Journey to the Opposite Shore

Old Year, New Year

2012-01-05T21:28:00.000+08:00

Dear everyone, we hope you have a great 2012, that it brings contentment, joy, depth and beauty!

Devin, Merlin and I stayed up on the 31st (Dan's in China continuing research, writing, and helping his parents who have both been ill). It was a beautiful surprise to have the weather clear enough to experience a firework-filled celebration. From our house, which I sometimes call our Mountain Retreat (I try to remember that when I feel like complaining about the uphill walk), we can see above rooftops to the city center below. Folks here really get into the fireworks displays and from just before midnight until after 1:00 am, it seemed the valley was just filled with showers and sparks and bright flowering bursts. I'm sorry, I didn't take any pictures (and they'd be a paltry representation, anyway, without a zoom lens), but after all my years in towns where personal fireworks are mostly off limits, I have to say that this was a treat worth seeing. Both girls enthusiastically endorsed being here for it again next year.

Up until the 29th of December, downtown Göttingen hosted a Christmas Market with booths filled with crafts and ornaments, winter specialties and eye candy (and real candy). It was a relatively small market, just filling two small plazas, but we found ourselves continually entertained by just walking through the jostle and seeing what there was to see.

We didn't have a white Christmas (just rain and more rain), but it did snow once, sometime in December, and then promptly melted and we're still wondering if we're going to get to use our sled. We did go ice skating, at the downtown indoor rink - it was pretty crowded and with the dim lighting, hard to take photos, but here are a few I got. We look faster than we really are, but for a bunch of Californians, we weren't really too bad at it. I think we can thank Sacramento's December rink for that.

Yes, that's Merlin in the maroon sweater.

And Devin, zipping by.

At least it snowed on our gingerbread houses...

and bonus points to anyone who can identify these (super extra bonus points if you know the Danish name, just because that's how I happen to call them):

not much going on, really

2011-12-14T04:24:00.000+08:00

But I do have good photos!

No snow falling yet - other than this

but back when autumn had its last burst-of-amazing, we went walking among the golden trees. Yes, this was a while ago, but rather than save the pics for next year and pretend they're fresh, I figured I'd better put them up!

We took the train to Bad Langansalza, a really lovely small town where it seemed the houses had so much color; at least more so than Göttingen which has a lot of white.

After wandering around for a bit we took a bus to a national park where there's an elevated walk through the treetops. And I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Let me backtrack a bit

2011-11-23T02:30:00.001+08:00

So ever so long ago I mentioned that we were going on a field trip and then I let it drop and didn't share any of it with you. Let me remedy that selfishness and show you pictures of where we went, back before the leaves had started to turn all sorts of fantastic colors (that'll be a different post).

Wartburg is a castle in the state of Thuringia (Thüringen, in German). Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the castle's foundation was built around 1080 while other portions were added up until the late 1800s. Major repairs have been undertaken since the 1960s.

Among the things the castle is famous for other than it's age:

1207 - essentially a medieval poetry slam, the Sängerkrieg (Singer War) is surrounded by legend and yet still appears mostly factual - so there's speculation about whether or not it happened, but some fantastic art work in its own right resulted, including the frescoes by Moritz von Schwind (see below for photos);
1211-1228 - St. Elizabeth of Hungary was sent to be married to Ludiwig IV of Thuringia and resided in the castle but after her husband's death she turned her attention to charitable works and was eventually canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. (see below for photos)...
1521-1522 - Martin Luther, after being excommunicated by the same, was sequestered in the castle and it was there that he translated the New Testament into German;
1817 - several hundred students came together and were the first to call for a unified Germany (which prior to 1806 consisted of over 300 kingdoms, territories, or imperial cities).

Of course I took pictures, and there's more to be seen at the official Wartburg site, including a virtual tour and more historical information.

Do click on any of these to see them better!

First of all, the location. On this map, the town we live in is circled in red, while Eisenach, the town nearest the castle, is circled in orange:

The region is hilly and forested.

And this is the castle itself.

One of the Ludwigs (sorry, I've forgotten which now, probably not Ludwig the Leaper who founded the castle, though. Gotta love the name).

And a fantastic tapestry.

Architectural details:

A 15th century oriel window:

And below is one of the frescoes by Moritz von Schwind, which was painted to resemble a tapestry of the event of the Sängerkrieg. In reality, it's not a tapestry, but is painted directly on the wall. I love that it includes Klingsor of Hungary about whom I can find very little information other than that he was a wizard who predicted St. Elizabeth's birth in addition to his minstrel abilities. He's the guy in yellow who seems to be levitating over the crowd on the left.

I was really awed by the artwork in Elizabeth's chambers - a mosaic created in the early part of the 20th century, it's richly patterned and stunningly colorful.

(This one is from Wikipedia, as I don't have a wide angle lens. The rest are mine)

(that's Klingsor again... quite the intriguing guy)

Again, I definitely recommend clicking on the photos so you can actually see them!

Up soon will be autumn colors and the lovely town of Bad Lagensalza. How's that for a name that sounds weird in English?
**

I just discovered a cool thing in blogger that didn't used to be there. Now, when you click on a photo, you get a nifty album that lets you see all the photos (without their captions) in larger format. Arrow keys let you navigate. Cool!)

Snow(ish)

2011-11-15T21:15:00.002+08:00

I am, in case you hadn't noticed, amused by weather. It's not just a conversation filler, it's interesting! So many variations, options, effects...

Anyway, here I go again. It's been getting steadily colder and then suddenly we had frost and our little pond froze over.

This morning, the girls set off for the bus stop and within a minute or two the phone rang - I panicked, realizing Merlin had forgotten her clarinet, said to Devin who was on the other end saying, "It's snowing!" that I was bringing it; grabbed it, dashed out the door (at least I put on shoes, didn't deal with a coat over my sweatshirt) and then realized... it was snowing. Well, snow enough for us, I guess, more like spitting little ice pieces.

It did this to everything outside:

I didn't realize that spiderwebs could get iced up:

And then if they get jiggled the ice breaks apart:

It's really pretty and really cold and Merlin's quite entranced by the ice on the pond. She keeps getting me outside to look at it and watch her poke it to break up the ice. Some folks are easily pleased. :)

On the bus, later, a lady told me it wasn't actually snow, but something I've now forgotten, maybe Schnee regen (snow rain: sleet). I find the German word for snow hilarious. Say it several times and see if you don't laugh. Schnee Schnee Schnee.

----

Here, a snippet of today's poem on The Writer's Almanac, by Kenneth Rexroth.

...November has come to the forest,
To the meadows where we picked the cyclamen.
The year fades with the white frost
On the brown sedge in the hazy meadows,
Where the deer tracks were black in the morning.
Ice forms in the shadows;
Disheveled maples hang over the water;
Deep gold sunlight glistens on the shrunken stream...

and now something completely different

2011-11-06T23:24:00.003+08:00

Just a little bit of wondrousness

welcome to the land of sheer writing madness

2011-11-03T03:47:00.000+08:00

Yes, once again we are engaging in that creative endeavor called NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month.

Daily you'll find us (more) hunched over the computers, fingers pecking away, minds (even more) completely spaced out to somewhere.

Nothing like a good, mad, word sprint every day for a month. For past posts on the topic, just click on the NaNoWriMo tag.

Treat or Treat!

2011-11-01T03:58:00.000+08:00

That's what a neighbor kid said to me as I opened the door tonight. We didn't have many kids but considering Halloween is an imported holiday, that's ok.

We got a pumpkin and Devin and Merlin and friends (neighbors, Paula, Nora, and Hanna) carved it and then got dressed up and went all over the neighborhood.

We all thought about the great times we had, going through Village Homes and Stonegate neighborhoods and hope you have a lovely evening tonight!

modes of transportation

2011-10-26T15:52:00.001+08:00

We noticed the differences in cars right away. In the US we see a lot of sedans and of course everyone knows Americans generally prefer SUVs more than most. I think in Davis we were used to seeing a lot more Priuses. They're here too, but not in as great a quantity. Instead we see makes and models we don't find in the US, like Skoda, Dacia, and Citroen.

One of the first responses we all had was that there were a lot of "bean cars," (as in bean shaped - rounded and aerodynamic) and we were surprised at how common wagon models are.

Anyway, rather than just talk about this, I figure it's good to show pictures.

the classic "bean"

the classic classic

Fiat's take on the classic

a sporty Smart Car

How come they don't sell the Ford Streetka in the US?

Or the Toyota Picnic?

There are bikes galore here. Sometime I'll take a pic of the parking pile at the train station.

And Göttingen has one up on Davis - even the mail is delivered by bike.

---

So we're contemplating getting a car - it'd save so much time for me to be able to do multiple errands in just one trip and to be able to carry oddly sized or heavy things. We don't have a particular model in mind at this point. The first step is going to be getting a German drivers' license before my CA license loses its 6 month grace period. Annoyingly enough, California is not one of the states to have an agreement with Germany that would allow me to just trade my CA license for a German one. Instead, I have to prove my CA license is not my first (if I can't, I have to go to driving school) and then I have to take a class in the theoretical aspects in order to take the written exam. Blah.

I wonder, though, if I could avoid all that by flying...

I'm a wimp

2011-10-14T16:52:00.000+08:00

or, gee, it feels like winter already.

We had two or three weeks of fabulous weather, up until a few days into October. It was sunny and warm and then gradually it began to feel like typical California winter weather - it rained and was colder. This morning the temperature had dipped down to around 32-34 F.

I find I'm reluctant to go out and take pictures right now, though I'm optimistic I'll get used to it.

The last few weeks have involved a lot of trips back and forth from the main part of town to the house. We're up a hill, which I can only get part of the way up by bike.

Luckily we're very near a bus line and I've made a brilliant investment in a monthly bus pas so I can come and go with backpack loads of groceries and household goods. Devin and Merlin also have bus passes - granted because we live outside of a certain distance from school, so every morning we trek down the hill and stand in the dark to await our bus. I've been going just because Merlin and I like to have the conversation time while Devin pretends to be unrelated.

In the first week at the house our wait at the bus stop took place just as the sun was rising and the sky was light. Now it's quite dark and there's only the faintest pale patch of sky to the east. It's amazing how quickly the days are getting shorter.

According to the Sunrise Sunset Calendar, we're already experiencing days 45 minutes shorter than you folks in Davis and our sunrise is about 30 minutes later than yours. One of those fact I neglected to research when we were in California is that Göttingen is actually as far north as Calgary, Canada!

I have to say, philosophically, now that we're brushing up against the halfway point between the north pole and the equator, that I'm slightly biased in favor of warm weather. I think I'll make good friends with the radiators this winter.

I just wonder what the good of a sundial is when there's not enough sun to be found!

----
The photo is of a sundial on Marienkirche (St. Mary's Church), right near the edge of old Göttingen. We've had breakfast at a bakery right across the street a number of times, sitting at the counter at the window. Now, it's almost too dark to see the church and this morning we found our images reflected back by the bakery window. And don't be fooled by the date on the sundial, the church was actually built sometime around 1318.

I need my DSL!

2011-10-01T21:58:00.004+08:00

Alright, it's my official opinion that it's taking far too long to get the basics - I'm not cross about it but I have reached the point where I'm more than ready to have a refrigerator, stove, oven, and, gosh darn it, internet! We've got access to all those things (though our staked-out-section of the fridge is mighty small) at Dan's office, but that just means that we're camping out at night at the house and camping out during the daytime in the communal kitchen of the institute.

I am way behind on so many very nice email messages - and I don't like that! Do know that I'm thinking of you all but everything's kind of spare and we're still dealing with the basics. At least we have a toaster and the butter doesn't get totally melty out of the refrigerator... and I've found peanut butter, which is of primary importance. Have peanut butter, will carry on!

Tomorrow, just to balance it all out, Devin, Merlin and I are going on a field trip. To where? I don't actually know but a few of the postdocs here decided to have a day trip and just 'cause we can, we've decided to join them. We've got some sort of package that you can get on weekends with a really cheap "family" ticket on the train... I'll share details with you when we get back as well as try to get caught up on email and the posts I've been meaning to write about Göttingen.

As an aside, there seems to be a ladybug party (they're flying up and sometimes in by the dozens) outside the window as we experience the supposedly last beautiful days of early autumn. It's been gorgeously sunny and warm and will most likely turn cold next week.

Our love to you all!

small details

2011-09-24T16:02:00.000+08:00

If you've known me for any length of time, you've probably noticed I'm extremely detail oriented. This can be a good thing - as in the case of my finding sometime employment as a copy editor. It can also can be somewhat maddening, as in the case of the recent move when I kept track of everything down to the stray screws at the bottom of the junk drawer

It still bugs me that I found, then lost again, the last screw to the closet door mechanism in Merlin's bedroom.

