EP 2: Redefining Home: A Journey from Poland to China During the Pandemic
What happens when the world shuts down, and you find yourself stranded in a foreign country with no way out?
Continuing the journey of Redefining Home, host Debra Josephson shares her raw, unfiltered journey of making a foreign land feel like home during one of the most challenging periods in modern history—the pandemic. As a solo Gen X traveler and expat, Debra delves into the struggles and revelations of living in a vastly different culture. Drawn to China by abundant opportunities like teaching English and a vibrant society, she quickly encountered the harsh reality of being a perpetual outsider in a culture deeply rooted in its own ways.
As strict lockdowns transformed daily life into eerie empty streets and constant surveillance, Debra found herself isolated yet determined to adapt. Through forging connections via creative groups and digital platforms like WeChat, she discovered resilience and the importance of community. Amid the chaos, a chance encounter with a rescued dog in Beijing blossomed into an unbreakable bond—an unexpected reminder that survival is not only about enduring hardship but also about finding connection in the most unforeseen places.
From the highs of cultural discovery to the lows of loneliness, Debra uncovers the realities of living outside conventional boundaries and explores how survival isn’t just about enduring hardship but also about finding connections in the most unexpected places.
Key Takeaways:
01:31 – Redefining Home: From New York to the Philippines
01:47 – Living in China During the Pandemic
02:59 – Challenges and Adaptations in China
07:11 – Navigating Cultural Differences
09:51 – Making Connections and Finding Community
16:41 – Reflections on Home and Freedom
19:00 – Starting Over and Embracing Change
26:05 – Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Follow Debra on Social Media:
Visit Debra’s multimedia website at www.dmeryl.net
Transcript
No Borders, No Filter
Episode 2
Redefining Home: A Journey from Poland to China During the Pandemic
DEBRA:
If you're not a minority, I mean, a woman is a minority in this world, but I'm talking about like, if you are anyone, if you are a person of a certain, whatever, ethnicity, a certain gender, a certain background, and you go into a country that is completely different than yours and you live there, you are a minority. You know, you're not represented in that way. We stand out like a sore thumb, all of us.
Hey there, and welcome to No Borders, No Filter. I'm Debra, your host and the Experient Explorer. Experient is for my hands-on lifestyle, and Explorer is for living outside of borders and boundaries. I'm here to shake things up, challenge your mindset, spark some critical thinking, and inspire you to live more boldly. I'm not going to sugarcoat my life or my thoughts as I dive into the intricacies of my global life journey as a solo Gen X woman. Growing up in New York fueled my wanderlust spirit, driving me to explore the world on my own terms. Expect raw, unfiltered stories with life's toughest truths sprinkled with a touch of sarcasm and plenty of straight talk. If you're curious about maintaining mental health outside of your home country, starting life over in exotic lands, and finding meaningful connections, you're in the right place. Tune in and let's get started.
Welcome and welcome back to Episode 1, Part 2 of redefining my home from New York to the Philippines and everywhere in between. In this episode, I'm going to talk about what it was like to live in China during the pandemic and how I was able to make it a home for four and a half years. Stay tuned.
Home isn't where you're from, but where you're wanted. Now, when it comes to China, I never felt like it was ever going to be my home. Again, when I talked about Italy, I knew that that was a place that I could call home. I knew it. And when I went there, it confirmed it. I never really thought I would end up in Asia, but due to, again, I did come into financial issues based on some of my decisions. If you want to know about money things, I will share about it. But as far as becoming a millionaire, that is not my thing.
But due to circumstances that when I was in Poland, I was in Europe and I was hoping to have Europe as my gateway to live in Europe and make a life there and which would lead me maybe to Italy or whatever, but that didn't happen. And anyway, I was just like struggling and I really was reluctant to go to China because of some of my health issues. And I didn't know if they would be able to help me with my mental health and that's important. So like I did know a couple of people that were in China and I did speak to them about some things and they kind of gave me the assurance that, of course, as long as I'm in a bigger city, international city, that it shouldn't be a problem, things like that. And I did some research and I'm like, all right, I'll go to China because there's abundance of opportunity for teachers. It's recession free. If you really want to teach or if you really want to travel and have an international experience and live somewhere and you have certain qualifications, whatever, in a nutshell, you could do teaching. English at least. And so from Poland, I was able to deal with everything, which is a lot to get the paperwork and the requirements and go through the process to get into China. And just as hard as it get in, it's really hard to get through and get out. And I felt wanted, at least for my education.
