An American friend and I were recently talking about the different kinds of expats one encounters in China and throughout the world: the “I don’t want to be here but the company sent me” type, who stays within his regal circle, relatively insulated from the natives; the “woohoo! here to party!” kind, who has a girl on each arm; the English Teacher, a bit oblivious to what’s really going on around them; the gone-native sort, who tries to out-native the natives; the blow-hard, who knows all there is to know about how the natives think and breed; and the cynic, who’s likely made his home in the country and is simply looking to get on with his life after the exhaustion of acculturation. I think I tend to be in the last camp, having skipped through several other of the expat lives in the list.

My friend and I agreed that for the most part expats are looking for an experience very different from the one they left behind in their home countries. Sometimes, expats as personalities simply don’t fit into the society in which they were raised as children. And other times, expats are looking for something they couldn’t find in their home country.

I told my friend one of the things I had been looking for in the States but found was rare was a sense of true mutual support between people. As a kid who spent formative years living in Hawaii in a mixed Asian neighborhood, I was deeply impressed and influenced by the way neighbors helped each other and adopted my young mother, helping raise my siblings and I. I have found something similar in China, though not amongst the Chinese. The sense of altruism and support I found amongst expats: all from different countries – like my neighbors in Hawaii – and all in a country not their own.

We’ve seen each other over the years through many adventures, trials and triumphs. They’ve been especially helpful and supportive over the past few weeks as my wife and I have shaped our lives around the newest addition to the family. Now – just as I had as a kid in Hawaii – our son will have aunties and uncles and cousins who are in no way related to him by blood, but who will love him and support him as though he were.

It’s the sort of gift that’s tough to buy off a store shelf.