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 X-Expats interviewed Alan Paul, American Expat/Repat, Writer (Wall Street Journal, Guitar World and Slam Magazines), Blogger, and Musician. He told us about his overseas experience, life as an Expat/Repat, his thoughts, and current projects.
X-Expats: During the 3.5 years you spent in China, you described your life abroad in the Expat Life column you wrote for the WSJ. Can you tell us about your Repat Life in the States?
Alan Paul: Because I am writing a book, Big In China, about my time in Beijing, I am still living half my life in China mentally and emotionally if not physically. One of the things we really miss is our tremendous group of Beijing friends and we have maintained close ties with many. Last summer, we saw three or four different families when they were visiting the U.S. and we just got back from a week in Mexico with three other families from Beijing, two of which are still there. I have resumed writing for Guitar World and Slam magazines, which I did for years before going to China and also have been contributing regularly to the Wall Street Journal.
But I have recently taken a leave from almost everything to write my book. When we were considering the move to China, my wife Rebecca said, “We can either spend the next three years in China or sitting around talking about home renovations” and I guess she was right. Now that we are back, we are doing a huge renovation on our house. We are sinking deeper roots here and preparing to really settle in – even while a part of me feels the expat itch all the time. it turns out that writing a book and ripping up your house at the same time keeps things pretty interesting.
X-E: How did you and your family prepare for the return home?
AP: Dave Loevinger, the other American in my band (and the U.S. Treasury Dept. official in charge of relations with China), described it pretty accurately when he said, “You’re acting like you were diagnosed with terminal cancer and have six months left to live.” I pushed everything hard. I drove the band way harder than ever before, booking gigs all over Beijing, as well as two tours of China and scheduling rehearsals, writing and recording sessions. And it worked! We recorded all the tracks for our debut CD, Beijing Blues, before I left Beijing. I behaved similarly in all aspects of my life. We found out we were leaving in late June and had until December in Beijing and we just crammed in as much as we could during those almost-six months. My brother and his family came, along with my parents and aunt and uncle and we took them all over China. I worked for NBC throughout the Olympics, which was very intense, gratifying and time consuming. When that was over, I felt like a college student looking sadly at his last semester and I just made sure to make the most out of every day. We also visited great Beijing friends who had moved to India; made it to Tibet; and just tried to enjoy every single day living in Asia. We also did a ton of exit shopping, threw a big farewell party and God knows what else. It was an intense, action-packed six months. We played a big farewell gig the night before we actually left Beijing, getting home at 2 am, with a morning flight looming. So we just pushed it to the very last minute.
X-E: You wrote in one of your last Expat Life columns, “The volume and intensity of response to my recent column on battling the repatriation blues caught me off guard….there’s a lot of repat pain out there”. What are the difficulties repatriates face?
AP: See above answer: after all that excitement, it feels really dull back home! I feel very fortunate that we returned to a place we really like (Maplewood, NJ), where we have an extended family and some great friends. It is also a very open community and that made a big difference, especially for our kids. One of the things I heard from a lot of people was that their kids felt like outcasts or freaks trying to settle into their American schools. That was not the case at all for us. My kids were like rock stars for having lived in China, and returning in the middle of the year was really not a problem. I think one of the other problems that a lot of people face is a deep feeling of loss for the friendships they had. Expat friendships tend to form fast and become very intense. We are each other’s families. It is normal to have very deep, day to day relationships with people, in ways that are just much more rare here.
X-E: You are now writing a book about your expat experience and the band you formed while in China. How did this project come about and what messages do you wish to convey through your writing?
AP: I had the idea of writing a book about my experiences in China for much of my time there and the positive feedback I got from my columns encouraged me to keep pushing. Over the last year there, my band took up more and more of my time and emotional energy – and we became better and more successful -- so that became much more of a focus of the book than I had anticipated. So I am telling the story of the band and my overall experience and trying to do so in a way that ties it all together and tells a story that is much bigger than me. It is largely about reinvention. Being an expat in China opened up a lot of opportunities for me, many of them because I did not feel constrained by my own self-image or how others who already knew me viewed me. It’s easier to go out on a limb as an expat. Part of what I’m trying to say is that anyone can reinvent themselves anywhere and view a journey into the unknown as an opportunity rather than a threat.
X-E: Your band “ Woodie Alan” has garnered praise and accolades. It was named the “2008 Beijing Band of the Year”. Can you tell us about the band/ its members and what inspired you to compose and play music together?
AP: Well, to really explain it all would require a book –which is why I am writing Big in China! The band has five members – Dave Loevinger and I, along with three Chinese members: Woodie Wu, my fellow namesake and the partner with whom I started the group, Lu Wei and Zhang Yong. Dave was my neighbor. He and I met and played informally a couple of times and I thought he was great and really wanted to find a way to play with him regularly. Then I broke a guitar and someone recommended Woodie’s repair shop. He fixed the guitar, we started talking and quickly realized that we both had a deep love of the blues. I was tickled to find a Chinese guy with a tattoo of blues great Stevie ray Vaughan and was really intrigued by him. When my guitar was ready, he brought it to a gig he was playing and then invited me up to jam. It went well and we talked about getting together and playing. After a couple of trio shows, with me, Woodie and Dave, we realized there was potential to be pretty good so we started looking for a rhythm section (bass and drums) and Woodie found Lu Wei and Zhang Yong. We all had instant chemistry and it got deeper the more we played. Writing original music together was a natural evolution.
X-E: This is a multicultural band. What have been the challenges and rewards of making music together?
AP: There have not been that many challenges. We have a pretty significant language barrier, with Woodie the only one who is really bilingual and can communicate with everyone. He has served as an integral translator and link. But we all understood one another musically very well from the start, which has made it much easier. The rewards have been great. Spending so much time with the guys in the band offered entrée into the everyday life of Chinese friends in a way that nothing else did, or would have, for me. I also believe that there is something powerful about people seeing this multicultural group of guys communicating so well together musically. I believe in the power of music and art in general to build bridges and create links between people and I think we prove it every time we play without ever having to say a word. To learn more, hear some music and see lots of pictures and videos, please come visit www.woodiealan.com.
X-E: Do you have plans to perform internationally?
AP: We would very much like to appear in the U.S. and have been working on some possible scenarios to do so. There are a lot of places in Asia we could play and I would love to do so some day but the logistical problems are large now that I am back in the U.S. When my book comes out next winter, I hope to launch combination book reading/concert tours in the U.S. and greater China.
X-E: How did this expatriation change you and the people around you?
AP: That simple-sounding question is actually very complex and a key theme I am working through in my book. I feel in many ways very different than I did before moving to China and I am trying to understand just what has changed for me. It’s easier for me to say in a pithy manner how it changed my kids: by just opening up their worlds. They have friends from and in many cases now living back in: Hong Kong, New Zealand, Taiwan, Malaysia, England, Australia, Sweden, Israel and, of course, China. I think they have a vaster sense of possibility, which I hope serves them well in life. I obviously understood that all of these places existed in ways that my kids did not, yet I would say my horizons and sense of possibility have also broadened. I think that as people get older and settle into family life it is easy for their horizons to shrink and to quit thinking ambitiously about life. Expat life snapped me out of that rut and I hope to help others do something similar.
I guess that’s actually the message I want to impart in my writing: Life never has to grow dull or become static. To stay up to date with my book and any other projects I am working on, please visit www.alanpaul.net.
X-E: Thank you very much Alan. Your experience is evidence that taking the road less traveled can enrich your life but also lead to new opportunities. Keep us posted on future endeavors and upcoming projects.
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