Easter 2021

Easter arrived almost undetected this year as did my 16th anniversary of living in Beijing. We have some simple family traditions around Easter. Family breakfast. Egg decorations. Easter egg hunt. Candy. Nothing on the religious front although seemingly by osmosis the kids know they story of the resurrection. We've maintained these traditions despite the family's reformulation eight years ago.

This year's breakfast was shifted to lunch at an Italian restaurant in Shunyi which is a western style enclave on the outskirts of Beijing. Shunyi's resident stereotype is the expat exec who's on a two-year assignment in Beijing and wants to keep his family in the same living and school conditions as back home. In reality, the residents are quite varied as all it takes is money to live there and plenty of people in Beijing have money. We used to visit friends regularly out there before the reformulation and I've only been there a couple times since. I have actually spent more time since then in what I call the "other Shunyi" (I wrote a bit about it here).

As we were waiting for our food to arrive a table next to us was seating. Yang's mom, sitting next to me, said "look at that table next to us, very interesting!". I am a sensor, so I had already noticed them, and I know her and knew what she found "interesting". It was the mixed race couple at the table and the mixed race children at the table. Not getting the response she wanted from me, Yang's mom repeated "very interesting!". Of course, the table she was sitting on had mixed race couple and mixed race children; just different races.

After lunch we went across the road to the river where the kids would do the annual easter egg hunt and Kobe our dog could run free. The hunt was a bit subdued. Kobe found a fish's head. I was grateful for Aidan, paying attention to his younger sister Elisa. I was grateful for Elisa for staying a child for one more year. I was grateful to Lydia for her wicked humor and being with us. I was grateful for Sabrina for adapting to this strange reformulation.  When we got home I had some See's candy.