Sometimes, being focused on details, the bigger picture eludes me; but usually I have the benefit of being made happy by very small things*. I couldn't ask for a greater gift than to be able to notice really interesting details, to find small sensory treasures all over the place.

This town, having been in existence in some form since at least 1150, is full of rich detail. Over the centuries things have disappeared, been covered over, replaced, restored, created anew. I'm finding and appreciating something whenever I can. Lucky you, you get to notice them too, sometimes with description, sometimes just in photographs.

Enjoy!

---
* Ooo, I think I like this phrase in its Winnie-the-Pooh-esqueness: "Made Happy by Very Small Things," kind of like a "Bear of Very Little Brain."

House, found.

2011-09-18T14:08:00.000+08:00

I'm in a rush (when am I not, lately?) - as we're vacating the guesthouse in two hours and there's still some things left to deal with (ah, the food problem, again).

We found a house in the nick of time - it's still got some work to be done, and it's a slightly strange place but it'll do and it's got some great features. We're moving in while the upstairs floor is being replaced, the bathroom being re-done and the kitchen getting a new stove, oven, and refrigerator. Nobody can decide how the very oddly sized rooms should be divided, but for now it doesn't matter since we're sleeping in the living room.

Here are pictures from the realtor's website. We've got no internet or telephone there so I don't know when I'll be online next, but hopefully it'll be soon.

meh

2011-09-13T16:40:00.002+08:00

It's been a bit of a bumpy week. The house search has been a challenge. I've looked at 5 places. All of them but one are on the high end of our budget (actually, they've claimed territory outside our budget, but what to do?). The one that was more decently priced turned out to only have two bedrooms in the house but included two bedrooms and a distant bathroom on the ground-floor, connected by a common-use stairway. Really, they were just separate rooms waiting to be rented out to students, it seemed.

It's ironic, seeing all these beautiful, beautiful houses and finding so few of them available.

The one I've liked best was close to Devin and Merlin's school, had ample room for guests, a yard, a really nice landlord who is retrofitting it with new bathroom fixtures, lights, and a new kitchen, and was, unsurprisingly, too expensive. The next option is the one I'm trying for now - but I've got to work out details about whether or not we can move into the downstairs while the upstairs floor is being replaced and bathroom repaired.

Do you see the trend? It seems landlords wait until they have a renter before they make repairs - or they put it on the market while the previous tenant is still current and who knows when they'll be moving out... or they list the number of rooms and sometimes count the bathrooms in the total so that you have to see it to find out it really only has two bedrooms.

Adding to this was the large amount of bank paperwork that came bearing PINs, none of which seemed to work, colds caught by the kids, a tick bite on yours truly, residency paperwork hitting the glitch of my passport expiring next year...

and I've concluded that the honeymoon is over and we're back to reality.

We're all looking forward to finding some normalcy so that we at least feel like we have a home base in which we can weather all storms, even when they're as small as a tick.

****

off topic and long shot: Is anyone looking for new cell phone service? I'm about to cancel my existing account and pay $600 for breaking our contract for 3 lines. If you're interested in adopting a T-mobile line, please let me know...

oh, and I'm behind in answering email - in case you hadn't noticed...

Walk in the Wald*

2011-09-09T16:55:00.000+08:00

This week and a half has been crammed with errands and tasks. Busy, for sure, but not stressfully so. Yesterday was the first morning my legs weren't stiff from all the walking I've been doing - daily 3 to 5 miles as I cross town and head back again, from Devin and Merlin's school to Dan's office, to various shops and then back to the guesthouse. Taxis are much more prevalent than in most US cities, but they're expensive and I haven't figured out the bus system. Anyway, the walking doesn't hurt at all and it lets me see all sorts of really neat things.

On Sunday we enjoyed ourselves by doing more walking, of course! Dan's boss invited us to his house for a simple lunch (amazing rolls, cheeses) and a walk in the woods behind his house. Some of the area is protected (there's a deer park) while in some places the paths pass next to farms and fields. It was a great way to spend what would be the last mostly-sunny day for a while.

Here's the goofy gang at the beginning of the walk.

We were heading up and in.

Along the way there were stone markers, including a few with dates. These woods are actually quite young, having been planted sometime around 1904.

The area around Göttingen** is pastoral, and so green right now. Coming straight out of the Central Valley heat, we feel like we've been dropped into the late November rainy season. (Here I recommend clicking on the photos if they interest you. They'll open up in their own window, large enough to actually see).

I admit, I'm a straggler, always at the tail end of the group, dawdling along looking at something (very often a plant, but I'm open to anything, really). That means a lot of my pictures show the rear of the group and how far I've lagged behind...

and then they have to wait for me to catch up

<==It's nice that Merlin lags along with me, though of course the speed-walkers are good humored.

Here are the scholars, deep in conversation: ==>

Among the discoveries:

The Banana Slug's German cousin, the Orange-Wedge Slug***

Unintelligible Teutonic Runes

and, The Slightly Sad Cyclops

All in all, we had a great time!

---
* You didn't know you were coming along for German lessons, did you? Wald means forest or woods and it's pronounced "valt."

** I have to say I am so happy to have discovered my umlaut.

*** not it's real name

First Blog Post and First Week of School!!!

2011-09-08T22:20:00.002+08:00

Hi everybody! This is my first blog post and first week of school . Sadly I don't have any pictures of the school but I do have words! So far every class I have: geography, music, math, religion, German, politics, and clarinet is in German, well except for English which is in English. My classmates speak very little English so it's kinda hard to communicate! We have lunch at 1:05 which is really late for me. At the cafeteria they at least have a kitchen to cook the food, but of course the food isn't that great. On the first day we had a pork dish with this bread crumb topping, some disgusting weird green vegtables and potatos. To drink was this really watered down fruit juice. On most days we're supposed to get out at 3:20 but this week almost all the teachers during the last period are gone and so we get out at 1:05. I have made a few friends and I am already am invited to someone's birthday party, hopefully my luck will keep up and I'll make as many friends as I did in California! The classes are impossible to understand and I have a really hard with the classes but luckily I'll have German classes so it'll be easier. I don't really have that much to say so I'm sorry if this post is short! Bye!

wait... are we back in Davis?

2011-09-06T14:45:00.000+08:00

It seems like on any given drizzly morning in Davis one could step out as we did on Saturday to find a bike race going down the street.
...

Last week was all about getting basics set up (a bank account, residency established, at least one functioning cell phone, school registration, etc.). This week there are more bureaucratic undertakings but most importantly, a house search. We have a little less than two weeks to find something in a market that's naturally tight but made worse by a larger than normal incoming college freshman class. Last year they switched from 13 to 12 years of schooling so that the high schools graduated two classes at once and now they're coming to college.

I'll be off looking at two places today and hope to find something quickly. Can't wait for some degree of regularity.

There'll be a post soon with pictures of our walk in the woods and maybe even a first-day-of-school post if I can get Merlin to stop watching Spongebob Schwammkopf for a little. She's living her tv-deprived childhood dream!

Where we've landed.

2011-09-03T13:16:00.000+08:00

Hello everyone! Guten Tag!

It's been a bit of a whirlwind week, but in a very nice way - so that it's not been stressful, just busy.

We're staying at a guesthouse near the city center which is convenient to Dan's office and Devin and Merlin's school. We've been walking everywhere, sometimes more than once, and the weather has been cool but still comfortable. I've not really been taking pictures, but that will come soon.

Dan flew from Beijing and Devin, Merlin and I left from San Francisco, meeting at the Frankfurt airport, where we bought train tickets and stopped for a bite to eat. Dan pulled two small wine glasses from his bag (how did he do that?) and bought a small bottle of champagne to toast the occasion of this new adventure. Talk about romantic!

Here we are at the Frankfurt train station.

If I'd done my photojournalist duty I'd have taken pictures of the train, too - very clean and nice... but maybe I can be forgiven for my combination of travel-stupor and the fact that our hands were already full with far too much stuff.

Here's what our two bedroom guesthouse apartment looks like (and the view outside).

Photos of this lovely town will follow soon!

57 boxes later

2011-08-10T12:12:00.001+08:00

A step in the right direction, from this

to this

It was lifted and rolled right out so quickly into the truck - the house felt weird after that. Now we're down to all that's left to put in the garage sale, the storage unit, and carry by suitcase to Germany.

Joking: "Ha, there's no going back now!"

The countdown begins. 20 days.

Save Caspian and Quincy!

2011-07-24T01:11:00.000+08:00

Two years ago we got Quincy at the pound and last year we found Caspian in the hope that the two could become good friends. It didn't turn out as well as we'd hoped and now that we're moving to Germany, we need to find two separate homes for them.

If you can adopt either of these cute guys, they, and we, would be so grateful. We'd intended to give them a permanent home but hadn't figured another international move into the picture.

They're phenomenally cute and friendly as all get out.

Here's Quincy! He has a hilarious full name, which is actually secret, but if you adopt him we'll let you in on it (though of course you're free to change it if you so desire)...

And then this is Caspian. He's not quite full grown - or at least he's still a bit smaller than Quincy, though with all his hair he can fool you.

We really have enjoyed these little guys and are so sad that we can't keep them and take them with us, however the fact that we won't have housing when we get to Germany (we'll be staying in a guesthouse until we find a place) makes this impossible.

The Yolo County Animal Shelter no longer adopts guinea pigs out to families and so there's no guarantee that they'd survive a stay there.

Can you help?

Delayed Details

2011-07-24T00:46:00.000+08:00

Were it not for the fact that I'm neck deep in sorted/unsorted piles of stuff, wrapped up in moving estimates and flight schedules, and meanwhile still managing to make semi-regular meals and keeping appointments, I'd have written a very nice blog post about the same goings-on (except for the meals and appointments, of course).

Instead I've had no left over energy to compose anything worthwhile here. That'll have to come later as there are still too many things to be done

The basics? We're leaving next month for two or more years in Germany.

There are many adventures to come as we head toward the opposite Opposite Shore - but for now everything has to revolve around the practical. Hence the next post to come...

no need for a jump-start

2011-05-28T08:31:00.000+08:00

This post is the electronic equivalent of stepping into the dark garage and pulling the lightbulb chain. There's the dusty, dropcloth-covered beater just waiting for some attention and TLC.

Maybe after a few years of waiting, the ignition will turn on the first try. Meanwhile, there's need of some updating...

It looks like we're going to move to another yet another shore (though significantly inland) sometime in late summer.

Hold on to your hats, it'll be a wild ride!

Welcome to Our House

2009-02-01T23:23:00.011+08:00

After a long search, we've got a home in Davis!

Welcome!

The Living Room

Below: Looking into the living room from the dining room.

Below: Looking into the dining room from the living room.

View of the walkway from the dining room.

The dining room has a door to the deck and backyard.

Below: The backyard.

Below: The girls' room.

Our room.

Hallway

Grandpa's room.

Grandpa's bathroom.

The "moving of the stuff" commences Tuesday.

Whirlwind

2009-01-14T07:51:00.002+08:00

It seemed like I'd gotten back to a good posting volume in December, but then lost it right around New Year. That would be because right around the last few days of December we made a decision to return to CA.

Of course Dan is still working here, but Devin, Merlin & I are returning so that we can help out my dad who is recovering from a second back surgery. We'll be moving in together when we get back to Davis.

I'm looking for a house and trying to get all this accomplished as smoothly as possible, so I may not post very often in the meantime. In fact I don't know what that means for the fate of the blog, though technically, since we're going back, it'll be the Opposite Shore of the one we're on currently.... I don't know.

I do have a lot of pictures and things I'd been planning to post, so I may just drag them out a bit longer even though we're returning in a week.

Welcome to the whirlwind!

Beijing Nights

2009-01-13T15:56:00.000+08:00

A while back I meant to write a post about the night life on our street. It's a bustling place as soon as the lights go on and people come out of doors in search of a cheap and easy meal. All up and down the street vendors wheel their carts and three-wheeled bikes along the curb and open up shop, patching in to the electrical system to light their incandescent bulbs. Even as the weather gets chillier, they're still out there. There are big barrel ovens with baking sweet potatoes and small coal stoves heat big woks full of something that looks like black stones in which chestnuts are roasted. Other vendors have glass-faced shelf-boxes in which "kabobs" of fruit are laid, having been drizzled or dipped in a sugar syrup so they're gleaming and colorful.

The big draw are the carts that open up into trays of bubbling soup. Vegetables and meats are strung on kabob sticks and then customers come and choose what they want to set into the boiling, spicy soup. When they're cooked, you just pull it out and eat it.

We tried it but it was spicier than the girls liked, so it's not something we've done since, though we have gone out just to walk through the crowd and get a festive feeling.

