Shanshan | Silverdale

“A thing that changed my whole life is coming to New Zealand. It’s the decision I made when I was 19, I had just graduated out of high school in China, and I wanted to travel overseas, and I chose New Zealand. 

I was born in the northern part of China. It’s called Shandong State. It’s a small city, but five million people. It’s called a mountain tai. It’s a mountain city, and I grew up in the rural part of the city, up in the mountains. I think I had quite a happy childhood, but it’s just a small city. For me, I just wanted to know the outside world. I’m very curious, because back home everything is so stable, and I was kind of bored. 

I have three children. Three girls and my little one is just one year old. I just came to this clinic opposite us, to work six months ago. I was in a hospital before, for over 10 years. North Shore Hospital, and I just changed jobs to private primary health care, so it’s very different, but I’m very happy. I like my new job very much. We’re fighting this virus, at the moment. 

I think I made the right decision coming to New Zealand, and I had all my children here. They’re very happy. This country is wonderful to their children, and the environment they get, the school, the education they receive, I’m very satisfied. I’m very happy that I made the right decision to have children in New Zealand. So my biggest hope is to continue when this virus thing is all over, we can go back to normal. Because everyone’s kind of limited their social circles because we can’t gather. All the schools have these rules about isolation. It’s not scaring the children, but somehow makes them fear the environment. I hope this goes over very fast, and we all live through it. That’s my hope at the moment.”