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[Still scrambling to finish this blog before we leave.  This is from a month ago…]

In a city of more than 20 million, it’s unlikely to run into someone you know from home, but on the Sunday morning after we saw Tosca, that’s exactly what happened.  As we were passing through the second gate at the Forbidden City we heard calls from behind from my colleague Keith and his wife Karen.  You know.  My colleague from California. Unbelievable.  I knew they were in Beijing as we’d intentionally seen them earlier in the week.  But what were the chances we’d bump into them again among the hundreds (thousands?) of people filing into one of the biggest tourist attractions in one of the most crowded cities in the world?  Wild.

The Forbidden City (essentially a series of palaces) is a “must see” if you are passing through Beijing.  It’s impressive because it’s so big, though mostly what Cece and I were thinking is: oh my God, this place goes on forever.  About 180 acres worth of forever.  24 different emperors lived there over the course of two dynasties (Ming and Qing), until China’s last emperor, Emperor Puyi, was overthrown in the early 1900’s.  It had a major facelift just before the 2008 Olympics, with lots of new paint, a little sandblasting here and there, plus the permanent removal of Starbucks from inside the “city.”  Someone on the Olympic oversight committee apparently realized the conflict of having that notable American symbol inside of one of Beijing’s most iconic spots.  Anyway.  By the day of our visit, I’d grown tired of taking pictures, plus I needed to chat and catch up with Karen. And so, if only for the sake of noting “we were there,” here are a few pix from our visit…

Vivid morning at the entrance to the Forbidden City. This is just across the boulevard from Tiananmen Square. (note: the girls now recognize Mao everywhere...)

With Keith and Karen Roberts...

First big plaza. After this one, the "city" continues on, and on, and on...

One of my favorite images from 2005 is a picture of Cece and Hannah Winslow in just about the same spot. And now, Cece and Elle together...

Glazed animals on roofs. I actually never tire of this...

Cece and turtle...

In spite of how crowded it was at the entrance, once inside, there's this: a spot with hardly anyone around...

Favored animals from Chinese myths (phoenix, dragon, lion, sea horse, etc); meant to bring luck. The number of animals on a roof reflects the seniority of the person in the building...

Throne inside the Hall of Supreme Harmony...

Glazed wall...

Old wood...

For a series of palaces with nearly 1,000 rooms, the emperor's living quarters were fairly spartan...

Another interior shot (taken through a smoky window; no one is actually inside any of living areas)...

Fam shot...

Another glazed wall...

Empresses...

Looking for an escape...

Elle never tires... (note those big brass bolt heads on the doors; in the Forbidden City they are always in 9 rows of 9; a lucky number)

So serious...

A change of hat on our way out...

Art has plans for us to hit the Forbidden City again this week, for another “quick” pass through (ha!) and to see the Hall of Clocks and a few other buildings we didn’t get to…

As I write this, we’re lying low at an eco resort in southern China having undoubtedly one of our very best experiences of the last five months.  When we arrived here on Sunday (Father’s Day) we spent a couple of hours lazily floating down the Yu Long (Dragon) River on two bamboo rafts… gently dipping over occasional baby waterfalls… and spotting water buffalo bathing near the shoreline.  That was all I needed to say: Goodbye Beijing. Hello rest of this big glorious non-urban, non-polluted world.  But I can’t find the camera cord so postings of this trip will wait until we’re back in Beijing (we have to return for one last week of packing up… otherwise I would sign us up for another week here)…

For now, in keeping with the theme that everything I post at this point is out of order anyway, here’s another wrap up from the end of May when our friends Mary Kaye, Bob and their daughter Nina came up from Chengdu for their last whirl through Beijing. We were lucky to share two days with them, and packed it in: Lama Temple, Confucian Temple, hutong exploring, Peking Duck dinner, Chinese acrobats, one last trip to the Summer Palace, swimming for the kids.  Hard to believe we’ve kept up this pace for as long as we have.

Our last temple visit in China...

They've grown so much...

Thank you for this time...

If this tree could talk...

Where the monks of this Tibetan monestary work....

I would like to be the monk who sits on this end of the long table... and gets to bang the drum...

Just a box of rain...

Pretty girls...

Whispering girls...

Gathering in the hutong...

Street games...

Elle get a bird's eye view...

