Arriving in a foreign city, I wondered if I would ever feel at home

I pick up the China Daily, the English-language newspaper that’s been pushed under our door, to read over my instant coffee. Scanning the headlines in hope of reading something familiar to me, I’m decidedly deflated when I don’t find any news stories I know anything about. I feel like I may as well be reading the local paper on Mars.

While I’m battling my dismay over the paper, Ava is happily playing with her Barbies. I choose some clothes for her from her suitcase, then dish her up a bowl of raisin bran cereal that James has ordered for us from the buffet restaurant: Kellogg’s, China style.

“I don’t like this, Mama. I want Weet-Bix.” Of course, all three-year-olds want what isn’t available!

“I’m not sure we can get Weet-Bix, bubba … let’s ask Daddy later.”

We get ourselves dressed and psyched to go outside, but just as we’re about to leave, a loud wailing siren rings out across the streets. It sounds like those war sirens you hear in movies, when bombs are raining down and you need to run for your life to a bunker.

My heart does a little somersault and I scan the streets outside for any signs of panic. No one seems to be running; in fact, everyone is just moseying around. There’s no sense of urgency, or not that I can tell anyway.

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“What’s that noise Mummy?” asks Ava.

“Um, not sure, maybe Daddy knows.” I frantically text James and, after what feels like forever, he texts me back to reassure me it’s to commemorate the end of World War II and China’s battle with Japan. It rings out five times for three minutes each.

Still, commemoration or not, I’m rattled. Not deterred, though, and I’m determined not to let my fear show to the small person beside me. We slip into our gumboots and pull our coats on, then head down in the lift for a glimpse of our new neighbourhood.

I feel all eyes are on us as we enter the lobby. James told me that, as I was the boss’s wife, I should expect the staff to be wary and a little shy of me at first. I smile nervously at a few people and they cautiously smile back.

The hotel doors slide open and we step outside into our new world. It’s hard to miss the 1300-year-old, seven-tiered brick pagoda. It stands 64 metres high and is adorned with small arched windows on each tier. Located opposite the hotel, she is directly in front of us as we step out the door. In Chinese she’s the Dayan Ta: the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. Built in 652AD during the Tang Dynasty, this ancient structure is visited by tourists the world over. It once housed China’s first Buddhist manuscripts, brought from India (most likely on the back of camels) along the famous Silk Road.

We stand there looking up; I’m trying to appreciate the pagoda’s significance and Ava is trying to avoid the pushbikes that weave around us on the footpath. In stark contrast to her ancient veneer, the pagoda is surrounded by giant LED screens advertising local restaurants and real estate. It’s a pop of 21st-century colour cutting through the grey haze, shining down on Qujiang New District – our new address.

With a population of more than nine million (and growing), Xi’an is one of China’s nearly 700 cities. Just a decade ago, the area around our hotel was completely bare, nothing but acres of green paddocks and … the pagoda. Now she’s surrounded by “new” China in the shape of hotels, restaurants and a mass of disorderly cars, plus a gazillion colourful kites frolicking against a grey sky like hungry seagulls. Locals are busy selling them to the hundreds of tourists who come from all over China to look at that pagoda.

Next door, there’s a large shopping centre. In fact, there seems to be one on every corner, with just as many under construction. A collection of mobile street-food stalls on the back of rickety, rusty carts, bikes and three-wheeler trucks are all selling foods I strain to recognise.

Above us, a train is chugging around on a monorail. It’s wet and slippery and a little cool, so we decide to venture inside one of the shopping centres and, much to my surprise, it feels like we’re the only ones there. I learn later that empty shops and apartment blocks punctuate this city (and many others in China). They’re often referred to as “ghost towns”: cities built before the people come. It’s almost like China is waiting for the future. Shop assistants are standing in front of their stores, waiting to lure in customers. They eye us suspiciously and shout something at us in Mandarin. All I can do is smile back.

“Why are they staring, Mummy?“

“Hmm, because you’re so cute, baby girl,” I say, even though I’m not actually sure that’s why.

Back on the street, we find ourselves under another giant LED screen. This one stretches right across the rooftop of the shopping centre, above crowds of tourists. Ava and I are standing under it, looking up in awe. The images floating across it keep changing, from spacecraft and planets to wartime aeroplanes, then to hot air balloons and an underwater world with ferocious sharks looming above.

Motorbikes of all shapes and sizes skid past us, their drivers hidden under colourful umbrellas that are somehow wedged into the bike so they sit over the top as makeshift shelters. We cross the road with a lot of ducking and diving. I realise very quickly that here, the little green man does not mean “all clear”. I clutch Ava to my side. Cars just keep coming through the crossing from every angle.

It’s all very impressive, but my head is swimming. I’m struggling to come to terms with the fact we actually live here.

I look over to the hotel, already our sanctuary. From the outside, it’s one of those “new” modern touches to this ancient neighbourhood. Holding centre stage, the hotel is king in this tourist hotspot alongside the pagoda. Taking up a gigantic amount of space, it stretches down to the end of the street, a mass of charcoal-grey rendered concrete with splashes of red paint around the alcoves of its rectangular windows.

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The words “The Grand Westin” run underneath in large Chinese characters. (Adding “grand” apparently gives it more kudos in Chinese culture.) On one corner there’s the hotel’s bar, opening onto a small patio that faces the pagoda; small, manicured hedges fence it off from the crowds of people strolling by. To the right is the hotel driveway, protected by a wall of wooden slats and a small water feature, and at the very end are the hotel residences under construction.

Despite its modern simplicity, the hotel still pays homage to traditional Chinese architecture. It’s all very impressive, but my head is swimming. I’m struggling to come to terms with the fact we actually live here.

Edited extract from China Blonde (Broadcast Books) by Nicole Webb, on sale now.

This article appears in Sunday Life magazine within the Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age on sale March 14. To read more from Sunday Life, visit The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.