Things I’ll Miss in Beijing/Can’t Wait to Return to at Home

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Now that we’ve got one final night in Beijing (and are staying at an airport hotel to ensure that we’re all packed up and don’t miss the flight, as we did on the outbound!), I’ve had a chance to reflect on our time here. In this kind of bardo (the Tibetan space between death and rebirth) between our life in China and our life in the U.S., I’m starting to feel our life beginning to fade here and our life in Charlottesville come into clearer focus.

Things I’ve learned during our time here:

-Confirmation that while I love living abroad, and look forward to the next time we live overseas, I wouldn’t want to permanently leave the U.S.

-Still, home can be a shifting paradigm.

-Although I would have a hard time thinking about spending another winter in Beijing, the spring and summer have been wonderful (minus the occasional high pollution day(s)) and I’ve come to really appreciate Beijing. In fact, I’d be happy to stay through the end of October.

-Although it isn’t always easing schlepping three kids around a huge city, the benefits of living in a large urban environment with lots of parks, historic places, indoor playgrounds, and museums has been a great experience for us all.

-Daily confirmation that I can make friends & be happy wherever I am (good reminder when thinking about our next move);

-The perspective that the things that I’m caught up in and seem so important at home can actually be let go of and life goes on just fine (politics, daily obsession with NPR programming and news, my involvement in the kids’ schools, especially Dylan’s co-op, etc.).

-Kids are flexible and resilient (Dylan’s Chinese is really kicking in! Both kids ended up happy in Chinese kindergarten!), although we weren’t always so confident things would turn out well.

-Transitions are always hard for me.

Miss from Beijing/living overseas in China:

-Beijing’s fantastic parks (Beihai, Jingshan, Taoranting, Summer Palace, Old Summer Palace, Ritan, Ditan, Temple of Heaven, Beijing Botanical Gardens and, especially, Purple Bamboo): I love the huge spaces taken up by gorgeous, manicured parks, where you can walk for hours. NYC may have Central Park, but I’ve never been in a city where there is such a wealth of beautiful, cultivated outdoor spaces in an urban center.

-Living in a large, happening, international, urban environment.

-Food on sticks, especially fresh pineapple in the street.

-The aliveness that comes from always feeling like an outsider.

-The cultural encounters every day.

-New food to try every day.

-Encountering surprising and often stunning architecture on every taxi ride.

-Ginger scented dishwashing liquid.

-The extreme attention given to foreigners, especially with babies/kids (love and hate): I definitely get what it would feel like to be famous! (Sophia recently told us that having her photo taken all the time by strangers on the street is one thing she definitely won’t miss!).

-A constant global perspective and not just a myopic U.S. one (though here it’s easy to see the parallel myopic Chinese perspective that could easily be embraced!).

-Weekly take-out from Mei Zhou Dong Po (Sichuan food).

-Living in a country where citizens can’t own and carry guns.

Looking forward to in U.S.:

-Nia at acac/real exercise in general;

-Fitted Sheets;

-Being able to text quickly (my phone in Beijing is archaic!) + having a smart phone;

-Driving;

-Clean Air (being able to run outside!) all the time;

-Car seats for the kids;

-Being able to brush/drink directly from the tap, especially for the kids!

-Having a clothes Dryer;

-Having a dishwasher;

-Involvement in the kids’ schools;

-Our house with three floors where one awake child doesn’t wake up the entire household;

-Ease of communication, where I don’t need an intermediary to translate for me;

-Living in a free, open, democratic society that is openly critical of itself and its leaders (gotta love the correspondents’ dinner, Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert, etc.). For all of the problems in the U.S., freedom of speech cannot be overpraised!

-Pam

Six Months in Beijing: Sightseeing Highlights and Recommendations

After living in Beijing for the past six months, we’ve not only had lots of opportunities to see and experience everyday life here in China, but we’ve also hit a lot of the tourist hot-spots. With all there is to see in a city with a population of 20+ million and a wealth of historical sites, I’ve put together a list with photos of our favorite places/must see spots. Since some of these places are obvious, I’d put them in the “usual suspects” category. Others are top recommendations, but may not be included in a several day itinerary of a visit to the capital. I’m also adding a few places that I wouldn’t recommend visiting, unless you have a lot of time, or a really specific interest.

1. Tiananmen Square: with all of the modern history in this massive square in the very heart of the city, it’s a good first stop. At the famous Tiananmen Gate with Chairman Mao’s face looking out across the square, you’ll also get your first sense of where Chinese tourists go (and there are a lot of them!). Traveling to Tiananmen Square is a essential visit for Chinese coming from all over the country, where you can see the Great Hall of the People on one side of the square and the National Museum of China on the other. Mao’s mausoleum is in the center of the square, where you can visit Mao’s preserved body (I tried to check it out one day with Isabel and Sophia, but the crowds and heat were so overwhelming that we changed our plans), something that is emotionally moving for many Chinese. I also considered getting up very early for the daily sunrise flag-raising ceremony (nationalism in China and the U.S. are quite similar!), but could never quite find the motivation to go (with three young kids, sleep is at a premium!).