At the Confucian Temple, I am (again) in love with the red lacquer...

China's greatest philosopher...

Elle…

I have the kids spotting these "special tiles "old walls all over Beijing...

Beijing has endless walls to walk alongside...

Ice cream break...

I continue to be drawn to doors...

The international language of Girl is alive and well in Beijing...

As is the international language of Hip...

Pit stop...

There are 4 or 5 Peking Duck restaurants in Beijing vying for the title of Best. On this day we went to Da Dong. Next week, we'll join Shemei and family at Quan Ju De...

Les canards...

The kitchen...

Sauteed lotus petals (love these!). Once the duck arrived I was too consumed in the ceremony surrounding the meal to document it, so you just have to take my word (or Cece's; she loves Peking duck) that it's a culinary delight not to be missed in Beijing...

The Chinese acrobat show was exhilarating! We'd been to the same theater in 2005, and forgot how amazing they are. A "must" if you have kids...

Painting poetry with water; early morning at the Summer Palace...

Another "must" if you have kids...

Painted names...

And fanning out in the park...

Given how often we're in a taxi, it was inevitable that one day our taxi would pull into a gas station. For the record, gas stations are full service, and on this day, gas was 7.52RMB per liter. That's about $1.16UDS for just under 1/4 gallon. Seems about right given what I'm hearing re: California gas prices...

Several people have asked about this, so here’s the skinny on the girls’ hometowns…

When we began planning for this “trip” one of the first things we considered was hometown visits for the girls.  They were both born in cities far from Beijing, and when we adopted them, we did so not in their birth cities, but in the provincial capitals (Nanchang and Wuhan) which were also far from the cities where they spent their earliest days…

So there was this big opportunity looking us in the eye.  We’ll be in China.  For five months.  Our kids were born in China.  Let’s go check it all out.  Let’s get to Nanchang and Wuhan and travel by bus or train to those other cities and SEE IT ALL…

But a hometown visit requires (I think) some sort of focus that just wasn’t there for this trip.  I want to let them to decide how we’ll contact their SWI’s, what we’ll do when we get there, what we’ll want to see, what questions we’ll have, and what we’ll do if (read: when) we don’t get answers.  With none of this being necessarily the same for the two of them.  This time (I think), our time in China was simply about taking a “dip” in the motherland: to see it, smell it, breathe it and maybe understand a little more of it… at least more than five weeks worth of adoption trips we’d had 8 and 6 years ago.

And neither of them has been ready yet (I think) – nor have they been clamoring – to go back to the place where the biggest mysteries of their lives are buried.

A few months ago, we did discuss a change of plan, and the possibility of heading to Wuhan and Nanchang.  Gosh, we’re here… maybe we should just DO this?  Go poke around and see where they were born and not make it such a big deal…

The girls were “fine” with the idea, but honestly, not really enthusiastic.  So those trips have been put on hold for the next time we’re in China: maybe a 2-week trip three years from now when Cece is 11 and Elle is 10… and ideally, accompanied by some of the families who were here with us in 2003 and 2005…

There is so much changing in the realm of China adoptions that I’m not sure what might be in store for us in this regard: what policies might change between now and then, what might be gone or erased when we finally do get back to those birth cities, what we might miss by not getting there now.  But now was simply not the time for us.

We have 14 days left in China and not enough hours in those combined days to cover all that we want and need to do.  The blog is one of those things.  I’ve tried to keep it up to date, but blew that weeks ago because there was just too much happening in May and June for me to post on time or in order.  I do want to get as much up as I can before we leave, but it’s going to be out of order.  Let’s live with that.  OK?

Here’s a quick batch of out of order stuff, beginning with (finally) my Beijing girlfriends Shimei and Alice.  These two women opened their arms to me on the girls’ first day at school and I love them for everything… especially afternoon shopping and spicy Sichuan lunches with Shimei (not to mention uh… fender benders) and the funniest comments from Alice (some of which cannot be posted here but made Art and me laugh until we cried).  I’m so thankful for the parts of China and their lives here that they shared with me…

Shimei and Alice are amazing moms, moving the earth for their kids...

The girls...

Art's students at Renmin all fell in love with him and were glued to every lecture... never wanting him to stop. I don't think they'd ever had anyone so dynamic at the front of the classroom. These are his Tuesday night undergraduate students. Worth noting here that some of these students take up to 15 classes per semester...