Devin's paintings

2008-12-31T12:55:00.000+08:00

Portraits by Merlin

2008-12-26T15:01:00.002+08:00

recent cultural activities

2008-12-23T14:09:00.002+08:00

We periodically join Dan's students when they have cultural activities. Some of the things we've done in the last month included hearing a demonstration of guzheng music by one of CUN's students in the music department. She shared a little about the history of the guzheng as well as different styles that have evolved over the centuries. Interestingly, the pitch to which the strings are tuned, being easily changed by moving the bridge of each string, has changed over time - modern songs use a different scale altogether. Here is a link to a free, downloadable guzheng song (track 5 of the ones listed) as blogger doesn't have an easy way to upload music into a blog post.

We also learned how to carve stone seals. After sanding a piece of soapstone so it was level, we then used a maobi, or brush pen, and ink, to draw a reverse image of what we wanted our stamp to look like. Then we used a chisel to carve away the empty space around our designs.

south does not equal warmer

2008-12-22T12:44:00.004+08:00

Ok, the title is a lie, Hangzhou IS warmer than Beijing, but there is a caveat.

When we left for the airport at five yesterday morning there was a small layer of snow alongside the road outside the city, and Devin happened to see a temperature reading of 10 degrees F (-12 C). Arriving in Hangzhou, it was a balmy 42F and we all felt it was great, unzipping our jackets and feeling quite comfortable.

What makes the south feel so cold though is that we're below the dividing line between heated and unheated houses. The Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) is the line that divides northern and southern China and in southern China houses don't come equipped with heat. People just take it for granted here, and there's some subtle pressure to just get used to it and wear more clothes rather than turn on the heater. In spite of the fact that today's temperature is hovering around freezing (lower if you consider windchill), and the windows leak, I'm reluctant to turn on the AC/heater unit in the living room. No one in the family uses one - typically we just wear a half dozen layers, tolerate cold hands, drink hot tea and generally look like overstuffed dolls, but when we're left to our own this evening I'll probably turn it on.

When we lived here, in 2002, the interior of the house received no sunlight because we were on the first floor, overshadowed by another building to our south. We spent time outside every sunny day before going back into the cold house.

We'd all gotten used to the heated house in Beijing, and the warm sunlight that pours through our south balcony. I'm going to have to prod myself to get things done - the cold makes me want to just sit under a blanket all day.

****

I was surprised that exactly six months had passed since we were last here. We flew from CA on summer solstice and returned to Hangzhou on winter solstice. In the last six months I realize I've gotten used to life in Beijing (not just the heater... ok, yes, the heater!). Moving around, travelling, is not something I like all that much. Trying to settle in somewhere new is actually unsettling - our usual things that we do that make it feel like we have a home are missing, our usual life is mixed up and honestly I think I've forgotten Hangzhou dialect completely and I keep getting mixed up in communication. I recall that we felt like this in Beijing when we first arrived, comparing it to Hangzhou, findng it lacking, but here we are doing it again, reversed.

I'm an average, typical person, in spite of what it looks like with all this travel and living abroad. I like to have my regular life, some continuity, a predictable home that's set up the way I've chosen, making my own decisions about how things are ordered. Maybe it sounds like complaint, but I think it's just that I know what makes me happiest.

****

On the flip side, Dan's family is great. I've always gotten along really well with them. I have a strangely privileged position, being a foreigner (and a kind of useless one at that) - I can't really cook the way everyone else can (and cooking under pressure, for a group of 12 is not my forte) so I'm not expected to make big dinners for everyone to come over and enjoy. Plus my inadequate Chinese makes it so that not much is really expected of me (it would be pointless to have me try to go pay Dan's parent's phone bill or take them to a doctor's appointment or do the grocery shopping or other such errand - all things I could easily accomplish in the US).

I'll be posting some pics from the last few weeks as soon as my fingers thaw a little. :-)

heading south for the winter

2008-12-19T07:50:00.001+08:00

We're taking off on Sunday to go visit Dan's family in Hangzhou (back where we started in June). We'll be there until after Chinese New Year (or Spring Festival, as it's called) which is happening in early February. Dan will head out of town for some lectures and then be in Beijing for part of the time, then join us later for the holiday.

So, in the midst of packing and getting the house ready to "close down" while we're gone, I may not post again until we get settled in Hangzhou.

some things we've learned

2008-12-16T15:53:00.001+08:00

The trees do eventually lose their leaves, but not until late November. The only time you can find a good pile to go crunching through is in the early morning before they've been swept up and stuffed into plastic trash bags. Poplar leaves are good and crunchy.

In the winter the bushes wear coats. This is true not only on campus, but along the big boulevards, too.

Pizza can be successfully made in a toaster oven with regular bread dough and imported spaghetti sauce and Land O'Lakes cheese (they're in the international foods section of the big grocery store).

Oh, and a picture I'd saved from last summer, so you can compare a burning California with every day Asia (see the earlier post for the satellite pic of Beijing, and see here for an article on the Brown Cloud that Hangs Over Asia, as we've started calling it, in capital letters because that must be its proper name).

Nashville, Tennessee

2008-12-15T13:05:00.000+08:00

Some pictures from Nashville, where I stayed for almost a week.

Victoria, British Columbia

2008-12-14T15:13:00.000+08:00

My first conference in November was on Victoria Island, British Columbia, Canada. These are pictures I took while walking around near the University of Victoria.

I'll also post some photos from Nashville, Tennessee, and I took a lot of landscape photos when I was with my students in Qinghai in mid October.

the benefits of smog

2008-12-12T13:31:00.000+08:00

It makes for a pretty sunrise.

but I guess the benefit is outweighed by this (as seen from above).

homelife

2008-12-10T20:13:00.000+08:00

new art exhibit

2008-12-09T12:50:00.000+08:00

Our art tutor, Shawn, is having his work exhibited in Dan's program gallery. His paintings are colorful and when you walk in to the hallway it's really quite arresting. He has some of his older stuff (from when he was in high school) up on display too- these are the very impressionistic gouache landscapes. The oil paintings are ones that he did during his undergrad years. Now he's a graduate student, though I haven't really figured out what his program is. He's in the art department and about the closest I could get was something like physiology - basically he studies body structure, but in relation to art, not health sciences. He's spent the last few weeks in his studio with a lot of bones, learning how to draw their structure and then applying that to his paintings of people.

This is him, on the left, with Dan and several of the program's students and tutors, at the opening ceremony for the exhibit, which was Shawn's first.

the works in progress

2008-12-08T13:10:00.000+08:00

Writers At Work

paintings, lately

2008-12-07T20:12:00.000+08:00

Oh dear, these are from October! I totally forgot to publish this post. Now I have to catch up with all the paintings we worked on in November.... I'll be back later with those.

cookies, toaster-oven style

2008-12-06T13:04:00.000+08:00

That day we were into baking cookies and such. Julie our friend, Devin, and I baked really yummy peanut butter cooties erm cookies. Guess what?! We were actually able to find Amazing Skippy Peanut butter!!! Just kidding about the Amazing, but we did find the peanut butter.

It was Julie's LUCKY DAY. Ye know why? Because she was able to bake (in a toaster oven) her first batch of cookies EVER!!!!! Isn't she cute? She's wearing our teddy bear apron while Devin and I wore our aprons from our Aunt Jessie.

Here we are smiling and happy, ready to eats tons of sugar while sneaking pieces of dough during the time that my mom was in the kitchen. Heehee ;0) smiley face winking yay!
Here are the good looking crunchy with a slightly golden touch to the cookies. It took aprox. 5-10 min to bake. My specialty, the slightly black ones (really I actually DO like the slightly over cooked ones).

Delicious, perfectly sweet, beautiful golden-brown, warm, great when dipped in refrigerated milk, and has the perfect touch of flavor. Yummmmmmm!!!!!! ^-^ :-) @.@ &.& *-* :P :D (these are all my creative invention of smiley faces)

A great end to a great month!

2008-12-04T13:33:00.004+08:00

We won!

Merlin
10,156 words in 30 days
****

Devin
80,743 words in 30 days
****

Wendy
103,557 words in 30 days
****

We got up early and wrote, we raced home from Chinese class and wrote, and we wrote instead of watching movies. Merlin let Devin write when her word count was behind and Devin let me use the computer when mine was. I went easy on all the other homework and we can now say we've written novels.

Tia asked if they'd be available any time soon and honestly, you wouldn't want to read them at this point. They're incredibly rough and probably too wordy (we were aiming for quantity here) and though Merlin won two times over (she finished her word count goal AND finished her story), Devin and I didn't actually finish the stories. We're going to work on that part-time this month and hope to finish filling in the general plots and then we'll do some major editing. Besides, I still need a title. Neither of us knows if we'll do anything with them (Merlin's already recognized that her story too closely resembles fan fiction to be able to do anything with it besides cherish it as her first NaNoWriMo Novel. Her novel's style is based on a book she really likes, though the characters are all her own).

Now, we can't imagine November without all the fun and despair. Dan was lucky he missed half the month (his trip to North America), that way he only had to put up with the insanity for two and a half weeks.

All in all, it was a success.

Big update

2008-11-09T15:12:00.005+08:00

We're writing like mad over here, simply like mad. And it's only a slight exaggeration to say that we're subsisting over the weekend on pastries (ok, I give in, I'll cook dinner!). I haven't been this willing to get up early (4:30) in the morning in ages, Devin begs me to get her up at 5:15, and Merlin writes when she gets up at 6:30.

The stats so far:

Merlin:6,599 words as of this afternoon, or 94% of her word goal which may be revised soon to reflect her true capability. Her synopsis:

The Miraculous Journey Beyond, a Summary: A girl named Feena dreams of living a life in the wild but she is kept in the castle as a princess. One night, she runs away from her province and ends up with a wolf pack. As she journeys toward the Firelands she must defeat Minya, the evil king of the Firelands. But will she and the pack members defeat him and his warriors?

Devin: 22,221 words as of this afternoon. She's at 55.5% of her new goal of 40,000. She intends to actually write 60,000 I think. Her synopsis:

Season of the Dragons, a Summary:

Freyja an orphan girl of age fifteen is trying to protect the pendant that her mother had given her only a year before her family was destroyed by the Dragons of Koraith, but some how her necklace is stolen and she sets off on a long journey to get back her only memory and link to her mother. Some how Freyja was gifted with the power of Dream Sighting and the band she is traveling with soon realizes that and agrees to head off to Koraith the land of the South. But before she is allowed to plan out her revenge she has to receive the Six Elemental Elixers from a few special beings of directions. And there is more trouble than Freyja can ever imagine. Will she get back her pendant or will someone else keep her essence imprisoned?

Wendy: 29,373 words as of this afternoon. This is 58% of the the 50K goal everyone strives for, but I'm actually working for somewhere between 60-90,000, which means I'm 48.9 to 32% of the way there. My synopsis:

Untitled at This Point, a Summary:
Survivor of a ritual sacrifice which has left her mute, a young captive in the walled city of Tavall discovers her connection to a deep source of power that promises an end to a decades-long drought, but which shakes the foundation of the only home she has ever known.

Meanwhile, Dan is heading for Nashville, Tennessee for a work conference and a pair of cowboy boots. When he returns we'll be able to post some of the photos he took during his students' field trip to Qinghai. Should be good, as usual! :-)

Last minute preparations

2008-10-31T18:34:00.005+08:00

NaNo checklist:

1. A supply of snacks stocked. Check.
2. Rewards for reaching word count goals purchased and stashed. Check.
3. Calendars with word count time lines mapped out. Check.
4. Character outlines, world/culture building notes, plot structure, languages, religious practices, maps worked out and ready to use. Check. (well, Devin and Merlin each get a check, anyway).
5. Good writing music transferred to the mp3 player. Check.
6. Computer repaired (the giant dust bunny was evicted). Check.
7. (Pre-)NaNo cold caught and out of the way so we don't have to deal with it in November. Check.
8. External hard-drive ready for backups. Check.
9. Time zones correctly set on the NaNo site so we can write according to our local time rather than always keeping an eye on Oakland time. Check.
10. Stories summarized for easy explanation. Check.
11. A teaser to get you to come back and check for our next NaNo related post. Check.

And no, we're not staying up until midnight just to get a head start. We'll be at it bright and early tomorrow morning, though. The housework will have to wait.

last of the October updates

2008-10-31T13:11:00.006+08:00

Devin and Merlin have a few things they've been meaning to post, delayed for no good reason other than that it takes some coordination to get kids, computer, and digital photos in the same place at the same time with a corresponding interest on the said kids' parts to actually sit down and write something. So, I'm not sure if we'll get any other posts up today, but hopefully we can wrap up posts of October's activities in the next few days.

In the meantime, I'll just throw on a few random pictures, just for fun and general audience edification.

