It is a week before Christmas and Elisa asks me what I got Aidan for Christmas. She really wants to know and when I won’t tell her she tries to find out if I’ve already bought the present yet or not. And if not, what would I buy. She asks me over and over again over the next few days and then again on Christmas eve. She never does asks me what I got for Lydia. ...
It is just over a year ago and I’m trying to flag down a cab to send the kids to school. And it’s windy. And the temperature is below freezing. And there is freezing rain pelting the side of our faces. And the cabs are passing us one by one without stopping. It’s at that moment that I switched to Uber and from the next morning onwards booked cars from the comfort of our apartment or the building lobby. Didi had been around for some time before that with the ability to book taxis ahead of time. I occasionally did this, or had a friend do it for me, when waking up in a hard to flag taxi place but in my apartment downtown taxis were mostly available in the mornings except when you really needed them. Once I switched to Uber the I quickly became a convert. About half the price of taxis, can get a car anytime, and can track the kids progress when I sent them to school or to some event. Uber app was also in English and was easy for me to set up payment. Over the year the service started to get more expensive and it felt like the quality of the drivers stopped as we were constantly having to communicate our location despite GPS. One of the last times I used Uber to send the kids to school we were looking for a white car with 9X0 as the last three license place digits. We walked a half block to where GPS said it was, say the car, waved at driver and then tried to open the door. Door locked, we knocked, looked into the window which was tinted and tried to open the door. Still locked. Then the driver turned away. Turns out the place was P20. Uber still showed the car at the corner and when I called the driver he said he was coming. I cancelled and put the kids into a taxi. Uber lost to Didi in the competition here. For a while it was great as a consumer. Both sides so hungry for the market they were subsiding our rides. But when Uber lost the Uber App was replaced with a China and Chinese language only App. At which point I switched to Didi and it’s Chinese only App as well. Since we moved I’ve been taking Elisa to school using Didi (the elders kids school is a short walk away). The first day was similar to my first Uber day. Raining ice, winding, cold. I could not communicate well enough in Chinese with the Didi driver and needed someone to help me. Later I got the routine down and can take Elisa without help. After dropping off Elisa at school I then have a 10 minute walk to the subway so I can get to work. Fortunately a new service recently launched a couple months ago – 1 RMB bike rental where you grab a bike and drop it wherever you stop. There are actually two such services and now you can see bikes returning to the streets of Beijing. ...
It is the summer of 2005 and I’m heading out for a walk. A woman with a white skin looking down at a map looks up and notices me. And then walks up to me. She starts to speak French and I say I don’t understand. She switches to a fairly heavy accented English and apologies saying she thought I was French. The then asks where the Russian markets are. Apparently they used to be right here and she visited them a few years back but now she can’t seem to find them. I say I only know Yabao Lu, a few blocks away, but she says not that one. A few months later I was looking Google Earth and I used it’s time lapse feature. I went back in time for my apartment building. Back to 2001 or so. When what existed in it’s place was..you guessed it..russian markets. ...
Lydia (12) is the first of the kids to arrive at the taco bar. She sits down next to me and says “nice haircut. You were aiming for 20 and got 70”. This a Lydia zinger, of which she has many. She means it as playful and it mostly is and every now and then crosses the line into harsh. Just like me. And her grandpa. Lydia’s gift for language goes beyond my kind of sharpness and just a pure multilingual fluency. It’s much more advanced than I had expected given I’m pretty much the only one besides her English teacher who speaks English with her. She gets that from her mom. No one knows where she got her gift to draw Elisa (8) is the next one to come through the taco bar doors. Elisa is caring, loving, sneaky, and outgoing when restless. I like to say she got the caring and loving from me but more like the caring and sneaky. When in turn I got from my mom and dad respectively. She will put her hand on my belly, call it her “pillow”. She will put things on the wall and deny it later or she will poke around my girlfriends things. When she goes to the playground, she is like her mom, always making friends especially with the boys. At lunch on this day, after we order, she asks to go outside and walk around. This is in part because she is that restless extrovert like her mom. It is also because she is sensitive to smell like her uncle and grandmother on her mother’s side. Aidan (13) is the last to edge his way down the chair. He is a snowboarder and wakeboarder. At once hip and cool and at once cautious. When I remind him of something – be careful where you leave your bicycle – he will be agreeing and slightly defensive with me. “I know, I know”, is his mantra. Aidan’s origins are perhaps the most complex to dissect. He is so close to his mom that sometimes it’s difficult to know if he is like her or if he is trying to emulate her. Like me, but at a different time, he was hurt when his mom found a boyfriend and stopped payed less attention to him. Like me, I believe he always wants to do the right thing but sometimes get tired of always having to be good and things come out in an unintentional way. Like when he ordered a full size basketball stand and shipped it to my small apartment. He really wanted to play basketball with me and thought it would be convenient but didn’t think though that I don’t have storage for it. ...
