I’m in the Starbucks of Yang’s apartment about to pick up Elisa for a morning performance of Disney on Ice. I text up to see if Yang and the kids want anything. Vanilla Frap for Aidan, Chocolate Frap for Lydia, decaf coffee for Yang, and pita bread for Elisa. I’m thinking this sure ain’t breakfast food when Sabrina says she wants the New York Cheesecake.

We get upstairs, fortifications in hand. Talk with the older kids while Elisa gets ready and Yang puts on some pants. Sabrina books a car and we take off.

I went to Disney on Ice in Beijing once before, maybe when Aidan and Lydia were three and four years old. It was a curious event, at Worker’s Gymnasium near our then home, with a mostly imported cast doing a Disney hits in both English and Mandarin. Like this year, it was some kind of work sponsored event. This year, however, was on the west side of town and it took the car about 45 minutes to get there. An arena called Capital Indoor Gymnasium that seats maybe 10,000 people and had played host to the 1971 ping pong diplomacy games. I remembered it from 2013 when the Arena Football League had a bizarre exhibition match that I attended with the kids.

On this day, the Disney dancers ran through all the hits. Toy Story, Mulan, Aladdin, others I can’t remember. Frozen was a bit hit and featured the only song in English - “Let it Go” - which I found oddly emotional. Elisa was into the whole show, I had been a bit worried that at nine she had started to outgrow Disney like her older siblings have. I was happy the Sabrina got a kick of of the performances. I enjoyed the music and appreciated the skating but I don’t have the kid enjoyment bit in me.

I did not notice any other foreigners there which was different from ten years ago. I feel there used to be more foreigners who came to China when their children were small and now they leave when they have kids.

And as we were on the way out there was a very Beijing thing. Everyone leaves the arena at the same time of course and for some reason our exit door was very slow going. Turns out a mom had stopped in the middle of the stairs to put on the coat of her two year old. It was taking a long time and everyone had to be careful to avoid them. The stairs are inside and when you get to the bottom of the stairs your are still inside, in the lobby of the arena. But the fear of the cold and the need to protect without knowing the context of the situation trumps all else.

We then took Elisa to one of her favorite restaurants - 6 RMB sushi boat - that we have not been to in a long time. She wanted to walk around the mall, she said, so we did. In fact it was a secret ploy for her to play inside the climbing playground that I had earlier said she had out ground. Like Disney, she had not, and she played for another two hours while my phone was on battery life support.