Here's Merlin, working on some Chinese calligraphy, with Dan in the background. This was taken during Dan's students' cultural activity. In the future we may join them for papercutting, stone stamp carving and other language/art activities.We're welcoming Julie (obviously her English name, as most of you wouldn't be able to pronounce her Chinese name) as our new Chinese language instructor. She's a grad student at CUN, is also a tutor for Dan's students, and has become the best thing about living in Beijing. She's tons of fun and really good at getting us all to speak Chinese (her English is good too, so she can provide translation when we're stuck on a word). You'll be seeing her picture more often because we like to go on field trips with her. This semester's students have instituted a new tradition every time we eat out together: ku gua, or bitter melon, is the one dish that HAS to show up on the table, regardless of what kind of ethnic cuisine we're focusing on. Ku gua lives up to its name - it's phenomenally bitter, but oddly satisfying. A little bit goes a long way.
Sometimes there are fantastic things here, like a clop clopping coming up behind you, through the traffic,
and a new-found gustatory treasure: Jian bing - roughly a Chinese crepe, though it's a very wild cousin to the familiar French style. Here's one version, but just watch the video and you'll get a good idea of what's involved: batter, egg, cilantro, green onion, a jiang (a sauce, probably made of fermented soybeans and salt and other things, like a chunky miso), za cai (a salted/pickled vegetable), lettuce, a crispy fried sheet of something (tofu maybe, as per the website linked to above, though it looks like some vendors make it with youtiao, a type of fried dough/cruller thing), and then it's all wrapped up and delivered hot. I think this is the first time I've eaten a food created with a putty knife.

(hmm, maybe the video doesn't work? I'll keep trying...)

excuses, excuses!

2008-10-27T15:39:00.004+08:00

Well, I have excuses, though not really very good ones...

A whole bunch of folks (TwilightLover, ClayJar & Creaturespirit) have left comments lately and I've hardly replied, I'm about two and half weeks (or more) behind in answering email (Tuyu, Sensei, Ruth, Tia)...

The first excuse is that my poor irreplaceable computer was having cooling fan trouble (you would too if you'd sucked that much dust up your nose!) and was badly in need of help. Thankfully, help was granted yesterday and its running a lot cooler now and I don't have to cringe when I turn the thing on, expecting flames to come blasting out.

The second excuse is that NaNoWriMo has had us all enthralled and our rationed online time has been pretty nearly consumed by that. We've been good, though, and haven't wasted our time on the forums (for the most part), though it was noted that there's an appropriately named thread on the forums called "NaNoWriMo ate my soul" - with help for those folks whose lives have been subsumed by novel plots and word count goals. Mostly we've just been planning and plotting and coming up with character sketches and maps of lands where wild adventures are going to occur come November. Wish me luck with keeping in touch in November, too...

The third excuse is simply a reason to ask for forgiveness from everyone - I go through phases where my introvert tendencies run strong and I go into a strange hibernation mode... with nary an email peep or a phone call from me. It doesn't mean I've forgotten you or am unhappy or anything other than overly caught in my own mind, assuming everyone knows that I'm thinking of them.

So, if you're expecting a reply, please keep expecting because eventually, knowing that you're expecting something will cause me to feel the pressure and I'll snap out it and send you a note or post something interesting up here.

But truly, I am thinking of you all!

Scenes from the antique market

2008-10-24T19:49:00.000+08:00

good company... and the food was pretty good too

2008-10-23T11:41:00.000+08:00

Dan's oldest sister came to visit for a week this month. Dan was travelling and so we had her all to ourselves. We just mostly hung out, did our studies and projects and enjoyed her phenomenal cooking. That week also went a long way toward lessening the 'American Bubble' problem as Da GuMa (as the kids refer to her) doesn't speak English. I saw a big improvement in everyone's ease of conversation, the general fluency, even if our vocabularies are still lacking.

We got to enjoy great dishes like bai jiao and doufu gan - I haven't any idea what bai jiao is in English, the dictionary says it's "wild rice shoots" but that doesn't make sense, plus it's a large piece of plant compared to what I'd expect a rice shoot to look like. Doufu gan is tofu, pressed and seasoned.

More tofu, this time little tofu-puffs with bok choy (bai cai or qing cai in Mandarin).
Yummy soups, with dong gua (winter melon) or daikon radish, tomatoes, sometimes meatballs...
...and just a generally fabulous spread. I tend to cook extremely simply - the most you'll ever get out of me is probably 4 dishes since I don't multitask well in the kitchen (I can only oversee one cooking thing at a time unless things are supposed to be burnt).
We were all reluctant to let her return to Hangzhou. Perhaps we'll be able to visit all the family over the Chinese New Year holiday next year.

Last of the Summer T-shirts

2008-10-18T11:20:00.001+08:00

Seen on T-shirts, before the weather turned cooler and everyone put on jackets:

Stupid

I'd trade my boyfriend for a Miller

A Bathing Ape

flip flop like a tot

c'est un idiot

Anti-riot and Explore the Truth

passion... keep a long time music

Pull a Stranger as Leg

Beauty 'tis melody

shave your style

twisty table jeans

it lives my own way

Back Sky Clear

Ere Sports

Fashion Liberty Spout

Don't Lose Double Dazzle

Hang Thinking

Smart Young Fashion

Cheerful Trio: Uno Dos Tres: Fly me to the Heaven

A88 Spirit A Devaitation

Juicy American Princess

You've Been Very Naughty, Go Straight to My Room

No Crying

Central Wonderland

Inspire Truth

person with a cool head

Surfer Dreams is Wet

Salt Urea

Enjoy my Game

Bug is Over

We Will Find Something

Sexy Diamond Taipei Up the Stakes

Feed the Smiling Cat

Fashion and Yishion

Sorry if I look Interested I'm Not

Re Lax Get Juicy

Rear Your Fair

Don't Touch Head

Fly Eagle

Kingston Pretty

Spark Yite Girl

Stone Hot Pot

Ollywood, I'm Gonna Hollywood

High Speed Money

Drink. Barn Life.

Feel 101 to be

I am cat person

Mare who?

Movie ready then silver

Groove Food

******
posted by all of us

Yay! A violin!

2008-10-17T09:49:00.010+08:00

Yay! I just got my new violin (and hi Tanya - my violin teacher in Davis). I've been really hoping to get a violin for I don't know how long. My dad had been so busy (and my mom didn't know where to get one), but we finally did it!

So when we bought a violin in China it wasn't like we just went to one ginormous music store, we actually went to many tiny stores about the size of half of Davis' Baskin Robbins. We went to a bunch of stores and they were jam-packed with instruments. Down at the bottom is a gourd flute (something they have in China) and up at the top is something that might be a Chinese zither.

Right here I'm learning how to put in fine tuners and how to restring the A string. This is the shop owner he actually gives lessons and taught me a few things for free!

My mom and sister are watching also, there's my mom, with my bow.

While I was watching the shop owner put in fine-tuners, my sister was with the shop owner's friend learning how to play an erhu, a traditional Chinese stringed instrument.
Here he is playing it for Merlin and talking at the same time or looking somewhere else.
We are just about ready to leave, only waiting for the extra strings and a few touches of the new violin that only cost half as much as it would've in America.
*********
By Devin

Autumn

2008-10-08T14:24:00.008+08:00

Finally! Autumn at last! These last few days we've been waiting for autumn and it hasn't been here because autumn starts early um I mean we haven't see the actual happenings of autumn until today, so what I mean is that it doesn't give the trees a chance to start mmmm... lets say becoming pretty? No not that, yes that's it! Leaves falling to the ground and begging to be picked up because they're soo colourful. I think I got it right! It seems like it's only the spiky leafed trees, the yellow err... golden colored ones with a hint of red and orange.

It's a nice day actually. The sky matches the leaves, a nice baby blue with golden leaves against it I like it! Oh yeah just to add a nice touch a grey bluish building (just the tip anyways) in the back left corner, I think it's our apartment from the outside.

Merlin holding a nice leaf infront of the the new camera, a nice touch with the background, some dappled cement (the sunlight that shone through the bush in the back).
Just got home, thought it be nice to take this picture of a messy but... stylish or um... fake version of a you know one of those cheesy pictures that goes on the front of a journal.
Merlin just insists that we walk through the leaves on the corner sidewalks once more, but I mean who can blame her, it's her first experience of Autumn in Beijing, so my mom and I had to agree after a minute of hesitation. Oh! I just wanted to include my final sentence, that this day was a very windy one, as you can see Merlins hair blowing across her face.

*******
by Devin

crazy people

2008-10-08T13:41:00.003+08:00

Today we saw two crazy people. One kept on throwing her arms out and in then she would kind of cough into her elbow and throw her arms out again and then she would shrug. She was laughing her head off. Then she went into the post office.

The other guy kind of looked like one of my dad's students. He was holding an ipod and playing air guitar while kicking and jiggling. He was also singing, though we couldn't tell what language he was singing in.

I don't know what it was about today that made the students crazy.

***********
by Merlin

Our Street

2008-10-03T12:37:00.000+08:00

Sometimes I realize I've gotten used to things which would be considered kind of abnormal back in the U.S.

For example, take the sidewalk on our street. Ok, I admit, I still complain about it so that means I'm not really used to it, but it's just a regular thing here - the fact that both trees and poles take up most of the room on the sidewalk and though it's not apparent in this picture, a majority of pedestrians actually walk in the street. If you are walking with another person, you can't actually walk abreast on our sidewalk, someone always has to be dodging obstacles. Also, be sure to watch out for the two inch bolts sticking out of the sidewalk (they're anchors that used to go with other poles that have since been removed), the missing bricks, or the open manhole.

Oh and the wires, look out for those, too.

I like the honesty of this sign: Caution, pedestrians running for their lives!

And the randomness of signs here. I don't think it has anything to do with the Chinese given here.
Ok, I take it back, I haven't gotten used to it all - I still find it as boggling and humorous as ever.

touristing 1.4

2008-10-02T13:23:00.006+08:00

Welcome to installment four of September's travels, complete with official self-portrait.

Yep, that's where we're headed on this climb up part of the Great Wall. We drove about an hour out of Beijing to find a less crowded section of the wall.

Merlin's ready to climb (and Devin's taken off already)...

For those who need official certification, it's available here

Devin went much higher than Merlin and I did, and got there fast. Merlin and I made it to the tower on the left, and Devin and the other students went 2 or 3 towers beyond the one on the right.
Of all of our sightseeing trips we all liked this visit to Great Wall the best. I stopped climbing every once in a while and leaned out over the wall - amazing, I could smell plants! That smell made my day. I'd forgotten what they smell like - Beijing being what it is, we're so separated from everything that isn't human centered (except the weather, I guess). The air was hazy here, but it still felt good to inhale deeply.

touristing 1.3

2008-09-30T17:15:00.001+08:00

The day we went to all these places I also took the medium format camera. I'm not as productive as Dan and I only shot one roll (if even that much) and since he takes film in when he's amassed a larger amount, I'll have to wait until there's more to develop before I get to see how they turned out.
The story behind this place (or one of the stories anyway) is that the man who had it built worked as a high-ranking government official. Somehow he managed to steal jewels from the palace. He'd build them into the walls of his mansion (and this place is like a small village, it's huge and complex and beyond what we'd consider a mansion). Eventually he amassed so much wealth that he actually had more than the emperor. He didn't give someone the cut they were due, though, and he got ratted out. Before losing his head, he and his family sure lived well.

I kept trying to get a picture of these pedicabs when streams of them would come rolling down the street, but I wasn't fast enough and missed it each time. Here they are parked, though, when they're much easier to catch.
This kind of thing cracks us up. A fake topiary to hide the spotlight...

Another pavilion for the corrupt official. Not bad!

touristing 1.2

2008-09-30T15:01:00.000+08:00

The second place we visited that day was the Temple of Heaven. I liked this much more than the Forbidden City - it actually has trees! The Forbidden City didn't have trees except in one small garden area, because they didn't want there to be opportunities for assassins to hide behind trees. It makes the complex rather blank and scorching when it's hot. The Temple of Heaven, though, has trees all over, and it's quite large. There's a lot to explore. I've heard that in the mornings lots of people are there, doing tai chi and playing instruments, kind of like Zizhuyuan, near us.

touristing 1.1

2008-09-30T09:28:00.001+08:00

Dan's students arrived earlier in the month and they're the nicest bunch of college students - they're fun to hang out with and we've had the chance to accompany them on a few sightseeing trips. These pictures are from a day we spent at The Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, The Temple of Heaven, and one other place whose name none of us could remember, so we just started calling it The Corrupt Official's Mansion (which, in essence, is what it was back in the Qing Dynasty).

Devin carried around the video camera and was quite happy to be the official videographer.

