On Monday mornings, before the world wakes, I journey toward a life full of wonder and pleasant surprises.
The Monday morning ritual
Eyes spring open, I glance around the room ... the time ... 3 am! (Groan!) Two hours before I need to rise, try to sleep now, try to sleep!! ... finally, within that hazy threshold of sleep and wakefulness, the alarm sounds ... 5 am. (Groan!)
Outside our Shanghai apartment, the city is still collecting itself. I slip out of bed, careful, (unsuccessfully), not to wake my wife, (a Shanghai native through and through…). In the kitchen, I perform my small, sacred ritual ... sleepy eyed I stumble in and open the coffee jar, allowing the aroma of coffee to fill my senses and drag me to reality ... the Bialetti gurgles and hisses on the stove and the fragrance of the fresh moka fills the quiet flat, instantly it carries me back to Rome, to my mother's kitchen, a past in time, a memory cherished, never lost.
Max Caruso (right) enjoys lunch with his wife in Rome. [Photo provided to en.wuxi.gov.cn]
Ying and I sit together for a few minutes before I leave. Sometimes it is biscuits and coffee. Sometimes it is warm Chinese porridge, or soft baozi that steam in their bamboo baskets. These small breakfasts are a bridge between our worlds — her Shanghai, my Rome, meeting on a Monday morning.
Running out of the apartment for the Didi that doesn't wait ... 'ciao ciao for now Amore' ... as I take my briefcase, and go! The high-speed train carries me away from my main home, toward my second home: Wuxi.
A journey, not a crossroads
The poet Dante Alighieri began his great poem The Divine Comedy with the words: "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita." (Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a dark wood, for the straightforward path had been lost).
Dante was at a crossroads, lost, uncertain, needing guidance. While I reference his journey, my story is different. I did not lose my way. I chose my way. (Actually, it chose me ...). Years ago, I crossed my personal Rubicon. I decided to leave a comfortable life in Australia and move to China — to work, to live, to thrive. That decision was a calling.
And so, the weekly journey from Shanghai to Wuxi is one of focus, intention and purpose, into a vocation that is meaningful. Yet, there is an ache of absence. The train glides smoothly and comfortably past canals, a beautiful lake that recedes into the horizon ... parks, and new high-rise towers. My phone buzzes with a message: "Dào le gào su wǒ." — "Tell me when you arrive." Ying's warm kind words, as always mindful, attentive ... I am grateful.
The poet David Whyte once wrote that the journey is not about finding a new landscape, but about having new eyes, about finally being willing to write your own name in the sky without permission from the ground you left behind. I left Rome. I left Melbourne. And now, I write my name across the skies of two cities: Shanghai and Wuxi.
This is the paradox of my two-city life. I love Wuxi, its calmness, its kindness, its focused energy. I love my school, my students, my colleagues, the village we nurture together. And yet, absence deepens longing. The ancient resonance I have previously written about, the harmony between Rome and Shanghai, now includes a new frequency and paradox of the gentle ache created when missing someone, while doing exactly what you were meant to do, in the place where you were meant to be.
Wuxi town
I arrived in Wuxi two years ago, after years in Shanghai, abroad and in other cities in China. At first, I thought of it as a satellite, a smaller, quieter version of the metropolis. I was wrong. Wuxi is not a smaller Shanghai. It is a civilization unto itself.
My first real exploration of Shanghai remains vivid. Walking through treelined streets that echo the French Concession, losing myself in the art deco history that lines the narrow lane parallel to Nanjing Road Walking Street. Eventually, I reached the Bund. There, I stood along the majestic Huangpu River for hours, watching ships and pleasure craft navigate that great turn toward the sea. As day ebbed into night, magnificent Pudong district lit up across the water, and Puxi behind me reminisced of any era gone by.
A contrast of experiences helps me to understand that Wuxi is not a satellite. It is a constellation. This city has an ancient soul, over 3,000 years of Wu Culture, and a modern heartbeat. The people are extraordinarily welcoming: curious without being intrusive, helpful without being overbearing. It is lovely to experience such a safe, warm place full of genuinely kind people.
Max Caruso (middle of second row), together with Meng Xiadong (first from left of second row), co-principal of Wuxi United International School, greets students at the gate of Wuxi United International School. [Photo provided to en.wuxi.gov.cn]
I live and love my professional life ... as co-principal of Wuxi United International School (WUIS), I love to greet the children at the gate with my colleagues as they bound in full of energy and joy ... I walk the corridors, greeting students. Each encounter, an educative moment. I sit in classrooms. I listen. I enjoy very much the ritual that is the Principal's Coffee Shop Chat, informal conversations with teachers and students over coffee.
