Family

We arrive at the Airport, T3, and Yang’s father JiPing heads strait for the Air China line that has no people in front of it. This would not be the economy line nor the self check-in line. First class line. He shows his special acamedician card that lets him whisk us through even though we only have economy seats. Lydia and Aidan impress the counter lady with their Chinese. The counter people in China tend to be a lot nicer…and not just the first class ones. Not like the 10 cup of coffee with hemorrhoids types you can run into in the states. Yang disappears to get Elisa’s infant boarding pass and is gone a long time when she calls me and says they won’t allow her to take three kids on the plane and I need to come over with my passport. I start to comment that this is weird since she flew 13 hours from the states with the three kids and Qingdao is a short hop. So I wander over in the direction where she is (the airport is so big one needs GPS) but can’t find her. Turns out they relented and she had returned without me seeing her. ...

Lydia runs into the den carrying a bowl of sliced apples and pears. She tells me in her unique english that I can eat some and would I like a few or many. I take one of each remembering that I had passed on an apple earlier in the day because it was looking a bit old. After my two pieces she says “ok” and runs out of the room, bowl in hand. Moments pass and she is back with the bowl of strawberries and tells me I can eat some. I have one thinking that I hope the strawberries are washed and what should I do with the pit. I haven’t been eating meat now for over two months. I try to avoid dairy but not so much…just replacing milk with soy in my cereal. Yang’s mom Yihang at first thought it was amusing and at the same time didn’t quite get that pieces of meat served in dishes also count. Lately she has been asking when I will start again and I honestly don’t know. She tells me that it can’t be healthy not to eat meat and I tell her I don’t know, if anything I’ve been feeling a lot healthier. She is especially worried because when I dropped by her apartment last week her mahjong friends told her I looked too skinny. To which I retort that I just don’t look as fat as I used to. I’ve lost maybe five pounds. This does not seem to console her. She asks again why and when and since I’m never good at these questions even when I know the why or when so I proceed to answer the more interesting question which is “what’s next?” I tell her I plan to go on a raw food diet followed by an all fruit diet. She doesn’t get the humor in this even when I add that during the raw food phase I can load up on sushi. Well, at least sashimi. Our new Ayi that cooks everything from scratch and throws nothing away. Makes her own noodles, makes her own dumpling wraps, I would not be surprised to find a rice paddy in the back bedroom. I guess that makes it healthier. It is cheaper but noodles and dumpling wraps are not exactly expensive to begin here. It does take a fairly long amount of time. And on her weekly day off I’ve been know to go through the fridge and throw away the old and molding food. Or feed it to the goldfish. We’ve been pretty good with the fast food and soda for the kids. McDonalds is a maybe once a month event and its for the toy more than the food. KFC (which is on par here in terms of fast food popularity) we’ve only been to once with the kids. And that was for a toy. Aidan likes Sprite but is lucky to have a can every two weeks—we just don’t buy it nor stock it in the house. Out major weakness is ice cream and with summer coming we can expect two a day ice cream cones for the kids. Hey, I may even have one. As I write this I just finished dinner. Yihang had they Ayi cook “meat tofu” just for me and it really did look like meat, which isn’t really they idea I’m going for. Tasted ok. We went to Qingdao last weekend and stopped in an SPR coffee shop where I bought Lydia a chocolate donut. You might be able to tell from these pictures that she enjoyed it. ...

In my thriftiness and eagerness to (easily) learn Chinese upon arriving in Beijing I signed up for a beginner’s special at Frontier’s School where learning mandarin is “made easy” or “made fun” or something like this. We had six initial students in the class and strangely enough four of them were just in Beijing for the summer and thought it would be “fun” to study Chinese. I remember the other five students vividly but hardly a word of Chinese. There was the young English man and his French girlfriend. He had just finished a year teaching in Hong Kong and she was joining him for the summer in Beijing. He made is money by teaching English to the kids of the rich, she seemed satisfied (mostly) with her two sizes two small red top. There was the American young man who learned so fast we all hated him except for everyone else in the class. There was the petite Spanish woman who would have made a good friend if the class did not end abruptly. Then there was Steve, an American 15 years my senior who, in me, finally found someone whose Chinese was worse than his. He went home after our first class and told his wife “hey, this new student’s Chinese is even worse than mine!”. And, naturally, I went home and told Yang the same thing. The Frontier’s class lasted six weeks or so. Halfway through they had some new students so they split the class in two, so the “fast” learners could proceed at a quicker pace. Us slow learners (or as I preferred to call is, “deep learners”) repeated the same material. It was me, Steve, and the French woman. New students joined and after one 30 minute private lesson where able to join us as if they had been part of the class all along. Like a “groundhog day” sequel I had visions of never getting out of Beginners’ Chinese, just repeated the same lessons over and over with new students. But then it got into late summer and people wanted to take proper vacations and started to drop out. Finally it was just me and my teacher and then they called and said that without three students they could not hold the class. “No problem”, I said. In English. My next three formal attempts were through work. Strangely enough, each work program used a different language vendor. The first time I joined mid class and attended two nights a week. The hard part was it was at the end of the work day, I was exhausted, and I looked like an idiot in front of co-workers. Then again they looked liked idiots in front of me. After about three weeks, I dropped out and was proud to call myself a “chinese language school dropout”. I then tried again in about six months. Again with work, another language vendor. The aimed to be more professional and an interview was scheduled to determined my Chinese level. There was a young woman (the good cop) who introduced an older woman (the bad cop) who was the language evaluator. The evaluator asked me what my learning objective was. “To listen to some, speak a little”, I said. “Read and write?” the bad cop asked. I laughed. Apparently this was not the right response. The bad cop argued the merits of learning to read and write. I stuck to my learning objective. After a few lines of dialog she looked at the good cop and said “absolute beginner” and the good cop dutifully noted it. I ended up taking the class with a nice enough teacher who indeed tried to get me to learn some characters. Poor woman. Poor patient woman. But after another six weeks of two nights a week I also dropped out of that class. I was learning a little, but not a lot, and I certainly wasn’t learning any characters. Another year, then two passed. I have convinced myself that the only way I will learn Chinese is to take six months off work, enroll in a serious school, and study it eight hours a day. Characters and all. I looked at those around me. Some had learned quicker than I but fell back to the pack if their lives only involved western folks. Some did not even try to learn. But most were better. Some were fluent. Four years and I could order meat in a restaurant but I could not tell them what part of the cow it should come from. But at least I am still better than Steve. And he me, as I am sure he still tells his wife. I’ve done some self study and my latest attempt, via work, is just that. A very popular self learning web site called ChinesePod. This is an eight month program, four lessons on four different topics a week, self guided. So far two weeks in. I’ve learned some new words or should I say I’ve remembered words that I’ve learned once before. ...