I discovered the extent of foraging in Beijing: some potted pomegranates. They're just turning red, d'you think I'd get in trouble with the Emperor's people if I stole one?
Gotta love what's lost and gained in translation (which reminds me, I have more of these funny things to post later).
I tend to focus on the out-of-place, the misfits and wild-hearts breaking through the concrete. I particularly like plants growing on buildings... they remind of me of who always wins in the end.I'll keep going through the photos we took (it's been a few weeks already, sorry!) and let you see what we've been up to.

What's New

2008-09-29T14:13:00.005+08:00

Here and over on the right you'll see two new graphics related to our latest endeavor: Novel Writing! Merlin, Devin and I have joined NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) with the goal of writing seven-thousand, thirty-five-thousand, and fifty-thousand words, respectively, in the month of November. We'll start on the first and end on the 30th and most likely be insane in between. We've been planning our stories out for the past few weeks, alternating between excitement and slap-ourselves-on-the-forehead, what-have-we-done insecurity. Gulp.

We need all the good wishes we can get - that Merlin will maintain her enthusiasm, that Devin will see a project through to completion, and that I will MAKE time to do this even if it means we eat ramen for 30 straight lunches in a row.

I've also got pictures to post and things to catch up on here - Dan's sister has been visiting, so I haven't been online much this week, but I'll try to put a few posts up in the next few days.

Hey, is anyone nuts enough to join us in this November craziness? (the icons in the sidebar are links to the NaNoWriMo sites)

Recycling posts

2008-09-26T08:15:00.002+08:00

Well, I had the thought that I actually really liked the post I put up the other day and that I could work it into a paper of some sort. I think it's got the start of some important ideas about the relationship between ethnic minorities in China and the Han-centered mentality that talks about unity. So I've decided to pull it from here (it's saved in draft form in case I want to put it back up) so I can work the ideas out in greater detail. Sorry about teasing you all with it for a few days...

Home is where the ART is

2008-09-15T14:27:00.002+08:00

We've been having a great time with one of CUN's recently graduated art students, Cao Shuang. He's about to start grad school, but has had free time to meet with us once a week. It's so nice to have an excuse to draw and paint. The last time I did any drawing at all regularly was when we were living in Hangzhou, and then we just had crayons and watercolors. Now we're learning how to use gouache, which we all like a lot.

He's had us sketch regularly, which is nice practice.

Here are some of the things that are up in our "gallery" at home.

one really long noodle

2008-09-10T09:51:00.000+08:00

(trying out Blogger's video function - let me know what you think, compared to the YouTube versions I've posted before)

black&white

2008-09-09T14:37:00.001+08:00

Just some pictures of us doing regular things...

Zi Zhu Yuan

2008-09-07T21:17:00.010+08:00

We have something really cool in our neighborhood!

About two blocks to the south we have access to the canal that the Emperor used to use as his thoroughfare to the Summer Palace.

Jabeh (Dan's assistant) first introduced it to us in July after a trip to the Beijing Zoo. There's a "Pleasure Boat" from the Zoo to the Summer Palace, which we took; but we got off halfway and walked the few blocks home.
Formerly, when the Imperial Entourage would travel to the Summer Palace it would take something like two weeks (being carried by sedan), but the canal shortened the trip significantly.
Now, there's a park that encompasses the length of the canal and which coalesces right in our neighborhood.
There's a lake with paddle boats, some fishing ponds, lots of twisty walkways through bamboo groves and pavilions all about where people gather to practice traditional Chinese opera songs, play flutes or stringed instruments (erhu), or dance. Hmm... maybe this would cure our bubble problem, if we started hanging out at the park to learn one of these things (I don't see me learning traditional Chinese opera, but maybe the weird little instrument that's a cross between a gourd and a flute would do the trick).

Just within the last year the city made the park admission free, so we should go over there a lot more than we do.

oops I forgot to mention that Zi Zhu Yuan literally translates as Purple Bamboo Park, though I think the variety being referenced is actually called Black Bamboo.

American Bubble

2008-09-07T20:15:00.004+08:00

One of the very real limitations we're faced with is the fact that we exist in a kind of bubble. The girls and I, having only a basic skill in Chinese, speak English almost exclusively with each other and we're with each other constantly. Any ideal I had that we'd be able to improve our Chinese this year has thus far been seriously challenged. Yes, we've got an hour of "class" each day with a CUN student, but in spite of the fact that we're living in China, this is certainly not an immersion experience. We're surrounded by eleven million people, with more than 13,000 of them in a two block radius, but with no activities to be involved in, we're floating on the surface. This situation is to be expected: I'm homeschooling Devin and Merlin, so after Chinese and Tibetan classes in the morning, lunch and cleanup afterward and English-based homeschool lessons in the afternoon, that's about the extent of our day.

Maybe it would have been smarter to enroll the kids in a local school - they'd meet other kids, expand their vocabularies, increase their fluency, be active and not require me to fulfill all their social needs. But I'm cautious about making sure Devin isn't behind for having missed 7th grade in the U.S. and if Devin doesn't go to school here, Merlin has no interest in doing so. In addition, there was the expectation that we'd be able to do more traveling with the kids not enrolled. That may possibly occur in the next two months, which will at least make me feel a little better about missing the opportunity for Devin and Merlin to really jump into a good language environment.

So, we're in a bubble and I'm not sure what to do about it - it's not like I want to just go up to people and say "Hi, we need someone to talk to." Actually that's what a lot of students do when they come across foreigners; start up conversations in hopes of practicing their English. I'm not extroverted enough to want to randomly introduce myself to people solely based on the fact that they speak Chinese and I need practice, nor do I really have free time for that kind of thing. Ideally, I'd prefer to find someone with similar interests or with whom we could be engaged in some sort of activity so that conversation and relation could arise spontaneously, but at this point that's unlikely. The three of us together constitute a bubble that is pretty impermeable. Devin and Merlin haven't found any friends among our apartment building's kids - they're self contained and there are enough of them already that there seems to be no need to include two somewhat shy foreigners who can't really understand what's going on.

I was approached earlier in the week (again) about the possibility of my teaching English - something I've avoided thus far all these years, but with the addition that the prospective student would like to spend his days with our family in order to experience English immersion. I declined, politely. I'm already overstimulated with our two kids bouncing around in the house day and night.

Maybe we'll travel in late September, so the situation isn't permanent - but at that point we'll learn to converse in Tibetan (right now we're just learning the alphabet and spelling system). Hmm... maybe that'll liven things up nicely, though. :-)

forager mode

2008-09-03T18:30:00.000+08:00

One of my very, very most favorite things to do is forage. Usually that means happening upon someone else's post-northwind fallen lemons as I walk the kids to school (no not here in Beijing, I'm talking about Davis), but if I could, I'd spend lots of time also out looking for wild foods. This last year my big food and medicine harvests were chickweed, wild mustard and radish greens, pie cherries, elderberries, rosehips, apples, jujubes, oranges, comfrey, calendula, pomegranates, and mullein. If I had my way, I'd be living somewhere where I could forage a good amount of our food and have that as an excuse to spend my time outside, walking around, talking to plants.

I did notice a pomegranate "bush" a few weeks ago (still blooming, as the seasons seem later here than in Davis), and that reminded me of how little I've actually seen here. There's something that looks suspiciously like lambsquarters, and though I know it's a chenopodium, I'm not sure which one. Anyway, I don't feel like eating anything growing here - there's too much dirt.

We also received a box of hongzao (Chinese red dates, that aren't really dates, but rather jujubes) from a friend of Dan's and I remembered last year's harvest from the nooks and crannies of Village Homes (people there don't know what to do with them and so they fall to the sidewalk and rot) which produced such incredibly good dried hongzao.

I looked back and found that the jujube's were ready in October, but I began harvesting the elderberries, apples, and rosehips right around the first of September. I'll write later about the jujubes.

Here's what I wrote about it last year:

I've been reveling in unemployment. I can do whatever I want so long as we're fed, rested, and the appropriate study has taken place. After that it's free-for-all. Woohoo!

This week, since we got home from all our travels I've been in major forager, stock up for winter, mode.

I've come across elderberries which I've dehydrated, frozen or made into jam.

There were lots of windfall apples to be sliced and dehydrated or made into applesauce.

I also just finished a batch of beef jerky and now I've got more elderberries going.

Another bucket of rosehips are next.

I love the dehydrator I brought back from MD. It was my aunt's old one which she never used and I'm using it all the time.

I also happened upon a tomato plant somebody pulled out of their garden (in this same "green" development mentioned below) and set by the curb - with lots of little cherry tomatoes on it - so I helped myself to a huge bowlful. And we've enjoyed them for the past few days.

I'll just go out every morning before it gets too hot to see what I can find. It's great!

Observations during my foraging journeys: I'm nervous about being caught though in actuality most people are only curious. For the wild edibles most people don't even know what I'm picking and a few have asked. My nervousness comes simply from my desire to go about unwatched. The apples, being windfall over in the nearby housing development are somewhat trickier - they ARE on people's property (even though I'm pretty much only picking up what I can reach from the sidewalk), but I'm still self-conscious about being there. I feel like I could identify with Gypsy people who always get sidelong glances and silent judgments for such behaviour. But I've benefitted from these plants' bounty and I'm not self-conscious enough to give it up so I'll be back at it tomorrow, looking for more apples or maybe hong zao (aka jujube) which is a traditional Chinese food/herb. Unfortunately I missed the sour cherries (those are fabulous but ripen in July). There are some figs but they're way up in the trees.

Maybe there'll be a few pomegranates.

I love, absolutely love foraging for edibles and herbs.

Welcome to Ride Beijing Taxi

2008-09-02T13:27:00.000+08:00

Number one on our list of things we like about living in Beijing is what we've come to call Weird English (aka Chinglish). Weird English shows up in all places, so I've started carrying the digital camera whenever I go out. Devin and Merlin know to watch out for me dropping behind, muttering, "hold on, I've got to get a picture of this."

Weird English is most prevalent on T-shirts. China would be a much more boring place if it weren't for T-shirts. I don't try to take pictures of people and their shirts, so along with the camera I also carry a little notepad and a pencil. I whip that thing out three or four times a day, scribbling logos and jargon as I walk. Some of the slogans are hilarious and some just downright perplexing. We've not yet figured out what to make of "D+GD+DG+G," for example, or "Drak Pop Kraboosh."

As for signs, I usually try to take pictures, but every once in a while I've not had the camera - so a few are also recorded in the notebook. The three most recently were "Fredjuice" on a menu billboard, under which was listed Strawberry, Orange and Apple. "Hotwind Life" was accompanied by an arrow, which if we'd followed it would have allowed us to know the secret meaning, but we were off in another direction and I didn't have a chance to ask Dan to figure out the Chinese version that was with it. Another, more philosophically, asked "Have you tried the new lifestyle?"

It's endless amusement.

Pusan Film Festival Winners

2008-09-01T09:23:00.000+08:00

A few days ago, my friend Pedma Tsedan and I received an email from Pusan International Film Festival and 2008 Asia Cinema Fund based in Seoul, South Korea, notifying us that we won the Script Development Award (with a moderate monetary award.

Pedma Tsedan is the only Tibetan film director in China. He has made quite a few films depicting life in contemporary Tibetan regions. He is mostly known among Tibetan fans and scholars of Tibetan studies.

Six months ago, during a casual conversation over dinner, he asked me if I would be willing to be his producer for a film called “Balloon.” Upon hearing the story of Balloon, I immediately felt it would be my cup of tea, too, because it resonated with my own work and lived experience in eastern Tibet. As an emergent film director, Pedma is not well funded enough. As his producer for the film, I decided to seek funding. Thanks to the World Wide Web, we found Pusan International Film Festival and its 2008 Asia Cinema Fund. We’re at the stage of completing our screenplay/script. Our application survived a stiff competition with other applications from over 200 individuals and film companies throughout Asia.

We hope in the near future we could have a film studio in California, which will make our productions a lot easier. Maybe this is the start!

The vote is in...

2008-08-31T12:30:00.002+08:00

We're two months into our stay in Beijing and we've all concluded pretty much what Dan concluded within the first few months of his arrival: we don't really love Beijing. It's not something easily pin-downable, just the sense of having to slog through everything here. Maybe we can just put it down to the fact that none of us are city folks. I think lots of people (foreigners included) like living in Beijing, but we're not really included in that group.

I've gotten used to being in Hangzhou, I think, where people are a little more laid back, friendlier, less likely to gape. In the first week it was a bit of a shock, how people stare - and it was all the more strange since there are lots of foreigners in this neighborhood due to the university, so it's really not like we're a novelty. I found I adopted a habit of not really looking at people, there was just too much pointedness in people's looks. Blech. Service is pretty unfriendly as well. Ah well, there you have it, life in a big city.