WUIS was founded in 2013 as the first Xiehe school outside of Shanghai. Our motto is "East Meets West", and in this context we practice a form of transcultural education, not just learning about other cultures, but learning through and across them.
Our students carry 5,000 years of Chinese poetry, philosophy, and perseverance, and a global vision that is agile, curious, unafraid and hopeful.
In recent readings, I came across the beautiful Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu: Simply it states "I am because we are". Indeed, a school is a village that raises each child and the genius of a great school is its deepened ability to speak uniquely to each child at their own frontier of learning, while holding them within a community of mutual care.
The evening walk along the canal
My apartment in Wuxi is across the street from the school. At night, after work and dinner, I walk along the canal that winds through this part of the city. In summer, the air is warm and heavy; the water reflects the neon signs and the streetlamps. In winter, I bundle up against the cold, power walking to keep warm. These walks are my meditation.
Max Caruso poses for a photo with the scenery along the Grand Canal in Wuxi. [Photo provided to en.wuxi.gov.cn]
Invariably my mind drifts into the challenges of the day and then, to pleasant memories of my home in Shanghai, the conversations with Ying, the beautiful meal my Baba cooks for us all ... at other times, I think about nothing at all, thoughts drifting in the rhythm of my footsteps, the lapping of the canal, the conversations around me, the squeals of laughter from children ... the Karaoke song sung with such energy ... and volume!
Exercise and contemplation. Warm summer strolls to brisk winter power walks. The canal does not judge. It simply flows, like time itself, carrying the echoes of everyone who has ever walked beside it.
A tyranny of distance (Salute to Geoffrey Blainey)
In the evenings, after my walk, I videocall my wife. The screen cannot convey the presence or our warmth ... but still I am grateful that we can see each other. We talk about our days. Sometimes we share dinner talk together over video, her in Shanghai, me in Wuxi. She shows me the dishes Baba has cooked. I show her my simple meal. We dream, we plan ...
Missing someone is not a flaw. It is a tuning of personal frequencies. It reminds you of our precious sacred moments, of the fortune we have in the lives we live and the opportunities and graces that have been bestowed upon us.
Grace and restoration
Dante journeyed through the dark wood to find clarity and, eventually, his concept of paradise. I am far less dramatic! My journey is simpler: a highspeed train, a Monday morning coffee, a walk along a canal. And yet, there is grace here.
The beautiful life I live, split between two cities, two cultures, two loves, is not a compromise. It is a symphony. It is a confluence, where the Yangtze River meets the Tiber, where a Roman Australian son-in-law of Shanghai finds himself walking the canals and paths of Wuxi, at peace.
I was born in Rome. My family left Italy in 1969, to cement a career exchange for my Dad, (two years morphed into a lifetime). So ... I carried the echo of a civilization I could no longer inhabit. That echo felt like a splinter for decades. But when I immersed it into the deep, flowing river of Chinese civilization, I was absorbed into a grace unimagined.
Wuxi is part of that grace. This city has given me a thriving community, a purpose to pursue, and a rhythm of contentment. On Monday mornings, when the train pulls into Wuxi East Railway Station, I feel a quiet readiness. The week ahead will be full of meetings, classrooms, conversations, decisions. But I am not tired. I am prepared, excited and energized.
Max Caruso has Principal Afternoon Tea with his students. [Photo provided to en.wuxi.gov.cn]
And on Friday evenings, when the train carries me back to Shanghai, I feel the opposite: a gentle release. The workflow slows down. The village manages and it is time to go home.
Gratitude, I have learned, is the highest form of grace. I am grateful for the 5 am coffee. I am grateful for the canal's quiet whispers. I am grateful for the students who trust me with their dreams. I am grateful for my wife who greets me and is present every day ... my Shanghai family.
"I am because we are". That is Ubuntu. That is the village. That is the ancient resonance that has carried me from Rome to Melbourne to Shanghai to Wuxi, and, I suspect, will carry me further still.
Gratitude
To the people of Wuxi, the teachers, the parents, the students, the strangers whom I have met, the neighbors who shyly smile at my attempts at Mandarin, the old and young men who fish silently along the canal, thank you. I am at home.
To the organizers of My Wuxi Story: thank you for inviting me to reflect on this journey. I hope my story encourages others to share theirs. Because every story, in the end, is a bridge, and bridges create a world without strangers.
Scan the QR code to learn more about the Wuxi United International School. [Photo provided to en.wuxi.gov.cn]
The author is the co-principal of Wuxi United International School, a son-in-law of Shanghai, and a Roman Australian educator who has spent three decades building bridges between civilizations.
If you would like to share your Wuxi stories, then send us your writings at wuxiexpatstories@163.com.
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