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Have been meaning to say this…

Thank you for the comments!  I haven’t replied to them individually since my time on the computer is limited by internet speed and our daily schedule, but am enjoying the feedback.

We brought three laptops with us to China: Art’s mac, my work Dell, and Cece’s mac.  I use Cece’s mac when posting to the blog since that’s the one I am dumping pictures onto.  But today I took a look at the blog pictures on my Dell and saw that the picture quality is dramatically different: quite fuzzy actually.  Just doesn’t look the same as it does on a mac.  I also checked it on Art’s mac.  All OK.  So.  Just to make the point: macs make everything better.

[note: the following post is from my contributing writer and favorite travel companion.  Also note the fabulous job he did taking pictures… some of these will be added to my quilt images file… ]

Ni hao.  This is Art and this is my first post to Nancy’s blog.  I haven’t read the blog yet but some of you have told me how much you enjoy it.

I am sports deprived here:  no espn!  At 10 at night when the family is sound asleep, I turn on China TV and watch highlights of pingpong, badminton, volleyball, pool–the kind with balls not Phelps (Oh my, where is the sport in any of this I ask you, i.e.,  tackling, hitting, running, sweating, drama, cheerleaders, instant replay, unions and arbitration).  So, the trip to the Bird’s Nest was fantastic: I walked every section of the stadium and not another tourist in sight.  The giant scoreboards showed highlights of the games–ones I purchased when I left–and with very loud music, all for me.  So I had a blast imaging all of it.  Extraordinary.   But the stadium itself is 100,000 empty seats in search of meaning.  There is very little that happens here.  And the place has a disintegrating feel to it, now just two years after its days of glory.  It kind of feels like a very expensive and impressive but disposable razor.   That said, being there was inspiring and awesome.   In fact, I was in the place for 3 hours.  The “Ice Cube” next door is also open for viewing but I ran out of time.  Next trip, I will report of what the pool looks like.  By the way, the IBM building was built in 2008, too, and that building is one we can see from our apartment.  It is directly across the street from the stadium and I cannot keep my eyes off of it so interesting and intriguing is its design.  The roof seems like it is modeled after the headgear of some ancient Emperor.   What a grand day.   Zaijian.

Arriving at the Nest; it is a 20 minute walk from BISS (the girls' school)...

Up close, outside...

No snow left in Beijing on this day but the Nest is full of it...

Field of snow...

Winter Wonderland demo crew...

Nest angles...

Nest angles 2...

Nest angles 3...

Nest angles 4...

Many problems like this inside the Nest...

View from the nosebleed section...

Canvas roof (quilt image 7)...

View from the Nest...

The torch structure has been moved from inside the stadium to the grounds outside...

The IBM building...

We’ve had such good fortune on this trip, almost daily meeting new people who make our experience richer.  Last night Art’s colleague Qingsi (all around great guy; he has also spent a lot of time in the US and even taught for a bit at Fresno State of all places…) took us out to one of those fabulous dinners that make me fall even more in love with China.  More steamed pumpkin (this time it was cold: delish!), tofu soup, and great big beefy mushrooms in a tangy, barbecue-like sauce.

Earlier in the day one of the BISS teachers met the four of us and drove us to the outskirts of Beijing to visit a foster home for fragile and special needs infants.  Kirsty is a wise and warm spirited women who’s been living in Beijing for 15 years.  She has a teenage Chinese adopted daughter… and a heart of gold.  So interesting to hear her talk about the Beijing of the last 15 years…

The facility is home to about 20 babies… all beautiful, all in need of tender care… some more fragile than others.  The ayis (aunties) who work there are amazing: full of love and grace and a quiet sense of calm that makes everything peaceful.  I could see how much these particular little babies are loved, cherished.  The building, which sits inside of a dusty quiet village out of another era, is modern, well-equipped, spotless.

One little darling we held was especially sweet.  Cece and I called her Suzie Q.  As with everyone else who holds her, we wish she could join our family…

I’ll limit the details and photos of this foster home (privacy reasons) but let me know if you’d like more information, and I’ll send you the US website of the organization that runs it…

Village near the foster home...