We'll be heading back to Hangzhou for a long weekend in a few weeks, which will be great.

The good thing to come out of this realization, though, is that we've been working to find things we like about being here. Surprisingly we came up with quite a list that, though it doesn't take all the blech out Beijing, at least reminds us that it's not all worth complaining about.

Stay tuned for some of the positives...

The Poor People's Olympic Event

2008-08-24T11:00:00.007+08:00

Even though we might have had a chance to buy tickets to Olympic events (last year, when they went on sale), we never really committed to trying to get tickets to anything. Last week we did walk by the volleyball stadium which is about 4 (big) blocks away - there were lots of people asking if anyone had tickets to sell so we gave up any thought of obtaining some and checking out an event.

Anyway, last Sunday we actually tried to get out for the Women's Marathon but had figured it would be later than it actually was. The noise of 4 helicopters got us out of the house quickly, but it was pretty much done by the time we got there. We hung out a little and cheered for the last place runner, though.

This morning we went out and watched the Men's Marathon as the runners passed by the front gate of the university.

We were early enough to cross the road and stand on the side where the runners were running. Stationed just a bit past the 22 mile mark, we were all surprised that there was such a small number of runners (maybe somewhere around 70 or 80 by the official count but several did not start or did not finish). There was no real "pack" except for the few groups of 5 or 6 who'd go by periodically, so it never seemed like there were that many. I think they all passed in about 15 minutes.

I observed that the crowd was extremely lackluster. We hollered for everybody (sometimes in the runner's own language if Dan happened to know how to say "hi"), and gave an especial cheer to the runners from countries that are home to some of our friends (Mexico, Brasil, Tanzania, Japan, Korea, Israel). We couldn't tell where a lot of the runners were from, but we whistled for them all.

The crowd only perked up when a Chinese runner came by (I think there were only two), though toward the end a few other people started yelling, "Jia You!" to anybody who passed by. I don't think I would've expected anything else, knowing how things work here, but it would've been nice for the crowd to cheer all those hard working athletes on. Ah well, I'm an idealist.

The Kingdom of Really Good Popsicles

2008-08-18T20:22:00.000+08:00

I do believe we've found the popsicle holy-land, here in China. We never knew what was possible, being from the land of something as weird as Otter Pops. Having given up on popsicles in the U.S., other than the ones we made ourselves (coconut/pineapple juice with banana - yum!), we've been converted!

Here's what we've found so far:

Hawthorn - tart and sweet
Cantaloupe/Honeydew (two flavors, two colors, swirled)
Sweet Red Bean (Dan's favorite)
Sweet Mung Bean (surrounded by vanilla ice)
Yogurt (tangy sweet)
Green Apple 'Jello' - as it melts it's actually jello-y
Yogurt with dried pineapple and raisins
Pineapple with icy crunches in the middle
Orange - with orange flavored ice on the outside and 50/50 style orange & cream on the inside
Orange and honey with chunks of orange-y ice and orange zest throughout
Purple taro root - admittedly, not that tasty
Strawberry
Coffee ice cream
Coconut
Bubblegum flavor
Iced Honey Peach
Kiwi
Milk - kind of like sweet milk (ice milk maybe)
Cake (like a white cake)

The smart things: the icy coating on some keeps the softer 'ice-cream' in the middle from melting too quickly and contains it when it does start to melt; the icy chunks in the middle are tasty and fun to crunch without being too hard.

posted by all of us.

Aikido in Beijing

2008-08-12T14:30:00.000+08:00

Devin and I were really hopeful that we'd find Aikido in Beijing. It exists. It even exists relatively close to our house, I came to find out. It has, however, suffered under the Olympic preparations that have gripped this city and is temporarily not happening. Apparently the space this particular dojo uses for practice is being rented out for the duration of the games (as well as during the Paralympics that are in September). So, we're out of luck for now. I don't know what we'll be doing in October (there seems to be travel in our future), but if we're in Beijing for any length of time, hopefully we'll have a chance to continue with our practice.

Hong Dou Baozi

2008-08-12T11:14:00.003+08:00

I used to make these back in the U.S., but figured I wouldn't be making them much, once we got to China. It turns out, though, that they're not very common in our neighborhood. We used to get really great ones in Hangzhou - very fluffy and packed with sweet red-bean paste. The little shop that sold them also sold really good vegetable buns as well as pork buns. I assumed we'd find pretty much the same thing in Beijing, but though northerners are known for their diet that includes more wheat, there's a serious lack of good steamed buns in our immediate vicinity.

The supermarket carries one version of hong dou baozi, but we all agreed that they were mediocre: too much dry bread and not enough smooth, tasty bean paste.

I foundpackages of dousha (the sweet red bean filling) on the supermarket shelf so knew success was close behind (that was half the battle, just finding that there actually was adzuki bean paste available). I have a recipe for dousha though I've never made it - it's available at the Korean store (Kim's Mart, which is owned by our friends/former neighbors) and it is cheap and easy to just buy it.

Anyway, I never really learned an official version of hong dou baozi, I just modified a bread recipe I used to use - you could use any recipe you're more familiar with if you wish.

This time, since I don't have my baking utensils, I just measured by eye - it turned out just fine, but I'll give you the measurements so you have an idea of what you're working with.

Bread recipe:

1/4 cup warm water (not too hot)
1 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp yeast

Mix these three ingredients together in a small bowl - let sit for about 10 minutes, so the yeast can proof.

In a large bowl add:

2 cups water
2 Tbsp oil
2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp sugar

Mix these. After the yeast has proofed, add it to the liquids in the large bowl.

6 cups of flour can be gradually added to the liquids. Eventually it'll become dough and be very sticky. Keep adding flour until the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Keep stirring, trying to incorporate as much of the flour as possible early on.

When it becomes too stiff to stir, flour your table surface well and put the dough on that. Flour your hands and start kneading, adding more flour as the dough reveals its true stickiness.

You may need to add an additional 1/2 cup of flour or so. No worries. Just keep kneading, until the dough is supple and smooth which will indicate that the gluten is well developed.

At this point I wash the large bowl and then coat it lightly with vegetable oil. When I'm sure I've kneaded the dough long enough, I set the dough ball in, upside down, flip it over (so it's gotten lightly oiled all over) and then cover it and leave it to sit. Your rising time will vary depending on how warm your house is. Let it rise until it's doubled in size (more or less) but not so long that when you stick your finger in it it gives a big sigh and collapses completely.

Deflate the dough gently, then let it sit for about ten or fifteen minutes - it would be fine to take it out of the bowl and let it sit on the table.

Divide the dough into four equal pieces - set three of the pieces aside and cover them with plastic wrap so they don't dry out. Make a "snake" of the one other piece (a very very thick snake with about a 1 1/2 to 2 inch diameter) and cut it into rounds so that when you roll them in your hand they'll end up about ping-pong ball sized (or maybe like a golf ball would be ok). Roll them all into balls and let them sit, covered, while you work with each one.

Now you're ready to make the baozi.

Take a ball and roll it out with a rolling pin so that it maintains its circular shape (not elongating into an oval). The Chinese way to do this is to hold the dough in one hand and the rolling pin in the other (Chinese rolling pins are like dowels with curved edges, so you can use it one-handedly) and the hand holding the dough rotates it after each stroke of the rolling pin so that all parts of the edge get flattened. The middle usually ends up a little thicker. The point here is that you should just do what works best for you.

When you have a nicely flattened round that's about 1/4 inch thick, take a spoonful of the dousha and put it right in the center.

At this next point I can't pretend I'm any good at making baozi - Real Chinese Baozi-Makers are impressively nimble-fingered and they turn out beautiful creations. Amateurs like me - well, I'm a little slow and I always end up saying, "Yep, they're ugly but they still taste good."

I use a method for wrapping them up that is more akin to dumpling wrappers, but it works - it holds the dousha in for the amount of time it takes to steam and eat the bun. I don't know if it'll translate well as a written description, but here goes:

Holding the dough round (with it's dousha in the middle) in my left hand, I use my right thumb, index and middle fingers to pinch the edge of the dough like I might to make a pie crust edge. Pinching it tightly, I walk my fingers forward to make another pinch - effectively making small waves in the edge of the dough as I go around the circle, pinching each one to the one previously made. Around, around, and at the end I just pinch it some more.

You migh wish to follow Merlin's instructions - " close it up into any shape, just make sure it's closed." That's what we normally do when I have help - we end up a with a hodge-podge of shapes that we then try to identify after steaming ("oh, that's the cranky bull-dog!" "look, there's your purse!").

When you have enough to fill your steamer basket... oh yeah, you need some steaming apparatus, generally a large pot, a tray to set all the baozi out of the water, and some sort of perforated dish or something like that on which they can be lowered and lifted out of the pot. I've used bamboo steamers, vegetable steamers, and the like - a colander might even work.

Ok, when you have enough to fill your steamer basket, go ahead and set them with a little space around each bun. Then put them into the pot and turn the heat on. Steam them for 10 minutes - start timing once you see actual steam coming out of the pot.

At the end of ten minutes, turn off the heat and remove the buns to a rack to cool. They're edible as soon as they're handle-able.

This recipe makes a bunch (it's enough dough to make four loaves of bread) but we end up eating them fast - and I usually take a good portion of them, after they've cooled, and stick them in the freezer. They make for a fast, easy breakfast because they just need to be re-steamed for a few minutes (maybe 5?) to defrost and be ready to serve.

I think the packages of dousha I usually buy only end up containing enough for 3/4 of the dough. This time I experimented with the remaining dough and found that indeed you can bake bread in a toaster oven. I baked it as though I was making pull-apart rolls simply because I knew the toaster oven would have the tendency to overcook the outside and leave the inside gooey. This way, with spaces in the middle and fewer thick areas, the dough ended up baking evenly.

Yummy!

Sunday "baking"

2008-08-11T10:21:00.008+08:00

We made hong dou baozi, which are steamed red-bean buns. To make them you first make a dough ball.

You knead it for about 20 minutes. Be sure to put flour on the table so it doesn't stick.

Let it rise. When it is done rising divide the dough into small balls then put flour on your spot on the table and flatten out each ball one at a time with a rolling pin.

Then, using the red bean paste that you have, put a spoonful into the flattened out dough and close it up into any shape, just make sure it's closed.

Then, steam it.

I like making hong dou baozi. I like to eat them too.

***************
posted by Merlin
recipe to follow...

Olympic Colors

2008-08-07T11:38:00.002+08:00

I keep hoping to have a chance to sit down and write something reflective, but the daily schedule involving learning Chinese and Tibetan, the homeschooling and housework all keep the day so full that I hardly get a chance to sit down. So, the reflection will just have to wait, I guess.

Most days we're at home (or in a classroom near Dan's office, working on languages with Jabeh). But when we do get out, the extent of Olympic preparations is obvious.

The city is looking festive and clean. We had about two weeks of oppressive air - muggy, hot, unpleasant - I felt like I could never get a deep breath; but it finally rained two days ago and we've had clear, sunny days since then. Here are before and after pictures (update: you can reverse these to after and before photos, now, since the air has reverted to haze):

In addition, we've taken a few outings (including the Foreign Language Bookstore, where Devin and Merlin were able to stock up on at least a week's worth of books). Here's what we've seen:

Bright and Shiny

Construction is masked with banners.

Some run-of-the-mill armored vehicles...

Astute observers will note something odd about this building... any guesses?

Mid-day, mid-week stroll.

"Tong yi ge shi jie, tong yi ge meng xiang."

or

"One world, one dream"

Tibetan dances

2008-08-03T08:15:00.003+08:00

These are short videos I took with the digital camera during the Makye Ama floor-show... amateur, with people walking in front, but they give you an idea of what was going on.

Ethnicity, Exoticness, Taste, Consumption

2008-07-31T17:04:00.003+08:00

Last week we celebrated Devin’s birth. I thought of repeating Devin’s idea of releasing some fish into a river and birds into air when we celebrated her birthday two years ago in Hangzhou with my family, but Beijing is so large, I hardly see waters running through the city.Some taxi drivers told me there’re a few rivers crossing it, but honestly, I’m intimidated by this gigantic city with overwhelming traffic and poor service in most stores. So, we didn’t release fish and birds. My sister in Hangzhou did it and gave us some credit toward our merit.

Toward late afternoon last Thursday I thought of Makyi Ama, a Tibetan restaurant in Chaoyang District, which is about fifty-minute taxi ride from where we are in Haidian District. In the past my students and I had dinners and cultural events there. It is indeed a festive place for a birthday celebration. My assistant Jabeh quickly made reservation. By 5:00pm, Jabeh, his friends (our friends too), and we hopped into two taxis.