Mao dominates the square

2.  While in the Tiananmen area, visiting the Forbidden City is another usual suspect must-see. Getting a sense of what life might have been like for the Chinese emperor and his consorts, wives, and eunuchs (no non-castrated men were allowed to sleep in the walled city) in this yellow-roofed massive complex of halls, houses, and gardens really shouldn’t be missed.

3. Visiting at least one Chinese park is at the top of my list. There are so many to choose from (Beihai, Jingshan, the Summer Palace, the Old Summer Palace [Yuanmingyuan], Ritan, Ditan, the Temple of Heaven, the Beijing Botanical Gardens, Purple Bamboo, etc.) and walking around amidst the cultivated beauty, while watching any of the many group activities that Chinese people regularly take part in, is an essential component of any visit (see my previous posts: Parks in China: Breathing Life into Sprawling Cities and What Makes Them Uniquely Chinese and The Lotus Festival in Beijing’s Purple Bamboo Park). If you’re in the Forbidden City area, visiting Jingshan Park and climbing the highest hill in Beijing, on a clear day, will give you a 360 view of the city and a chance to look directly into the Forbidden City from above.

View of the Forbidden City from Jingshan Park

The tree where the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty hung himself: enter the Qing Dynasty!

Kunming Lake in the Summer Palace

Plying the lotus waters at Purple Bamboo Park

Fan dancing

Isabel in a peach tree (Beijing Botanical Gardens)

4. The Great Wall: of course you’ve got to see it. If you can skip the highly touristy Badaling area and head to at least Mutianyu, I’d recommend it (you can take a cable car up, walk along the wall for awhile, and then toboggan down on a cement track: surprisingly fun and safe with kids!). I really wanted to visit the Jinshanling section of the wall too, as the photos I’ve seen are spectacular, but we ran out of time.

Mutianyu section of the Great Wall

5. Sanlitun Village and Yashow Market in Sanlitun: we came to love the Sanlitun area, with its combination of very high-end retail shops and more middle class stores and restaurants. It’s a great place to see the “new China” in all its consumerist glory, as well as to walk around in a beautiful outdoor mall space (there’s a mall beneath the area as well) with changing art installations and store/brand promotions. Right next to Sanlitun Village is the six-story Yashow Market with floor after floor of knock-offs. This is the other side of China’s consumer (and production) culture and is the perfect balance to the fancy real name-brand shopping just steps away. While a lot of tourists may prefer the Silk Market (we bought the silk for my wedding dress and all of our bridesmaids’ and groomsmaids’ dresses there back in 2002), with limited time, I’d recommend just hitting Sanlitun. Similarly, a lot of tourists visit the snazzy Wangfujing shopping area, but I’d recommend Sanlitun Village over Wangfujing.

6. Take at least one taxi ride around the Central Business District (CBD) area (and other areas of the city too) to see the architecture of recent dreams. Especially cool is the CCTV building, the various SOHO buildings throughout the city, the Global Trade Center towers, etc.

SOHO Galaxy Building

SOHO Galaxy

near “The Place” in CBD

the National Library

New architecture in Beijing. Caught this quick pic from a taxi of the Wangjing SOHO building.

7. Go to a Chinese acrobat show. We’d been to a couple of shows in the past, but the one we saw last week at the Chaoyang Theatre was absolutely amazing! It ended with a steel ball and eight motorcycle riders driving around inside (and upside down) simultaneously. As a bonus: we were a bit slow getting out of the theater and had a chance to meet the performers!

This ball with 8 riders inside was amazing!

Post-show

8. Capital Museum: As Manu’s recent post attests (The Capital Museum in Beijing), the Capital Museum is a gorgeous space with fantastic, focused exhibits. Skip the National Museum of China in Tiananmen Square and head over to the Capital Museum. Now that the new design of architect Jean Nouvel has been chosen for what looks to be a fantastic looking new National Art Museum of China in the Olympic Park area, in a few years it might be a different story…

9. Nanluoguxiang, or NLGX, is one of the coolest streets in Beijing. Somewhat similar to Thamel in Kathmandu, but not just catering to foreigners, this lively area near the Drum Tower (worth a visit, but we never made it since we’d already visited the Drum Tower in Xi’an) is part of the traditional remaining hutong (alley) neighborhoods. There are funky boutiques, charming bars and coffee shops, and lots of enticing snack stands on this great street.

If you’ve got specific interests, I’d also recommend:

1. 798 Art District: In this former electronics factory complex built by the East Germans, there are now streets of galleries and cafes. A couple of the galleries are impressive, but don’t expect to be impressed across the board. It’s a fun place to spend a few hours, or a day, wandering around, hanging out in cafes and doing a little shopping for unique gifts.

