Family

It is Thanksgiving weekend and we are staying at a big spa resort in the outskirts of Beijing. These resorts are massive and frequented by relatively few foreigners (I would see two other foreigners over our two nights there out of maybe 2000 people). I find these resorts a nice change of pace for a half day or so, tolerable for about a day, and ready to leave anytime after 24 hours. When we hit the 24 hour mark on this visit, I head out for a walk. It is cold, maybe 28 degrees and there isn’t a lot to see except for the resort and the surrounding neighborhood. The neighborhood is not really a city but is crowded nevertheless. Analogous to a city of strip malls. After 30 minutes or so in the cold I head back inside where it is very, very warm to the point we open windows to cool the air inside the hotel room. ...

I’m on my laptop trying to do a little work when Elisa pushes open the door and slides up next to me. “Baba, I want to play you”. She then says “no Dora. no iPhone. no little bit Dora.” She says this because in the past I’ve told her “No Dora" only to relent and use the computer to play “Dora the Explorer” games with her. She knows I cannot resist. ...

As Yang and I exit the hot pot restaurant in Chengdu I’m habitually checking something on my phone. I realize is a tantalizing annoying habit. I catch up to Yang and put my left hand on her left shoulder and then run it down to the middle of her back as I am want to do. A huff of a scream. A look up at me and then a full scream of fear and Yang runs away. Except it isn’t Yang as I flubbed the transition from phone to wife. A woman runs diagonally away from me and then stops and looks back. I apologize in my worst Chinese – which is my only variety – and seek out Yang to clarify. Luckily the woman doesn’t think I’m also harassing Yang – I should say luckily Yang didn’t take the opportunity to run off screaming as well. Once the woman saw my mistake she was good natured about it and just made sure to keep her distance from my wandering arm. ...

Yang heard Akon was coming two town for a concert and she immediately signed us up to go. And then she asked who Akon was. The concert was in the Olympic basketball arena which is a near diagonal across town from where we live. For our previous concert experience there, The Eagles, we taxied to the subway and then took the subway to the arena. This time the concert started a bit later and a quick check of traffic and we thought we could drive. Got onto the forth ring road and it was not moving. So we not moved the car to a near by subway station and change the modes of transports. This put us about 20 minutes late but Akon started 25 minutes late (no warm-up acts) so we didn’t miss a thing. ...

The older crotchety nurse loosely fondles two small cups and asks me a question. I have no idea what she is saying so I reply “tīng bù dǒng” which she finds amusing. “tīng bù dǒng” means I hear you but I don’t understand. (The fact that she understands me saying I don’t understand her is an improvement from when I first moved to China when I used to say “tīng bù dǒng” which resulted in a similar response back to me). The nurse in a semi laugh yells “tīng bù dǒng”. No one responds so she laughs and yells a bit louder. The head nurse, the one who booked (sold) us the exam happens to be close by and comes over. It is no small miracle that she was close by as there are maybe 15 stations spread out over two floors with maybe 100 nurses. The head nurse looks at me and then down to the small cups. “Pee pee. Poo Poo”. The poo poo cup is way too small I’m thinking. I say no to the poo poo and take the pee cup. ...

I’m sitting in the den working on the laptop trying to get a project idea off the ground when Elisa opens the door and walks up to me. “No Dora” she says. “No Aidan iPad. No iPhone.” This is her way of letting me know she wants to play with one of these things. She says this because in the past when I’ve been working I’ve told her “No” only to relent into her cuteness. We start with Dora the Explorer images as served by Google which is weird because of the amount of my past work life spent on Bing image search. ...

Yang and I are driving along a small, paved, road in the hillsides of Hebei Province and looking for a trailhead for Haituo Mountain. To our right out in a field is a farmer working his field. Up ahead on our left walking down the road is a farmer making her way. They look old, really old, which makes them about our age. Yang leans out the window and asks the farmer where the mountain is. His reply is a quizzical “Mountain? Everywhere is mountain.” ...

The nice thing about the Beijing marathon is the built in crowd just waiting to cross the street. This was my thought at about mile six today and it colored my views of the crowd the rest of the way. Maybe the people shouting encouragement of Jiayou Jiayou just wanted to get home after the daily grocery shopping. As I looked deeper the crowd was mostly there just to cheer and enjoy the spectacle. Little kids waving flags waiting for a parent to run by, cheerleaders of one of the sponsors, the middle age with time on their hands. But there were a few who clearly wanted to make a break for it and if you’ve lived in Beijing for a while you know lines and barriers don’t really discourage people from going from point A to B in a straight line. This was offset by a pretty massive force of policemen and military stationed along the road and at every intersection keeping the crowd at bay. When I ran in the Bay to Bridge two weeks ago, San Francisco also deployed cops to keep folks from crossing into the runners paths but the number of runners, people, and cops are at a whole other scale here. Think a factor of 50. ...

Yang calls from the tennis tournament she is at and says Lydia’s been asked to try out for a movie. The director is famous here which pretty much means I have no idea who he is. Yang says if Lydia got the part it would be 50 days in Guangzhou for the shoot. A big deal. One minor problem is Lydia doesn’t want to do it. She told Yang that on the phone so then it was up to me to try again 10 minutes later. I just told her we were going to go, no questions asked. She started to cry, not real thrilled with the prospect. An hour later Lydia’s “agent” picks us up. Lydia is in a better mood, no complaining but not enthusiastic either. We ride in the back of the agent’s 10 year old mazda compact and Lydia starts to sketch. The agent tried to talk to her about the audition, that Lydia she be a certain way. Lydia just repeats that she doesn’t want to do it. ...

I’m driving the kids home from school with Lydia in the back seat passenger side, Aidan in the middle, and Naomi on the driver’s side. They always sit with Aidan in the middle, I asked Aidan why by could not quite decipher the reason. This being due to both his English language skills and him being eight. Lydia asks me for my phone and I pass it back. I figure she wants to play a game on my phone. A minute latter she is talking the phone, arranging for Naomi to go with her to a birthday party she’s been invited too later that afternoon. And with that I am completely and totally reminded of Yang. ...