I was surprised how many have already toured the US, and how many are heading back to the States for travel and summer internships...

And here, his Monday night graduate students...

Sissy was exceptional student, and also wrote an article about Art that was published in one of China's higher education magazines. She titled the article: Scholar on a String

Stopping for er shui (two waters) from this woman... every morning on the way to school...

Outside of BISS one morning. It's glorious when it rains in Beijing, and we've had the kind of outrageous June electrical storms I haven't seen since I lived in Pennsylvania...

On the bus in Beijing...

Last Saturday we met up with two other Fulbright families we hadn't been together with since Kunming. Kids are: Ethan, Ivan, Reid, Jonah, Cece, Elle and Francesca... each with the world by the tail...

All over China, people over 40 love to dance. ALL THE TIME. Mostly in plazas, parks and open squares. Here's a shot from last Saturday in Beihai Park...

Major milestone today: the girls finished their last day at BISS.  I’m so proud of them for taking on this whole experience.  Heading to a new school in a foreign country was unnerving for us in February… especially so for the two of us who are only 7 and 8 years old.  But our two champs did beautifully.  Wonderful friendships, astounding achievement and high fives all around.

So off we went to Pete’s Tex Mex for a celebratory lunch, and exactly one hour and 36 minutes after we’d left BISS, Cece sat back in the booth and said:  Mom, I wish we could have just one more day at BISS.  I miss Miss O…

I should have known at that moment what lie ahead.  Tonight, the floodgates opened…

… thinking that the blog reads a little like a pollyanna account of five months of easy, blissful travel through China and a sweet life in Beijing.  Hmmm.  It has been a lot of that. And it’s in my nature to call out all the great stuff and gloss over the crappy parts (in public forums, anyway), so maybe I’ve ended up with a tidy account wherein it all looks easier than it’s been.  But for anyone who’s curious, we’ve not been without frequent stressful moments here.  I just don’t bother to record those because once they’ve passed who really cares.  But if I’d been online on Sunday or Monday, that would have been one of those days that I whimpered a really discouraging word about being here. Because for two days, everything was wrong.

Cece and Elle were bit by mosquitos so killer that we ended up in the ER of Beijing United Family Hospital on Sunday morning.  I’m paranoid about things like mosquito-borne Japanese encephalitis and malaria, so when Elle swelled all over and her chin got so big she looked like an alien… and when, for the second time in 10 days, Cece’s eye swelled shut and the hives were all over, and the benedryl wasn’t kicking in, I cried uncle. Four and a half hours later we left the hospital with negative blood and urine results, and $4 worth of Chinese loratadine (claritin) and liquid chlorpheniramine.  Oh, and a $450 bill for the “urgi-care” visit.

At exactly the same time (and clearly adding to my anxiety), I had my first bad reaction to something in China.  Likely something I ate at a party on Saturday night… or maybe it was the delicious organic lunch we had on Saturday afternoon.  Not the best way to lose weight, but effective.  Enough said.  Suffice to say that all the time we waited in the lobby of that fancy hospital I never mooched a single crumb of French pastry from the coffee bar (it’s a really nice hospital).  I was sick as a dog and spent 18 hours in bed once we were back in the apartment.  Sick.  And pissed about it.

So there was that… sick kids and a sick mom (never a good combination)… and the general build up of all the things I never mention… like the fact that I am bone tired of camping.  Which is what living in this apartment feels like.  I know now that my threshold for long-term “camping” is about 106 days.  We passed that mark a while ago.

I’m getting old, plus I’m from a land where appliance shopping is a weekend sport (a sport I’m really good at).  So it turns out my biggest gripe these last five months has been about how much I miss my appliances.  Petty.  Shallow.  But true.  We have no stove, no oven, barely a refrigerator, no ice, no toaster, no coffee maker, no dishwasher (and remember, no hot water in the kitchen), no dryer, no iron… and on and on.  We have a psychotic washing machine that makes me nervous.  A single broken hand held shower that requires parent oversight of every kid’s shower.  One toilet that needs to be plungered daily. (is “to plunger” a verb?)  I never dreamed I’d use a toilet plunger so regularly in my life.  Funny how things sneak up on you.

