Zhongguo is Mandarin for Middle Kingdom or Middle Country and, since 1000 BCE, has been the Chinese name for China. For almost seven years I’ve lived and worked and traveled there. I first came to China in 2014 to take a teaching position at a middle school in Zibo, Shandong Province. From there, I went on to teach at universities in Henan, Jiangxi, and Heilongjiang Provinces before taking a high school position in the geographic center of China, Gansu Province’s capital of Lanzhou in August 2020. Taking advantage of a long-sought opportunity, I’ve ended my time in China and am now in Latin America.
For years I’ve been trying to get into Latin America. From what I’ve been told by people in Latin America, there seems to be a bias - or more accurately stereotypical assumption - against hiring teachers who’ve been working in China that is similar to the bias in developed countries against hiring older, more experienced, workers: because China tends to pay relatively well, it is assumed that teachers who’ve taught in China are going to want the pay and benefits similar to what they receive in the Middle Kingdom; likewise, employers in developed countries tend to assume that older workers are going to want to be better-compensated for their greater experience. There may be some general truth to the assumption - after all, every stereotype is based in fact - but, like all stereotypes, it is not universally applicable to the entire group of Westerners who’ve worked in China. I, in particular, am only concerned about whether what the prospective employer is offering is enough for me to live a reasonably middle class life in the local economy. So, having managed to overcome the aforementioned stereotypical assumption, I am now living in Latin America.
“Well, Latin America is a pretty big place consisting of several countries spread across two continents”, you might be thinking. Yeah, that’s true, but as I’ve been trying to get into Latin America for several years, I haven’t been particularly concerned about which country I got into (though, frankly, Venezuela and Brasil were not countries in which I would have been interested). The goal was to get into this part of the world, and I’ve finally accomplished that goal. So, where am I? Honduras.
Honduras, a country notorious for wanting foreign teachers to come and work as volunteers, does occasionally have opportunities for teachers to be hired as employees - complete with salaries and other benefits - and I’ve managed to land one of those positions. The position for which I was hired is at a private K-12 school in a town called Juticalpa, the capital of Olancho Department (what you might know as states or provinces, which are not themselves synonyms, Honduras calls departments). One would think that a capital of a state/province/department/whatever would be a city, but there is some question about where the line between town and city is drawn and even how the two are defined. Regardless, I think of it as a town. At the school for which I’m now working, I'm teaching grades 10, 11, and 12.
So, where in Honduras is this town of Juticalpa? Look at the map below:
Juticalpa is about a three-hour drive northeast of Tegucigalpa (the capital of Honduras). As you can see on the map, Olancho Department is one of the largest regions of the country and Juticalpa is west-of-center in that region. Not quite the geographic center of the country, but it’s fairly safe to say that Juticalpa is in central Honduras.
It would be a bit unfair to compare China and Honduras. While both are developing countries, China is much further along in its development (and, in a few areas, even rivals the developed world). Honduras lacks a lot of things one tends to take for granted living in China, such as the availability of various products which one can't even find in the two main cities (Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula) or to the tourist traps along the northern coast (for example, I can’t find unbleached toilet paper here in Juticalpa), the ease of travel, and especially an online economy (e.g., being able to use a single app on my phone to do things like make purchases at local shops and restaurants, buy train and plane tickets, top up my phone, and so on - imagine using an app on one’s phone to buy a soda from a soda machine; and don’t even get me started on Taobao). Yet Honduras doesn’t have a Great Firewall blocking internet access to various sites such as Wikipedia or Facebook. Again, it would be a bit unfair to compare the two countries.
I often tell people that home is wherever I’m living at the time - it’s a mindset that makes it easier to adapt to the present environment. China was home for almost seven years and now Honduras is home. Someone yesterday (a Friday the 13th) asked me where I’m from and I said I’m from China; at some point, I’ll start telling people I’m from Honduras. The USA is where I was born and the country that issued my passport, but it is no longer home for me. Home is wherever I’m living at the time - whether the US or Central Asia or China or Honduras or anywhere else.
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