It is two days after Christmas which for you kids is mostly about getting gifts. But it is about a lot more than gifts. It is about ritual and I want to explain a bit about why rituals are important. The short answer is because they can pull you through when that’s all you have left. When I was a child the kids would all gather in my parent’s basement waiting to be allowed upstairs and open presents on Christmas morning. We’d be gathered on the stairs, looking up at the door, waiting for the knob to turn. If my dad had to work that day, he was a firefighter, then the door would open before 7am. If he was just getting off work that day, then just after 8am. Once the door was opened we would rush to the living room and stare memorized at the pile of gifts. With eight kids, there were a lot of gifts. All the gifts were wrapped and my father would sit at the base of the tree and call out the name on the package and that kid would come excitedly forward to collect his bounty. We’d start out a gift at a time but invariably it would turn out to be a free for all with wrapping paper and giddy kids everywhere. With my dad being the way he is there was also an element of stress. Too messy, too much stuff, too noisy. You may recognize the same elements in your dad. ...

I wake up with a stuffy nose and a dry throat. It is five AM. It is 0 degrees Fahrenheit outside. It is Christmas Eve. I down a cup of instant coffee and eat three of brazil nuts and then begin my workout. 30 minutes later, drenched in sweat, I make my breakfast and listen to ESPN radio over the internet. I shower and dress for the office. Christmas Eve is just another day here. Well, mostly. The kids being in the international department of Fangcaodi have the week off school whereas the rest of the students need to go to school. For our house these means the kids are still asleep when I head out the door for work. Normally, they are leaving at the same time as me and I get to harass them about waking up and eating some breakfast. On this morning, I am missing that. ...

She woke up the sounds of him grinding coffee beans. She resented that sound. Hated it. And she was instantly awake with anger. A nice way to start a Sunday. She didn’t know how it came to this but came to this it had. Do all couples reach this stage? She wanted to blame him. To find fault with him. And for sure there were plenty of faults. From keeping the bathroom a mess to dry butt crack. But none of these faults were really that bad. Certainly not worthy of the hate she felt for him. ...

Foreigners (Laowai) are not expected to understand anything about China and that can be a haven for someone who has never felt like he belonged anywhere. Or it can just be really annoying. Today’s post covers a couple of annoyances. Yang’s mom, Pan Yi Hong, was set to land in Beijing after a six month stay in Boise, Idaho. The fact that she could stand spending six months in Boise, with her son, is incomprehensible but then again many things are incomprehensible about Pan Yi Hong. I was originally going to fly the San Francisco to Beijing leg of the flight with Pan Yi Hong, in fact I booked my return flight from the states to so that I might be of some assistance. Pan Yi Hong is fairly old after all and has the strange needs older people get. Well, I suspect, age is not a factor in her case. And as it turned out I did not take that flight with her as she missed her originating flight from Boise to San Francisco. And when she did get the originating flight the next day, it was delayed landing in San Francisco and she missed her connecting flight to Beijing. After spending the night in Fremont with her beloved daughter-in-law she finally boarded United Airlines 889 to Beijing. This is where I re-enter the story. ...

He can smell the heavy, cold moisture in the air and knows that snow isn’t far off. He pulls on his long underwear, jeans, winter coat, gloves, hat and scarf. He heads to the nearby park, Side Park, and enters unnoticed. No one is out tonight. He walks away from the light towards the deepest and darkest part of the park. He lies out his plastic mat on the frozen grass and sits. ...

Tomorrow is your Mom’s birthday. I won’t mention her age. No one would be believe me if I did. She still looks great. Hot, even. Being in love with someone is like being on a life raft with them. At first you are aware that you are on that boat because the love is so new and all-encompassing and the memory of the chasm just on the other side is fresh and sometimes scary. Then the boat - or is it the sea - stabilizes and you feel confident and empowered as you go through life. That you can go anywhere together. Do anything together. Be anything together. And if you are lucky time will pass and you will start to notice that the life raft is not very big after all. And that the little life raft is fragile; that all it takes is one person to poke a hole in it and let the air out at which point your only hope is that the base is made of wood. ...

It is the day before Thanksgiving and I am at Carrefour hopelessly searching for a meat thermometer and pie crusts. This seems to happen to me every year and my Chinese is so bad that I cannot even begin to describe what I want and have it make any sense. And if I could describe it then it really wouldn’t make any sense. Not many ovens here to cook a Turkey or bake a pie. ...

During our first summer here I bought a bicycle. An old fashioned ten speed with narrow tires which I used it to bike to Chinese class and just get around town. Yang got a bike too and we would take Aidan and Lydia out. Elisa was just a concept. No baby wagons here, kids sit on the back in a simple seat. Here’s what the bike seat looked like when it was relatively new ...

As I type this the US presidential election is underway and the 18th Chinese National Congress will soon be underway. If you don’t live in China, you may not be aware of the impact of the National Congress. I’ll just say it’s a big deal. This post is about the vote that took place at Lydia’s and Aidan’s school yesterday. The parents voted 9-7 to replace Lydia’s teacher. As I understand it, the vote would be given as a simple thumbs up/thumbs down to the school and the school would comply with the parent’s wishes. ...

If the Giants won a World Series and no one applauded, would they have really won. Maybe not in China. Game four of the World Series was largely played during my flight from Beijing to Xiamen. When we landed in Xiamen, like everyone else I ignored the instructions to keep my cell phone powered off. Unlike everyone else, my main purpose was to check the Giants score. 4/3, F10 it read. The Giants were World Series Champs. ...