Heat Back On Tomorrow

Like Spring, Fall is a very very short season here.  We went from flip flops one week to boots the next.  The government controls the heat in Beijing and we are cold.  It got down to 1 degree C last night (low 30s F) and with no heat in the apartment we piled both comforters on one bed and slept huddled  together.  In the office my colleagues are wearing coats, scarves and fingerless gloves sitting at our computers.  We talk about the merits of long underwear and wool.  The weekend promises below freezing temps and precipitation.  What?  Um...snow.

Our expat apartment includes an extra four weeks of heat a year, two on the front end and two on the back end.  Everywhere else the heat comes on November 15 and off March 15th.  My real estate agent said we'd appreciate the extra two weeks when the time came and boy, do we.

The government's gongren (workers) have been checking the apartment pipes since the heat comes from hot water radiators.

Last night I came home and changed into sweats that hung on my bathroom door.  They were warm.  I felt the pipes on the wall behind the door, followed them to the radiator and...presto: hot!  I raced to the kitchen to tell Ayi the heat was on and grabbed the kitchen's radiator:  cold.  Ayi said (I think) that they'll come on tomorrow.  Yay!  Heat!  I love Beijing.

PS:  News says heat on earlier for everyone because of cold.

Soundtrack for China

  

LiLi and her little girlfriends are very pre-teen-like and rockin' out.  At the Sanlitun Village last weekend there was even a car show Chinese performer doing covers of Adele, the girls' current fave.

When we first moved here, one of Adele's songs, Someone Like You, was the one we played over and over.  LiLi put that song on repeat as we cruised around that one bedroom service apartment getting ready.  I can still feel how cold it was when we arrived, and dark in the mornings when walked in the frigid air to the school bus.   Itunes keeps track of the plays: 338.   But now we're more into Set Fire to the Rain.

This is our sound track for China.

I've got a handful of Chinese pop tunes, too, from my heiche driver. I still need help finding the pinyin since I can't read the lyrics.   One of the CA moms in our old MI school mentioned learning Chinese listening to Chinese love songs.  I get that:

轻轻的 我将离开你

Qīng qīng de wǒ jiāng líkāi nǐ


I'll part from you... gently

请将眼角的泪拭去

Qǐng jiāng yǎnjiǎo de lèi shì qù


Please wipe away your tears

In the endless nights, in the future days

My darling you, don't cry because of me

Qīng qīng de wǒ jiāng líkāi nǐ


Mànmàn chángyè lǐ

漫漫长夜里 未来日子里

亲爱的你 别为我哭泣

Here's another from the CN set:

大海
张雨生

从那遥远海边,慢慢消失的你,
cong na yaoyuan haibian, man man xiaoshi de ni
from that distant seaside, you slowly disappear

本来模糊的脸,竟然渐渐清晰.
benlai mohu de lian, jing ran jian jian qing xi
from a fuzzy face, has gradually become clear

想要说些什么,又不知从何说起,
xiang yao shuo xie shenme, you buzhi cong he shuoqi
want to say something, but don't know where to start

只有把它防在心底.
zhiyou ba ta fang zai xinti
only put it in the bottom of heart

想要说声爱你,却被吹散在风里.
xiang yaou shuosheng ai ni, que bei chu isan zai fengli
want to say love you, but it's dispersed in the wind

茫然回头,你在那里.
mang ran hui tou, ni zai nali
turn back ignorantly, where are you

And finally, there's this recent discovery--  Jack Savoretti Harder Than Easy:

At the end of the day when you're lonely

after begging to be left alone

You can look at this world as your kingdom

If you want you can make me your home

Poop coffee

One of the things we brought back from Vietnam was cà phê Chồn or weasel poop coffee.  They feed the beans to the civet cats who poop them out after the critters' intestinal enzymes break down some of the components of the beans.  That creates special flavor.  And how.

I saw the movie Bucket List recently and the Jack Nicholson character has this obsession over his special coffee that in the end is revealed to be poop coffee.  I thought it was all fiction until someone asked if I planned to try it in VN.

We found some in Old Town and I bought it so there's a chance it's fake (not pricey enough) or real, who knows.  Since it is my birthday I brought it to the office.  One of the IT guys (the American one) is a coffee connoisseur who knows his way around a French Press.

The coffee was really good, very different and more smooth tasting. It smelled very chocolatey but didn't have the chocolate flavor.  Still, it was fun and we were all really really wired today!

Typhoon Gaemi

To evacuate or not to evacuate.  We're on a tiny spit of sand between the South China Sea and a brackish river South of Danang, Vietnam.   It's near the World Heritage Site Ancient town of Hoi An and its  beautiful historic architecture, walk streets and giant Buddha statues.   A welcome relief to dirty, crowded, crime-ridden Hanoi.  Unfortunately, though, it is also the tail end of typhoon season and Gaemi is heading our way, expected to make landfall tomorrow. It was due here, or in Danang, but apparently made a slight turn and is now bearing down on Hue, a couple of hours North of here.  We've befriended an Australian family whose dad is a former Qantas captain so I'm watching their movements carefully figuring he knows weather better than I.   

Our fabulous resort is installing wood over the largest of the windows, sandbagging the beach access and Northernmost end of the huge, three-pool-with-bridges pool, and staking the gardens.  The sound of hammering brings to mind a hurricane my ex and I survived in Florida, as we escaped Key West to the sound of locals nailing shut their window shutters and made it to Melbourne in time for the hurricane to change course and land at home.  We were young and being evacuated to sleep on the floor of a school gymnasium was exciting and fun.  Now, middle aged with a 9 year old, I just want to keep us both safe.  