At the entrance to the foster home. It sits in a still and quiet village where most of the homes do not have plumbing. Elle is toting a bag of baby bottles. Everything helps but what they most need is money for surgeries...

Sweet babies...

Art playing with his new buddy...

Cece and beautiful Suzie Q...

One of the many loving ayis...

Doors in an alley near the foster home...

After our visit we drove over to Mrs. Shanen's for lunch. Think: hip, organic cafe with a mouth-watering menu, organic milkshakes, arugula and bags of bagels and pita chips to go. First bagels we've seen in 5 weeks...

The girls love checking our little mailbox in the apartment building lobby, like, every time we pass by it which is multiple times a day.  Of course, there is never anything in it.  Until Thursday.  We got mail!  Thanks mum.

And thanks to neighbor Jack we also squeezed in a quick trip to the discount sports mart.  Roller blades = B-I-G hit.  We practiced in a quiet alley next to our building last night.  Once they got warmed up, they didn’t want to stop…

We got mail! Made her so happy...

There's a popular kid's show here starring this famous "pleasant goat" and a big bad wolf. We've never seen the show, but the pleasant goat character shows up everywhere...

Totally...

Still loves pink...

Warming up... all serious...

Fun...

Our time in China has such a rhythm to it now; the days are flying by and I see July 1 looming too quickly ahead.  We still have so much to plan and do here, I’d love to slow it all down or add a few months…

We’ve been without internet in our apartment for the last 5 days, so I’ve not been able to email or post.  Renmin has a new policy that locked down internet access in our building, limiting the download capacity (we don’t download anything so this has no impact on us), but also requiring id numbers and passwords that we don’t yet have.  On Monday Art recieved his Renmin ID card with ID number.  This is also the key to his office and so he can now get into his office at off hours and on weekends.  But still no internet luck as this morning we found out that this card/number (that he waited two weeks for) is merely a temporary one… and won’t get us into the internet…

All of our neighbors are furious about these new internet policies, and since they have seniority here (and speak Chinese) Art and I are letting them work the channels with the IT department.  They are teachers with loads of 6 to 10 classes and tons of students emailing them and wanting to skype, many are also earning master’s degrees and PhD’s online and have not been able to get to their coursework… others rely on the internet for movies, news, music, all of their entertainment.  THIS is where people get really mad.  Give man bread and a circus, right?

To all of this, our neighbor Jack says: TIC (This is China).

Anyway… day to day life is slower with no internet, no TV (you know how this makes my heart sing), minimal DVDs… no gymnastics and no piano lessons… none of all the running around that keeps us forever on the go at home.  Art and Elle have joined Cece and me in reading… A LOT.  Elle is clipping through chapter books and Art is plowing through one China book after another on his iPad.  Cece, my ever-faithful reading companion is devouring books faster than ever and even sent a plea to Grandma Clara to “please send books.”  Best up on my kindle since we left home have been: Incendiary (Chris Cleve), The Memory Palace (Mira Bartok) and The Book of Dead Birds (Gayle Brandeis, a UofR professor).  All wonderful… the Memory Palace especially (if you love emotionally exhausting reads).  Reading away from home is like wearing someone else’s glasses… seeing/reading through a different filter.  Always, the books I read on vacations and out of my own element stay with me longest…

