Three weeks

Our favorite market is our local one:  Tuanjiehu.  It consists of several one story buildings that contain a wet market with meat and fish, a produce market, and some buildings with individual stalls selling dry goods such as stationery, clocks and clothing.

We went yesterday to get some fleece-lined winter leggings for LiLi and begin to buy the gift items we will bring home for our peeps in the US.  We have some favorites such as the grumpy man who sells hair ties, fuzzy earmuffs and other small things: four for 10 kuai (about US$1.60).  The first time we went the man was very crotchety and had the "I hate foreigners" tone.  But since we're big hairtie-users we've been back to him many times.  After a year he is very welcoming and smiley.  Then there is the endless search for the perfect pen that LiLi and her buddies engage in at the roughly half dozen stalls that specialize in stationery.  Pens cost about 3 kuai (less than fifty cents US) so it's fine that the girls buy one or two a month.

On the way out one of the toilet paper stalls at the entrance was offering Christmas decorations and some small plastic trees.  LiLi was so excited her face was all lit up as she carefully examined the bags of ornaments and loose strings of lights.  At home in San Francisco (notice:  home), we have a tradition of a ceiling high tree, white lights and glass hand blown ornaments mixed with the kid-made ones we've developed over the years.  I loved a tree even before LiLi so our Christmas stuff is pretty extreme.  We put icicle lights in the windows and on the front deck railing.  We run strings of lights across LiLi's bedroom hanging-art wire.  We play endless rounds of Christmas CDs driving my (Jewish) ex crazy.  In sum, we go all out.

So...we wound up with a big bag of Christmas stuff and, after stopping at our usual hole-in-the-wall bao counter, we grabbed a taxi home and started decorating.  As a tree, we chose a giant ficus we got from the Brazilian woman who sold us most of her household of furniture nearly a year ago.  This tree has barely survived the bad air and little direct sunlight it gets here.  Lacking our CDs, we put some streaming carols on the laptop and did up the tree:

We'll celebrate Christmas here in Beijing with my sister and her husband who arrive just after school ends.

Three more weeks of this time, this life in Beijing.  LiLi is again talking about Paris.  I still feel drawn here.