Aidan, Lydia, and I are walking towards a Singapore hawker center (local food stalls) when Aidan says to me “you know that sound in Beijing..the ones cars make?”. It takes me a beat and then I realize he doesn’t know the word “honking” so I tell him, yea, what about it. Aidan says the cars don’t do that here. The kids and I spend a week in Singapore and Bali. A bit of a rushed trip as we could have spend a week in either place. The kids particularly liked Singapore and our all day tour there. Sea Aquarium strangely reminding me of IKEA with it’s massive size and never ending switchbacks. The cart racing. The tram to and from Sentosa island. The night safari. ...
Aidan says to me “we can eat at home more often” as Lydia reaches for her second hot dog and Elisa by some miracle digs into my version of 白菜. The July 4th dinner which we had on the 3rd is a success. We don’t really live where there are many American expats nor am I very close with Americans that would have a fourth of July BBQ. Back in my early days here I did attend a couple of independence day celebrations with other newish American expats. It felt weird to celebrate the fourth with expats since they are not known to be the most patriotic of folks (some of course are, especially the execs placed here with packages). For me, the fourth was mostly a day off in the states. I never felt super patriotic. At the same time, I don’t harbor any ill will. It’s just a day. But I do want the kids to understand and embrace that they are American so I keep up some traditions. ...
I wake up, alone, and in a light sweat. I debate getting up and turning the AC on so I can sleep another hour. I check my phone. 7am. I slept through the night for the second night in a row after three weeks of insomnia. I get up and wash out my eyes which are recovering from an infection. I feel my sore throat is coming back. If 70 is the new 50 then it’s really going to suck to turn 70. ...
When I grew up my schools had team sports which I participated in from the second grade through my senior year of high school. In Beijing, my kids, at least through grammar school have a “sports day” every Spring which I’ve for the past eight years. My typical attendance consisted of arriving at the school playground around 9am which is later than work so I tended to stay up a little longer the night before. During the sports day I would sip my coffee while waiting for one of the kids to do something. It could be an opening performance, a game of soccer, or a three legged race with a parent. It was a chance to nod at other parents that I may have or may not have nodded at other such events. It was a chance to see my kids around their classmates and how the acted with each other. ...
Aidan dribbles and then takes a step back three. It clunks of the back rim and into my hands. He’s been telling me that he’s been shooting threes during his after school games but this is the first time I’ve seen it. He now has the strength to shoot them relatively easily using a push set shot which strangely makes me feel proud. He even makes a few doing our four games of 21. I of course beat him in every game but my aching knees the next two days tell me I won’t have this advantage for long. ...
Lydia and Elisa are walking single file in front of me making their way to the back of the speed boat. As we walk I hear a father call out from the water below. “Help, help!” and I look down to see him trying to wave his hands towards his 10 year old son who despite the life jacket was in some kind of danger. It barely registered with me at the time beyond delaying our descent into the water as the boy and father climbed back into the boat. As we got to the rear steps a mom, holding her six month old, gave me some advice about tying Elisa’s hair back. Death stare. Lydia was first into the water followed by Elisa and then me. Elisa was immediately scared as the ocean swells put her head underwater and she could not adjust their rhythms. I too was having a hard time adjusting and could immediately relate to the father calling emergency. I held Elisa through a few more waves but she was too nervous and could not adjust so I brought her back to the boat. I went back out to find Lydia waiting for me, not affected at all. We snorkeled for about 30 minutes, father and daughter, enjoying a wonderous feeling of weightlessness and senses of the eyes. When it we were done we found Elisa waiting on the boat for us, relaxed again. ...