2. Yonghegong Tibetan Buddhist Temple Complex: If you have any connection to Tibetan Buddhism, Yonghegong is an obvious place to visit. Beginning in the 18th century, the complex maintained a connection between China’s emperors and monks from Tibet and Mongolia.

3.Peking University: Though you have to have a residency permit to enter the campus of China’s top university, if you can visit it, it’s worth walking around the beautiful grounds (there’s a stunning lake).

4. Olympic Sports Complex: Seeing the iconic 2008 Summer Olympics Bird’s Nest and Water Cube in person does give you a sense of the scale of the endeavors to build these structures, but unless you have a specific reason to visit the area, or a lot of time, I’d skip it. We walked around the fairly treeless concrete grounds in the hot sun, but the sense of national pride many Chinese undoubtedly feel did not arise in us.

5. The Beijing Zoo: While the grounds of the zoo are very beautiful, once you leave the chaos of the main animal buildings, including the overrated panda exhibit, the experience itself can be missed. While it’s not the worse zoo I’ve ever been to in terms of the space for the animals, it’s also not very impressive.

There are a few things we didn’t do that will be on our agenda for our next visit:

1. The Fahaisi Temple in the Western Hills with Ming Dynasty murals that you have to view with a flashlight.
2. The White Cloud Taoist Temple. Sadly, we didn’t visit even one Taoist temple while we were here.
3. The Fragrant Hills Park in the Western Hills. This is supposed to be especially beautiful in the fall when all the leaves are red and gold.
4. A modern dance show at the “Egg” (National Grand Theater).
5. Visit the Olympic Forest Park. This huge space doesn’t have the cultivated landscaping of most of Beijing’s parks and some day I’d like to see it.

Things we didn’t do that we’ll probably never do:

1. Watch a Peking Opera. The piecing voices just don’t appeal to us. We saw a bit of a Hong Kong opera and that was enough.
2. Visit the aquarium. The aquarium is within the zoo complex and you have to buy a separate ticket. Although it’s got a good reputation, having taken the kids to the fantastic Monterey Aquarium and the Vancouver Aquarium, it doesn’t strike me as something we must do in Beijing. Also, I wouldn’t recommend the joint Chinese-New Zealand “Blue Zoo” venture, unless you want to feed goldfish with a bottle and watch mermaids (real live ladies in bikinis and tails!) swimming with the fish.
3. Visit the Natural History Museum and/or the Planetarium. I could never gear myself up to visit what I’ve heard are very crowded museums.

Overall, our stay in Beijing has been fantastic and I’m really sorry to have to say good-bye, for now, to this lively city. I hope it’s not too long before we return again.

-Pam

What’s in a Lotus: The Lotus Festival in Beijing’s Purple Bamboo Park

In Tibetan Buddhism, lotuses feature prominently. For example, one of the oldest and most important early masters (8th c.) is Padmasambhava/Pema Jungnye, which means “Born from a Lotus,” as he is said to have been reborn in the heart of a lotus after having been burned to death on a funeral pyre. Buddhas, Bodhisattavas, and great masters are often depicted sitting on lotus seats and young consorts are described as being like a perfect, eight-petaled lotus. Lotuses regularly appear in Tibetan paintings (thangka) and sculpture and decoratively on furniture. You can even buy plug-in lotus lights for your home shrine. Because lotuses grown from the mud in water into beautiful flowers, lotuses also represent the mind of enlightenment coming forth from the confusion of ignorance.

Padmasambhava (photo from bhutanjournals.com)

Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, sitting on a lotus seat (photo from heidicries.com)

A thangka depicting Chenrezig, the Bodhisattva of Compassion (photo from ebay.com)

Despite feeling pretty familiar with lotuses in this context, until this last month, I had never really fully appreciated them. Thankfully, our neighborhood park, Purple Bamboo Park, is currently holding a lotus festival. I can’t seem to stay away and have already taken four boat rides through a large section of the lake that is almost completely filled with blooming lotuses (a water field!). The slow moving boats hold around 15 passengers and a single rower navigates through the narrow passage of water left open. The boat meanders past blooming pink and white blooms pushing up from large green leaves. Sometimes you can even see a family of ducks or coupling dragonflies in the cavernous area shaded by leaves and blossoms.

Rowing through the lotus passage

One of several boats offering rides through the lotuses

Heading under a pretty bridge

Lotuses abound

a water field of lotuses

lotus boats waiting for passengers

a slow boat ride

One day as I was entering the park, I noticed a man selling what looked like a type of green fruit (I thought it might be similar to a sweetsop). The next day I decided to buy one, but found that they were being sold in tied-together bundles of three. Still having no clue what they were, I asked Sophia’s Chinese teacher, Qing Qing, and found out that they were lotus stalks with fresh lotus seeds. The seeds require effort to eat, as she showed me how first you have to remove each seed from the pod, peel off two different layers, and remove the bitter green interior before you eat it. While the texture reminds me of a nut, similar to a raw almond, it actually doesn’t have a lot of flavor.

Lotus pods for sale!

