from the US or Canada. I’mColombian, but teaching English has been my bread and butter all my life, and Ilived in China for about 4 years, being Beijing the last place I stayed at.
The realizationthat I had to leave sunk in hard. Since I had arrived in China (earlyMay 2008) I wanted to go work in a big city, and Beijing was a goal after myfirst week or so in South China. I finally arrived in Beijing to live and workin September 2011, but I got a pretty rough deal with the tight visa policies.As I mentioned to a dear friend of mine, the type of visa that got me intoChina was precisely the kind that got me out of China.
At the end of myjourney, I remember having this mixed, love-hate feeling about China. I lovedit for all the things I learned about the country, its culture, about myselfand life in many instances and the friends I made, butI hated it for all that I was going through at that time –it was hard for me tofind a job being a non-native speaker of English-, for all the things that Icouldn’t change about my situation at the time and about myself, always feelingthat the regulations were about to change for theworse, or that I was risking myself for deportation.
I leftwith a bittersweet feeling. I would reunite with my family that I hadn’t seenin four years, and I would be going back home, where I didn’t have to worryabout visa rules or the PSB or all the red tape, but Iwas also leaving a place that I learned to call home despite all thedifficulties. I will miss the baozi with soymilk in the morning, or the McD’sbreakfast (here in my city it is not common to have breakfast at McD’s), theXinjiang restaurants, the people I met and the fact that I was witnessing a nationbloom in all its glory. I will not miss the Beijing winter, or thepollution. Probably, the bad feelings about China had to more do with myself,and the unrealistic expectations I had about the city,something like: “It is not you, it’s me.”
I still miss a lotof things, though, and I know I would gladly go back to visit Beijing.
我仍想念很多东西，我知道如有一天我能再回北京我一定会喜不胜收。
Anonymous
I thinkthis depends on many factors, but age in particular.
我觉得这个取决于很多因素，特别是年纪
I can answer thisas someone who left Beijing as a late teen, having lived in the city center forroughly eight years (2000-2008). Leaving was very difficult for me, and not mychoice. Leaving friends at school, the bustling chaos of Beijing and movingsomewhere with a different climate and different culture was not easy, despitethe fact that it was my 'home country'.
At my new school Iwas overly protective of China, and denied or avoided any criticismsof it made by my new classmates. Although I knew that much of what was beingsaid was probably true, I did not like it that people who had never bothered tovisit China, or at least read about it - beyond the negative articles writtenin the press - pushed me to validate what they had read.
I missed the excitement of living in Beijing, the food, notunderstanding everything being said around me (it made people far lessannoying).
我怀念生活在北京的激情、美食，以及听不懂我周围人说的一切（这样不会使人那么烦恼）
As much as I(mostly) loved growing up there, I don't think that Beijing is a particularlygood place for expat children to grow up. It's horribly polluted, andexpat children (who attend international schools) live in a bubble.I don't miss these two things.