Makyi Ama is an upscale restaurant in Beijing. Its interior motif reflects the luxurious aspect of Tibetan cultural tradition: hardwood dining tables and chairs and the display of crafts of both religious and cultural significance. It is owned by a couple – the husband is a Tibetan and the wife is a Han Chinese. They started out successfully in Lhasa and now there are two more restaurants in Beijing. Most of Makyi Ama’s customers are North Americans, Western Europeans, and the new rich of China.

The phrase “Makyi Ama,” pronounced as “ma-ji-a-ma,” came from one of the fifth Dalai Lama’s poems. “Ma” means “not,” or “no” and “kyi” means “birthing” or “to give birth.” “Ama” means mother. So, it could be translated as “mother without giving birth.” Tsangyang Gyatso, the fifth Dalai Lama, was known for his love poetry. However, tantric practitioners and scholars contend with this claim by saying that his love poetry in essence conveys higher meanings of tantric practice, not just cheesy courtship verses. Anyway, Makyi Ama is a popular restaurant not just because of its food but also because of its Tibetan cultural contents. In fact it has become a window for local and foreign residents to experience Tibetan culture in a commercial environment.

So, we were consumers walking into this cultural window. Waiters and waitresses all dress in traditional attire with a Lhasa style. Jabeh reserved the best table for us, located in the center of the restaurant facing the stage where evening performance takes place each night at 8:00. Wendy, Devin, Merlin, and I arrived earlier. We took a slow tour in the restaurant. It has a small book/souvenir store. The jewelry displayed there is quite beautiful but expensive. It's probably twenty times more expensive than that I often saw in Qinghai and Gansu. The display of Tibetan kitchen wares in a corner particularly caught attention from Wendy and kids. Wendy began to take photos. One waitress told her photos were not allowed. The head waiter nearby then said to me, “You can take photos of yourself and kids but you can’t directly take photos of the displays in the restaurant…” He didn’t explain why customers could not take photos. One waitress standing next to him said, “Laoban (owners) said no photos allowed.” But I had taken one photo without people in it before we were told “No.”

Jabeh and our other friends, Gabeh and Sangdhe, arrived. They brought a Totoro Doll (a Japanese anime character) to Devin as her birthday gift. We began to order food. The menu is impressively composed with large photos and descriptions in both Chinese and English. Meat dishes are predominant choices. The owners have modified traditional Tibetan food because in general, Tibetans do not roast meat. Makyi Ama has assorted roast beef (yak) and lamb. Unlike the gamy texture of yak meat I have had in Qinghai, Sichuan, and Gansu, yak meat at Makyi Ama is soft to my teeth. What I like most at Makyi Ama is a type of thin pancakes made out of highland barley flour. The food was good so we quickly ate most of what we had ordered. I ordered an additional plate of yak meat, boiled not roasted. I knew Jabeh, Gabeh and Sangdhe all love meat.

Around 8:00, performance began. Dancers and singers mostly come from Kham and Amdo regions. Although I had seen the same performance quite a few times, I still very much enjoyed it especially the singing part because once in a while I fantasize myself as a folk singer. The performance is programmed to show customers different singing styles, choreography, and fashions from all regions of Tibet, namely, Lhasa area, Kham, and Amdo. There was a bi-lingual announcer on the stage who informed audience of the regional variations of Tibetan singing and dancing. Like previous times, my impression of Makyi Ama is colorful, expressive, and loud singing and dancing. This is what I see from Makyi Ama, as a window of Tibetan culture in Beijing.

Last semester I directed my students to make a video project on how tourists consume ethnic sites in Yunnan province. What we experience is similar to elsewhere in China – ethnic cultures are being turned into a type of commodity for consumption. I didn’t mean to kill the fun at Makyi Ama. Honestly, this type of fun is a one-time occasion. It does not sustain itself for the second time when you go. Tibet has a dichotomized public image in China. On one hand, its tradition, or what is referred to as “Old Tibet,” is portrayed by the Chinese state as a most barbarous society because of its feudalist system known as “serfdom;” thus, it “deserved” abolishment via revolution and reform. On the other hand, in the tourist industry of contemporary China, Tibet is being advertised as a place closest to the heavens. Images of Tibet as Shangri-la are well employed in Chinese tourist industry. So, Tibetans, somewhat resembling the image outsiders hold of Native Americans, are seen as “noble savages” – they have tantric Buddhism but they also carry swords and daggers wandering the highlands with their yaks and sheep.

This split image of Tibetans prevents non-Tibetans, especially in China, from seeing the humanness that is common to all of us, i.e. personal emotions, kindred relations, and the individualities of the young and old. At Makyi Ama, customers are physically close to the Tibetan waiters and waitresses, and the performers; however, they’re more than an ocean apart from each other. The sharp cleavage between tradition and modernity, and backwardness and progress is fully displayed at Makyi Ama. The divide between those on the stage and those off the stage making merry with their food and Tibetan performance, sets Tibetans apart from non-Tibetans, as if Tibetans were the presence of the past – a museum piece. Their colorfulness and expressiveness are to be looked upon but are too distant to be embraced.

I’m not saying that non-Tibetan consumers of Tibetan culture are the culprits who cornered Tibetans into this museum-like display. In many instances, they did, but Tibetans with resources, like anyone else, also take opportunities to make a better living in this age of economic globalization. In the meantime, Tibetans in

China

mostly rely on the means of the market economy to exercise their collective self-representation. For so long, Tibetan culture has been portrayed, in China, as the “darkest” social system on earth

. So, why can’t Tibetans take opportunities to show the festive and glorious sides of their ancient civilization? Like anyone else in

China

, they also desire to be loved and cared for instead of being shunned because of their past. But, commercial channels are too narrow to let the river of Tibetan civilization display itself.

I haven’t been to all parts of Tibet. My association with Tibet is mostly with farmers and nomads in eastern Tibet, currently southern Gansu, western Sichuan, and most parts of Qinghai provinces. In these regions, I have never experienced the same luxurious gourmet that we find at Makyi Ama, but I have stayed with Tibetan families with integrity and dignity, who are not always in colorful and expensive outfits. I feel I’m experiencing multiple culture shocks in Beijing – the disparity between performed Tibet and lived Tibet, between the current China and the China I grew up with, and between the prescribed human destiny of modern progress and my own imagined utopia where differences give us stronger bonding and distances bring us kindred spirit.

assorted pictures

2008-07-28T16:09:00.002+08:00

A random sampling of pictures we've taken over
the last month... scroll over each photo for a caption.

on not always telling the truth

2008-07-28T08:34:00.004+08:00

I'd been collecting anecdotes about the changes in Beijing as the Olympics draw nearer. Some of the things I'd noticed or had heard were positive, others not quite so.

I wrote it up with the intention of posting it but I changed my mind. I don't know if it's because I'm simply predisposed, as an American, to be critical of Chinese policies, or if it's just my own personal tendency, but I realized that it might be an interesting exercise to consider being in China as though I were engaged in a relationship.

Truly I'm here by the grace of the Chinese government. It was a huge bureaucratic hassle to get my residency paperwork, but I got it - I'm approved and certified. So why would I need to be so quick to point out faults?

It's not necessary to always draw attention to the negative qualities one finds in others. It's enough that I've noticed them, at this point, and while I may share them eventually, I think it's prudent to try to go deeper first, to try and see the intentions behind what I'm quick to criticize.

...I just wanted to say that.

retraction

2008-07-27T15:56:00.002+08:00

Well, I'm going to go ahead and negate my assumption from the other day - I was fiddling with my various proxy-server settings and found that one of them in particular always leads me away from any Blogger blog and toward that spam site I'd mentioned. I can access any Blogger blog just fine when I don't use that proxy option. When I'm running completely openly over my DSL connection I have no problem accessing the blog.

So, though it made a nice story, and certainly seemed to be true at the time, I guess there's actually nothing really limiting what we're doing on the internet at this point.

So, no need to point fingers....

Pilgrimage to Mt. Sedzong

2008-07-26T09:12:00.019+08:00

I feel elated each time I return from a pilgrimage trip, including this time, regardless of my bus crash. As a matter of fact, I’m recovering very quickly. I was told by a doctor that it would take a month to recover. It has been slightly over a week and an half but my routine has been resumed, i.e. going to work, researching, and writing. Pilgrimage in general gives me a sense of rebirth, transformation of my consciousness in terms of my existential and spiritual positions in this world. The world goes on as it is with events of both happiness and sadness. The transcendental nature of pilgrimage elevates my consciousness from multi-dualities of our worldly mode of being. I feel restored, recovered, and renewed upon returning from my recent pilgrimage trip to Mt. Sedzong, a sacred site where Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava, founder of Tibetan Buddhism) had solitary meditation in a cave.

This time, my pilgrimage was not only a trip expressing my homage to the teachings and practices of a Buddhist saint. I was also connecting the sublime physical environment of Mt. Sedzong with human ecology. For this coming fall, I plan on making a visual documentary with my students on the relationship between Tibetan traditional wisdom and ecological health. Mt. Sedzong is an ideal site. Unlike Mt. Ani Machin, Mt. Gang Rinpoche and other sacred sites that require many days to complete a circumambulation, Mt. Sedzong is compact enough for my students to explore its natural beauty and caves of historical and spiritual significance in three days. It is also fairly close to the county seat of Xinghai, about an hour bus ride. Most importantly, there is a monastery on the south side of the mountain. It’ll be our base and a site for our students to have conversations with monks who know the history and folklore of Mt. Sedzong.

The rock formation at Mt. Sedzong is one of a kind in the region. It stands out among the expansive rolling mountains covered with lush grass in the summer. If a Chinese Fengshui man or an Australian aboriginal Dreamer happened to be at Mt. Sedzong, I am sure he would identify it as a celestial place or as a place where many songlines (passages of dreams) converge. This was how I felt when I was there: Buddhist practice in Tibet isn’t a lone business; on the contrary, when a lone practitioner takes residence in a cave, he or she immediately plugs into multi-interplay with other species and with both earthly and cosmological energy-fields. Enlightenment comes from within, but I wonder how much our inner landscape is nourished by sublime natural environments like Mt. Sedzong. In turn, from the perspective of human ecology, we also consecrate the landscape of our spiritual/religious choice. In the context of Tibetan Buddhism, the consecration is done in Buddhist terms.

The circumambulation of Mt. Sedzong goes clockwise. Direction-wise, it starts from the south toward the west, turns to the north, and return from the east to the south. The west side is uphill, a gradual slope leading up to a long ridge, resembling a long spine of a dinosaur, which separates the south and the north sides of the mountain. A long stretch of prayer flags were hung over the ridge. It was a spectacular scene. I began to see how humans are capable of sanctifying parts of the earth with spiritual orientations; thus, they’re immune from our utilitarian activities.

While I was standing along the ridge taking a photo of it, my Tibetan student cautioned me not to stand right on the spine of the mountain too long because I could faint. He grew up in the area and told me a few cases of local residents who had fainted on the ridge. He shared his folk education with me that mountain ridges are the intersections where deities, spirits, and ghosts frequently pass. They are the places where the living need to stay low and be respectful toward lives and things that are not visible to our eyes. In fact, I was feeling slightly light headed; perhaps, I was intoxicated with the congregations of the assorted invisible beings.

I felt much affinity with the north and the east sides. When I reached to the north side, it was around 5:30pm. The sun was tilting toward the west, shining on the north side of the mountain. Everything, i.e. rocks, grass and yaks, looked surreally uplifting. A nomad boy was singing on a rock while overseeing the herd of his family’s yaks. I caught a few verses of his song – “The sun is dropping to my height…my ama (mother) is beckoning me home…” I waved at him. He joined us for our walk on the north side. It was a long stretched slope with green grass on the foot of the mountain.

One tree decorated with layers of prayer flags caught my attention. It must be the “karmic scale” that I had read about prior to the pilgrimage. It’s a tall pine tree. Its uniqueness isn’t the prayer flags left on it by pilgrims. Of course, they certainly mark it as a special site. It is known as the “karmic scale” because a pilgrim can actually “weigh” how heavy his or her karmic retributions from wrong doings of past and present. The side of the tree facing Mt. Sedzong has a short, sturdy branch sticking out. One may lift oneself up by hanging onto it. The nomad boy demonstrated the weighing process. He was utterly serious about it. The weight of one’s karmic retribution is determined by whether or not one can see the “karmic mirror,” which is a large, round hole in one of the large rocks on the top of Mt. Sedzong. If one can see it, the weight is light. If not, the weight is heavy, unfortunately. This means one has much purification work to do.

We bid goodbye to the nomad boy when we turned to the east side of Mt. Sedzong. The caves on the east side gave me goosebumps and a warmth went up my spine. Entereing the cave where Guru Rinpoche had his solitary practice was revisting a history of Tibetan Buddhism. The precipice in the cave is smooth, having been worn by the hands of countless pilgrims. A sense of blessing and empowerment rose from within.