Lotus seeds: whole, cut open, peeled, green interior stem, dried

Like many foods in China, the lotus seed has warming or cooling properties, but it depends on which part of the seed you eat.  Qing Qing told me that the bitter green stem inside the seed is the only cooling component of the lotus and it can be dried and made into a tea. When the raw lotus seed is eaten alone, it has warming properties that can help with nervousness and sleep problems. The dried seed (the green interior is removed from the top before it’s dried) can be made into a sweet drink by combining the seeds, crushed dried white wood ear mushrooms, and rock sugar with hot water and leaving overnight. Drinking it helps nourish yin and reinforces body fluid.

After I learned where the seeds came from, I went back to the park and suddenly became aware of the seed pod and began noticing that as the petals of the flower opened more broadly, it became visible in the center. As the leaves fall off, the seed pod is left standing amidst the other blooms.

a lotus flower next to pods

a pod in the center of a lotus

Now I seem to be seeing the seed pods everywhere. For example, last Friday I took Sophia and Isabel to Beijing’s 798 Art District, a former electronics factory complex built by the East Germans that has been re-purposed into a large area filled with galleries and cafes, and we went to a couple of galleries. The first one we stumbled upon featured copper work. If I hadn’t recently encountered the lotus seed pods, I probably wouldn’t have paid much attention to a whole room of copper lotus stalks and seed pods in various states of growth and decay.

Copper lotus pods at a 798 gallery

and more copper lotus pods

The one part of the lotus I’ve been familiar with for awhile, but have never cooked with yet myself, is the root. To me, crunchy, sliced lotus root with its white meat and beautiful pattern of holes, is the best food to cook in a hotpot. I love how it soaks up the flavor of the broth and tastes better and stays crunchier than a potato.  I’ve also had it in stir fries and in a soup with pork ribs, where it’s a great addition.

Lotus Root photo borrowed from: http://www.joyharari.com/tag/lotus-root-remedy/

Thanks to our proximity to Purple Bamboo Park, I’ve come to appreciate the depth of the China’s relationship with the plant.  Not only is there a great appreciation of the beauty of the flowers (as there is for Tibetans), but little of the plant is actually “wasted,” as medicinal (and food) uses have been found for the lotus’s roots and seeds in both fresh and dried forms (the petals, leaves, and stems are also used in other Asian contexts).  To me this epitomizes the rich depth of Chinese cuisine and medicine and its millennia-old relationship with plants (and animals) to uncover a myriad of uses and tastes.

-Pam

My Adventures in Extreme Eating, Beijing Style

Deep-fried scorpion

So far so good

As is apparent from my two other posts on food in China (Food in China and the Challenges of Limited Palates and How the Sichuan Peppercorn Led Me to Learn to Cook Chinese Regional Cuisines), I love trying and learning to cook new food (I’ve been able to take five cooking classes, including, most recently, Hunan and Yunnan Vegetarian) and have loved that aspect of my life in Beijing. I’m happy to report that my family (at least the kids!) have become slightly more adventurous eaters over the last six months. While Manu still has no desire to travel around the city with me seeking out unusual ingredients and tastes (three of our four dinners out sans kids over the past six months have been at restaurants featuring contemporary, creative European cuisine), I’ve been fortunate to have made a wonderful friend, Xu Er, who has been happy to accompany me to explore some of Beijing’s stranger offerings.

Our first night out was inspired by my friend, Lindsay, who sent me an article about eating rabbit heads in China that appeared in the NY Times in April, asking me if I’d tried them yet. I have to admit that at first the idea didn’t actually appeal to me, but after I read about how tasty they were and that the rabbits are part of spicy Sichuan cuisine, one of my favorite regional styles, I asked Xu Er if she’d like to come with me and, having never tried them herself, she agreed. The heads are not very large and you have to break them apart, sucking and using your chopsticks to get all of the meat out (eyes and brain included!), but the flavor is quite rich and spectacular. Although we tried both the five spice (a blend of cinnamon, star anise, cloves, fennel seeds, and Sichuan peppercorns) and the spicy, both of us thought the spicy route was the way to go.

Popping in an eyeball

Xu Er enjoying a head

5 Spice & Hot rabbit heads

Success!

We also ate this spicy Sichuan tofu and organ soup – gotta love the chilies!

