One thing I won’t miss is the quality of the air.

So I’ll have to admit the air has been quite clear recently, but for a significant chunk of the year the weather is pretty awful. From our home we have a fantastic view over the city – we can even just see the Pudong skyline. But sometimes we can only just see the building next door. It feels quite claustrophobic.

The schools just quietly keep the children in, but you can’t help wondering what the long term effects are of breathing this stuff.

One thing that regularly irritates me in the US is the fact that most people can’t shake hands properly. In most of Europe, you shake hands from an early age, so people tend to get the hang of it. In the US not so much.

While there are a fee out there who know what they are doing in the handshake department, on the whole, Americans tend to fall into one of four camps:

• THE DEAD FISH – the one where they sort of dangle a limp (often damp) hand next to yours – that’s not a handshake, that’s an insult.
• THE HALF ARSE – the one where they just grab your fingers (Ok we’ve all had a near miss but it’s not that difficult to get palm to palm). This one always leaves me feeling sort of cheated.
• THE GRIP TEST –  I blame whoever went banging on about having to have a firm handshake for this one. “Firm” means “contact you can feel”, ie  not the dead fish or the half arse. It does NOT mean “crush the bones of the hand to compensate for your minuscule manhood”.
• THE HOLD – Where the handshake is OK, but they hold on to your arm, elbow or shoulder. Just watch any politician shake hands – it turns it into a full on power play, probably preceded by walking towards each other hands outstretched. If you aren’t a presidential candidate, don’t do this. Don’t even think about shaking with both hands, and NO PATTING. OK? And don’t, for Goodness sake, hold on. Unless you are, say George Clooney, it tends to come off a bit creepy.

I’m a bit concerned that there might be a new entrant to the list soon. According to a newspaper (so must be true – right?) there’s a company called “Attraction Methods” where they suggest that a guy should gently stroke along the palm as he slides his hand away. Eeeeeuuuuuw. All that might attract from me is a swift departure, possibly preceded by a left uppercut.

One thing that I absolutely won’t miss about China is the trauma that is involved in going to the hairdresser. I was initially lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that my first hairdresser here gave me the best cut and colour EVER. Then he left for India, or TImbuktoo or somewhere. How selfish is that?

Since then, it has not gone so well. My hair has been all colours – from a sort of sludgy green to yellow. (You know when children draw blondes with crayon it comes out yellow – well it was that colour).

Here’s the problem:

It is bad enough trying to choose hair colour from plastic bits of Barbie hair – but here they are pretty much all shades of black (these really are all slightly different shades of black). My advice to anyone wanting highlights in China – don’t do it. Embrace your inner brunette. You see all those Chinese girls and boys with orange hair – well the hairdressers don’t do a good job for them either. Save yourself.

Luckily my haircuts were never too bad – mostly because I just allow an inch off the end closely supervised 😉 According to one hairdresser (from Mongolia actually), Asians/ Westerners not only have different hair, they have different shaped heads, which is why some styles don’t translate well. That explains a lot.

So, while I haven’t had amazing hair colour in the US (hairdressers are mostly just trained by local salons it seems), at least it hasn’t been yellow. Well maybe just a bit.