Still, the days fly.  Getting the girls to BISS in the morning involves getting us down 17 flights and over to the West Gate to hail a taxi (easy some mornings, nearly impossible on other days… one never knows), then settling in for the 30/35 minute ride on Ring Road #3 to the Chaoyang district where the school is located.  This is a very quaint, quiet, ancient neighborhood with mostly “gated” entrances, and with the Harrow School sitting adjacent to BISS, the skinny little roads are crammed BISS and Harrow buses, taxis and private cars, even motorcycles delivering students.  At the gates of BISS are usually two guards who know us now, but still require signing in and a visitor’s badge (I have no qualms about the security here).  The school is housed in a wonderful building and the girls both have sunny ground floor classrooms just beyond the main entrance, so it’s quick to get them settled and on their way.  Occasionally I go for coffee after this at a Costa Coffee near the school, but generally just head back to the apartment.  This means a lovely walk of about 15 minutes or so through the old neighborhood, up and over an original wall built by the mongols, over the canal, and to the subway station, where I catch the train back to Suzhoujie station near Renmin.  Then more walking from that station to campus.  The entire round trip (without stopping for coffee) takes from 7:20am until 9:10.  Always just a hair under two hours.  Later in the day is the reverse to collect them, so nearly 4 hours a day is spent dropping and collecting.  I love it.  I never get to do this back in California, and it’s wonderful to be there just as they emerge from their classrooms at the end of the day, to chat with teachers, and to talk immediately with the girls about their days and all that happened.  Feels good and right to be in the moment with them when they are in the tail end of that high energy afternoon mode.  The last two days, however, Elle has fallen asleep in the cab on the ride home…

Art’s life is busy as ever, but I think even he would agree that day to day life happens at a slower pace here.  He’s teaching on Mondays and Tuesday (late afternoon classes) and holding office hours and meeting students for coffee throughout the week.  He’s also teaching violin at BISS one afternoon a week, and playing in a symphony composed of mostly conservatory students (from the Julliard of Beijing).  He loves everything about life here: totally content and not eager to go home any time soon.

Last Friday he went on a solo field trip to the Bird’s Nest… the huge sports arena of 2008 Olympic fame.  It’s desolate now and in a number of ways in need of repair but Art sure had a good time, as he always does (will post those pictures as soon as I get a little more internet juice…).

And then on Saturday, he dragged the four of us off to the Yonghe Temple, aka the famous Peace and Harmony Lama Temple in Dongcheng district.  This is a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, over 300 years old… and with a serious Saturday crowd that never thinned during the 2 or 3 hours we explored it.  It has one of the world’s largest carvings of Buddha, about 90 feet high and carved from a single tree.  It’s in a building called the Pavillion of Ten Thousand Happinesses.  I love the spirit behind that.  (no photos of the deities…)

Getting there via the subway on a Saturday was sheer madness.  I even felt Art hesitate behind me as we transferred from subway line 10 over to line 5… the mass of human bodies descending the stairs was so thick, really too much to bear.  I  get so nervous with the girls in these situations, but act as nonchalant as I can, like we do this all the time.  Crowded Beijing subways are not for the even remotely claustrophobic.  You literally push yourself, elbows first, onto the train.  Once the doors close there’s not an inch of wiggle room… no way to raise your arm or scratch your nose.  Unsettling for me, kind of scary for a kid…

I had deja vu at the temple.  I’m certain we were there in 2005, but will have to consult old notes, pictures.  I remember the front gates, and Cece at 2 and a half, in her little quilted pink coat, holding a skinny stick of incense and very seriously crouching over one of the kneeling benches…

Anyway.  That’s what we’re up to.  During the week: getting the kids to and from school, lots of reading, figuring out what to have for dinner (tricky given the limited cooking of our little hot plate)… and soaking in as much of China as we can.

Other notes and observations of late:

Art and I feel totally safe in Beijing.  It really is an extraordinarily quiet city given how huge and dense it is.  No beggars, no one slouching around with their pants falling off, no graffiti, no signs of drugs, guns or sinister anything anywhere…  Even the subways, for as crowded as they can be at peak times, are pristine and pure.  There’s the added measure too of security scanners inside the entrance of every line.  EVERYONE queues up and puts whatever they’re carrying onto a conveyor belt for inspection before getting to the ticket stalls.  Can you imagine this taking place in NYC or London??  (note: on the other hand, passengers themselves don’t go through scanners, just bags and packs… so… yeah, a bit futile isn’t it?  Still.  It all feels safe.)