Checking out the teeth

Our next foray into the unusual was to try “stinky tofu” (臭豆腐 Chou Dou Fu). I’d occasionally smelled it on the street when the scent something like a very moldy, drippy, smelly (delicious!) cheese wafted my way (I chose to dwell on the former image rather than on other possible associations, such as old shoes), but hadn’t had a chance to actually try it. We went to a renowned stand in the Houhai (lake) area, which, fortunately, was right across from a place that boasted serving traditional Beijing snacks. After we picked up our tofu, Xu Er chose a number of other dishes and snacks she thought we should try, including fried durian (炸 榴莲 Zha Liulian), a yogurt-like cheese with red bean (奶酪 魏 Nanlai Wei), and filled sausage (炸 灌肠 Zha Guan Chang). The stinky tofu was tasty, but the smell is more potent than the taste, I thought (after having eaten some serious cheese, I found stinky tofu to be less intense).  One dish that Xu Er loved (she insisted that we each get our own bowl, as she knew she’d want to eat a whole bowl herself), featured intestine, kidney, and stomach in a soup with a wheat cake (卤煮火烧 Lu zhu huo shao). While I’m not usually a huge fan of most organs (liver aside), I’d recently read a book, The Last Chinese Chef, by Nicole Mones, that elucidates the profound thought and intentions behind Chinese cooking (against the backdrop of an engaging, fictional story). I remembered that one of the important principles is texture. When I ate the soup and its organs with that idea in mind, as none of them were particularly flavorful, the experience was better than I’d have thought and for the most part I appreciated the organs as a conduit for bringing out the flavor of the rich, dark, meaty broth.

An array of food for us to try!

The stinky tofu master

Intestine ready to add to the soup!

Fried Durian (left) & Hot&Sour Rice Noodles being served up

The soup with the organs is dark with cilantro on top

Although Xu Er and I went out for a couple of other Chinese meals with more conventional ingredients, our last adventure in the unusual was the most dramatic, as we went to the touristy Donghuamen Night Market, where many non-Beijing foods and snacks are available, which is especially appealing to tourists looking to challenge themselves (many of the specialty items are traditionally eaten in the south, but they’re always available at this market). We had a great time walking past the entire line of lantern-lit stalls before making our purchases. Two of the most unusual things we tried were pigeon on a stick (tasty, but a little dry, not like the velvety pigeon Manu and I ate at Temple Restaurant, Beijing) and deep fried scorpion, which was more crunchy than anything else. A few of the things we saw, but didn’t try, were: large black spiders; large black scorpions; starfish on a stick; snake on a stick; large centipedes; and sheep testicles, also available on a stick (maybe next time…).

Xu Er contemplating the pigion

A pigeon in Wangfujing lights

I skipped the spiders

Deep-fried scorpion

So far so good

Crab-filled dim sum

snakes, cocoons, and spiders in back, centipedes in front

starfish anyone?

check out those big, black scorpions!

Lamb testicles on a stick just didn’t make the cut that night

cute, dessert dim sum

Rows of lanterns light the night market’s stands

Thinking back over the past months, two other foods that I tried for the first time stand out as being particularly good: horse meat and bullfrog. We had horse, which was cured and served in thin slices, at a Xinjiang (the far, northwest autonomous region) restaurant with our friend, Iliyar (and family), who’s from the region. I found that the meat reminded me a little bit of Spanish lomo, but dry, rather than oily-moist. Bullfrog surprised me. I’d read that Chairman Mao loved to eat bullfrog with hot chili peppers, a dish popular in his native Hunan province, known for food even spicier than Sichuan’s, but was not drawn to try it. Then I was at an Imperial style (known especially in the last dynasty, the Qing, for gathering and perfecting the best dishes from all over China) restaurant with my friend, Betty, who remembers eating frog as a child when her family visited Hong Kong, and told me that it’s often served to children because it’s an easy meat to eat.  She was happy to order it, so we ate the tender chunks of white bullfrog meat with hot red and green chilies (what a pretty combination!). It’s true that the flavor of frog is a bit reminiscent of chicken, but the texture is more like seafood, reminding me of squid.

Bullfrog with chilies

Pretty, tasty snails at “My Soup”

During these last six months, my appreciation for Chinese cuisine has deepened a lot, and I know that I’ve only scratched the surface. Understanding some of the philosophy behind Chinese cooking, I’m eager to continue to try more foods that I’d not have thought would appeal to me and I’m hoping to have more opportunities in the future (maybe we’d even live in China again for awhile). And maybe one of these days I’ll even get up the nerve to eat one of those chicken feet I always see people munching on in the street.

P.S. You may be interested in checking out this article (http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/beijing/articles/blogs-beijing/the-dish-bj/beijings-weirdest-and-wackiest-food/) about Beijing’s strangest food offerings, including penis hotpot (of various animals), which is supposed to enhance virility!

-Pam

The Capital Museum in Beijing

Last Friday, we went to the Capital Museum in Beijing. Pam had already gone with Isabel, but she had been so impressed with its various exhibitions, as well as with the building itself, that I also wanted to check it out. I was not disappointed. The building is a beautiful combination of traditional and modern architecture that presents a city proud of its past, but also looking towards its future (you can watch a great interview with the architects here.)

This angular gallery-filled cylinder is stunning

a corner of the exterior

the cylinder juts out

an interior gate

looking down from an upper floor

In a city with so many historical sites to visit (the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, the mandatory visit to the Great Wall, etc.), I am not surprised that the museum often goes under the radar (if it weren’t for Pam, I would have also missed it), but I would definitely recommend a visit. It offers a great overview of the history of the city, and it also introduces you to some important aspects of Chinese culture and festivals.

