We are driving to see the Lady with the Chisel. Aidan is in the back seat lying strips of banana peal side by side. I ask him if he wants to help his father with a Chinese lesson. He says yes. I switch what’s playing on the car stereo to an episode of ChinesePod about calling someone tall. Aidan is not super interested and he asks for another lesson. It seems these ChinesePod lessons, at the level I listen too, actually help his english a bit as they talk more english on the show than Chinese. ...

As we get older certain dates explode off the calendar with a vengeance. For those that follow the lunar calendar – like the older generation in Beijing – dates appear like clowns in a funhouse, you never know which corner they are around. This year, my father in law’s birthday was announced just days before the actual day, making a near orbital collision with Yang’s bday and Thanksgiving. What does this all mean? ...

I’m in line, backpack strapped to my back, pushing my duffel bag with my feet, and pulling my carry-on toward the united airlines business class check in. I was too cheap, or too sane, to pay $3 for a luggage cart. Sanity or disturbance is an argument I often have with myself. I check in the duffel bag, check in the carry on, and leave the counter with just my back pack and boarding pass. As I walk towards the gate, I see a vaguely familiar face. A bit older, a bit thinner, quite a bit more worn. But yes, it is her, Mary. My first instinct is to bolt pass her, pretend I don’t see her, as I often do when I see an person from my past. But I’m trying to get past my past – so to speak – and make my past, my past and not let my past be my future. So to speak. ...

I call Beijing from my temp office trying to catch Yang and the kids before they head off to work and school respectively. Yang is just stepping out of the shower – suddenly i feel i’ve been away too long – so she hands the phone to Aidan. Aidan tells me he has a stomach ache. This is his way of avoiding school. When reminded he just finished breakfast without any sign of stomach problems he quickly switches to a headache. I can feel his slight smile at playing this trick, him knowing I know what he’s trying to do yet doing it anyway. Aidan’s giddiness is almost palatable on the phone and causes me to smile. We talk bit, Aidan asking for toys from America and me promising at least one. ...

The day before the Halloween party Yang and I took the kids to Watson’s to buy baskets to stash the large quantities of Halloween candy they would be collecting on our behalf. Aidan and Lydia decided this would be the ideal time to try out their new costumes – Aidan as Spiderman and Lydia as Cinderella. On the way across the street to Watson’s, Aidan and Lydia were quite excited. Aidan occasionally breaking out into spontaneous spidy moves. Once at Watson’s they gathered a fair amount of attention and stares. Aidan didn’t like it and began crying. Not the cry when he is angry or tired but the cry when he is really hurt with big, solid tears running down his cheeks. People nearby thought he had bumped his leg on something, but Yang new better. He immediately asked to go home. hua jia (回家) in Chinese over and over again. I held him and carried him home. Lydia was oblivious to the whole thing or at leased seems so. ...

The Beijing Marathon was supposed to start at Tiananmen Square and finish at finish at the National Stadium near the new Olympic park. But planning being what it is here, they overlooked that the national congress was meeting this week and had to re-arrange the route to both start and end at the National Stadium. Well, end there all except for the half marathon which I was entered in. My first challenge was to find the starting line. The sign at the entrance pointed left, so I went left. And left, and left, and left. I found the 5K starting line with loads of runners waiting. I went through and around them only to find the 10K starting line a few hundred yards ahead. I was starting to get desperate. I tried to go around the 10K starting line only to be stopped by a guard. Two japanese men also wanted past. The guard held is ground. We tried to explain we needed to be at the other starting line, to let us past. Out race jerseys and numbers indicated either full or half marathon. The guard did not understand nor did he wish to understand. A few more of us stranded marathoners gathered and with a push forced our way past the now two guards and to the marathon starting line. The race had just started so we joined, it was 8:15am. ...

Her brother has a friend who is opening a beauty saloon in the Asian Park section of Beijing, so she packed her bags – really just one – and left our family this morning. The beauty saloon represented a better opportunity and the chance to learn a skill that she can use when she returns to her hometown in a year or two. At least this is her plan. Everyone plans to be here a year or two. ...

I’m sitting on our bed watching the 2007 baseball playoff highlights. This is the first time I’ve watched baseball highlights in Beijing since I lived here. At least baseball highlights in English. And of American baseball, not Japanese baseball highlights shown during NHKs English news broadcast. The highlights come over the computer, on this new service called Joost, through a deal with MLB. It’s the only thing on Joost worth viewing. ...

I’m sitting in the back of a vintage Volvo, wearing my oversized gray hoodie with the hood down. We are heading towards downtown portland, to some chick restaurant for people too cool to be chick. My childhood friend is driving, his caucasian wife if in the passenger seat. he’s asking me how my parents are, but instead of describing how they are I describe what it was like for me to spend the previous weekend with my parents. Always answer the more interesting question, I heard once, and in most cases I am more interested in myself. ...

It’s National Holiday week in China and we are driving in the outskirts of Beijing. The sky seems clear, the air seems fresh, but it is hard to tell once you’ve been in Beijing a while. Yihang, my mother in law, sits in the passenger seat. Yang and the kids are in the back. Yihang grows excited, which doesn’t typically takes much but in this case is justified. She recognizes the area we are in and says she has spent some time here. Turns out, as an intellectual, she was sent here during the cultural revolution for re-education. But she doesn’t describe it this way. Just that she came here, to the farms, and worked with the managers of the farms. If she bears a grudge or resentment of being taken away from her two small children (who were also sent away) and husband, she does not reveal it. ...