So.  I’m not good at long-term camping, and I was whining…  But all is well now.

Living in China has been such a dream come true.  I love this country and its people and I will weep, profoundly, when we leave, I know.   If living in a Green Acres apartment with wacky internet rules that change so often I can’t keep up with them was the trade off, then I think we got a great deal.  And yes, if we were going to be here a single day longer we surely would have gone out and purchased appliances and furniture (don’t get me started on beds.  Go sleep on an elevated plywood board for 5 months and let me know how you’re doing)… and lamps and rugs and bathroom fixtures…

But I didn’t rant it all out because by Tuesday the girls woke relatively better and went back to school (v. good because we’re running out of Modern Family episodes).  And I went back to the Renmin track with the beautiful Chinese people who inspire me.  They have no idea they inspire me, but they keep going around, so I keep going around.  These are the Chinese who work out wherever/whenever they can.  So at the track I (the sole westerner) join this wonderful range of people: grandfathers walking in groups and hitting themselves (this is a circulation thing they do… repeatedly raising each hand up and whacking the alternating shoulder.  Go ahead.  Try it.); women in office dresses, nylons and pumps carrying their purses and chatting on iphones while they get in a few laps; college students in Hello Kitty clothes that neither my 7 nor 8 year old would wear; a cook in his striped pants and chef’s jacket who I see jogging every day; ayis (nannies) with toddlers dressed in Baby Gap clothes and tiny baby girls with adorable shaved heads (they will have Pantene-hair-commercial hair one day); and super fit star athletes. Everyone fits in.  Everyone is working out.  And working it out.  NO ONE is complaining about anything. Not a single discouraging word.  Anywhere.  Ever.  A long story for another day.

Last weekend we went to Tianjin for two nights of sleeping in real beds.  Wonderful.

No one needs to go to Tianjin.  It’s not a famous Chinese city per se, and you might say that leaving Beijing to go to Tianjin is a little like leaving NYC to go to Newark.  This is not a city you’ll encounter on a great tour of China, and we had mixed recommendations on it.  Some said it was lovely, others said it was awful.  But we wanted to take a ride on the bullet train and the girls had a three day weekend… so off we went.  The bullet train runs from Beijing to Tianjing every half hour.  You simply show up at the train station and take your pick of trains.  This is fast, easy, cheap transportation.  Fast as in 336 Km per hour (208 miles per hour).  Right up Art’s alley… and the girls and I enjoyed it too.

Tiajin is a port city of about 12 million, sitting on the Hai River and the Bohai Gulf.  It has a developing waterfront area and a lot of old British architecture that is (miraculously) being restored, and one area we strolled through on a very quiet Sunday morning was similar to a tree-lined Georgetown neighborhood.  Beyond that, the similarities end. Most of Tianjin is not so appealing with row after row of drab apartment buildings cramming millions of minions into dense quarters.  But!  We managed to find the city’s sweet spots and were happy to get away.  We took a horse drawn carriage ride through the “romantic streets” area, got in lots of swimming and work outs at the hotel, and two nights of really good sleep.  Oh… and we were upgraded to club class (though staying on the 41st floor can be unsettling in China)… and took the girls to their first happy hour (for the hors d’oeuvres).  So.  A fun weekend all around.

CRH (China Railway High Speed) runs a tight ship... beautiful new trains that run on time...

Most of the distance between Beijing and Tianjin is beautiful countryside... though hard to get a clear picture from a speeding train...

Safe landing...

From the Tianjin drum tower plaza... in every direction are massive apartment buildings...

This is how much of China lives... everywhere I turn here, this is what I see...

Bell girl...

The Tianjin drum tower houses no drums. Only a bell. Never found out why they call it the drum tower...

Old area near the drum tower...

Love these calligraphy supply stores...

Tianjin swimmers...

Sunday morning stroll...

Old arches...

Backside of the famous Astor Hotel. We would have stayed here if their pool had not been out of commission...

Built in 1863...

Time and time again we wander into really nice places... only to find them deserted....

Lovely, but something is missing...

Many buildings in this area have been recently renovated and it was refreshing for me to see the attention to detail they were pouring into some...

We enjoyed a very quiet stroll along the water on this morning. Again, for a city of 12 million, there was no one around...

