Book 24: Big in China

What dreams could you fulfill if you didn't have the everyday household and family stuff to do? If you had a small staff to do the cooking, shopping, cleaning, and a lot of the child care?



 This book answers that question for one man, a "trailing spouse" whose wife becomes the Beijing bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. They move their three young children to Beijing for three and a half years and live the expat life. Alan has always done the bulk of the child care and "holding down the fort" in their family. Now, with a couple of household employees to handle much of that, he has time and energy to pursue his interest in forming a blues band.

The book was a bit heavy on descriptions of blues tunes and musicians for my taste (as in, I know nothing about the blues so it really went over my head), but I was able to imagine *just a bit* what my experience might be if we moved abroad. Hello Beijing?

A lot of Alan's descriptions of China and Beijing really felt true to me, especially this statement made by one of his friends: "Beijing encourages you to make mistakes in all the right ways." I made a lot of mistakes in Beijing, and learned from all of them.