Beijing --> Seattle, oops, make that Beijing --> San Francisco

Starting my third year in Beijing, and my sixth year abroad, I decided that it was time to move onto the next chapter of my life. I recognize that I have a VERY comfortable life and job in Beijing.  I don’t work very hard, considering I can simply pull out what I taught in previous years, change the date, names in the problems and show up to class.  But that’s the thing, I can simply pull out what I taught in previous years, change the date, names in the problems and show up to class. Without other math colleagues, I can simply coast in this job, with its 1015AM to 330PM teaching day and weeks on end of vacation. The job is wonderful, but I’m not growing in my position. If I wanted to put it in cruise control for a number of years, this is the place to do it. In addition, living in Beijing has been wonderful, I’ve made friends, but I’ve also seen many of my friends leave. It has been hard to create a community of friends and then see them leave one by one as their lives take them away from Beijing.

With these two large reasons pushing me to leave Beijing, I found out early in the academic year that I was soon to be (cross your fingers) an uncle. In addition, my parents are both getting on in their years and I am beginning to feel a responsibility to be around Seattle to help out, if and when help is needed. So these two reasons were pulling me back to the United States, specifically Seattle.

2014-15 Academic Year – Beijing                   Summer 2015 – Beijing à United States

During the Christmas and New Year’s holiday, I updated my resume, but together a couple of cover letters and sent them out to all the independent schools in the Seattle area. A few weeks later, I began to get some responses from schools. They all wanted to do an initial interview by Skype. So over the course of a few weeks in late February and early March, I would Skype at crazy hours (3AM to 7AM), here in East Asia from Beijing and one time when I was on vacation in Japan, back to Seattle.  I lined up three on campus interviews for my week visit to Seattle in March. I interviewed at the three schools and the one I was most interested in was Lakeside, my alma mater. You see, in my life, I have this way of moving through life by having visions of what I see my life looking like and then working towards making that picture of my life happen. For a number of years, I saw my post ex-pat life as moving to Seattle and spending my remaining years at Lakeside.

Upon return to Beijing, I quickly found out that I did not get one of the positions I had interviewed for, but after a couple weeks, Lakeside called and said they offered the position to someone else. I was pretty disappointed at first, but now still have pangs of disappointment; I realize why I am sad about it. What is hard to swallow is that this picture Lakeside part of moving back to Seattle was not going to happen. Seattle was also slowly fading as a possibility as two schools had hired other teachers. I needed to change my picture.

I began to panic. I went through all these worst-case scenarios. What happens if I don’t find a job? What would I do about health insurance? What would I do with my days and all that free time? Even though I had claimed that I had all these projects and ideas about what I could do with a “year-off” I realized that a great deal of my identity is as a teacher. I love the profession and find that it really defines my professional sense of self. During this state of panic, I had so real low moments. I began to wonder about what I did wrong in these interviews instead of realizing that the schools had their reasons for hiring other people. I had to frame it as though they chose someone else and not as the schools choosing against me. However, it still was hard to know that I was essentially right back at square one in the job search.

Therefore, in this low period, I expanded my search to include schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. I began to work my connections and I signed up with a placement service that specifically served Math/Science Teachers. It was a hassle to have to write essays and get transcripts uploaded and have former colleagues write recommendations for the search service file. In the midst of this flurry of activity, I logged onto the website of a school near my home in San Francisco called, Lick-Wilmerding. It’s a school that I’ve always had an interest in and they advertised a position for a math teacher. I quickly applied using their online application form and hit submit. The date was April 8^th, 2015.

I woke up on April 13^th with an email from the math department chair at Lick asking me to have an initial interview by Skype. We talked on April 16^th and she told me right then that I would advance to the next phase, an interview with the Academic Dean.

However, there were also developments on the Seattle front as well. Back in late March, a school in the suburbs of Seattle asked me to apply for a one-year sabbatical position as well. I had gone through the first Skype interview but then they went on Spring Break. On April 18^th, I had an interview with the headmaster of the Seattle school who verbally offered me the one-year sabbatical position at the end of the interview.  So, there was great relief in knowing that I had a job to go to in the United States. However, the fact it was not permanent was a sticking point.  Plus at this point, I had begun to envision myself back in San Francisco.

Now, I need to stop and explain how I viewed Lick in a metaphor.  Lick is like that cute person who you is in your extended friend circle.  You really think they are attractive and interesting, but you think would never be interested in you. So when I sent my application online to Lick, I never thought I would hear back from them, let alone get an interview or even make finalist. Therefore with this in mind, I interviewed with Lick’s Academic Dean on April 21^st.  I open my email on the 22^nd and I had the job offer.  I was stunned and I sat there with a pit in my stomach. In many way, the job at Lick was more interesting and better for me that at Lakeside.  So there it was. 

Now it’s a week later and I’ve had time to reflect on the whole process.  I came to realize is that how lucky I have been in my career to never struggle to find a job.  Lawrenceville came out of nowhere, which lead me to Head-Royce in Oakland and my life in the Bay Area.  Italy was just a simple phone interview.  Rome was a flight to Chicago for a job fair, an on campus interview in Rome and that came to fruition.  The move to China, again, a simple letter and it was done.  Because of the challenges (ok not nearly as hard as most people work to find a job) of this search, and the fact that at 45 it’s only going to be harder in the future if I ever need to find a new job again, that I will appreciate this position more than anything else and NOT take it for granted. In the past, I have not taken my positions as seriously as I could have because I didn’t have to struggle to get the jobs in the first place.  No fooling around and doing things that could jeopardize my standing with my employer.