California temperatures and bougainvillea... (to be fair, there were people in this park, and later in the day, the town came alive...)

Nice...

Angels at the local temple...

Purchasing offerings...

Namaste...

For wishes...

Elle's game...

Bride arriving at our hotel...

Elle loves this...

Goubuli is the famous dumpling chain in Tianjin so we had to eat there once. Good dumplings... and house beer...

Tianjin's Ancient Cultural Street... we took a quick pass through...

I keep spying these teapots...

Love...

Unlike the Astor Hotel, the train station was packed...

...on a 90 plus degree day with no AC in the station...

Here comes Artie...

Fast trains and slow trains...

[note: internet connectivity has been sporadic and mostly out for the last three days; I am getting this post up at 9:00pm on a Friday night because the internet is finally completely back up AND because three facilities management guys just showed up in slippers and scrubs to fix our AC unit (interrupting the movie that Art and I were watching).  No problem.  We will take AC any way we can get it…  One of them is currently hanging out the window.  We’re on the 17th floor…]

The list of people and things we’ll be sad to leave on July 1 is growing all the time and the Beijing campus of BISS is right up there at the very top of that list.  Having our girls enrolled in a great school has made all the difference in our time here.  There was a brief moment when we first arrived in China when we considered homeschooling them (i.e., me homeschooling them) if we couldn’t get into BISS.  Seriously.  I would have shot myself by now had we gone that route.  And Cece and Elle would have missed mountains of great learning and inspiring people…

International Day and Spring Carnival…

Feeling like the Brady Bunch in our matching shirts... we were part of Team USA on International Day. Among teachers, students and parents, there are about twenty Americans at BISS, and about 35 other nations represented...

BISS focuses on creating world citizens...

And is a haven for a lot of TCK's ("third culture kids")...

Bringing up the end of the (alphabetical) parade, here comes the United States...

Blue skies over Beijing for this festive day...

aka Mr. Art...

BISS bliss...

Cece with buddies Nina (Italy) and Greshme (Singapore)...

Elle and her classmates warm up for their big performance...

They sang a delightful Chinese song and Elle was all over it...

Rock on Elle...

Art with head of school, Dr. Ettie Zilber (USA), an interesting woman who's been running international schools and raising her family abroad for 35+ years...

The following week was the track meet with four international schools.  Huge fun for the kids and tons of winners from BISS…

Grace (Korea) and Cece...

Cece with Aighar (Malaysia) and BISS elementary principal "Mr. D." (Australia)...

Proud Cece with her beloved teacher Ms Ostiguy (Canada)... Cece took home 4 medals and the biggest grin...

And then there was the 3rd grade field trip to Beijing’s contemporary 798 Art District (Cece informed us, in giggles, that there were male nudes on display)… just after Elle’s day out at the Beijing Botanical Gardens…

Beijing art...

Art has also had a great time at BISS… teaching violin classes to several string students on Wednesdays, and joining them for various performances…

BISS commencement...

Last day of school is June 17.  We’re going have some sad farewells…

So… we arrived back in Beijing from Hong Kong on Sunday, May 1… hit the ground running… and haven’t stopped since.  On the 2nd (a Chinese holiday similar to Labor Day) Art was admitted to the international hospital while the girls and I went off to the Summer Palace to meet up with our friends the Smiths who were in from Wuhan.  Of course, we would have gone with Art to the hospital, but honestly there was nothing we could do.  And as it turned out, his hospital stay lasted all of about 4 and a half hours. After a bunch of blood work and not much else to do except wait two days for results, he got dressed, discharged himself (with a new bottle of prednisone in hand), and managed to catch up with us for dinner with the Smiths.  [Just to be clear: we still have no idea what plagued him for the better part of 4 weeks (some sort of arthritis?), but he’s really quite fine now, and working his way off of the low dose of steroids he’s been on, ready to get home and back on his bike.]

This month (in addition to day-to-day living which in itself is an accomplishment) we’ve continued to take in Beijing.  We’ve done the Summer Palace (second time), the Temple of Heaven (on Mother’s Day), all of the big “markets” (pearl, jade, silk, toy), the Forbidden City, Beihai Park, and a bunch of other excursions that I’m sure will show up in the pictures.  And there was Shakespeare (Much Ado…), then Tosca (!!)… plus school field trips, international day, Cece’s first track meet and Art’s trip to Taiyuan for a couple of guest lectures.  And we’ve still got Chinese acrobats, Peking duck and the 798 Art District coming up in this week alone.  We are workin’ this town, folks.  That’s all I’ve got to say.