The Empress Dowager, Cixi, the last empress before the Qing dynasty fell

a traditional hutong neighborhood door

Peking Opera Masks

Peking Opera

Peking Opera

reflections in a gorgeous old door

“Grabbing test” objects to predict a baby’s future (not unlike the process of Tibetan lama recognition!)

Peking Opera Art

a miniature play made of porcelain

a very cool modern scroll painting of Yonghegong and the Beijing cityscape

They also have a very decent Buddhist art collection, which made my visit all the more exciting,although, as you can see in one of the pictures below, they could have used a native English speaker to polish the explanations of  the various rooms and artifacts.

Please, someone help with this English translation!

If you ever come to Beijing, make sure to include it in your itinerary.

P.S. Pam, Sophia, and Isabel just visited the National Museum of China, which is directly across Tiananmen Square from the Great Hall of the People. It’s recently been renovated, so the giant, Socialist style exterior has a modern, light-filled interior. She said that in contrast to the Capital Museum, the National Museum, not surprisingly, is a paean to China’s great and lengthy civilization, with halls focused on money through the dynasties, jade carvings, fan art, scroll painting, etc. The Buddhist statue collection is pretty good too, which includes a number of large stone and wooden statues (Isabel wanted to pose in front of each of the large “Bu-ahs,” as she calls the Buddhas). With limited time, Pam says she would definitely recommend going to the Capital Museum over the National Museum (and the National Museum is much more crowded, in part due to its central location).

Isabel posing in front of a Bu-ah

Everyone was munching on snacks sold in the museum, but not allowed in the galleries themsevles

Only a small portion of the National Museum of China

A recent 4-year renovation resulted in a rather stunning interior

– Manu

Dalian: A Trip to One of China’s Most “Livable Cities”

Last weekend we took an overnight train to Dalian to visit our former boss at SIT Study Abroad, Linda, and her husband, Stephen. With a population of over 3.5 million, the city is located in northeastern Liaoning Province (one of the three provinces that formerly comprised Manchuria), at the convergence of the Bohai and Yellow Seas, and is merely the 27th largest mainland city in China.

Dylan got soaked at a fountain show

It took him only a couple of minutes to be drenched

Isabel liked this fast food character’s belly button

Renmin (The People’s) Square fountain and music show

A few guys doing a jump-roping performance

Running across a bridge, Xinghai Square area

In a country steeped in many thousands year old history, the crazy thing about Dalian is that it’s only a bit over a hundred years old. A former fishing village, the Russians gained control of the area in 1899 and held it for a few years until the Japanese wielded control of it for the next forty years, during which time it developed into an important port city (now it’s the northernmost port in China that never freezes).  Since its return to China, it’s continued to grow and, with its wide avenues and low pollution, in recent years has been named among China’s most “livable cities” (for the record, Beijing has never made that list!). If it weren’t for the protests (in China!) against a petrochemical plant that put it on the map two years ago, it’s probable that a lot of people outside of China wouldn’t even be familiar with the city of Dalian at all.

Chinese zodiac animals at Labor Park

Dylan & Stephen became good buds

Xinghai Square area bridge

Dongbei Pork: gloved left hand, chopsticks in right hand to reach any difficult areas

Linda (& Dylan) in Xinghai Square

Xinghai Square looking out to the ocean at the “open book”

Bound-foot footprints at a Dalian Monument in Xinghai Square

As a new city in China, sightseeing options are more limited than places with a great depth of history, but we managed to do some pretty cool things while catching up with Linda and Stephen and attempting to keep the kids entertained. We visited four parks, tried Dongbei cuisine (the “East-North” food of the Manchus), rode amusement rides on the Coney Island-style boardwalk, took a taxi ride along the coast, visited an active Chinese Buddhist temple-cum-flea market, checked out the fantastic market where Linda and Stephen get their extremely fresh seafood and veggies, saw architectural fantasies manifested in many different forms, etc.

Large Buddha statues contrasted with t.v. building

Buddhist temple meeting room

Sunday flea market at Fuguo Park

Buddhist temple at Fuguo Park

Treasures

Fresh Fish

Trays of “spitting” clams

Street side dining

A Castle Fantasy near Xinghai Square

Beach at Xinghai Square

Small jellyfish for sale!

Yummy seaside food

Gorgeous cherries bought in Dalian, eaten at the airport

One of my favorite aspects of our visit was hearing about Linda’s six recent trips to North Korea. It was fascinating to hear about life inside this country shrouded in secrecy. Her work for the American Friends Service Committee has helped to improve farm techniques within North Korea, giving the population expanded opportunities to produce its own food.

