China — my second hometown

My name is Trang, I'm from Vietnam, my husband is Chinese, we have a romantic love and great marriage and I have been living in China for over two years.

We are married in 2019, my husband's hometown is in the most beautiful grasslands of the world — Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolian. The first time I arrived at his home, people in husband's family treated me so well. I can feel their kind, their warm-hearted every time, my parents-in-law said that they will treat me as a daughter, it touched my heart deeply. Then, my husband and I moved to a beautiful city beside the sea — Dalian for settled down. My life in China was started from March 2019. At the beginning, although I have HSK (Chinese Skills Examination) at five level, it was a challenge for me to communicate because Chinese dialects and accents are too much. But if I say I am a foreigner Chinese people will comprehend me, patiently explain the words that I couldn’t understand and try to speak slowly, I think they are so lovely and nice.

I love Chinese foods. Each place in China has their own specialty, I realize a fact: the North China people love wheaten foods and the South China people love rice. Chinese foods are so special with the using flavoring way. There are many kinds of oil (such as sesame oil, peanut oil, rapeseed oil...) and soy sauce (for example soy sauce, dark soy sauce, light soy sauce), they are very interesting. Besides, cumin, cinnamon bark, star anise, Chinese prickly ash, chives, salted bean curd are can not to be lacked flavor in Chinese foods. Chinese hotpot is too famous to say, if you taste one piece, you can’t stop eating them. Scalding a slice of fresh meat into a boiled enrich flavor water, and then dip it in sauce made by your own is an amazing must-try feeling. Because of loving Chinese food I started to learn cooking them from teaching cooking program on CCTV, like "Go home and eat" (回家吃饭).

In 2020, I was pregnant. I chose Dalian Municipal Women and Children's Medical Center for the prenatal examinations and giving the birth. The doctors and nurses showed the profession and the professional ethics so I absolutely believed them. When I gave the birth, I met some problems because my baby was not enough time to be born, thanks of doctors and nurses professionally handled them, my baby and I were safe, they took care of us very well. They made my day bright, I want to thanks them a lot.

Going through things in last over two years, my Chinese skills are developed rapidly. I learned to use Chinese Pay system as Alipay, Wepay, Union Pay and now I can pay fast as a native person in supermarket, restaurant... No need to bring cash, so convenient. Through these applications, I can take out foods and drinks without go to other places, just stay at home and after 30 minutes the things you want delivered. Not only foods and drinks, they also help you buy anything you want in supermarket or somewhere sell the goods. Besides, I can use online-subway-ticket, it's so cool when you going out and don't need to take anything unless a smart phone.

If you go to China at the first time, don’t afraid of getting lost because the map applications (Baidu map, Gaode map...) in China are so good, they are updated every time and they can give you the most detail information you need to arrive your destination. One more thing, if you live in China, you will have a great experience with online shopping. Varied goods, reasonable price, including famous brand products are sold on Jingdong, Tmall, Suning, Kaola platform. Chinese express delivery system is very brilliant. It makes your online shopping be more convenient, it only takes one to three days to receive parcel for a long distance over 1,000 km. China suits young people to live here.

I love living in China because of the conveniences, the people, the foods and the culture in here, they make my life more better. In my heart, China is my second home country. I know Chinese Government in the 14th Five-years has some policies to support foreigner in China, there are many opportunities for people like me to find a job or immigration to China, therefore, I’m ready for it, I have my plan in next five year. I am going to study master degree in a Chinese university in September this year, this course will be maintained in three years. Last two years I accumulated the Chinese social experience, next three years I will try my best to study and collect bit by bit the knowledge to make my education background better and improve my soft skills. After graduation, I hope I will find a wonderful job that I have job satisfaction with some of the perks of the job such as insurance or holiday entitlement. Although I started lately but I believe I can adapt the busy life in China rapidly. In the future, I hope I can get the permanent residency to have a stable life with my husband and children.

My great experience in China when I live in here for over two years. My plan and hope about the better future in next five years.

The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of China Daily and China Daily website.