The Blithe Traveler

Maths

Do you remember being in the third grade and whining to your parents about how useless math was? And they would look wisely down at your wee self and tell you that you would use math every single day for the rest of your life, so suck it up and learn it?? They were so right. I should really have sucked it up and learned it while my brain was still young enough to actually absorb something.

By the way, it seems other English speaking people call it “maths,” plural, not singular. Which kind of makes sense. “Spellings” is another one of those things that turns out is really plural in the Queen’s English versus American English. But let me not digress, I have a lot of ground to cover here on the maths front and we can deal with spellings another day.

So, the maths issues are many and varied: the metric system, the 24-hour clock, and currency conversion are the three that pop up instantly as stuff we have to deal with every single day. We can cover the metric system and 24-hour clocks today and leave currency and conversions for another time.

The majority of the readers here are American (with the notable exceptions of the token Canuk—hi, Vicki! And the occasional drive-by Australian), so our few foreigners and those with ex-pat experience can chime in here to either verify what I say, or call me out as a liar.

Random Snow Photos: the construction site we can see from our bedroom window. They work 24/7, all weather. We have no idea what they are building, but they are quite serious about getting it done.

The rest of the world thinks it is a bit of a giggle that the U.S. failed to embrace the metric system. Seriously, I was at a gathering recently when I was the token American among about a dozen people, and the rest of the room were snickering over the fact that the US had had that huge honking “Embrace Metric” campaign way back in the 1970s and the whole thing just fizzled out.

I know, this is a small speed bump on the highway of life, but I have to tell you, it is embarrassing. Not from a “gosh, I’m embarrassed to be an American because we failed to embrace the metric system kind of way,” not, not at all. As an American, I have a lot of stuff to be proud of (the Constitution—hello! the Bill of Rights!) that makes up for some of our smaller failings on the world front. But on a personal level, I’m a little ashamed that I not only failed to embrace the metric system, but that I ignored it to such a degree that I required a remedial tutorial when I arrived here.

Random Snow Photos: the night shot. I wasn't kidding when I said 24/7, all weather.  We're very curious as to what it is, particularly given that there are so many housing units around here appear completed and yet also appear to be un-occupied.

As if Mandarin wasn’t hard enough, I now have to think (and speak!) in centimeters when I knit with my knitting group.  And meters when I talk about the height of my children—as in, “Children Under 1.2M not Permitted” (a sign seen at Metro and frequently on the smaller sections of play areas).   I have to tell you, I don’t know how tall they are in feet and inches let along in meters and centimeters! Kilometers are easy enough, mostly because the speedometer on the car and the road signs all match – if we have 50km to go and we are going 50km an hour, I’m all over it.

Temperatures, though, have become randomized in my pea brain: someone will toss out a conversation starter like, “Crickey, it’s 24 degrees at home, isn’t that just spot on!” And my overextended cranium needs to do some quick figuring to determine if “spot on” means good or bad. Is that hot?? Too hot?? Cold?? Too cold?? Or maybe like baby bears porridge, just right? If I could just internalize it, the same way that I now think, “32, brr, cold, 65, nice, but sweater weather, 95, delicious!!!,” then I’d feel much more confident talking about the weather, in English, let alone in Mandarin. 

The 24-hour clock adds yet another maths dimension to our lives. Jeff and I (and now Tom, as he can tell time pretty well) are so trained in the 12 hour clock, that we have to do the mental maths from 24 hour back to 12 hour to figure out what time it is. I don’t know if that makes sense, but I’ll try to explain with an example:  the children go to bed at 8:00pm. Which is another way of saying 20:00—note one of the benefits of the 24-hour clock is that you do away with that silly am/pm stuff—if it’s 20:00, it’s just 20:00. But my brain, instead of thinking, “Oh, it’s 20:00, time for wee ones to be in bed,” goes this route: “Let’s see the 24-hour clock says it’s 20:00, now what’s 20:00-12:00, let’s see, that’s 8:00! Oh, look, bedtime!!” If I could just reprogram my brain to think in a 24-hour clock, I would save precious minutes in my day. At least precious minutes in my afternoon and evening, because we’re okay so long as it’s before noon.

And, back to the metric system, my weight maintenance pool group (hi Karen! hi Anne!) now gets my weekly weigh-ins translated from kilograms. Let me tell you, it is not easy stepping on that scale at 6:30 (I’m using the 24-hour clock here, so you do the maths: morning or evening??) wishing I had remembered to turn on the radiant heat last night trying to figure out if 55.5 kilograms is over my maintenance limit or not. You would think I would just do the translation and put a post-it note over the scale with a few notations. These ideas generally occur to me (a) now, when I am busy with something else that is already late or (b) at 6:30am when I am standing in the dark shivering and the last thing in the world I am going to do is stop to dig up a post-it note and a pen.  But maybe, since I’m about at the end now, I should just go do it. Pull up my Kilogram Conversion web-site and make a quick post-it chart. Or, maybe, now that it’s 13:06, I should go have lunch.
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Quick Updates: Sorry for the missed post yesterday! Busy day, and at the end of it I had two choices (a) spend an hour with Jeff or (b) post. No brain-er there.

