This essay is an attempt to bring together experiences and research by the author related to the fields of gender, the Arctic, especially Greenland, and China. Comparison of these very divergent and different parts of the world in scale, population and size of the economy as well as legal and normative cultures is hardly possible. Nonetheless a gendered – and personal – perspective reveal similarities in development especially in relation to rapid social change, urbanization, globalization and climate and environmental challenges. The use of the essay as a genre has seemed to me particularly apt for this purpose of looking for links and similarities.