Making longterm friends as an expat in Beijing

One of the most important tasks for newly-arrived expats is making new friends within the established expat community.

Beijing has soared in popularity as an expat destination over the past few years and is now a hub for startups, entrepreneurs and successful expat professionals. However, life isn’t supposed to be all about work, with finding new friends and establishing long term relationships almost as important as finding the right job. One drawback to the process in Beijing is the huge number of expats now living and working in the city, all of whom seems to have their own individual specialties and expertise.

In one single night out, it’s possible to meet up with expatriates working in the expanding movie industry, others in marketing, several in finance, many in varied tech jobs and even more in programming as well as teaching English. That’s just for starters, and remembering all their names is tricky enough without having to form a potential social friendship, especially as they’ve arrived from all over the world and may not have a command of your language. Diverse mixes of this type are normal in London or New York, but at least English is the common tongue.

For the vast number of expats, keeping up with everyone and establishing lasting friendships is an impossible task, but being lonely in the midst of a huge population isn’t an acceptable option. Worse still, few expats in this massive city will stay for more than a year or two before moving on to the next opportunity elsewhere. Strangely, Chinese citizens in Beijing follow the same pattern, arriving from all across China, staying for a while and then either moving on or back to their families in faraway provinces. Beijing is a fantastic city for expats, crammed as it is with incomers from all corners of the world, but any semblance of permanence as regards connections and friendships is definitely hard work. Those expats who’ve managed to make true friends may find they still have to work hard to keep them.