The second thing I learned in this process is that I have the support of my family. In many ways this job search was one undertaken by my entire family. When I didn’t get the jobs in Seattle, I got the word from my Dad that he would financially support me if needed (no need Dad). When I had to decide between the Seattle sabbatical position and the job at Lick, we all agreed, as a family, that I take the job in San Francisco even though it meant not moving to Seattle, which was the original and ideal situation.

Reasons to leave Beijing and reasons to move back to Seattle. The reasons didn’t change, but the picture I envisioned changed. When I heard back from Lakeside saying they chose someone else, I really had to believe that saying that the world was telling me that something else was waiting in the wings that was just as good if not better. The world came through and I learned some great lessons along the way.

"Midnight In Peking"

As a teacher, I often have students in my class who can't put down a book they are reading in English class.  This year, the book that fit that description was "Midnight in Peking" which retold the story of an unsolved murder of a young British girl on January 7th, 2015.

Here's a map of the walk.  1) Is the Beijing Railway Station  2) Armour Factory Alley (Werner Home) 3) Fox Tower (Body Found)  4) Original Beijing City Wall  5) The Badlands  6) Soochow Hutong  7) French Legation  8) British Legation  9) US Legation

Since the book takes place in Beijing, the author has a walking tour of the sites of the book.  This past Friday afternoon, I downloaded the audio guide to the book and took a walk.  The major sites lie in the areas between Tiananmen Square and the modern day Beijing Railway Station.  We start here on what used to be called Armour Factory Alley.

The hutong is exactly the same as when Pamela Werner (the murdered girl) and her father, E.T.C. Werner lived here in the 1930's. 

The hutong layout is the same, but the out classic courtyard houses have been subdivided into smaller residences.  This is #1 Armour Factory Alley, the Werner residence.

The other half of #1 Armour Factory Alley is not a printing shop.

Just down the road at #13 (now #6) is this hotel.

But it was the residence of the Snow's, who were huge proponents of China and Edgar Snow wrote, "Red Star of China" when he lived here.  The Snow's played a large role in the attempts to solve the murder mystery.

Inside the courtyard of the hotel, you can see the layout of a typical hutong home, which is centered around the open space in the middle.  Back then there would have been one story, not three.

Just a few hundred meters away from Armour Factory Alley, just to the southeast is what was then named the "Fox Tower".  This still standing tower is one of the few remaining gates into the city of Beijing.  Between where this picture is taken and the tower are the railway lines that lead into Beijing Railway Station.

Now looking at the tower from the Southern side, it was in the ditch/canal in front of the tower that Werner's body was found the morning of January 8th, 1937.

Extending west from the "Fox Tower" is the only part of the original city wall that encircled Beijing that still stands today.

The wall, which stood for 500 years, was 20 meters thick at the base and 12 meters thick at the top.  The city wall was nearly completely dismantled in the 1960's when the 2nd Ring Road was built and when the original loop subway line (Line 2) was built.

Just to the northeast of today's Beijing Railway Station and east of Tiananmen Square was the former no man's land called the Badlands.  This hutong, Chuanban, was the heart of the Beijing "Badlands."

It was along this hutong where one could find gambling dens, brothels, drugs, pornography and cheap lodging.  This was the place where underworld Beijing was found.  It was in the Badlands that the police went looking for murder suspects.

A few streets to the north is Suzhou (or back then Soochow) Hutong.  It was the northern border of the Badlands and was known for the numerous food stalls.  It was here that Pamela Werner was known to have had her last meal.

Is this Europe?  Nope, it's Beijing.  Just to the west of the Badlands, one crosses into what was the Legation (Embassy) Quarter.  In the old days, one would have needed to show papers (to keep local Chinese out) to get into the quarter.  It was here that all the western countries built western style buildings for their embassies and other commercial interests.

This grand entrance was the gateway to the French Legation.  Inside the French Legation was an ice-skating rink.  It was here at the rink which was where Pamela Werner was last seen by her friends before being murdered and found the next day, a few kilometers to the East at the Fox Tower.

Across the street from the French Legation is the apartment building in which the dentist, who was a main suspect (and totally sketchy) lived.

Just down the main East-West Street of the Legation quarter is the corner where a number of banks were housed.

The entrance to the British Legation, now the home of a government security office.  It was here in the 1900's that foreigners were housed during the Boxer Rebellion.  It was also where the British citizens of Beijing were sheltered once the Japanese invaded Beijing later in 1937.

That's my friend Milan from Serbia.  We are walking along the tree lined parkway that bisects the main North-South street of the Legation Quarter.  Close your eyes, the somewhat quiet and you might think you are in Europe.  Kind of....

I love this juxtaposition here of the Greek/Roman archway which stands in front of the monstrous modern building which is a Beijing courthouse.

A building with Ionic columns, now repurposed with Chinese Characters on the front.

The wide streets in front of the former American Legation.

And a few steps to the west, we're at the eastern end of Tiananmen Square with Qianmen standing over the southern side of the square.

Milan and I at the end of our nice walk.  This walk finally got me into the Legation Quarter, which I've been meaning to go and see since I moved to Beijing.

This building at the southeastern corner of Tiananmen Square is the former Beijing Railway Station.  This is where the trains entered Beijing before the 1950's.  It's now the Beijing Railway Museum.