I didn't know if I was going to feel at home. I didn't know if I was going to feel welcomed by the people. I didn't know any of that.
But I knew that I would feel at least wanted for my knowledge and my skills that I can offer there. The kids, the parents' expectations for them and be of use in at least that way, wanted in that way. I get there and I'm in Beijing as my first city.
But again, I was nomadic and I moved through that country, but I will start there. And Beijing is enormous city land wise. It's enormous city.
Let's just say this with their high tech trains and they are high tech. I mean, I will give you that. They are high tech.
The conveniences related to transportation, the infrastructure, their Wi-Fi, their apps. It's just wow. It really is.
But even with their train system from where I was in Beijing, it still took me over an hour and a half from the outer ring, like I was in the fifth ring, to get to the center area, which was much more cosmopolitan, international, and obviously also more expensive. But I was working for a university in the outskirts. And that's just what I found like last minute.
And I'm just like, okay, I'll go with it. So I was in the outskirts of Beijing when it was the lockdown. So like that January was when I was just getting really started with living there and working there. And then everything changed where the most unfathomable of things, which, of course, for millions, billions of people, which was this pandemic. For me, it came from almost left field. I did get a whiff of it, of news when I was leaving the Philippines.
One of the workers at my hotel brought it up like someone got sick and was coming home on a plane with this virus. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. You know, like we've heard of so many things before, you know, and I'm just like, yeah, OK.
But it was much bigger, obviously, than I could have possibly imagined. You know, it first started off where China was denying anything for weeks. And we learned, you know, obviously, like they had knowledge of something going on back in December, but they didn't do anything.
And then, boom, it, you know, it started getting out of the country and hitting other places like Italy and local Asian countries as well. And just my world turned upside down in being at home yet in a new country and a pandemic hitting you at the same time. It's like an atomic explosion for someone who suffers from anxiety and depression.
And, you know, an isolation does not work well for me. So when I keep moving around, it's really not really good for my mental health, to be honest with you, because, you know, I need for my well-being a sense of foundation. So I know it sounds like, well, why do you live this way?
Well, you know, I am a person that has mental health issues, but I am a person that has a certain need to live a certain lifestyle. And I have to find a balance. But when you first move somewhere, it's really hard, especially in the Habitat, especially when you're in a culture that's completely different than your own, you know, like when you go to Europe and you're going to countries that are familiar with English or like Western ways and you're Western, you know, it's not that as difficult to adapt to a culture.
I mean, they have, you know, familiar things to you. When you move to countries that are dynamically opposite of yours, where the language, the food, not just the food, but how you eat food and how everything functions is literally like the upside down world from Stranger Things. It's just so different.
I'm not saying it's like bad, but like when you're new to a culture, you have to learn everything from square one. And that is part of living the life that I do is you have to be open to and accepting that you are starting over. And that means everything.
And it's a very vulnerable time. It's humbling, but it really takes a lot of skills and resources, experiences to navigate through those beginning months. And usually it's about three months at least to get kind of your bearings, especially if, let's say you are solo and not with a partner or maybe knowing people, they are all ready to kind of take you through and walk you through some things.
But China is made for Chinese. And what I mean by that is the culture is they have a certain values and they have a certain way. And again, they speak Chinese.
That's their language. English is very much for the elite. To be honest with you, it's not taught and it's not taught well in their public schools. And it's not taught that great, to be honest with you, at the international university levels that I worked at, you know, to be honest with you, but it functions for the Chinese, for the everyday Chinese. And so like you are always like to me, I always felt like a foreigner in foreign land. And that might be how they feel when they go to America or other countries, but like that's really how it is.