Next to the girls school is a department store with a decent supermarket in the basement.  Good for a quick stop for milk or whatever right before I collect the girls from school at the end of the day.  The sound track they play here includes only three songs, two of which are Chinese covers of Madonna’s La Isla Bonita and Sarah McLachlan’s Adia.  I like this market, but these two tunes belted out in Chinese, over and over and over, kill me.  I laugh alone in the supermarket…

The “shorts and tights” look is big here.  Especially short, short cord shorts worn over thick black tights, with anything from low UGG’s to thigh high leather boots.  Yeah.  Uh.  No…

And goodness.  The “man purse” is very much alive and well in Beijing.  Watch for a special post on this soon.  I am trying to photograph discretely without smiling too hard (note to NJo: total flashback to 7th grade for some reason…).

Finally, last night Art was out late with his Tuesday night class so the girls and I were on our own for dinner.  In keeping with the decadence of “girls night” we ordered McDonald’s by phone and had it delivered! Unbelievable.  Less than 10 minutes from telephone call to our doorstep, and for 88RMB ($13US) we got 10 chicken mcnuggets, 2 medium fries, 2 mcflurries (in a sweet petite size… no super-sizing in this city where no one is overweight), and two double cheeseburgers sans cheese (our choice).  No idea how they got this to us so quickly and so hot… the delivery guy rides a bicycle and our address, by phone and in English goes like this: “Renda, Yiyuan, Building #3, Apartment 1705”

Renda is the slang of Renmin University (it’s like saying “UofR” for Redlands).

Anyway.  No street name, no cross streets… and bingo, he arrived in 7 and a half minutes.  I wonder if they use google maps… or maybe he has GPS on his bike?  There is one mcdonald’s phone number for all of China.  You simply press 2 for an English-speaking operator and viola!  Instant fast food.  I am not a McD’s fan, but everything we got tasted exactly like it does in the States, and the girls were thrilled.  Not to mention it cost less…

Quick photo montage while I have internet…

Note to Lisa: yes, there is pressure here, but a lot of it is self-induced (in their DNA?). This article speaks of students who instinctively know they must do well to honor the family. Also, re: The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a Chinese mom said to Art the other day: "that woman not Chinese"...

Lama Temple 1

Lama Temple 2 (prayer flags)

Lama Temple 3 (love this green tile)

Lama Temple 4

Lama Temple 5

Lama Temple 6

A noseful...

Lama Temple 7 (offerings)

Lama Temple 8

Making wishes...

Lama Temple 9 (Elle modeling a wall I liked...)

Quilt image 7

Alley near Lama Temple. I could live here.

Our living area (from front door)...

View from the girls' room: looking across living area and down the center hall. On left side of hall are doorways to the kitchen and office, on right is doorway to bathroom and at the end of the hall is our room. It's actually a large apartment and feeling more like home all the time...

Our room. Peaceful.

The girls' room. Sweet.

Bathroom...

Thursday night here: the kids are sleeping, Art is reading James Fallows’ observations on China and I am spending too much time on the computer… trying to post pixs as the internet fades in and out, and I catch it when I can…

We’ve been busy with “normal life” and homework (fractions and spelling words OK, I am not much help with the Chinese…) and the start of classes for Art (he LOVES his students; will post about that soon).  All is well and good and we continue to thoroughly enjoy our time here.  Here’s a bit of total randomness from the last week…

It snowed again last Saturday. Art and the girls are loving it...

Elle in her element...

So quiet outside... it was mobbed inside...

In the taxi on the way home from IKEA...

Cece at the skating rink...

Elle with a little help from Celine. Note the gorgeous rink. There were never more than a dozen skaters on the ice...

The girls of our apartment building: Yiyuan 3 (Sarah, Grace, Katherine, Elle and Cece)

These "playground" pieces are actually made for adults to work out on...

Whether you need defence or defense, these are plentiful around campus...

Sweet Peach helping with the groceries...

She does well everywhere...

Thursday night dinner. So gourmet...

Certain brands can be found anywhere... (worthy of an entire post)

Art and I visited Elle's class this week on "culture day." We did a powerpoint presentation of the 4th of July and taught the kids the Star Spangled Banner...