Dalian is actually very close to North Korea (you can see it, Sarah Palin style, across the Yalu River from nearby Dandong) and both Russia and Korea (more likely the southern variety) influence the city. Seeing Russian tourists (often looking a bit on the rough and ready side) with many restaurants and tourist attractions catering to them reminded us that we weren’t in Beijing. A mecca for the prized sea cucumber (there are about ten high-end shops in Linda and Stephen’s neighborhood selling the expensive delicacy), we were often similarly reminded that we were close to the sea. Thanks to our great hosts, we had an insider’s perspective on the city, definitely the best way to visit a new place, I think!

-Pam

How to Fight a Hot Summer Day in China (if you’re a man): Try lifting up your shirt…

We are in the midst of summer here in Beijing and I can tell you one thing:  it is very hot. Temperatures average in the 80’s, and last week we had a few days close to 100 with an extremely high percentage of humidity. I’ve talked to a few locals about it, and they all told me that this is just the beginning… it is only going to get hotter and more humid!

Different countries fight the summer heat in different ways. In the States, people hide in locations with AC (their own homes, malls, restaurants), where the air can be irrationally cold. In southern Spain (where I was born), people avoid the hottest hours of the day by staying indoors, and they only start coming out at sundown, when the streets become intensely alive (which also explains why children are still playing on playgrounds around midnight, since they can’t do it during the day!). Here in Beijing, people also avoid doing any activities during the hottest hours of the day, which means that parks are quite empty during the day and come alive only when the weather cools down in the late afternoon (or very early in the morning!). There is one thing that men do to cool down in a hot summer day, though, that has particularly called my attention: they lift their shirt up halfway, or even take it off completely. At first it seems a little odd, coming from cultures where that can be seen as crass, but it is such a pervasive practice across all social strata that, after a while, it becomes normal. You can see in the small gallery below how pervasive this practice is.

So if after we are back in Charlottesville, you see me having brunch with the family down town with my shirt rolled up, or you see me reading on the lawn in front of the Rotunda without a T-shirt, do not be alarmed, for what it is strange to you (as it was for me) is perfectly normal for a fifth of the world’s population…

-Manu

Sophia’s Chinese Kindergarten Graduation: Performance, not Ceremony

Sophia graduated from her Chinese Kindergarten two weeks ago. While I’ve actually never attended a kindergarten graduation in any other context, I have witnessed or taken part in many other graduations. Hence, when I arrived at Sophia’s school at 5 pm on a bright and sweltering Thursday afternoon, I wasn’t surprised that I felt a bit wistful of our passing time in China and our children’s growing bigger, and even bittersweet that Sophia was graduating (I seemed to have temporarily forgotten that she also finished kindergarten last year in the States: see Why Chinese Kindergarten?). As I talked with a fellow parent whose only child was graduating, after having attended Brown Kindergarten for three years, I even felt a bit verklempt (though the mother herself didn’t seem particularly emotional).

The graduation lasted for almost two and a half hours. During this time any emotion I had or thought I would have was completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the performance. I say performance, because that is what the graduation felt like to me. Granted, I didn’t get what was said in most of the speeches or introductions (occasionally, someone translated a bit for me when I wasn’t running around after Isabel, who kept trying to rush the stage area), but there was definitely not a ceremonial component.

Hair & Make-up by the teachers

An all-class opening number

The boys doing their hot Children’s Day dance again

Sophia was in a total of ten dances and a few of the kids participated in a couple more than that. Not only was there a reprise of all the dances the class did for Children’s Day (see the Children’s Day post), but she crammed during the last couple of weeks with the rest of the graduating children to learn another five routines. Aside from the numerous dance routines (including a new one by the teachers), at one point there was a staged competitive group math problem contest. Another number had the kids reading sentences in Chinese pin-yin. Towards the end of the “show,” four kids rang triangles each time one of them made a statement about how many hours they had spent working on particular subjects.

Performing teachers

Three groups compete in a staged math contest

New dance with plaid outfits

Sophia and the girls in her class performed in one of the final dances in which they encircled some of the teachers and school administrators. At one point during the song they bowed to each other and the song ended with a kind of group hug. It was well-staged and executed, but, again, it felt performed and not even a tear came to my eye. After the final dance number, the diplomas were quickly distributed (not in a ceremonial manner with each child’s name being called out, though) and we all snapped photos of the group holding their new certificates.

Teachers/Administrators performing with the girls

Sophia’s graduation certificate (note the lack of last name!)

Drawings the kids made of themselves growing up

My one kind of secret hope for the day was that I’d get to see Sophia in a graduation cap and gown. Since we’d paid for another outfit, I had a vague sense that it may be a gown. While it turned out to be a plaid outfit (see photos), I did get one glimpse of Sophia in graduation gear: the following day each family received a coffee table-ready mounted photo of their child in a graduation cap and gown next to a class photo. The individual picture, like the graduation event itself, seems to be a requisite component we now possess, but that somehow comes up feeling a bit hollow to me (though it is a cute photo!).

