this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2026
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I'm a citizen of Canada, let's put it that way. 😅
The issue is, I think, that for me I've had a lifetime of basically visiting the "L" shape from Montreal to Victoria, then north into the high arctic. He's never been outside of China and has never seen, for example, the prairies (where you can look out your window Friday to see who is coming to visit on Saturday) or other things like that. So to him it was all new and exciting and different from anything he's ever experienced, whereas for me ... it was July and August.
And really, even though we took a truly EPIC road trip (the rented SUV recorded well over 3000km of travel), we barely scratched the surface of what we could have gone to see. Like I'd have loved to take him up to the high arctic to see 24-hour sunlight, or see some of the mountains in the Yukon, near the Alaskan border. That kind of thing. Maybe even a ferry trip from Alaska down to Vancouver (recreating a similar trip I made in 1978). We could have filled up six weeks easily enough.
We couldn't have afforded it, though. Canada was EXPENSIVE, yo! And now apparently it's even more expensive. 😮
For visits? Yes. To live? ...
...
...
... honestly? Probably not.
It's not a huge language barrier for SO. (We're not married: we both resisted the pressure to be married and to procreate.) But he'd face some problems getting employed, starting with his age and with the fact he's educated in a Chinese university. (This latter point is a significant source of amusement for him given that Chinese-educated scientists and engineers have almost 50% of worldwide patents issued in 2024, that China broke into the top 10 on the Global Innovation Index in 2025, and that in world university rankings Chinese universities dominate the top 5 Asian list while Chinese universities feature as high as #14 in the global top 50 list.)
So the real choice is "do we retire in Canada?"
And that's the stronger choice only ... ah ... we're not married so his emigration would be very difficult to work out. I mean by Canadian law we're common-law married, but proving this to the incompetent, lazy, and racist assholes at IRCC would likely be a multi-year aggravating chore.
And as much as I'd love to retire to the semi-rural life of northern B.C. (a place he was profoundly impacted by too!), I'm not going to do it without him, and I'm really not super-strongly motivated to commit to a years-long fight with IRCC.
I would say it's of a different nature than in Europe. In Germany people loved me. But infantilized me as well. (And I still can't grasp why Germans thought making "Schlitzaugen" at me was a friendly "greeting" (in their mind ... apparently). They seriously didn't mean anything hostile about it but they kept doing it everywhere.) The overall feeling was "look at the clever monkey", though, not "this person is a threat".
In Canada there's more a hint of ... I don't know ... jealousy, maybe? And it's expressed so passive-aggressively it would make Minnesotans gasp with delight at technique.
Oh, on the Schlitzaugen thing: this was the late '70s, early '80s. A VERY different time.
Well the big one that always popped up was the "they (Asians) just don't value life like we do". Followed by people "noticing" I'm there and then faux-gasping in flustered surprise saying, "Oh no, not you, you're one of the good ones".
It was suspicious how that one got trotted out any time someone Asian accomplished something. And this was across several companies.
There's also the constant low-level snideness over handing difficult maths-related problem to because "they like that kind of stuff". In engineering companies where the nerds formed this weird brigade who would make up reasons to talk to the Asian chicks in marketing (because nerds and "Asian girls") there was also a lot of cattiness with critical comments on the bodily characteristics of Asian coworkers...
Nothing was really ever overtly hostile. Just this constant low-level snide comments and glances.
The Chinese view towards foreigners seems to be more "foreigners are weird" . I mean there's assholes in any country of course, but China being as diverse a place as it is seems to make them more prone to just accepting things as they are.
Queer people here got 30 years of patient diplomacy undone by … I'll be polite and call it "outside influences" … so they're way more circumspect than they were only a decade ago. Tattoos, however, in every form from temporary to permanent are HUGE here. Tattoo parlours pop up everywhere.