Besides Guru Rinpoche's cave, there are many other caves on the east side of Mt. Sedzong. Numerous monks, yogis, and yoginis followed the footsteps of Guru Rinpoche by taking residence in caves. These historical sites are marked with prayer flags and kadhas (honorific scarves).

These caves aren't quite historical in the conventional sense, as if they were only the relics of the Tibetan Buddhist past. There are current residents who have found new caves or have built cabins for their solitary practices. My yogi friend and I met four persons who currently live in cabins next to Guru Rinpoche's cave. One is a nun, one man is a cook for the other residents, and there is also a woman and her niece. The aunt has lived in her cabin for fifteen years. She hasn't left Mt. Sedzong since she arrived in 1997. She is the primary caretaker of Guru Rinpoche's cave, offering daily incense and water and cleaning the dust brought by the wind. Her niece joins her in the summer, before the family wheat wheat harvest. I took the aunt's long-term presence at Mt. Sedzong as a form of consecration and guardianship of the sacred.

The focal point of the sacredness is a Buddhist saint; however, what is consecrated has become a refuge for everyone who happens to reside here (besides the mountain itself). I particularly want to mention wild goats who freely roam the mountains. They walk fairly close to humans but keep enough distance to leap away. They resemble northern California's wild deer - brown, small and agile.

I feel very fortunate that I have a panoramic camera. For the last three years, I have got myself fixated on panoramic views of both interior and landscape photography. I considered being a freelance photographer, but it does not support our living. There’re tons of photos of sunsets, mountains, flowers, animals, that could be downloaded from the internet. I don’t know how attentive people are about landscapes and sacred sites. But I do believe awe-inspiring and sublime state of being is collectively felt.

bus crash

2008-07-23T20:39:00.004+08:00

Living and dying are both dream states. It is a matter of one's consciousness shifting from one dream state to another. When the bus began to flip, I felt I was dying. When I woke up from the violent commotions, I could not remember my past as if I had entered a total new dimension into which I was just reborn. About sixty seconds (or longer) later, my memory of this life time returned...

Last week I was out of town in order to do some preliminary preparations for my students' fall travels. The day before I was to come home, I was going to make my way to the capital of the province so the next day's flight would be easy to catch.

The morning was kind of drizzly and grey, kind of cool. I set out after breakfast, waiting on the roadside with my friend. The first bus came but we saw some other people we knew approaching us, so we waited for the next bus, about 20 minutes later, and they got on with our help to load their backpacks. We saw them off and a few minutes later my bus came. My friend who was sending me off knew the driver as they were from the same village.

I got on the bus and decided to sit in the back since it was empty. I set my backpack against the window and wanted to take a nap. I didn't sleep, though, just enjoyed the scenery. A little while later the driver's relative who was collecting fares came to me so I paid my 15 or 16 Yuan. The ride was pleasant, the rain making it a kind of lazy day, quiet. We went up, crossing the big mountain pass on the way to the city. We came to a deserted gas station and there were the two travelers we'd seen off. They boarded and sat down about two seats in front of me, but they didn't see me. Oddly, they didn't have their luggage.

Shortly afterward, two monks sat down in the seat next to me - an older monk and a younger one with some vision problems. The bus got quiet again, after everyone purchased their tickets. The rain got heavier as we climbed the mountain. Eventually we came upon a junction and the two travelers I was acquainted with got off to wait for another bus that would take them toward their destination. The monks got off as well. I still wondered where their bags were. My guess is that they'd decided to get off their original bus which was standing room only, and waited for another that would take them to the next little town where they could pick up their bags which the other bus would drop off.

Next our bus descended the winding road toward the city. I noticed very nice, poetic, misty mountains and I thought of taking some pictures but my window couldn't be opened so I put my camera back. A man in his 60s was busy taking pictures with his digital camera though. I thought he might be a pretty good photographer by what I could tell caught his eye.

We had almost reached the lowlands and there were probably 15 or 20 passengers. There was a family with a child. The mother was indifferent to everything except the baby, and a grandmother was holding her grandchild. I also noticed a good looking young woman in shorts and T-shirt. She sat next to a window and fell asleep. There were also a couple of old ladies, some of whom looked kind of familiar as I've been to this region before.

I can't say I was falling asleep, but all the sudden the head of the bus went up and a lady started yelling, "Hey! The bus driver is drunk!" and before she could even finish the last word the bus started rolling over. I don't remember what happened next but my consciousness was very active - I sensed danger and felt death was coming. I thought I was going to die in a very tragic way and I was praying for at least a good rebirth. Then I thought of my life insurance. Then there were no other thoughts.

I assumed I died. There was a big long silence and then my eyes started opening. I was upright in my seat. Oh. I saw blood on my pant legs. I touched my head - oh, sticky with blood. It was a different world, I didn't really comprehend it. I thought, "How come I came to this world?" and "Why would I be reborn here, with lots of blood?" Then my ears started working again and there were people moaning and yelling - the young pretty young woman obviously had internal injuries and I felt like we were in a war zone or a movie setting. My consciousness was processing this, trying to figure it out.

I looked around, oh gosh the bus was basically destroyed: the windows were shattered with shards and hanging rubber gaskets. Passengers were unconscious. I looked out the window and the visibility wasn't very good, so I was thinking, "where is this place?" Oh, yes, I recalled a traffic accident and I remembered the moment the bus started flipping. I looked beside me and couldn't see my friend, I was afraid he'd been tossed out the window, so I tried to lift myself up and I couldn't, I looked out the window, left, no; right, no. I made myself calm down and tried to remember.... deep breath....I focused on my friend..."Ok! He didn't come with me!" What a relief! So I started to pull myself together, what day is this? where's my phone? So I found my phone in my pocket. I checked to make sure all my joints moved, found I'd lost my shoes and my glasses. I saw my glasses down on the floor, under a seat so I reached down and grabbed them - minor damage, the lenses were ok, so I put them on and got a good look.

I called home, kind of happy actually, that I'd survived - really almost heroic to be sitting upright and relatively ok. Later, Wendy said that in my phone call I said, "I'm sorry, I just had a traffic accident." She tried to figure out if I'd been personally hit by a car or what, so I told her I'd been in a bus accident but I was kind of vague I guess because she thought maybe my bus had been hit by another car.

At this point some passengers had already been taken out of the bus by passengers of another bus who happened on the scene (forget anything like ambulance service in these remote locations), so I told Wendy we were going to the hospital. I also called my assistant in Beijing because he could find somebody in the city to come and help me out.

Then I saw the fare collector and I started hollering, "Hey! I need my shoes!" He found one, but my temper was pretty short and I yelled, "I need both my shoes!" He said, "Look around, everybody's hurt!" "Except you!" I said, "I need my shoes, they're so good!" So he found a square rug and said, "let's wrap your foot up in this."

Later, I asked him how come he looked just fine while everyone else was hurt. He said that at first the bus tipped and everyone got scared and then it rolled and within that first roll, the doors flew open and he was flung out of the bus. So he saw the second revolution, watching it, and it was the second roll that destroyed the bus.

By now another bus had arrived and I found it so painful to stand up. I thought maybe I'd broken some ribs. The first bus had taken the more seriously injured passengers and I got on the second bus - very painful and I started feeling weak. Other victims were there too, including one older woman who started out very spirited but declined visibly as we drove on. The photographer was unconscious. I only saw the boy with his grandmother, he was crying and his grandmother's ear was torn.

I called my assistant and Wendy and then I called my friend who thankfully hadn't been on the bus with me. He immediately went to wait for the next bus so he could meet me at the hospital.

The bus driver dropped me off at the front gate of the hospital. Other passengers had relatives or friends waiting for them there, but I just stepped off the bus and didn't know what to do. So the bus took off and I stood there until a short, young woman walked by, very modern looking. She looked at me, paused. I looked at her, paused. She said, "Hey how come you're here?" and I remembered her and said, "Hey, how come you're here?" It turned out that she's a singer I'd met before in Beijing. Then she said, "Oh I know why you're here, look at yourself, you're a mess. My father was on the same bus. Hang on I'm going to get someone to help you." I don't remember who came to get me, but then the next thing I knew I was in the emergency room and someone was calling a doctor to see me. They checked for internal injuries, saw my head wound and did a CAT scan. I was on the phone with Wendy when they started to stitch up the gash on the top of my head (she said she could hear the crying child in the background). Then to X-Ray to check my ribs (not broken).

At this point people started showing up, a grad student from my university, my assistant's dad (who had driven an hour and half to come make sure I was ok). So then I just waited in the lobby while patients with internal injuries were treated. I chatted with the singer and her mother. They suggested I stay in the hospital for observation, which was a good idea and perfectly acceptable in Chinese hospitals (unlike in the U.S. where they send you home as soon as possible). By the time I was given a room I was so hungry which was a good sign!

My assessment, after some reflection, is that I was really fortunate due to the fact that my backpack protected me from broken glass. I could have been cut badly, but the backpack cushioned my impact. I had a few small pieces of glass in my clothes which fell out at the hospital, but nothing serious. Also, my REI fleece hat protected my head. I ended up with three stitches, but it could have been much worse. I was also lucky I hadn't fallen asleep because I was able to react quickly enough to hold on tightly as the bus flipped. That's why I wrenched my waist muscles, but at least I didn't get thrown around.

I didn't know for sure that we rolled twice until later, after my friend came to meet me in the hospital. His bus, on the way into the city, actually stopped and the bus driver let everyone off to inspect the crash site. There were some witnesses who had seen it and he even told me the bus was totalled. The fact that it tipped up first, then rolled, meant that my end of the bus stayed on the ground and it was the rear end that was the fulcrum or the hub of all the rolling, so my radius was small and other people's radius was huge.

It was definitely an awakening experience, awakening from living to dying, and from dying to living. Life becomes ever more precious after the bus crash.

first of all, he's fine

2008-07-21T16:46:00.004+08:00

I've not posted as frequently this week due to recent events that've kept me busy, but stay tuned for the next episode when Dan tells the story of last Sunday's dramatic bus crash... just so you know, he's fine - some stitches, some bruises, some very sore muscles, but thankfully no worse than that.

well, that was strange....

2008-07-21T10:20:00.001+08:00

I've issued a retraction of the below assessment, here.

****

For the last four days or so I was unable to view the home page of the blog - I could log in to blogger and post (that's how the two before this made it in), but any time I tried to view it, in its own page or not, I was redirected to some spam blog.

I did a little asking around and I found that there wasn't a problem on the U.S. side. Yesterday morning I checked again and was able to get to it, so I didn't have a chance to see if it was just a problem from my ISP or if other computers/ISP avenues here were also having issues.

My assessment: the Tiananmen post by Devin flagged our blog and blogger was blocked (for me) internally for the few days it took for them to recognize that it was innocuous. The fact that I was able to access the blogger main site but not blogger blogs seemed to indicate that this was the case.

This kind of thing makes me feel like putting keywords in every post so they have to manually go through and verify everything. Maybe I'll try to improve the entertainment value of this blog so that even the internet censors have something fun to do every day. You know, if they're going to be that uptight, let's make it enjoyable for everybody! I don't mind that I couldn't see the blog (since I had other options), it verified the existence of that realm we already knew about but couldn't prove. Well, I guess I still can't prove it, but as they say, "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you!"

coal stoves

2008-07-16T11:05:00.000+08:00

The other day I mentioned coal-burning stoves and this morning I took pictures of this one - it's used by the folks who run a little breakfast shop out of one of the restaurants down the street from our apartment. The restaurant is owned by other people who run it for lunch and dinner, while the breakfast crew brings in all their things early in the morning and is out by about nine. These stoves are settled in the back of this flatbed bicycle.

Sometimes when we walk by they're still radiating heat. At some point I'll see if I can get a picture while they're fired up. You can see the coal "rounds" at the bottom of each channel, here. This one fits four rounds - I've seen them family sized where they only fit one round, too.

A funny thing happened on my way to the blog this morning...

2008-07-16T06:31:00.000+08:00

Oddly, a direct-click on my own link leads to some strange spamming blog. Is it just me or is this happening to everyone else too? If so, I guess I won't be able to find out here because you'll be unable to even read this post!

Ok, off to do some sleuthing.

three bridges

2008-07-14T14:54:00.000+08:00

______________
Top: Beijing canal 7/2008
Middle: 2002
Bottom: 1991

in case you were wondering where we are

2008-07-13T13:30:00.000+08:00

Here's the trusty map of China, this time with Beijing highlighted in dark teal up toward the northeast....

and this links to the page with the map showing where Hangzhou is.

scenes from a taxi

2008-07-12T22:54:00.000+08:00