One of the best dates Art and I have had in a long time was our night out at the National Grand Theater (aka the Performing Arts Center, or the “Egg” after it’s basic shape) for a breathtaking Tosca.  First of all, the hall (where we’d previously come for a Night of Puccini) is jaw dropping.  Designed by the French architect Paul Andreu and built in 2007 just across the boulevard from Tiananmen Square, it is pure magnificence to me, though controversial in Beijing where it is surrounded by boring square communist buildings. All of the elements are represented: water, metal, wood, fire and earth.  I’m sorry that I had to check my camera and got no interior pix…

And the Tosca really was breathtaking.  Art (who has seen and heard a lifetime of Tosca) said this was the best production he’d ever experienced, both musically and artistically/staging. We had 10th row seats and never blinked, never moved a muscle. Also, two rows ahead of us, surrounded by a dozen Chinese secret service agents was Liu Yandong (China’s equivalent of Hilary Clinton; she is the highest ranking female in the communist party) and her husband.  That was interesting.  She worked the crowd just like Hilary would have.

Took us three subway lines to get home and we barely made the last train… but what a wonderful evening…

Date night...

Here's a shot I found on the internet that better explains why they call it the Egg...

Below are the pix from our second trip to the Summer Palace, then Mother’s Day at the Temple of Heaven…

I keep looking at this image and seeing the English countryside. It's actually Beijing... just outside the gates to the Summer Palace...

And while most everything inside the Summer Palace is pretty pretty pretty... I continue to gravitate toward the old doors...

The Marble Boat...

Summer Palace wall...

More...

I repeat...

Elle, Alison, Cece, Lindsey...

Girl hanging on pot...

Dinner at the Angel Restaurant... with Barb and Lars and Barb's mom... (khaki pants all around! They must be the Americans...)

Sweet Elle... back to school on May 3...

Just before Mother's Day, Art took me on an afternoon excursion to find the perfect jade bracelet (which we did). From the cab window, I snapped his favorite building in Beijing (the CCTV headquarters)...

Different from every angle...

On Mother’s Day we took off for a “leisurely” Sunday at the Temple of Heaven.  We’d been there in 2005, with Cece and Beebs, and it’s a lovely spot… though nothing is ever really leisurely with Art now is it…

Concert at the entrance to the park...

Quilt image 17 (Temple of Heaven flowers)...

Mother's Day kiss...

Quilt image 18 (the first China quilt I make will probably be in these shades of grey... LOVE these old walls)

All together now...

Peach...

Peach again. I have a picture of her and Beebs in 2005 on this very spot of the circular "Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests"...

Fancy lattice...

Seems every dynasty shared a fondness for large doors...

Another shot of the circular hall... built of wood with no nails, by the way...

Great big green grass? So rare in Beijing. For looking only. No one is allowed on this grass...

Still loving the glazed tile... in green...

And blue...

Nice wall...

The very shade of blue we painted our front door 12 years ago. I still love it...

Have I mentioned before that Art has captured about 9,000 hours of video...

The white hats...

The blue hats...

Behold... the Empress Elle...

Girl power...

I say it every year: this was my best Mother's Day ever. And it was.

(previously noted in a post that was accidentally deleted… so here it is again)

When I started this blog, I guessed that we’d cover about 20,000 miles.  A fair guess.  So far, we’re at:

LA to Beijing: 6,250                                                                                                                 Beijing to Kunming: 1,300                                                                                                       Kunming to Beijing: 1,300                                                                                                           Beijing to Shanghai: 660                                                                                                         Shanghai to Beijing: 660                                                                                                             Beijing to Chengdu: 930                                                                                                         Chengdu to Xi’an: 450                                                                                                                   Xi’an to Beijing: 565                                                                                                                 Beijing to Hong Kong: 1,225                                                                                                         Hong Kong to Beijing: 1,225                                                                                                         Total: 14,565 miles

One more trip in June after the girls are done with school, and then homeward.  Looks like we’ll easily pass 20k.