Condensed Beijing crammed full of life
Like many long-term expatriates living in Beijing, I make one trip every year back home to visit my family. And like anyone who has been in China for a long time - in my case for nearly five years - I now have very mixed feelings about these visits.
On one hand, they provide an all-too-rare opportunity to see my parents and sister. I love them dearly, and they have been amazingly supportive of my China odyssey. But on the other hand, after residing in Beijing for more than four years, I'm much more at home here than in my old hometown.
That hometown, Fresno, is a medium-sized city located in central California's agricultural heartland, the San Joaquin Valley. It is a very young metropolis, founded in the 1880s, and like other such conurbations in the US, has little in the way of history or culture.