And navigating through Asia to live in a country like China really takes resilience. And if you don't have it, you learn it and it's a good skill. But, you know, I'm not saying I'm a master at that either, but it took quite some time for me to make that place feel like some sort of home for myself.
But through the pandemic, that wasn't the case. I never really felt at home there. And there are foreigners that people, they find it to be something they, I guess, enjoy in some capacity. A lot of foreigners, you know, just gravitate to each other because it really is about survival and you need that comfort of familiarity and people like yourself and people who speak your language or understand your situation is absolutely essential to get through it. I don't care if you love another culture. If you don't have people that you can identify with, it's a very difficult situation.
It's really important to find at least one person that makes you feel like you're not an alien in a place, especially in the beginning. And I don't even know where to begin with China. I mean, I don't think I can break down China enough, but for this particular podcast, when it comes to making China at home, eventually, let's just say this, eventually with time, again, it took a few months well into that year of 2020 to get my feet on the ground. Again, I was learning how to take care of a dog with special needs. She had skin issues and it was causing her so much discomfort. I learned that she was hard of hearing or deaf, sweet as anything, good manners and anxiety as like me, French Bulldogs do.
Eventually when I did have to go back to work, it was really difficult because she was used to me being around all the time and she was, I think, afraid that I would not come home and so that she would pee on the floor and whatever. We got to know each other. We got her better. I was able to, through a friend, make a contact, a foreigner, where when I worked at home and we were both dealing with this situation, this insane lockdown in China, the zero policy, everything you heard in the news was pretty much true. So I would have to say that when you heard about the horrors of it, it really was true. Their technology, as advanced it was, was able how to kept us in lockdown and they knew how to do it technologically because they were that advanced and they knew how to track you everywhere.
If you were in a store at a certain time and then an hour later, someone found out that they were in your same area, that same store an hour later or something like that, and they eventually got tested and they got positive, then they would trace everyone who was in close proximity to that person and our phones would light up and you would have to go to quarantine and all this stuff. I mean, I just can't even get into it. And especially the foreigners there, like you feel like a minority.
If you're not a minority, I mean, a woman is a minority in this world, but I'm talking about like, if you are anyone, if you are a person of a certain, whatever, ethnicity, a certain gender, a certain background, and you go into a country that is completely different than yours and you live there, you are a minority. You know, you're not represented in that way. We stand out like a sore thumb, all of us.
And the news certainly didn't help these people because like any political country that wants to save face, which China does, they want to save face. They're not going to take it. They didn't take accountability of starting the pandemic. They, you know, have propaganda and they told their people about how this started and how did I learn that? Because I had students bring up things to me. So I don't want to get into all those details, but the thing is, is that how I was treated, how foreigners were treated during the pandemic was as if we brought it there.
So people would keep their distance and people would do certain behaviors that were sharing how fearful they were to be around us. Mind you that every protocol and everything that we had to do was the same exact as theirs. And obviously we were there because they weren't allowing anyone come in or out of the country. Like they locked borders. So unfortunately the evident and factual poor information they were getting because they don't have free speech in that country. You can look it up.
And then my dog on top of it all, because they were afraid of animals passing it on and like the things they did to animals too, I can't even get into right now. So it was really difficult to feel at home there during the pandemic. It was very difficult to make connections because again, we were isolated at home a lot of the times. My connections I had to find again, through talking on Skype or, you know, whatever things, the WeChat app there, because again, they don't use Google, they don't use Facebook. And yes, I had the VPN to connect with Facebook and people, but mind you, I'm just saying on a day-to-day basis, I just utilize the Chinese apps and I communicate through them. And I just was able to, little by little, make some connections and eventually I would make it back.
We made it back to working in the university and I met a couple of locals, really awesome ladies that I started becoming friendly with and started doing things with, but it took a really long time. You get to know a culture really well. I think if you step back and look at whatever country you're from and you looked at how your government and how people took care or didn't take care of things during the pandemic, you would be a wallflower and just be an objective viewer.