Continued snow is forecast for this evening and all through the weekend. If it snows, the road to the airport will be closed, and it is possible no flights will go out anyway. So, we’re plotting. It is possible we will still make it to Thailand. It is possible we will spend the next week trapped in a series of Chinese airports. We are, as always, hoping for the best.

There's No Way She'll Talk About the Weather Again, Is There?

I know, you’re bored. Sorry, but the weather is all we can talk about here! Here’s a quick link of those of you interested in further details on the topic:
China's Wild Winter Weather

Snow Dragon

There are a few interesting bits worth extracting, as they do blend with a discussion of culture. The Chinese New Year, also known as Spring Festival is a time when all of China gets up and moves one chair over. Or three, depending on how far they are from the place of their birth. It goes something like this: the Chinese get exactly three major holidays a year—they are called the “Golden Weeks” and everyone who is “away” from home, which constitutes most working age people, goes home. Which means literally tens of millions of people travel – last year the estimate was 56 million. Mostly by train and bus. To put that in perspective, it is as though every single person living in Texas and California got on a bus or train and headed off at the same time.

"Yeah, yeah," you yawn back at me, "but didn't something like 39 million people travel in the US over Thanksgiving?" Yes! A number which is greater than the entire population of Canada (33 million) if that sort of thing interests you. But the key difference is that the vast majority of people in the US get there under their own motor power. Here, there still aren't that many car owners, so the vast, vast majority of people travel via public transportation, creating thronging masses of people where ever buses and trains are located.

And they travel long distances. In Jeff’s office, the person with the longest to go is planning to spend four days getting there. Which means he’ll spend a day wherever home is, and then spend four days getting back here. It boggles the mind. And the weather is creating all kinds of SNAFUs around what is already considered to be a pretty FUed deal.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Wild winter weather across China left hundreds of thousands of people stranded on Monday and crippled energy and transport, stoking fears of rising deaths and economic damage blighting the biggest holiday of the year.

The snow struck as tens of millions of Chinese head home to celebrate the Lunar New Year, starting on February 7 this year, straining trains and planes even in normal times.
At the main rail station in Guangzhou in the relatively warm commercial far south, 170,000 people crammed together waiting for trains that cannot leave because of electric trains stranded downline, Xinhua news agency reported.

By the end of Monday, a backlog of 600,000 waiting for trains from the city was expected. Television showed green-uniformed anti-riot troops ready to keep order around the station.

600,000 people waiting in Guangzhou at the train station. That’s more people than live in the entire state of Wyoming. Interestingly enough, we are flying through Guangzhou on our way to Bangkok. Luckily, flying.

By the way, the general consensus among the ex-pat community is that Golden Weeks are a very good time to bug out of China. And I mean out of China, as in, you don’t even think about traveling anywhere “local,” during these periods.  I have friends going to South Africa, Australia, Thailand, Vietnam and Bali to name just a few of the hot spots. 

I was hoping to do a rather detailed post on the Chinese New Year, but a lecture I was planning to attend that was going to form the basis for that post was canceled due to—guess! Weather! I'll try to do some internet research over the next few days. We will be celebrating the Chinese New Year where we're staying in Thailand, so hopefully we'll have some fun photos as well as some background information to share.

Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that the snow is not only hurting people in terms of immediate quality of life (the guys who live in the tent at the construction site next door would be a good example of people who’s “quality of life” is probably less than optimal right now), but it is going to have a dramatic impact on one of the few times in the year when people get to go home to see their families.  Although it does seem at this point that our airport is open again for business—fingers crossed, we’ll be on a plane for warmer climes on Friday!

And since school was canceled again today I took Tom back up to our old neighborhood for a much needed haircut. The boy was getting shaggy and as we are new to the Wild, Wild South West, I don’t know where the nearest hair cuttery is. Since we had the day to do as we pleased, we headed up with Jeff in the morning and checked in with our old friends at the local barber. They were delighted to see us (whipping out their cameras and dredging up photos from the last time we were in, and then snapping a few more which I am sure we will see the next time we are in), and Tom was shorn. Look, doesn’t he look happy about that??

International Day!

But, first a quick weather update. I know, weather is one of the more boring topics on the planet unless you happen to be living in it. But as we continue to live in the most bizarre winter weather anyone in our Fair City can remember, it's the only topic of conversation around here. It has been snowing straight for three days! School has been canceled for today and tomorrow and everyone, just about everywhere is shut down. We had planned to have a dinner party Sunday night, which got canceled when our invited guests decided to hunker down rather than brave the elements, so, whew!— we have plenty of food.

Note the plastic bag wrapped around Hope's non-snow type shoe. We started with two.

