Blunt

James Blunt came onstage, made a sound with his guitar and then his voice and the Star Live club in Beijing came alive. In a kind of middle aged expat, rich young Chinese kind of alive. I appreciated that he was on time. Yang and I were 20 or so feet from the stage, off to the side, and when as the rest of his band joined in and the lights came on Yang's heart skipped a beat and she asked me to let my hair turn back to brown and grow it long and maybe grow a shaggy style beard. I noticed Blunt's eyes were unnaturally white and alert as he ripped through the song and toyed with the audience.

After the song he said "thanks" in Chinese (xiexie) and even though he probably just heard it himself for the first time, his pronunciation was better than mine after three years of living here. There are things you need to work and work at to make it look easy, and then there are things that just are. Or are not in my case.

He sang his new stuff and all his hits including the two mega hits which he said are England's most popular wedding and funeral songs. I can't really imagine either song fitting the bill. While Blunt's words are over the top sappy, they work on more than one level and are designed to pull you towards a singular message while at the same pulling you away to tell a completely different story. Or maybe it's just me. In any case, he played for about 90 minutes and the thousand or so of us in the club had a good time, I suspect the crowd was a little more subdued than others. There were plenty of folks making cell phone movies  , now posted on Youtube or Todou, such as this one and this one.

The next day, before the rains came,  we took the kids to a less blunt event...a hunt for a pirate's treasure at Ritan park. It was supposed to go like this -- show up at 11:30, eat, find the 10 hiding pirates in the park, return with the treasure map, and collect the treasure.  After the 2nd pirate Lydia bailed and wanted to take a nap. Her and Yang went off. Aidan made it through six pirates and then decided  the monkey bars were more fun. So up he climbed and climbed falling just once as I watched the people on the rock wall and listened to my zune. He made a friend as they swapped toys. Aidan with the baby ultaman and the new friend with this plastic top connection that a pirate gave us. Aidan can make friends easy enough but he's been shy since he's been four and he needs to be around another kid for a while before interacting. That's what happened in this case, they were both on the monkey bars and the other kid was trying to play with Aidan. Aidan just ignored him if you don't count the accidental climbing kick. But the toys broke the ice and smiles and laughter ensured.

By 2:30 we were all a bit tired of pirates and I was wondering where the ships were. I mean, the cool thing about pirates is they have ships. On shore, they are just thieves.

We headed home on our bikes, Yang with number three and Lydia. Me with Aidan. Lydia was asleep by the time we got home and it was a bit of a juggle to get the two bikes, two adults, one awake child, and one sleeping child into the doorway, then into the small elevator, then into our condo. And yes, I did think its not going to get any easier anytime soon. I thought this just as Aidan pulled on the heavy glass door leading to our floor. He pulled with all the strength he could muster and he managed to open it just enough so that we could all fit though.