Time for DTR.

You know when you’ve been dating someone for a month or two and you’re just not sure where you’re heading with that other person?  When you’re talking to your friends, you spend most of the time wondering what the status of your relationship is.  That’s when you most acutely feel like you need to have a Define the Relationship talk or a DTR,  More often than not the DTR never happens as some dramatic talk over candles with soft music in the background, but most likely occurs over a series of missteps and fumbling around until you find that perfect equilibrium with that other person.

I’m sitting here about to return to Guangzhou, China to teach humanities classes at Sun Yat-sen University after leaving Hong Kong over six years ago.  Aside from being completely knackered from staying out way too late on my last night in New York and then enduring a full day of moving my apartment back to my parents’ place in New Jersey and packing all of my worldly possessions into two suitcases, I am about to start another phase of exploring my own relationship with China’s people, history, language, and culture.   I am not sure what to expect from the next eleven or so months I am going to be over there, but I do know that it is going to be a total adventure after six years back in the States filled with the wonders of law school and big law firm life.  

I want this blog to be a space where I start to have my own DTR with China, as I figure out what type of relationship I want to have with this country that has fascinated me ever since I was a freshman in college.  It’s going to be a place where I write about my teaching experiences, the people I encounter, and my own thoughts on all of the things that are either changing or perhaps not changing in what is unarguably the world’s rising new superpower.  As I write, the DTR will unfold.  Most times it’ll be clumsy and amusing, but every so often I hope to have a moment of extreme clarity whereby I can then move onto the next phase of the relationship.  For those of you that have never been to China or Asia for that matter, I hope chinadtr is a place where you can learn something about this crazy place and perhaps even begin your own DTR with China.  And for those of you who have lived here or elsewhere in the region, I hope you can empathize with the ups and downs that come with living here.

Let the DTR begin.