I’ve really enjoyed the downtime—although the question most people will probably ask is, hey, honey when exactly is your up time??—with Jeff and the children. We’ve eaten more microwave popcorn than I care to think about, read out loud about four hundred books, none of which contains more than a two syllable word, have watched every single move we brought (Cars, Nemo, and Monsters, Inc ) until I can recite the dialog (with appropriate voices), and ventured outside infrequently, to romp in the snow, get freezing cold and come back for more popcorn. My only wish is that I had some hot chocolate and Nestle Toll House cookies. Yum-o! But we’re lucky – it has been a whole heck of a lot warmer with the four of us living here full time, versus the apartment being empty during the day and only occupied at night.

I did finally get to do a check on some relative latitudes to give the folk back home an idea of exactly how odd this weather is. We are located at 32 degrees latitude. Which is close to the same distance from the equator as:
(1)    Macon or Savannah, Georgia
(2)    Tucson or Yuma, Arizona
(3)    Dallas or Forth Worth, Texas
(4)    Jackson or Montgomery, Alabama
(5)    San Diego, California

The interesting problem with “latitude,” is that of course, it only tells a small part of the story. You would never expect to see snow in Savannah or San Diego, because of the proximity the ocean. Tucson is at about 3k feet elevation, so it’s cooler than other places that are closer to sea level, etc. But I guess the point is, you really don’t often see a foot of snow in Dallas, do you? So, the snow here is an odd weather occurrence.

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But now, International Day! There are only two schools in Our Fair City, which speaks volumes to the size of the ex-pat community. There are about 400 children at the International School (pre-k through high school) and probably 50 now at the British School. I can’t even provide numbers to compare to Shanghai, but there are literally dozens of International Schools (American, French, Korean, British, etc, etc) in Shanghai all of which have thousands of enrollees, so I hope that provides some perspective.

The Hand Jive gets a Dutch, German and Assorted Other Twist

Anyway, the International School here hosts “International Day” every year. The idea is that natives from different countries get together and present a “room” with some theme related to their native culture. And then the countries with enough participants do some sort of skit or show at the end of the day, again, meant to be some kind of representation of their home country. 

Canadian Mountie chats up ... an Ozzie Footballer?

It is a huge event and people spend months preparing for it, so the snow was a major disappointment for many people—myself included, as I was really looking forward to Tom and Hope being there. But the groups that turned out were just spectacular! Most people came in “costume,” and the booths/rooms provided native foods (and wines! You have to love that!) for sampling as well as games and fun activities. The Dutch group, for example, had printed on a billboard size piece of plastic a skating rink! And had children take off their shoes and go “skating.” Very fun!  Although, who could have known, they could have done the same thing outside.

The American group did a Grease themed room, complete with families in costume, followed by a mini-Grease dance show on the stage. The mom’s put together a mini hamburger feast (complete with 500 handmade hamburger rolls—there are a few bread machines in the expat compounds!) with Coke and chips. It was a huge hit and a ton of fun was had by all who braved the weather to come out. 

Whither Weather II

Okay, if you could gather up a little of that Global Warming thing and send it our way, we’d sure appreciate it. I am not complaining here, just stating the facts as best we can sort through them, ma’am. The temperatures are hovering in the high 20s, low 30s F. So, not that cold on the face of things. The problem is that in a relatively temperate climate the infrastructure is just not in place to deal with cold. So despite the not-really-so-very-cold temperatures, we are pretty cold. Even in our lovely quarters.

I am very, very conscious of the fact that there are a multitude of people who are way, way colder than we are in our fancy, albeit inefficient centrally heated space. I have been to several different homes this week, all of which were freezing. In fact, a friend of mine who is Chinese sidled up to me and asked, genuinely curious, “So, tell me, are you warm where you are living??” I replied, that no, indeed we were not, and she breathed a bit of a sigh of relief. “We are freezing, too!” Comrades in the cold, as it were.

The Palm Trees Shiver

And then, this morning, snow! Snow the likes of which has not been seen in Nanjing ever, if you can believe what people are saying. The airport was closed, the roads were horrendous and in general, all the smart people stayed home. I was not among them as I had volunteered to work at International Day at the International School—a tale I will tell in my next post. So, with great trepidation, I slowly made my way all the way across town, diagonally. I got really lucky and hitched a ride with a Singaporean restaurateur and a Singaporean airline specialist. Very interesting discussion for the two hours that we spent in the car, battling the elements to deliver burgers and spicy chicken and rice to the International crowd.   

But the roads were rather like one would expect Georgia (that would be the

If you don't have a shovel, make one.

American state, not the country) to be like in a snow storm. No 4-wheel drive, no one with a clue as to how to drive and no method for removing or dealing with snow. And—here’s a fun tidbit!—no tow trucks. As we passed car after car beached in mini-snow banks, I realized that I had never seen a tow-truck in Our Fair City! I asked the Singaporeans about it, and the general response was that in a country where labor is so cheap, who needs tow trucks?? Interesting cultural moment, ne c’est pas??

Intrepid Bicyclists

Fun was had at the event—one that Tom and Hope (and Jeff) were scheduled to attend, but in the interests of insuring their continued good health and safety, they remained at home—and then, we schlepped back. Snow sleeting down on us, cars helter skelter and the dedicated bicyclists not letting the worst snow in the history of the city stop them.
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Housekeeping Note: “Tomorrow” is Sunday, and on Sunday, I rest. So, no post. I’ll return on Monday with a bit about International Day. The Big News for next week is that the Chinese New Year is fast approaching! I will certainly spend a few days posting about all of that, including dropping little hints about where we will be spending the holiday:  Thailand!!!!! Oh, wait, that’s a big hint, isn’t it?