Art did not bring his violin, but this one found him. He will be working with several violin students at BISS...

Quilt image 6 (can't stop lingering over street stands of fruit...)

水

water = shui (pronouced schwei)

You cannot drink the shui in China.  Ever.  It’s fine for bathing, floor mopping and teeth brushing, but not for swallowing.  This means that we schlep a lot of water to the apartment.  Like every day.  Each time we stop at the market we add water to the list of whatever else we’re getting.  This would seem to be a pain, but we’ve adjusted to it just fine.

We have no running water in our kitchen.  There is a sink with a tiny trickle of cold water from the tap but using this is like washing dishes in an elementary school drinking fountain.  So for kitchen water, we schlep water in a plastic basin from the bathroom across the hall.  The bathroom has both full speed running water and a hot water heater, so getting water to wash dishes is really no problem…

The bathroom, in fact, is all about water.  It is, essentially, one big shower stall as there is nothing to differentiate the shower area from the sink or toilet areas.  Thus, when you shower, the floor floods.  Afterward, you mop or squeegie up after yourself.  Surprisingly, this works just fine.  Added bonus: the bathroom floor is always clean.

Also located in the bathroom is the “washing machine.”  It has no hot water supply and is more of a twister than a washer (every load emerges as a tangled web).  With no dryer to fluff and de-wrinkle, you simply SHAKE VIGOROUSLY everything that comes out of the twist-a-thon, and hang on the line to dry.  A very green way to approach laundry because a) you use no energy to heat water or run a dryer, and b) it’s enough of a pain in the ass that it’s easier to simply wear your dirty clothes over and over.  Seriously.  I cannot believe the waste happening in my laundry room in California.  Washing whites in hot water.  Changing the bed sheets every week.  Shame.

Our hot water heater, directly overhead the bathroom sink...

We’ve had several “normal” days in a row here with no sightseeing, meetings, or major attempts to figure out/find/fix anything.  Just day-to-day living… all good… in a familiar way.  One of our girls even had a meltdown on Saturday.  So.  You know, back to normal.

Friday was a “no school” day, and Cece and Elle and I were up and out bright and early for our first China play date.  We were picked up by Elle’s classmate Celine, and Celine’s mom “Sheh-may” (I have no idea how to spell this so let’s just go with the phonetic).  Shehmay is a former Benneton model, turned graphic designer, turned “well healed” stay-at-home mom.  She and her husband are both Chinese but their two daughters were born in New Zealand… thus, they have New Zealand passports and so can attend BISS International School.

We drove just 10 minutes from campus to a new-ish mall, half of which is devoted to children.  There are three floors of things for kids to do, and things for parents to buy for their kids: ice skating rink, mcdonald’s, fancy cupcake bakeries, ice cream stores, stores with high end clothes with french labels, really (really) expensive kids shoes, bungie jumping, soap making, professional picture taking, fairytale furniture stores, a theater with kids movies, etc.  We started with ice skating at a gorgeous, nearly empty rink.  Celine is almost seven and has been skating for several years; Cece and Elle have ice skated just enough times to make it around the rink and have fun.  And they did.

After skating for an hour and a half we were joined by Kaitlin and her mom Alice, and went upstairs to a place called BabyBoss.  The word “baby” in its title is one of those unfortunate translations.  I think what they meant to call it was more like “MiniBoss” as the place is for the 5 to 12-ish crowd, not for babies.  And… oi vey, what a place.   A huge indoor amusement park but instead of rides, the kids “go to work” at anything from making pizza to putting out fires to hosting game shows… to astronauts, wind energy plant engineers, supreme court judges, recycling plant managers, radio show hosts, doctors, dentists. archeologists, fashion models… you name it.  When they first check in they are given a wallet and photo ID and then go off and start making money.  Parents are not allowed inside any of these places… where kids disappear for 30 to 40 minutes at a time (though everyone wears electronic lo-jack bracelets so you can know at any time exactly where your kid is).  As they earn money, they can spend it however they want (the girls had their nails done and their hair french braided, got chocolate covered strawberries, etc)…

