The percentage of younger women in the U.S. who express a desire to migrate permanently has surged in the past decade.

But why?! The USA is a paradise for women! Isn’t that what Margaret Atwood taught us!?

    • ZDL@lazysoci.alOPEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      I’ve been living in China for 25 years. My salary is 1/10 of what I made in Canada (Ottawa) but I’m much better off than the colleagues I left behind right now.

        • ZDL@lazysoci.alOPEnglish
          2·
          6 months ago

          I live in that city basically nobody outside of China ever heard of until 2020. 😉

          Cost of living in Canada has shot up stupidly in Canada in the past two years on top of the already pretty stupid costs vs. salaries. I was making quite a bit of money, but I still had to pay close attention to my budget.

          In China my salary is a tenth of what my Canadian salary was 25 years ago and I rarely have to worry about money. It’s quite liberating.

            • ZDL@lazysoci.alOPEnglish
              3·
              6 months ago

              Talking of cost of living, however…

              In … I want to say 2007? … an old colleague and his wife visited my SO and me for six weeks. When he got back home he started going over their finances, cringing at the anticipated expenses.

              They’d saved money.

              They spent a ridiculous sum on airfare. They lived in a hotel near my home for the entire six weeks. We ate out for each meal daily. And yet, when they got home, between the drastic reduction in their utilities usage over the period and the zero cost in groceries for six weeks they came out ahead (by about two weeks, according to his analysis).

                • ZDL@lazysoci.alOPEnglish
                  2·
                  6 months ago

                  What are your favorite snacks in China?

                  This is going to sound weird because of a vocabulary issue, but … sweet potato jerky. (“Jerky” is just the closest word I can use for what this stuff really is, but it doesn’t cover how tender, sticky, and oh-so-sweet that it is.) “Spicy sticks” are also a guilty pleasure of mine. I grab a pack every second day or so and just eat them over the course of a day at work. And there’s any number of street foods I love, with 锅盔 being my current favourite.

                  Are you fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese?

                  Nope. Never touched Yue, Wu, Gan, Min, etc. at all. Mandarin is rough enough for me, thanks!

            • ZDL@lazysoci.alOPEnglish
              2·
              6 months ago

              No, weirdly. I worked in tech firms, but I did marketing. Switching to teaching English in China was a huge step down in my salary. Now I’m back in marketing, as of 2016, working for a local company as their “cultural expert”. (Officially on paper I’m a PA, but in reality I tend to lead all the stuff related to international things.)