Yum-O!

Rachel Ray’s got nothing on me, baby!!! Oh, wait, she’s young and cute and rich. So maybe a few things, but I took a cooking class today and I am feeling all puffed up about it.

I am not a cook. I am one of those people—one of those very, very few people on the planet, in fact some days I think I am alone on the planet—who just aren’t all that interested in food. I know, it’s a mortal sin against Mother Nature, but it’s true. My palate stopped developing at the age of 5. Which means I love pasta with butter, Oreos and bananas. And that’s pretty close to it. Oh, I feign interest in food, and there are a rare few delicacies that I really do love with all my heart: bleu cheese being one of them. (1)

All of which makes cooking really hard. I mean, seriously, if you were having your portrait painted, would you choose a blind guy to do it for you?? I can state emphatically for the record that people who don’t like to eat are just not meant to spend time in the kitchen randomly assembling things in the hopes that they stumble across some combination of things that people who do like to eat will find palatable. Don’t get me wrong, I do try to follow recipes. But I just have no sense of things.

I once studiously followed a recipe for chicken soup from scratch. And in my world, I mean scratch. First, we raised the chickens. Then we sent their little chicken souls to the Great Hen Coop in the sky. Then I made my own chicken stock, and finally, the soup. The process took a while—about ten weeks if you count from when they hatched, about three days if you count from when I started to cook.

Then we invited about thirty of our best friends over for dinner—the soup was just one of the things on the menu. I was so proud of that soup, though! Wouldn’t you have been?? So around 9 o’clock when the last of our guests were shuffling out, I finally dished myself out a bowl. You know the punchline—the soup was awful. Know why? I had forgotten to add the salt. And no, I had never in all the time I was working on it thought to taste it to see how it was coming along. Like I said, no sense of things.

The tiny chickens hanging from the ceiling were not part of the class, just observing.

So here in China, we have the interesting problem of dealing with three age five and under palates, plus Mr. Gluten Intolerant. While it is easy enough to avoid bread and pasta in cooking, try cooking in China without Soy Sauce (surprise—wheat based!!).  So, as I have mentioned previously, we do a lot of simple stir fry. I stir fry some meat in a little sesame oil and salt, add a little pepper, toss in some random veg that I may or may not recognize, three days a week I toss in some random mushroom, add rice and call it dinner. Can you say boring? I think I can say it in fourteen languages now.

So when our local International Club offered up a cooking class, I was first in line, toque in hand. The best thing was that the recipe this month was simple! Only a few ingredients. And while one of them was soy sauce, we brought some actual SOY based soy sauce from the U.S., so I knew there was hope I could replicate said recipe at home.

And it was fabulous! I wish I could find someone to give me a cooking class every week. The recipe was simple, something that never in a million years would have occurred to me, and is something I can make Jeff that he will really love. Which means I can have pork dumpings for dinner, which I really love.

Here it is if you want to try this at home: First, buy a hunk of pork with the skin still on, the “fattier” the better. The stuff we were working with was marbled with fat. Cut it into one inch pieces. You boil it for ten minutes to “take the bad smell out”—don’t ask, I don’t know. And since there wasn’t any smell, I wouldn’t worry about it. But I would do it.

Then you mix ten tablespoons of dark rice vinegar, one tablespoon of sugar, a tablespoon of salt in a small bowl. Drop in three small pieces of sliced scallion and two little chunks of ginger. Drop the cut pork in the sauce and put the bowl in a steamer. Wait two hours, serve!

I wasn't kidding about the toque.

It really was good, although I suspect that anything with that much fat in it has no choice but to be good. One of the interesting comments one of the woman who was in the class with me made was that when she lived out in the Chinese countryside ten years  ago, meat with as much fat on it as that pork had would have been very expensive—basically, the more fat meat had, the better, more expensive it was. In a country as calorie-poor as China, you paid more for more calories. In stark contrast to the US, of course, where our Lean Cuisine Freezer Meals cost more than the average worker around here makes in a day.

So, I am going to try to make something similar tonight. I dashed out and bought a bamboo steamer and I’m going to try the same recipe except on salmon. Jeff loves salmon and I suspect the flavors will translate perfectly—mean while I can heat up the wok and have dumpings! Yum!! Really.

The Best and the Worst

When we were home over the holidays, the question people asked most frequently was, “So, what’s the best thing about living in China??” Immediately followed by the corollary:  “And what’s the worst??” (1)

It’s an interesting problem, addressing those questions. Mostly because there are so many levels on which they can be answered.

Philosophically, as an America used to a glorious excess of freedoms, I have issues with a country that mandates how many children any individual is allowed to produce.  But that doesn’t stop me from having a great time buying silk purses by the gross, now, does it? And really, legislating an individual’s reproductive allowance is just the tip of that proverbial iceberg.