While I had my sense of Sophia’s graduation, she definitely had her own. It was clear that she’d spent so much time preparing to perform the dances that she spontaneously practiced parts of the dances and moves around the house and talked a lot about it. During the performance itself she wore one of her very serious faces and it was hard to penetrate what she was feeling. However, the next day, the final day, when I picked Sophia and Dylan up from school, Sophia burst into tears and was weeping by the time we got home. She spent the next hour in her room staring at the class photo and crying.

Our Dai restaurant graduation dinner

Isabel with Dylan’s English teacher, Carol

Regarding Dylan, we were a little worried about how he’d react to attending the last month of school (until July 31st) without Sophia (see previous post: Life in a Chinese Kindergarten). To our surprise, he hasn’t complained at all and actually seems really happy when going to school. A recent excerpt (June 28th) from Dylan’s Contact Book says: “Hi Dylan’s Family: Dylan is very great, he likes Chinese, he is very glad to speak Chinese to the teachers. He can sing some Chinese songs…”  Now that he’s got a good buddy (Joshua) and is understanding and speaking more Chinese, he’s enjoying himself. Even if he’ll likely lose a lot of his Chinese after we return home next month, it’s good to know, for both him and us, that he’s made a life for himself at school in Beijing.

-Pam

Does the Tooth Fairy Come to China?

Sophia lost her two top front teeth within three days of each other. New look aside, she was most excited about the impending visits by the Tooth Fairy. She didn’t seem concerned about whether the Tooth Fairy would make it all the way across the world. In fact, for her, the nighttime gift bringer who takes her tooth is some combination of the American Tooth Fairy and the Spanish Ratoncito Perez (Little Mouse Perez). Last summer she lost her second tooth when we were in Spain and received a visit from Mr. Perez, who left her with a few coins and some lip gloss.  Since then, she often sleeps with a stuffed Ratoncito Perez (who carries a stuffed tooth) and talks about both of them (I think she thinks of them in cahoots with one another, a little bit like the companionship in Rise of the Guardians). If it works for her, we’re fine keeping it vague.

Happy to show her new smile

While she was awake early on two mornings a week ago, eager to show us the small gifts and money she’d received under her pillow (since we are in China, after all, I picked up little hair items, gold nail polish, a wooden comb painted with a Chinese lady, etc.), Manu and I started asking around about what people do with their baby teeth in China. Sophia’s Chinese language teacher, who’s from Fujian Province, which is the closest Mainland China province to Taiwan, told me that when she lost her lower teeth, she buried them in the ground, while she threw her upper teeth onto the roof of her grandparents’ house. This is supposed to ensure that the adult teeth grow straight up/down.

I looked up different Chinese traditions on the internet and found that traditions varied (sometimes the lower teeth are placed on the roof and the upper teeth buried in the ground and sometimes instead of the roof and ground, the teeth are placed above and below the bed), the essential desired outcome is the same: get those big teeth to come in straight.

Since Manu spent last week in Lhasa, he asked around to find out what Tibetans do with their baby teeth. He found that, at least in Central Tibet, they wrap the tooth in a cloth, sometimes keeping it whole and sometimes crushing it, and then throw it on the roof while reciting the following wish:

Tibetan tooth wish in Manu’s notebook

Don’t grow the tooth of a horse; Don’t grow the tooth of a donkey; May a tooth of a white sheep grow!

While I don’t know a lot about other baby teeth traditions around the world (you can check out an interesting blog post I found that begins to scratch the surface), I’m wondering if at least the Chinese and Tibetans are onto something with the focus on good looking adult teeth. Perhaps it’s no wonder, with our short sighted tooth-for-gift exchange, that so many Americans, in particular, end up needing braces!

-Pam

Flight or Fight: What is this Movie About?

I have mentioned in a previous post how counterfeit DVDs have a very idiosyncratic way of “reproducing” the original DVD:  the cover picture can be wrong, the title misspelled, the credits are from a different movie, etc. The other day I found a funny example of this. As you can see in the pictures below, I own two copies of Robert Zemeckis movie, “Flight,” with Denzel Washington, although, if you were to judge the covers, they seem to be two completely different movies.

The one on the left is the original, with Denzel Washington looking all serious in his pilot outfit under the rain. The image in the middle of the cover gives us a hint of a major plot point of the movie: a plane accident will make him a hero, but it also will uncover a secret life of addiction. Anyway, you can see that the movie is presented as a drama of sorts.

The picture to the right is of a copy of the same movie that I bought from a street seller very close to my university. Now, if you were to judge the DVD for its cover, and not its title, you would think that you just bought a very different movie. Denzel Washington is not a pilot anymore (you can’t see his pilot hat), but some sort of action hero, a mixture of Bruce Willis in Die Hard 2 (which takes place at an airport), Mark Wahlberg in Shooter (which would explain the telescopic rifle), and Vin Diesel in Fast and Furious (notice the race cars at the bottom of the cover). I wonder if some people bought the movie here expecting to see a hardcore action movie and ended up disappointed when they watched a movie that’s not even really about a miraculous pilot who saved all of its crew and passengers from certain death, but a movie about the struggles of alcohol addiction…

-Manu