You can really learn about a culture. And I learned China really fast through this process and understanding the power of the CCP and they are no joke. And the three years escalated. The first year, I have to be honest with you, was reasonable, but the second and third year was unbearable and unreasonable and illogical because they lost control of the virus. And again, they didn't want to show the world that they were not in control anymore. So it plays a big role on the lack of humanity that you experience as a human in that country, and I'm talking about as well as with their people.
We were like petri dishes more than humans. And that's how I really felt for a lot of that time with breaks and stints between where I did do my best. I did my damnedest to travel during that time because I needed to, like being cooped up in an apartment is, it's like being in prison. It was for me. My spirit and my mind were, I just lost it. I couldn't bear it. Like I kept thinking about taking a jet ski across the ocean. I could just, anything to get across, anything to get to break free because, you know, I'm all about my freedom. The best thing I have from my country is my passport and I use it. And I would say anyone who has the privilege of having a passport, I say, use it. I think the pandemic taught us life is short. And I think that travel is a big part of freedom and having access to the world is the best gift you could possibly have, the best education you can ever have.
Eventually I made China my home the best that I could. You know, again, I made a few friends. Again, I'm not a big social person.
I love my quiet time. I like my personal time. But of course I need to go out. And I did also find a creative writing group. I eventually was doing that in the last city that I was in. I did make the best of China as I could. And I saw a lot of incredible history there. As far as travel, if you like history in the visual way, which I do, China has plenty of it. So I was able to get to enjoy some of the top landmarks as well as some of the UNESCO heritage sites.
Those are outstanding. You know, that's the best way I could make China my home during that time was to get out there and travel and, you know, utilize their social media and, you know, find groups with the foreigners and find out what's going on and building some social connections and things that helped me navigate through it. It's absolutely essential for China. Like you cannot do China completely alone. It's impossible. You are interdependent on them as well as you're interdependent on finding some foreigners that you can lean on and cry on and talk to and laugh with or whatever to get you through it because you need to find a way to laugh through it.
So some places that you choose to go to might not turn out to be a place where you do feel completely wanted. And that was definitely my feeling with China is that, yeah, they wanted me, but it's really more about face, I think, than anything else. But it certainly was helpful, let's say, enlightening on, well, life. I got to make better choices or, you know, I got to figure out a better way to make money or I need to stop leaning on this way of doing things because it just wasn't working. And it just it hasn't been working for a while, to be honest. And it's like, OK, my next step is that I need to really start over, like start over, start over, start over. And you can do that at any age. So let me just point that out. People like, especially from my culture and my country, like they have this like 20s or this, 30s or that, 40s or this, 50s, whatever.
And again, it's just nonsense. I have to be honest with you. It's just more cultural norms that help. It helps you navigate maybe with life, but it really certainly does not allow you to reconsider what your life can be. And I think that there's plenty of like people like Jay Shetty, Nas Daily, there's, you know, just those are names off the top of my head that like really help with looking outside the box of what's possible. And by all means, if your life is not working out for you, if you don't feel at home where you are, you can change that.
You just need to just take that first step. And again, you don't have to move to China. You don't have to move even outside the country. But if you start taking some actions by even just talking to some new people, get out of your little group or, you know, comfort zone in that way, and just open up the possibilities of a new friend, a new place to eat, trying a new hobby. I don't know. Just you want your life to be a little different instead of complaining about, oh, my job is this. I don't have enough quality time with my family. I want to travel more. I don't have money.
You know, if you have these desires and these needs for your life to improve, then by all means, start taking steps to do that so that you feel at home with yourself. And that's really what it comes down to. You need to feel home with yourself.
The place does matter. I have to be honest with you. Like when everyone says like you can create a home anywhere, unless technically you can. But look, I'm not Buddha and I'm not Confucius and I'm not, you know, these gurus, but I can tell you like for someone like me, the environment really matters. The weather matters. The culture matters. The political, you know, situation matters. My freedom matters. There's things that matter to me and I need it.