And on the other side of the chasm, let’s call it the "superficial edge," one could spend a lifetime complaining about the quality of food, the smells, how hard it is to get anything done, the tragic fashion sense and giggling about weird signage. But I try not to spend a lot of time doing that, either.  Really, cultural differences should be expected. I think anyone who moves to China and expects life to go on as usual needs  to head to the local Jiffy Lube for the $39.95 Expectation Realignment.

So, I have tried to carve out a place for myself in this wild and frequently wooly world where “maybe” means many things, but almost never “yes.” I try to find a happy medium where I can (a) acknowledge that there is a Big Bad Wolf, (b) try not to let the day to day inconveniences bother me, and (c) ultimately soak up all of the adventure I can access for the short time that we are here.

Hope's Motto For Happiness in China: Have You Hugged A Dragon Today?

So my answer to the first question, “What’s the best thing?” is that we are introducing the children to a global lifestyle. They are meeting more people from more cultures than they could meet anywhere in the US at just about any time. They are discovering different languages, lifestyles, cultures, religions and social norms. Among their friends they count Australians, Germans, Italians, English, Chinese, Koreans, and a few more that I am having trouble dredging up at the moment. They know children who speak three languages,  they know children who are vegetarians for religious reasons and they are learning games and songs and stories from places all over the world.

I should probably point out at this juncture that Jeff describes the global learning experience as  “acquiring a marketable skill set.” I am more inclined to believe that it will ultimately make them better human beings, more conscious of their place on the social and world stage, as it were. And at the end of the day, we hope it will do both. Their growing knowledge of Mandarin, their burgeoning ability to relate quickly and easily to people of different cultures and backgrounds and their ability to travel long distances with relative ease and sense of normalcy we hope will hold them in good stead both as citizens of the world, and wherever their marketability takes them.

As for the worse, like I said, the little things are easy enough to deal with. Bad internet, scary water, genuinely cold living conditions (which in a few short months will be traded in for really, really hot), and questionable food are all inconveniences that are not hard to move past. Particularly given the knowledge that we won’t be here forever. The bigger, social and political issues are not so much ignored, as recognized and understood as differences that are far outside our sphere of influence. There’s not a lot I can do about China’s one child policy. Although I will say that every single time a Chinese person tells me I have the “perfect family, one boy, one girl,” my throat closes and I can’t speak.

No, the biggest issue for me living here is that right now, I don’t really feel as though I have a “home.” We have a home base as it were in the US, but it’s not a community in which we have settled or put down extensive roots. The timing of selling our farm and leaving an area our children had been born in just a few short months before we left for China left us with some rather tenuous roots. We have maintained friendships from where we were, but there is not only the distance from New Jersey to China, but there is also the unknown of where we will ultimately settle. So, I’m rootless. And some days that can be hard. I think about “going home” to the U.S., but without a specific place really in mind.

"Oh give me a home, where the wild turkeys roam!" Wild turkey posse right outside the kitchen window while we were "home for the holidays."

Interesting—to me anyway—that possibly the hardest thing about being here for me is not feeling rooted. We are cultivating our short term roots here, as we make friends and find ourselves thinking about ways to connect with both the ex-pat and the local community. And yet, home is where the context is, isn’t it? The U.S. is ultimately my home, and I look forward to eventually getting back there and re-establishing myself in a community there. Maybe I’m not looking forward to having to clean my own house again, but hey, you take the good with the bad. When the time comes, in a year or two and we return to the US, I’ll take up my mop proudly, if perhaps sporadically, again. (2)
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(1)    Which is not at all the question Jeff got asked the most, which was, “Should I be investing in China?”
(2)    All of which is a long and snotty way of saying to Ann “YES, I am TOO coming back!”

Whither Weather

Our Fair City is known affectionately as one of the furnaces of China. Temps during the summer can get up to 120 F. That's hot. And during the season formerly known as winter, those January/February months, it is usually fairly temperate. Ask the palm trees—this kind of stuff is important for their long term health and well-being. Well, I can tell you that for the past week, we’ve have some sorry looking palm trees looking like they wish they could trade a layer of xylem for down. Not only have the temperatures dropped to record lows, but it has actually snowed!! For the first time in two, three, five or ten years, depending on who is telling the story. Whatever, it’s cold and snowing and that’s fairly unusual in our neck of the world.

And rumor has it it’s snowing in Georgia!! The latitude here is around the same as someplace in Georgia, or maybe Florida (1) so snow in Georgia isn’t quite as shocking to me as it would have been a week ago. At least we are all unexpectedly shivering together. And shivering we all are. The buildings and infra-structure are just not designed to handle very much in the way of cold. For example, building insulation is thin to nonexistent and home heating units are small and generally uncooperative. So, we wear a lot of clothing wherever we go, and tend to wear shoes that work well with thick socks. 

Our Australian friends are looking a bit desperate these days.  If you think about it, it’s summer now in Australia. And if they “go home” to Australia for the “summer,” it’s winter then. So, imagine a world in which you lived with no summer. Yeah, I’d look a bit suicidal myself.

