Expectations

Occasionally and increasingly infrequently people thinking of moving to China ask me what they should expect. I tell them the absence of expectations is the best way not to have missed expectations. Birthday cakes in Beijing are generally awful..these light tasting, over sugared, over fruited imitations for the real thing. What I want instead…what I expect…is something that tastes like the cake my Mom used to make for me. So what I did was go to Jenny Lous and buy Betty Crocker chocolate cake mix and chocolate frosting and made it myself. I baked in on the morning of my bday so that it would be nice and cool for the frosting. When I got back from my bday lunch with Yang (fabulous) I found Yang’s mom and eaten a good 10% rectangular chunk from the rectangular cake. Well, plenty of frosting then. The cake came out a bit dry. Dry as in take all the water out of your throat dry and cause you not to pee for three days. At least Yang’s mom liked it, she took most of the leftovers home to share with her Majong friends. My birthday was on a Sunday, which I expected to have off work but this being China Sunday was switched to a working day in order to extend the New Years holiday by a day. The following weekend Aidan and I travelled to Harbin home of the best winter ice festival in China. I have wanted to go for the past few winters but haven’t because Yang was a bit disinterested. Ok, she flat out did not want to go. The reasoning was something like…It’s 20F degrees in Beijing and you want to go to some place below zero. Have a nice trip. Anyway, I decided to just go this year and then Aidan got wind of it and tagged along. We took the overnight train up and checked into the a four star hotel. If one has never been to a 2nd tier city four star hotel then one might expect it to actually be four stars. Well, the lobby was. The room itself would round down to a two. But ok. Foreigners get a lot of attention in 2nd tier cities but the ice festival draws more than the occasional foreigner so most of the attention we got were from hawkers trying to sell us hats, scarves, and face covers. It was cold, but not bitter, bitter cold and we managed to enjoy an dog sled ride and a inner tube slide.   We went to the Ice Festival that night and it met our expectations…even exceeded it. Aidan happy with the rides and the snow, me with the lights and him. The next day we went to lunch at a Russian restaurant. Eating with children is a bit like meal roulette. You never know what they will like or how much they will eat even if they do like it. So in this case I decided to go for the “should be enough” approach and ordered soup and curry beef stew. Aidan started in with the stew and didn’t stop. I kept expecting him to, but he never did. He kept telling me how good it was until the plate was gone. It sure looked good. There were some other expected and unexpected things on the trip. Tang hulu (small candied cover looking apples that are not apples) tasted as bad in Harbin as the do in Beijing. Aidan got a lot of attention for being a foreign kid. The typical reaction was an older woman (sometimes younger which I enjoyed more until it was apparent my presence was unobserved) would see aidan and tell her friends how cute this foreign baby is. The group of old ladies would exchange comments. Aidan understanding everything and me about 50% (my “this is a cute baby” Chinese is my strong suit). In most of these encounters Aidan would not say anything. In a few, however, he would just join the conversation speaking perfect Chinese.  The old ladies about fell over. I swore one or two actually did. When complimented on his Chinese he would (especially in front of the younger women) tell them that his father spoke no Chinese at all. A few days after my birthday Lydia and I decided to make another chocolate cake. We went down to Jenny Lous and bought the same cake mix and frosting. I doubled checked the cake mix instructions. Three eggs. 1/4 cup oil. Water….Water! I knew I had forgotten something the first time.