Name：Thara McDonald
Country of Origin：New Zealand (half Kiwi, half Thai)
Occupation：Educator
Years in China：Approximately 2 Years
How did your journey in China begin?
In 2017 I was living in New Zealand and at that time, applying for jobs in China since I always wanted to experience living here. I got an offer to teach in an extremely rural district in Jiangxi, however, after talking with my mom she advised me to explore the possibility of teaching in Thailand since she is originally from there. I ultimately caved in, moved to Thailand to teach and didn’t take the offer in China, instead I suggested that my best friend, Rob, would be a good fit for the Jiangxi job. After a year of teaching in Thailand I decided to visit China for the first time to see how my friend Rob was settling in. It was ironic that when I first went to Thailand, the lady who sat next to me was from Yunnan and we became really good friends which led to me having an extra reason to visit here! I travelled around China for a bit to see what living here was really like and I was extremely impressed! I had an awesome holiday and decided in January 2019 that I would move here. I got an offer from a school I liked around March but however, due to some complications, it was extremely difficult to process my visa and it ended up taking close to 6 months. Just as my luck would have it, 2 weeks before I moved, I got into a motorcycle accident which injured my leg and would mean that I would have to limp onto my flight. To add insult in injury, on the day that I was supposed to move to China, I ended up missing my flight even though I got to the airport 20 hours early! I felt as if fate was not allowing me to move to China. Luckily in the end, I moved to Fuzhou and worked there for close to a year and now I live in Shaoxing.
What do you like most about your city (Xiamen or others) and China as a whole?
I love Shaoxing because there’s water and canals everywhere which fascinates me! Everyone always calls Shaoxing the “Venice of China” and I would see why it could be described in that way! The canals and waterways actually inspired me to build my own boat but I elaborate on that later on.
What fascinated you the most about living in China?
I love the sheer convenience of living in China! Even when I visited here as I tourist, I loved using WeChat Pay and was fascinated by just how convenient the average Chinese person lives their lives. Waimai, Didi and TaoBao are some of my favorites, especially since you can get anything on TaoBao (I even ordered baby chickens once! And considered buying an ostrich but got discouraged by my good friends.)
What is your unique China story? Tell us something that you experienced that made you love living here even more.
I have plenty! The first would be the story on how I randomly decided to build a boat. What I love the most about China is that I can have an idea and I could make my idea a reality because I can find anything here. A couple months ago, I was having a discussion about buoyancy with the Physics teacher at the school I work at and I wondered what would it take for me to build a boat and it not sink. Luckily, there is a huge lumber market near my apartment so I picked up my skateboard and skated there to get some wood for my boat. In my mind, I wanted my boat to be 3 meters long but I ended up with enough wood to build 4 meters. I couldn’t take the wood back to my apartment on my skateboard so a kind gentleman at the market offered to drop me to my apartment with everything I bought! I’m happy to report that my boat worked and I was actually able to sail it to the supermarket, buy groceries and come back!
The second unique story that I would like to share would be the time I tried to hike from Fuqing, Fujian to Fuzhou. My friend and I had a plan of walking between the two places without going on any established trails or tracks. However, in the middle of the hike we discovered that we had no water with us or in any of the surrounding areas which led to us being extremely dehydrated so we headed back to where we started. The journey back was terrible as the bush was extremely thick and I felt like we were walking on tree tops for over 12 hours with no water. To make matters worse, I accidentally went through a hornets’ nest and got stung more than 20 times!!!
Add a random fun fact about your country or hometown.
Even though I am originally from New Zealand, I feel extremely nomadic and I sincerely believe that home is where the heart is.
Thara loves Li Bai’s poem and he likes to recite his favourite one when he meets new Chinese friends:
天生我材必有用，千金散尽还复来。
With talent, even if I lose everything, I can still make it back.
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