Around here, the snow brings—as it does in most places— slow traffic, many accidents and layers upon layers of clothing. Although since many, many people living here travel to work by bike or scooter, there appear to be millions of Michelin people rolling around all bundled up with naught but a tiny tip of nose and a glimmer of eye to be seen behind layers of down, scarves, face masks and assorted gear designed to keep one from freezing in what is usually a rather temperate climate.

Here’s someone I saw today who can carry off cold weather with total panache. She does an enviable job of combining warmth and chic: maroon velvet riding helmet, face mask (pink), plastic face shield, and scarf (red), a great down coat and some awesome winter bike riding hand warmers. These things are fabulous! I am sure motorcycle riders in the US must use them, but what a great way to ensure your hands don’t freeze to the accelerator. The half-chap things on her legs are also quite popular. I’m not sure what they are technically for, but I can see them as being useful for (a) warmth (b) reducing mud/grime on clothing and (c) reducing road-rash in case of accidental contact with the macadam. 

Now behold how one family does it. Their motto might be the family that clings together avoids hypothermia together. I’d like to point out a few key bits: note that this driver also uses the very awesome hand warmers. Check out the kid in the middle and please note the clever use of her dad’s back as a windbreak and pockets as extra hand warmers. I will also gently point out that only one of the three are wearing a helmet.

 

But potential brain threatening head injuries aside, you have to give them credit for squaring their shoulders and not letting the colder than normal temps keep them home. Although given the state of most home heating units around here, it might actually be warmer tooling along at 15 KMH than sitting in their living room. Like I said, this place isn’t exactly prepared for what we in the Northeast US used to call “winter.”

The babies are the ones I have the most compassion for, although to be clear, not because I think they are cold. No, the toddlers are bundled within a centimeter of turning into completely spherical objects and every time I see one, I want to peel down a few layers just to double check that there’s really a wee person buried in there. When you see their little arms and legs sticking straight out, it makes you wonder how they manage to get around on their own at all. Although, that might be part of the strategy. They must be in a heat induced torpor deep inside the layers, so between that and the nearly physical impossibility of moving their limbs, they are probably pretty well immobilized.

This photo example is one that I swiped from someone else’s web-site. Turn around being fair play, when I saw a little Michelin child in the market today, I cooed a bit over how cute he was and politely asked permission to take his photo, thinking that after the hundreds of thousands of photos that had been taken of my children, that surely there was some sort of local custom that deemed it appropriate to take random snapshots of children you have never seen before and will never see again. Nope. Wrong. Which is why I swiped someone else’s photo as an example of the Stay-Puff Children. 

And then later in the day, I sneakily snapped the above shot. The fact that you can actually see this child’s face demonstrates a parent who showed what I would consider great restraint. I can only imagine that the mom took some guff for it. “Look! That poor baby! Exposed to the elements that way!” No kidding. There are babies so bundled up that not a single patch of skin shows anywhere. And these are huge bundles! The babies are buried so deep it would take an archeologist to find one! But I bet they are cozy, toasty, snug-snug warm. And I have to say that even in my fabulous service apartment, it is a bit chilly--the apartment below is empty, as are the 25 apartments below it, so the floors never warm up. So, maybe at the heart of it, I’m just a wee bit jealous of their cozy snugness.

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       (1) And if the internet would just work for me I would be able to offer more data on where in Florida, or Georgia, but for the sake of getting this post up, versus waiting until my bandwidth cooperates, we’ll leave it at “somewhere.”

 

 

Our Chinese Names

Names in any language can have multiple meanings. Rose, or Forest for example. Or even "Hope," now that I think about it. And most Western names are "derived" from an earlier language and have some kind of esoteric meaning that we all diligently looked up for a third-grade research project and promptly forgot. Luckily, Al Gore came along and we now have all this formerly hard to find data at our fingertips:  "Ellen" probably derives from the Greek word "torch," meaning possibly "light." And Thomas is purported to mean "twin," also Greek. Jeffrey is a little vague, but might mean peace. Or might not. Hope, one assumes, is self explanatory.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, we have been seeking our very own Chinese names, the better to promote cultural understanding and move us on up the language learning ladder. So far, I'm still on the bottom rung. Jeff did work through his Buddha issues and has a Chinese name that sounds like "Je Ef." It has no specific meaning, but makes sense as a name. So far, so good.

For the children, I had asked their Chinese teacher Hu Lao Shi to please come up with appropriate names for them. After being slapped down soundly for wanting to call Hope "Little Dumpling," I decided to leave the naming in the hands of the professionals.

Well, Hu Lao Shi did a bang up job and I am so please to present our two little wonders: Tai Meng and He Ping. Tai is the one on the left.

Photo credit: Jennifer O'Donnell Photography (Sept 2007)

The names were designed to work on several levels, and they are quite touching and very beautiful.  "Tai" means peaceful and great and there was a leading scholar of ancient times named "Tai." Meng refers to daybreak, as well as honest, tolerant, kind and sincere. What a lovely way to for Tom's Chinese teacher to describe him. Sniff.

