(LI SHIGONG)

More than two years ago, I wrote a list of the top 10 reasons I love living in China. It was published in a local expats' magazine and somebody from a radio station spotted it and invited me to talk about the article on the air, a hilarious, comedic if not surreal experience for any foreigner.

Now that I've lived in China for more than three and a half years, a lot has happened since that list was penned and released for public consumption. I've gotten a driver's license, gotten married to a local and gotten pregnant, all in that order. If written today, that list would look vastly different. Some items would be toppled over in exchange for something else while some would remain resolutely lodged in position.

Food was high up in the sources of joy in the first and second year but since the newness wore off, I've grumbled more about the quality and sameness but still gained unwanted weight. I long for anything not eaten with a pair of chopsticks and lament the "Chineseified" Western restaurants that have a taste that isn't quite what it's supposed to be, an inferior copy of the real thing.

Bike lanes are great fun coming from the Philippines, which had none and although the tyrannical rule of cars has grown stronger, bikes nevertheless complete our urban Chinese life. Watching people's morning fitness rituals and old folks swinging their pet song birds in blue cloth-covered cages are still a wonder to behold, but they don't pop out of the landscape as much as they did the first few times. Exercise parks with their colorful, hardy outdoor gym equipment, the photogenic public sculptures and the blindingly rich array of kites all made it into the inventory of favorites but like the others, the novelty factor has worn off.

Chinese characters and calligraphy still move me and like a monk slaving away on holy script, I maintain writing my diary in Chinese. The old list included nationalistic pride and fervor—still something to admire and learn from in China by piecing together snippets of ancient and contemporary history through people's personal accounts.

What would I add today to the catalogue? Maybe things that are not unique to China like the stars you see at night when you've lived without them for too long in the city and you go to the countryside greeted by a swarm of twinkling bodies in the evening, you feel like staying up the whole night just to bathe in their presence. Maybe, there will be some things that only China can provide such as crooning Yueliang Daibiao Wo De Xin (Moon Represents My Loving Heart) at your own wedding or travelling elsewhere more exotic like Tibet and Xinjiang. However, I do need to refill and refresh that category with unseen sights and unlived adventures or see everything through a pristine set of eyes like those of a toddler's.

A couple of years back, topping my list of things to love about China was mountain biking through its grand ranges. Though that one is definitely at the top of the current heap, its prime spot has obviously to be dislodged by whom else but my pair of raison d'etre for being in the Middle Kingdom—my husband and soon to be born baby.

However, I suspect soon that too may evolve and change as well, as the search for the next big challenge along an unconventional, sometimes illusory and nonexistent career path continues. Add to that the monumental onset of motherhood and raising a child of two cultures in China, the future could only hold promise and potential.

Before, it was shocking and appalling to witness babies with holes cut into their pants, wearing no underwear, bums exposed in the numbing cold of winter. As if some kind of ritual offering to the gods, the mother would hold the child over the trashcan or the sidewalk and even inside a store, then allow the child to freely relieve himself or herself. It was something I swore I'd never do even if my Chinese in-laws gifted me these pants for my boy. However, contemplating disposable and non-disposable diapers and our consumerist society, it is quite tempting from an environmental point of view to reconsider once dearly-held beliefs. Think of the landfill space and detergent you'd save. Think of the economic and ecological issues. Think of the convenience although you dare not do it inside a building's public space. Perhaps limit it to the "harmless" park lawns and garbage bins?

The writer is from the Philippines and lives in Tianjin