Opening my diary... to you

I’ve kept a diary for as long as I can remember. I’m talking pink, lockable Holly Hobbie tomes that held acres of drama from the inside an eight-year-old head––stuffed with fairy incantations, fashion advice, best-friend drama and delusions about boys.

Reading these diaries is as eye-opening as it is giggle-inducing. It’s also a little sentimental because I still so often feel like that little girl, albeit a tad more experienced. My writing style, even back then, is candid and rambling, just like it is now. The belief in fairies is still as vivid as it is now. The delusions about boys––yes, still there, only now it’s over my five-year-old son not eleven-year-old elementary seniors.

What’s changed since I penned those diaries, however, is that I now write for a living. Sure, a lot of my current work is still memory-cataloguing, but now I do it for Real not just for the dark corners of a dresser drawer. I do it because I need to write like I need to breathe, but I also do it because I need to share. I love to relate on life experience, and if there’s an experience anyone should be relating on, it’s our gung-ho time in Beijing.

You may or may not have had a gung-ho time in Beijing, but what I do know for sure is that your time here has been/will be memorable. Good, bad or ugly––it will be a time to lament, to enjoy, to surf wildly and cruise calmly. It will be a time when your kids become worldly, when your partner becomes cynical and the whole family becomes enraptured in another culture, time and place.

Yes, it will be the rollercoastering time of your family’s life––and whenever you plan on leaving, a little piece of Beijing will stick to you like stink on durian. Boy, are we stinking to high heaven. We are saturated, coated, steeped in Beijing. We are like a pair of wet trousers on a hutong clothesline––we are part of the city now, and nothing will take that away from us, no matter how far away we go.

Anyway, back to the diary thing. When I first got to Beijing in May 2005, I began keeping diaries, then I started writing for magazines, so I amassed a large collection of literary memories of our time here as a family. Reading over this collection recently, I knew it would make great reading for any tai tai or xiansheng in Beijing to guffaw over or stew over or roll their eyes at or nod in agreement or even raise their glass in a raucous gan bei fashion.

So I decided to print all this work in Beijing Tai Tai––essentially a memoir but also a catalogue of the ups and downs of expat family life in the capital. To me, this is not only about my life, it’s also about yours’. It’s about the ride we’re all on, newbies or leavers, visitors or here-for-lifers.

Who would have thought that one day I would be publishing a grownup version of the honesty, angst and joys of my childhood?

But here it is––Beijing Tai Tai will be born this Sunday and when it’s pages are opened, I will also be opening my head, heart and diary… to you.

Tania McCartney

PS: From Monday 15 December, The Bookworm in Sanlitun will have a limited amount of pre-launch copies of Beijing Tai Tai, just in time for Christmas. Don’t miss your change to snaffle a copy––I hope you enjoy it as much as I have writing it.