About

Background

My parents left South India in search of a new future in Singapore in the 1950s. My dad became a welder in the shipyards. He lived prudently and bought an apartment in Singapore. After his retirement, he started practicing kundalini yoga and eventually became a published author of four books on health, yoga and about Singapore. He passed away in 2017 at the age of 83. My mum was a loving lady who fought poverty to bring up five boys in a new country. She passed away in 2013 at the age of 77.

I was born and bred in Singapore and am a Singaporean Indian. I studied physics unsuccessfully for a while in the university before dropping out to study communications. I eventually graduated with distinctions in 1998 and started working for German global automotive companies in marketing and communication roles. In 2007, I studied a little bit more and completed couple of management courses with the University of Chicago campus in Singapore.

In 2009, I relocated from Singapore to Shanghai to take up an expatriate role to lead the corporate communications activities for the Asia Pacific region for a large global German automotive supplier. I started living and working in Shanghai for five years.

In 2014, I was offered a new role as a change management consultant for the BMW Group’s joint venture in China. I had to relocate from the first-tier city Shanghai to a little-known third-tier city called Shenyang. Eventually I worked and lived in Shenyang for five years which also included a year’s posting to our Beijing office. Thereafter I relocated to Melbourne, Australia and currently live here.

If you look at it, there are not many foreigners in the world who have lived in China for ten years. This is my story in China. What I saw, what I did and what I experienced. In retrospective.

Objectives of this blog

• To be an archive of a foreigner’s life in China from 2009 to 2018 for the benefit of future generations
• To be an unbiased guide for anyone who aspires to work and live in China one day
• To be a personal reflection of my China experiences to take away lessons for life

All photos in this blog are taken by myself.

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If you plan to move to China to work and have some specific questions about daily living not addressed in this blog, please feel free to write to me. My email address is raavenan@icloud.com.