He Ping when pronounced sounds vaguely like "Hoping." Which I think is really lovely. And the name means (pause as I reach for a tissue) "peaceful." And lotus, like the flower. Peaceful flower. How darling is that?? And true! She mostly is a peaceful flower, for being a little red-haired spitfire and all.

And me? Are you wondering if I have a Chinese moniker to iron on to my summer camp clothes? Yes, I do.  I spent a morning recently at the Police Office working out some visa issues. Or rather, I spent a morning sitting at the Police Office while people around me worked out my visa issues and I wished I had brought my knitting. At one point during the lengthy negotiations, someone turned to me and snapped, "What's your Chinese name?? We need to fill it in!!" Without one on the tip of my tongue, or anywhere else on my person for that matter, one was pulled out of the air and inserted right then and there. Sounds like: "L N." Means: nothing. Which I suppose is better than meaning "Hair In Drain" or "Kangaroo Feet." But maybe not by a whole lot. I admit it, I'm a little jealous of Scholar Daybreak Boy and Lotus Flower Girl.

Addendum to What IS It???

Speaking of jealously, if there is anyone out there feeling twinges of the Green Eyed Monster over my incredibly fabulous existence, I have great news! Ann dug this up:  Rice Dispenser on Amazon. You too can have your very own Rice (or bean!) Dispenser! Really, life is incomplete without one of these puppies. Unless of course you don't go through a 50kilo of rice every couple of months. But, surely, you do???

I have to respond to Jennie's comment that even post-reveal, the purpose of the object in question did not seem quite so obvious. The great, grand and glorious irony of the entire adventure was that while we were debating the Rice Thing's (formerly known as the Bug Thing's) raison d'etre, sitting right next to it was a 50kilo bag of rice. I had just brought the bag home from the market and was quietly fretting as to where it would fit in my very fabulously wonderful, but rather compact kitchen area. The rice was sitting right there. So, once we put two and two together and came up with "the. rice. goes. in. the. bin." I felt as though I had been wandering around looking for my sunglasses when all the while they were perched up on my head. You know that feeling.

The Olympics

The view from the 27th floor includes our own Olympic Stadium. She’s a beauty, isn’t she? We have yet to see a car turn in the parking lot, but I am sure it is only a matter of time. The actual Beijing Olympics won’t be happening here, of course, mostly because they are in Beijing. And we are about a thousand kilometers south of that particular venue. So you might be wondering why it’s called “Olympic Stadium.” That’s okay, we’re wondering, too.
The story we were told originally was that the stadium was built during the furor leading up to China’s (finally after a few fits and starts) being awarded the Olympics. And the naming was a patriotic, flag waving sort of endeavor. There is another rumor that it was used for the 2005 selection process for the Chinese teams. Whatever, it is an enormous, gorgeous building that won’t ever rise to obstruct our view. For this, we are grateful. 

But Olympic Fever is running hot and heavy all over China right now. I was stunned when I mentioned the Olympics to a friend over the holiday in the US, and she replied in a rather lackadaisical tone, “Oh, the Olympics. Right, aren’t they in London in a few years?’

WHAT!!?? NO, the Olympics aren’t going to be in London in a few years! Well, wait, actually, technically they are. The 2012 Summer Olympics are in London. But the NEXT Summer Olympics, the ones the world is waiting for with bated breath are in Beijing! 2008: This very summer!!!!  (1)

What?? You mean you aren’t waiting with breath bated, or un-bated? Well, everyone around here sure is. Ai-yi-yi. They Olympic logo is everywhere. And I mean everywhere. On buildings, cars, toilet stalls, you name it, the logo is there. And an odd little logo it is, in a tragic, limp stick figure kind of way. Is that an oxymoron, I wonder, “limp stick figure?”

And even wackier than our loose limb-ed athlete are the Olympic Merchandising Figures. Wait, sorry, I think they are meant to be referred to as the “Mascots.”  I have to admit it must be hard to come up with some kind of cute-sy thing that appeals to everyone, but we have a few of these things stuffed and the children were terrified when they first saw them. These five little cuties are collectively referred to as the “Fuwa,” and I bet there are frenzied collector/hoarder type folk all over the US who would chew off my right arm to get a hold of one.  But we kept them jammed under the bed for months until the children could look at them without crying.

Although the Fuwa are head and shoulders less scary than the mascots for Torino in 2006: Who you gonna call??:

Back to the Fuwa. I need to stop making fun of the little buggers because they are really fascinating once you get past their terrifying visages. Here’s a tidbit I stole from the internet:

“Designed to express the playful qualities of five little children who form an intimate circle of friends, Fuwa also embody the natural characteristics of four of China's most popular animals -- the Fish, the Panda, the Tibetan Antelope, the Swallow -- and the Olympic Flame [I’d just like to point out that many playful children wisely avoid fire, let alone wild animals, but, hey, that’s just me].

Each of Fuwa has a rhyming two-syllable name -- a traditional way of expressing affection for children in China. Beibei is the Fish, Jingjing is the Panda, Huanhuan is the Olympic Flame, Yingying is the Tibetan Antelope and Nini is the Swallow.

