Family

When you come to China and meet an expat who has been in China for some time refrain from asking the generic “so what’s life like here? any surprises?” Be more specific and slice right through the heart by asking “what’s a trip to the bank like?” All foreigners here not living out of a suitcase will have a story or two. Or ten. Here is my most recent one. I bank at ICBC (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China) because it was the only bank that my company had automatic payroll deposits for and whose credit card I had to use to book my flights. Pretty much all banks here have a bad reputation for customer service and ICBC is the well deserved leader in the bad reputation race. I had things pretty much set up so that I never, ever had to visit a branch because of stories previously told. But my luck ran out and I needed to visit a branch not for one transaction but three. The first transaction was to get my ATM card replaced because I lost it, the second transaction was to transfer money to my bank account in the US, and the third was to get my renewed credit card. So kind of like three stories in one; bear with me. ...

I guess part of being a nearly eight year old boy is learning how to use your body in some kind of coordinated way. It must be doubly difficult when you can sit still for a single moment. I was sitting down to play Monopoly – China version – with Aidan on Thursday afternoon. We needed to do a lot of work to set the get the game set up because Elisa has “played” monopoly earlier in the weeks. Under Elisa’s rules the object of the game is to shuffle all the money into one big mess, crimpling as needed. Aidan was excited to be playing and moving around in his chair. Lean forward. Lean back. Arms out with lean. Now arms sideways on lean back. You get the picture. On one of his rocks forward he pushed the monopoly board and it in turned pushed an empty water glass (actual) glass off the table and onto our faux marble floor. Crash, glass into hundreds of pieces. As the ayis cleaned up the glass and we kept Elisa from running around on top of it in her bare feet I “lectured” Aidan on being more aware of his movements. I say “lectured” in quotes because I wasn’t upset at all about the glass breaking it was just one of those things. (My level of upset-ness in general seems to be in direct proportion with the stress I’ve been feeling and I haven’t been feeling much stress these days.) The glass finally cleaned up and then it was time to pick our pieces and start the game. ...

I remember when I was a couple of years older than Lydia I came to the conclusion that the chain link fence in the All Souls School playground would be a perfect to stop a bike. I tested this theory by riding head on into the fence. It turned out there are less painful ways to stop a bike. Aidan and Lydia are on winter break which lasts about five weeks here. This means they are home all day and since it is quite cold outside they can’t get out and play. Yang and I made an effort – my part was to complain – to get the kids into more winter sports activities. Last week we started them on skating and this week we took them skiing. ...

It is Friday night, about 9pm, and we are having a family night at home. Aidan is playing with his latest yo-yo demonstrating it’s unique properties (and here I thought a yo-yo was a yo-yo). Lydia is watching TV and goofing on Aidan. I’m sitting on the coach when Elisa comes walking up with her small plastic water cup in hand. She is giggling a bit. She then spits out some water on the floor and pours some more from the cup onto the floor. She’s not being naughty or testing limits as she is want to do other times, in this case she thinks this is just fun play. Nevertheless, I give her a stern face and tell her “Elisa bu hao”. Elisa turns and walks out of the living and into the den, which is empty and dark. A beat passes. Then “waaaahhhhh, waaaaahhhh” and she is crying. ...

It is one of those rare occasions where I am home alone with the three kids. This situation requires just the right coincidence of events kind of like a full solar eclipse except that people look forward to the eclipse. In this case, it was a weekend which meant we were down to one ayi and the ayi on duty is the one that goes home at 8:30pm vs. the one who lives with us. Yang’s mom would typically be with us if I was going to otherwise be alone with the kids but she had another commitment. And Yang’s mahjong (or was it tennis) game ran long. So this left me alone with the three Beijing Allio kids. ...

We are at Invincible Ramen which may be the best ramen house in Beijing. It’s a small place and without fanfare. Up a flight of stairs, no English signs or menus, simply tables on a wood floor. We are in the back section, a table for six including the Allio Beijing five and the ubiquitous mother in law. Having placed our order I take Elisa out to explore the restaurant. We look at the fish of course and the sushi chef. Then Elisa notices balloons lying in a corner so I give her one only to be told a minute later that the balloons are “taken” or so said a middle age woman on behalf of the too well behaved children with her party. So we smile and put the balloon down (later, typically, it dawns on me what the appropriate response would be). ...

A few months back Aidan asked for a Yo-Yo so we bought him a cheap little one costing 15 RMB. I expected him to try it a few times and then put it down and go onto the next thing. A week later he was still playing for it and asking for a better yo-yo. I then spotted him watching a cartoon where the hero is a boy who uses the yo-yo as some kind of weapon. At least that was my impression for the 10 seconds I looked at the screen before the epiphany of why Aidan wanted the yo-yo sank in. ...

We had come to Lijiang with only a loose understanding of what there was to do here. I knew it was named a UNESCO world heritage site in 1997 and that led to a flood of tourists. I knew that there was a famous snow mountain where you could see a glacier. I knew there was a city nearby called Shangri-La not because it was the setting of the famous novel Lost Horizon but because the townsfolk had renamed it to take advantage of the fame the name enjoyed. I knew there was a hiking trail along the tiger river gorge. So on our first night here when we walked into one of the ubiquitous tour operator’s stores and looked at options my first choice was the hiking. It was a reasonable 160 RMB ($25 USD) per person for a two hour drive up to the river, then four hours of hiking, and then a two hour drive back down. Before booking Yang quickly stepped outside and called the taxi driver from earlier in the day to see if he could beat the price. He could not so we booked it. ...

We are flying into Lijiang and experiencing some turbulence. The plane drops, then sways to the right, then to the left, then drops again. It has my full attention now. Yang is next to me trying to finish off a nap. The passengers next to us are making noises like they are on a roller coaster. Not the I’m scared to death type noises but rather I am having the time of my life noises. “Wheeew…. Wheeee… haaaaaaa…. wooooo”. The main cheer leader was a woman who looked 60 but was probably my age dressed in the local naxi style. Which is a bit hard for me to describe, not because it’s hard to describe in an absolute sense but I’m just not very good at describing what people wear. The best I can do is say she looked like a waitress but that would not be fair to her. Even less fair is that on the way out I noticed she was wearing a towel on her head. I don’t mean that in some horribly offensive way like an ignorant American would say about a turban. I just mean she really had a towel on her head. A nice one. I found myself thinking it was a very clever way to travel. ...

I am a fan of unstructured time. Unstructured time is notable for that feeling in the morning that you have a clean slate. It is also notable for the sheer lack of pressure, of stress, of conformance. I had a fair amount of unstructured time when we first moved to Beijing nearly six years ago. In fact, I had so much of it that I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. By the time I had started to figure it out, it was time to start working again and enter the daily grind. ...