China’s National Holiday, also called Golden Week, starts on the anniversary of the new China’s founding, October 1 and lasts a week. It is generally the best season in China and many other parts of the world. We often take trips during Golden Week. Amanda’s first road trip in 2024, Jim’s service and family visit in 2023, US trips in 2019 and 2017 amongst many more. But now that we are not working, Golden Week is just like any other week. When you can travel anytime, is there a reason to travel when everyone else does?
So we stayed in Beijing for the week and if you avoid touristy places, Beijing is quite liveable during the holiday. Traffic is better and there are generally fewer people on the streets. Go to touristy places, like Tiananmen to see the raising of the national flag, watch out. Back in Sabrina’s younger and poorer days, Sabrina would go to Tiananmen to get a sense of the holiday. When she was older, she went to Europe.
We did have an adjustment for Golden Week - Amanda was home from preschool. It is amazing how quickly I got used to having my mornings back to focus on exercise, my projects, my long walks listening to podcasts, and the beauty of afternoon naps.
The prologue to Golden Week was a preschool “hike” at Chaoyang Park organized by Amanda’s school. It was held on the last day before holiday and most of the kids along with one or two caretakers went. I find these events slightly awkward, given my shyness and lack of Chinese language. Amanda already has some close classmates and we know their parents/grandparents at least by sight. On this day, we did a 2km walk through the park and Amanda collected stickers along the way. I got a coffee made by a robot.
After the hike, Yang’s mom arranged for a holiday lunch at a favorite restaurant of hers. I knew she also invited her housekeeper’s family but I had put it out of my mind. When they all showed up, the housekeeper, her husband, her two daughters, her son-in-law, and her grandson, I felt a bit overwhelmed. Such is the condition of my fatigue. Amanda played with the grandson, who is a few months younger than her. For days after, Amanda asked to see the younger boy. To call him at least.
The food itself was great. I wasn’t in the best mood because of the fatigue and the housekeeper’s husband saying I looked old and maybe I should exercise more.
Once the holiday officially began, we attended a taco festival at Chaoyang Park. Supposedly it attracted 100,000 people over a few days. We went for lunch tacos and saw more young western foreigners that I’ve been seeing recently in Beijing. There were maybe 50 taco stands which is amazing compared to the dearth of Mexican food Beijing had when I arrived (and the Mexican Wave bar/restaurant is long gone). I made the rookie mistake of picking a taco stand that had a modest line, assuming it would be good. They were just slow at making tacos. The tacos themselves were decent.
Our next outing was Ritan park, our 500 year old neighborhood park. It was all decked out for the holiday with flowers, games for kids, and small stands. It was crowded and festive. We make sure to get Amanda some tanghulu (糖葫芦) which how could she not love. It is a fruit skewer where each piece of fruit is covered in a hardened sugar glaze.
We spend a fair amount of time during the holiday taking care of a cat. I should say Sabrina took care of a cat. A couple weeks ago, Sabrina texted me that the cat store in the mall had cut its prices in half and we should get a cat. I said please, no more pets. A week later, the store was closing. Sabrina got the cat for her sister. The cat had some kind of fungal infection so Sabrina went over to her sister’s house twice a day to apply medicine. I often acted as the chauffeur and wasn’t pleased about it. I also wasn’t pleased that I wasn’t pleased about it. After several days, Sabrina just brought the cat to our apartment.
Our final outing during the holiday was the Beijing Auto Museum which I wrote about here. It was crowded but not too crowded and I enjoyed it until the fatigue set in. And boy did it ever set in, but more on that later.
With the holiday over, the office buildings near us got crowded again and we settled into the school day routines again. Morning yoga, walks, and naps have returned.