Way more information than you need… but interesting to me as the girls have NOT stopped talking about this place, will not stop playing with their BabyBoss wallets, and CANNOT wait to go back.  I wonder if I could sell the concept in Redlands where there often seems to be a shortage of nearby places to go on rainy days (or “too hot” days) and “no school” days…

Alice, incidentally is a gorgeous, funny Chinese woman also married to a Chinese man.  Alice is a former accountant turned stay-at-home mom.  Her son and daughter were both born in Vancouver, thus they have Canadian passports and so can attend BISS (are you seeing the theme here?)…

Anyway.  Two really delightful women to hang out with for the day.  They both struggle with similar things American moms face: careers, diets, sibbling rivalry and kids fighting, trying to not give in to too many french fries or too much pizza (or too many video games or too much TV), insisting on at least one musical instrument…etc.  One difference is that they are hyper vigilant about their kids mastering a second language: namely English.  Neither of these women, however, is a tiger mom…

On Saturday snow returned to Beijing, and so after skyping with our moms, Art and I dragged the girls to the metro and joined a mob of Saturday shoppers at IKEA (what were we thinking?), then had dinner upstairs with Cherie and Jack and their boys.  Jack is Chinese and his aunt (from Xi’an) lives with them and prepares all of their meals.  To-die-for food, people… with lots of shredding happening in that kitchen.  Among other things, she prepared a shredded carrot dish (cold and with radishes) and a shredded potato dish (hot) that were both amazing…  all followed by an old fashioned home baked swedish apple pie (while the kids watched Despicable Me).

See.  Normal life.

Today we broke from Chinese food and let the kids have KFC for lunch, followed by Oreo cookie blizzards at the DQ.  Cece was feeling especially homesick today… missing everyone and everything at home…

In other news… we’ve not been near, nor heard much about the possible protests in Beijing… though the internet continues to act mysteriously, and many sites are not accessible without the VPN.   Also, connection is squeezed tonight, so photo posting is not possible…

On Sunday we took a chilly (one of us was freezing) afternoon outing in our very own Haidian District to the “Old” Summer Palace (not to be confused with “The” Summer Palace mentioned in the very first post of this blog).  The “old” palace was the original summer palace, aka the “Garden of Perfect Brightness.”  Of course it is no longer perfect or bright since it was destroyed by British and French troops in the Opium War of 1860 (drug wars, destruction… the endless human condition)…

This “palace” was once a glorious collection of gardens and pavilions.  Now, it’s a desolate, great big depressing reminder to the Chinese of the destruction the Anglos brought.  On Sunday, the cold, winter day only added to the gloom.  The girls, however, had fun running around the expansive park grounds, and trying Chinese cotton candy…

We also paid a few extra yuan to enter the “spectacular” ice sculpture exhibit.  I’ll spare you the pictures of that.  Just imagine: a big dark (and dank) circus tent full of dirty, melting snow sculptures illuminated with psychedelic lights, and cheesy piped in music (misty water colored memories….)…

So that was Sunday… and here it is Friday again (see what I mean about delays and dealing with a time schedule that is out of my control…).  The girls are off from school today as BISS is hosting an international Flat Classroom Conference, but we’ve been invited on a play date to go ice-skating at a mall…  so another adventure awaits…

The grounds of the destroyed "palace" (really a series of elaborate gardens and pavilions) have been left like this. A reminder to the Chinese of what the Anglos did to them...

Original low walls and steps are all that is left...

Ruins...

Original floors...

Along the various walkways and floors you can see where there once were pillars, no doubt holding up the fabulous painted roofs and ceilings I love...

History...

The grounds cover almost 1,000 acres with all kinds of walks and bridges...

Lots of places for kids to hide...

And strange stone formations (caused by fire?)...

Had to try the cotton candy...

Beautiful walls like this one stretch for miles in Haidian District. They surround the old summer palace, but also the entire campus of Peking University (enormous)...