Zi Zhu Yuan

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

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

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

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

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!