I'm very temperamental, as I said, and temperature and quality of life and things on how the day to day works in a country. It matters. It really does matter. And I hear so many people talking about and complaining about it that have the accessibility, the finances and things like that, but they've never been educated or take the time to really think about what can I do to improve this so that I have a home that I enjoy? Well, the thing is, you have to be open to starting over that thought process. What does home mean to you and what are the most important things? And be willing to say, well, maybe I do need to leave it behind. Or, you know, maybe there's opportunities that I didn't know about, but I just, you know, I can look it up on the Internet. I can talk to my friends and maybe they know someone that can lead me in the right way.
And I think that's really what it comes down to about home is that whatever choices you do make about your life, again, to each their own, I'm not telling you to live my life. Like, let's just make that clear. I'm not here to condone my way of life and tell you this is what you should do with your life. I'm not saying that. But what I am trying to help you maybe understand why I live the life I do is that I'm just not content with the standard norms of life. In fact, as I get older and I have learned so much through these experiences, being an experienced explorer has taught me that home is not something I just settle like, OK, this is it.
No, it's OK. I'm going to try this out. I think this might be a good direction for me. And it's difficult. It's awkward. And I get frustrated like I do today. But if I don't try, how will I ever know? And I think that's what we lose. A lot of adults lose from our childhood is this freedom to explore, freedom to carve out, create, imagine something else and trying it. And when we were little, we would like, especially from my generation, we would fall down like off my bike. I would get scrapes on my knees and whatever. And I didn't cry home.
I was like, OK, let me try again. Let me try again. Let me try again. And let me try again. If you go to art school or something creative, you continue developing that. And that's what I continue to do. I've made mistakes. I've made poor decisions. I tried new things and I didn't like them or I didn't belong. But I'm still alive. I'm not in a situation where I cannot not start again. I can start again anytime. And I'm starting again. And we'll see how it goes. And who knows? Things might work out. But I'm just getting started here in the Philippines. And so we'll see.
And I will definitely get more into my life and home in the Philippines. But I think for now, it's really important to keep an open mind, an open heart to the ideas of home and being yourself. And I think that's really what it comes down to. The more that you are yourself, the more I think you'll feel at home. And that will carry you through to any of your choices of lifestyle that are for you. But by all means, people who live like me, I don't feel like I need to also explain to people, why do you do what you do?
Like for me, when I look at normies living like that routine life, I actually, in my mind, I question why are you choosing this? Is it because you want to or because society and your family expectations and things like that? But I don't ask that and I don't judge each person for that. So keep in mind, if you meet people like myself, maybe ask a question about, wow, how did you do this? How are you being a nomad? How did you make the choice to Philippines or open a conversation without judgment to people like myself.
Be more curious and try to learn from instead of being fearful and just question why I would want to do something like that. Think about what questions you would want to be asked if you were me. And being judged is, of course, not something that we, you know, I don't mind that you judge it. It's not about you. Like I judge things, of course, that I have to make decisions, but meaning don't judge me negatively immediately for not doing the lifestyle that you do. And, you know, I can think that I would never do that.
You can think that, that's fine. And it's the same how I feel about your life. If you chose like, you know, the family and living in one place and doing certain things traditionally, I will never do that. And I never want to do that. And that's okay, too. But if you're not happy with what you're doing, then consider other options for yourself and explore them. All right. Thank you.
And that's a wrap for today's episode. Thanks so much for tuning in and hanging out with me. If you enjoyed this podcast with no borders, no filter, and you feel a connection or a little inspired, please like, subscribe, and share it with a friend. I truly can't wait to hear from you. Let's keep challenging the status quo with an unfiltered perspective. I'll be podcasting with real stories, interviews, and reflections on my day-to-day and journey. In the meantime, explore your spirit. Experience the world. Get to know me more by connecting to my social media at experienceexplorer, found in the description. Also, you can check out my photo website dmeryl.net. That's D-M-E-R-Y-L dot net. Until next time, the best way to learn is by doing. So go out and get your hands dirty.