Tiāntiān xiàngshàng

Sept 15- Sept 21

Mary Starts Work

M&M House Hunting International: Episode 2

We’re excited to call Jintan home! We’ve chosen a comfortable and nice three bedroom apartment (including a guest bedroom for anyone who wants to visit), with easy access to shopping, and a beautiful view. We aren’t positive when we’ll move in, but we’re hopeful it will be mid-late October. It’s customary in China to ask the owner to make changes to the apartment, so we’ve submitted our requests and are waiting for the work to be completed. Below is a picture of the view. More pictures to come once we’re moved in and settled (not to mention seeing it yourself when you come to visit).

World Food Tour

Matt ate at the Moon Key the first time he visited China in 2023 and suggested we give it a try. We were ecstatic to discover they sell chips and “salsa” (tasted like marinara sauce, but was still a welcome deviation from rice-noodles-and-dumplings), lasagna and kimchi quesadillas! Right in Jintan!

New Friends

A few weeks ago while leaving a mall in Jintan, Matt excitedly proclaimed, “Look! Foreigners!” (In Jintan, we don’t see many foreigners outside our hotel.) We made our way over to the couple and said hello. The couple, Armin and Mohaddeseh, recently arrived in Jintan from Iran. Armin is pursuing a Ph.D at the local university. Mohaddeseh is working on her English, and plans to start a masters program at the same university next year. We exchanged numbers and said we should stay in touch.

A few weeks later (this week), Armin texted and invited us to join him and his wife and their fellow Iranian friend, Neda, for a stroll through an old village near the university, and then dinner. We were happy to join them and have a night out with new friends! It was fun to share experiences of leaving home and moving to China. We found commonality in those experiences. They miss food from home, and so do we. They marvel at the gleaming infrastructure of modern China, and so do we. They are intrigued by the “crime-free” society created by the Chinese State, and so are we.

Despite a complicated and tense history between the United States and Iran, there was no animosity between us. Instead we felt kinship and a gratitude for new friends. There’s an old Confucian saying, “四海之内皆兄弟” (sì hǎi zhī nèi jiē xiōng dì), meaning, within the four seas, all are brothers. We feel that here, with our Iranian friends, frisbee teammates, coworkers, and church members, and are grateful for the universal brotherhood of man.