Change of scenery brings friendly jibes and funny looks

Some of my Chinese friends laughed at me when they heard that I'd decided to swap Beijing, China's bustling capital, for the smaller city of Kunshan, in the eastern province of Jiangsu.

"You're really choosing to go from a first-tier place to a third-tier?" one friend asked after hearing the news, his face a picture of incredulousness. "That's entirely opposite to what every Chinese wants to do."

He was only half-joking, but he still managed to make me momentarily picture myself as a salmon furiously swimming upstream, with my friend on the riverbank shouting, "You're going the wrong way!"