When you put their names together -- Bei Jing Huan Ying Ni -- they say "Welcome to Beijing," offering a warm invitation that reflects the mission of Fuwa as young ambassadors for the Olympic Games.”  (Source: 2008 Beijing Olympic web-site)

Now that last bit really is pretty fabulous, isn’t it? And very Chinese. Names carry so much meaning, and the ability of the language to be fluid and idiomatic enough to embody each little character individually, and then have the characters link up to form a linguistic welcome mat sends shivers up my spine. So, I’m sorry I made fun of the Fuwa. They are very lovely philosophically. Just, maybe not so great rendered in fur fabric leering at you from your nightstand.
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(1)    Except the Equestrian sports, which are the ones I actually care about. Those are going to be held in Hong Kong. Which is even farther from Beijing than we are: 2800 km if you’re interested.

What IS It???

We’ll start with the big unknown. What do you think it is?? We had one back at Jinmao, too, although as I never figured out what it was there, I just ignored it. It was tops on my list of questions for the staff, mostly because it seemed like a rather simple thing, and I just couldn’t wrap my head around what it might be.

Details, for those of you who like to guess:  IT doesn’t plug in, IT is just a free standing container sort of thing. When you open IT, IT has some kind of valve mechanism (Ann is jumping up and down right now, waving her arm in the air, “OOOhhh, ME, pick ME, I know what it is!!!”) with a small drawer (shown open in the photo). And what appears to be a notation of “150 grams” on it. I have to say in hindsight, it is blindingly obvious what the thing was for. But that’s only in hindsight. In real time, I was scratching my head.

The staff made a planned sojourn up to the 27th floor for the sole purpose of giving me a guided tour of my appliances. While there are some notations in English, most of the appliance directions are in Chinese, so it was much easier to get a lesson than to randomly push buttons and accidentally rev up the air conditioning.

When Sonia and Grace arrived, the very first thing I did was to pull open ITS cabinet with a dramatic flourish and say, “THIS! What is it???” They both got what I would describe as a rather shocked look on their faces, which quickly morphed to  “worried.” They chatted back and forth to each other for a bit. Then turned to me and Grace said, “Um, we don’t know.” The ladies discussed it a bit more amongst themselves, then turned to me and said, “We don’t know how to say this in English, but,” and then they made some little finger gestures that I translated to “bugs.”

“Ah,” I said, “bugs??” And drew a few small bugs on a piece of paper and showed it to them.

They nodded vigorously. So, it had something to do with bugs. But what????  By the time they left, I was left with the feeling that it had something to do with storing garbage so that the bugs couldn’t get to it. But given the structure of the thing, and the inherent difficulty in keep it clean, I just couldn’t imagine how such a thing could work.
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But we moved on and they gave me the tour of my other fine appliances. I have to say, I adore my mini-dishwasher. You might think it is cute and tiny, which might not be your heart’s desire in a dishwasher, but compared to the little Haier countertop thing I had at Fox Hall (see photo of Hope in her younger, hairless years, in training as Resident Dishwasher Starter), well, it is a giant among dishwashers! And, best of all, drum roll please, it washes dishes! Which translates literally to: “So I don’t have to.” I love this.

And my clothing washer and dryer! Get this - the washing machine washes with hot water! Then there's the dryer: I get all warm and sunny inside just thinking about this particular appliance. At Jinmao, any reasonably nice day became Urgent Laundry Day. Since all washing had to be dried outside on the laundry deck, too many wet weather days in a row required I buy additional school uniforms for the children. Seriously. Not having a dryer has many terrific benefits – clothing that is sun dried is so fresh and there is inherent satisfaction in using solar power rather than the non-renewable sort of resource. However, the downside is either: (a) dirty or (b) clean but damp clothing during monsoon season.

This little dryer is quite fascinating in that it is not vented to the outside world.  While it uses some heat to dry the clothing, the primary “drying power” is centrifugal force. Bear with me on this one because it really is intriguing. The drying spins, and provides a little heat, then stops, then spins, with a little heat, giving the heat time to dissipate, unvented, as it were. But, since it’s the spinning that’s really doing the drying, there is a collection bin (see photo, it’s the thing sticking out on the upper left hand corner) collecting water! I empty the bin every few loads. Interesting, ne c’est pas???

The rest of the stuff, washing machine, microwave, rice cooker, are all pretty standard stuff, so we can just say, they work great and all is well.

But back to the burning “What Is IT??” question. The ladies left after their tour, and I happily punched buttons for the rest of the afternoon, running the laundry, dishwasher and dryer, humming a joyful tune. The phone rang a few hours later. It was the ladies, most embarrassed. They had asked the Engineer what the Bug Thing was really for. Turns out, it’s a Rice Storage Unit. You pour in a 50kilo bag of rice (which I just happened to have handy). You press the valve and 150 grams of rice shower into the little drawer. D’uh! Like I said, in hindsight, it was rather obvious what the thing was for.