Fortunately, unlike our Florida days, I can keep an eye on the typhoon's eye via internet updated regularly including pics.   

First Day of School

Though the ramp up was the worst yet, the actual first day of school went well.  So did the afterschool homework helper.  Whew.  The past two weeks have been so so so hard.  Seriously, hard enough for me to actually question my decision to stay on longer.  Lots of meltdowns (hers and mine) and anxiety about getting all the ducks in a row (mine).

We only just interviewed the afterschool person on Saturday!  She came from a friend who recently took her three boys back to America.  The boys' mom must have spent hours and hours teaching this young woman how to turn memorizing characters into games and wow, is she great.  Of course, on Saturday she said "boys play games but girls like to sit and be quiet."  Hahahaha.  LiLi was doing backbend-flipovers all over the livingroom at the time.  So...this young Lao Shi (teacher) used her games tonight with our pool ball and all I heard was laughter coming from the other room so she was a huge hit with LiLi.  And me.  Whew again.

The school remains very very imperfect and I toy with the idea of just taking LiLi out of it.  The English half seems good but the Chinese half remains very challenging.  The opposite of nurturing, for sure.  Is it just the Chinese way?  I don't know.  We hired a new attorney at the office and she was telling me today that when she was LiLi's age all she did was study.  Go to school, come home, study for hours and hours, then do it all again the next day. She said she didn't play, didn't have activities, didn't have fun.  But, she said, it was worth it.  She's been doing international law, was abroad for a few years, seems very bright.  Is it worth it?  I'm not sure.  I think the French have it right.  35 hour weeks.  A couple of months vacation.  Great wine.  (We had a French intern who was aghast at the idea of going in to the office on a weekend one time.  She shared this with us.)

But yes:  fourth grade has begun.

Another new phase

It often happens that post-vacation-blues set in after returning from a beach.  This time, it is following not only the Hainan Island trip but also four weeks away from work studying Chinese and hanging out with LiLi.  Many of the schools in BJ have already gone back but LiLi has another two weeks off so she'll spend it on playdates and with Ayi.  Since Ayi does not speak English, it'll be good for LiLi's language too.

On our way up to Lido for tutoring on Friday, LiLi started counting the weeks until we go back to our home country:  18.   Though my plan had been to go back last week, I never actually booked a flight for us so on some level I knew that we'd extend our stay.  I wasn't ready to go back last week, and home wasn't ready for us either.  This time we have air tickets on an actual date.  We also have my (very global) sister coming to China in December and my (also a globetrotter) mother meeting us in SF in January.  So we have some things to look forward to in addition to seeing our friends and neighbors.

Speaking of neighbors, there was a NYT piece about my San Francisco neighborhood that generated many many comments from my neighbors and others and made me miss my hood more than ever.  I still can't imagine myself sleeping in my own bed but there are other things I long for there.  Including: my books.

I've started reading for pleasure again after a long break.   We didn't have tv at home for most of LiLi's toddlerhood so after she went down and after I took care of all those life tasks like putting away toys and washing dishes, I'd read.  I have a book lined library at home, along with three book cases in my bedroom which are filled with the as-yet-unread.  But once LiLi began school and once we got tv and once I started doing work that demanded evening hours, I stopped reading for pleasure.  I was simply too tired.  I continued to buy used books, though, like hundreds per year, driving my ex crazy.  So I bought those bedroom bookcases to house the books I would read "later."  That went on for several years.

And now I'm reading again.  Since this work break and since LiLi's own interest in reading has taken off we've begun to borrow books (English ones, we buy the Chinese ones to keep) from a cafe/bookstore in BJ called the Bookworm.  I think of all those books I have at home and wish I could somehow transport them here at least for 18 weeks.

Sometimes I have to intentionally stop, breathe, and notice, so I can remember certain moments.  Moments of life and moments of parenting.  One recent one was this:  I was lying in my bed with my head propped on several pillows with some novel (some fast-paced Swedish mystery maybe, no E.M. Forster right now) and LiLi was lying perpendicular to me with her head propped on my stomach engrossed in a kid mystery.  Reading together.  I recall a friend whose kid is five or six years older than LiLi saying, "Just wait until you can read together.  It will change your life."

So the next 18 weeks are what I'm calling a new phase.  Fall semester for LiLi and wrapping up work projects and continuing to study Chinese for me.  It will be a busy time--I know that already--but a sweet, poignant one.  I know that already too.  Maybe we will be consciously letting go of China, feeling lucky to have lived this part of our lives here.  Or maybe I will be plotting our return.  That, I don't already know.

Hainan: island paradise

We spent last week on Hainan China's version of America's Hawaii.  Hainan is an island and China's southernmost province.   Loads of tourists visit Hainan since it is a tropical paradise built up as a tourist resort destination.  It is apparently popular with Chinese as well as Russian tourists.  In fact, the signs where we were on Yanlong Bay (above) were in Chinese, then Russian, then English.

Last summer when we traveled around China with our group of four I had wanted to come to Hainan at the end of the trip.  But we weren't able to manage it and see everything else we had wanted to see.  We had heard too that summer is monsoon season and the rain could ruin the vacation vacation.  Indeed, last week our visit was sandwiched between several typhoons and we were lucky to have lovely weather during our week, with a bit of cloudiness and rain toward the end of the week.

We visited Nanwan Monkey island off Hainan, an island habitat for some 2000 monkeys accessible by chair lift.  Some monkeys were made to perform but most seemed free to roam.

Mostly we lazed on the beach, built sand castles, swam in the warm sea or in the many swimming pools of the resorts.  The air was clean and the fish was fresh.  I daydreamed about spending a month there next summer depending upon...well, depending upon where we are living by then.