When I first got to China I started to carry a notebook around and take little notes about the strange things I ran into. I thought it would be great material for a blog or story entitled “Chinese Lessons” in which I exposed about the whimsical and not so whimsical lessons of a middle aged man’s life journey in China. This strategy had some fatal flaws. First, I am a lousy note taker. Always have been. I considered trying to compensate by using a voice recorder but given that I don’t like to talk or draw attention to myself, speaking into a voice recorder was a double whammy. The second flaw is most of my whimsical and not so whimsical observations are hardly unique. Books and blogs of poorly written prose already exist on “chinese people cut in lines” or “i regained my soul while eating dumplings”. And, the final fatal flaw is I do not speak Chinese. Hard to write a blog called “Chinese Lessons” when you don’t know the word for “lessons”. In general I learn things when I have an interest and an aptitude. Maybe this is true for most folks. With languages, I neither have the interest nor the aptitude. My best friends in childhood spoke english as a second language. Did I ever ask them, even once, to teach me some spanish. Not that I remember. I had pretty much zero interest in taking a language class in high school, instead I choose “computers” as my high school elective. Kind of the the opposite end of the aptitude/interest pendulum for me. Most people assume I speak no Chinese except for 7-10 year olds who have no concept that someone would not be able too and they just blah,blah,blah (however that translates to Chinese) when they speak to me. The other common reactions I get is locals pointing out foreigners who speak “good chinese”, think Yang could teach me, or that I secretly can understand much of their conversation. That last bit is partially true but I understand it at an IQ level of about 35 so I wonder how intelligent those people think I am. But I am in China and it would be nice to be able to ask for paper when using the restroom so I decided to take some lessons. Well, I’ve decided at least five times to learn Chinese which will be the subject of my next post.. ...

When I left to the states on my last business trip we had just gotten (ok, Yang had just gotten) Elisa a walker. Elisa toes just barely touched the floor and she was able to make little progress in moving the thing. She was however, able to push the buttons on the walker tray which produced unbelievably loud “toy noise” as if “toy noise” was some type of music genre. I vowed to replace the toy’s batteries with some worn down ways but laziness gave way. All and all what is a little more noise when Aidan and Lydia are around? When I returned from the states, there was Elisa sitting tall and pretty in her walker. She must have grown a bit in the eleven days I was away because she could get around the house just fine by herself. The freedom turned an already happy baby into a downright giggly one. She would follow me into the bedroom, to the kitchen, to the living room. The new found freedom was not without pitfalls, I once spotted her chewing on one of our plants but overall we have a pretty safe house. A loud house, but a safe and now even happier one. ...

Yang is having dinner with her college classmates and I am taking Lydia and Aidan to explore the Solana mall. It is not so cold today and is nice to be out and about. Aidan asks the security guard where the kids playground is and we head towards it. Lydia runs ahead and ends up in a toy store. Aidan forgets about the playground when he discovers the lego store. I point out the disney store to Lydia and she dashes for it and is soon playing with a Cinderella dressing table. The stuff in the lego and disney story are more expensive than the equivalent in the states so aidan and lydia know not to even ask to buy something. But they don’t give up looking for bargains. We find a small knick knack toy store…i call it knick knack because they seem to have a random assortment of toys without any rhyme or reason. The reason seems clear that their stock is the excess inventory from other, more expensive stores. Lydia and Aidan zero in on this as a place they could score a toy. Lydia finds a barbi coloring/sticker book and with Barbi misspelled on the cover. I knew the price would be reasonable, 15 kuai (about $2.25). I told Aidan who could buy a toy for up to 20 kuai but despite 10 minutes of looking, nothing in that price range looked good too him. They had a bunch of model cars going for 25 kuai each so I suggested Aidan get one of those. He confirmed that he could get one and when I said yes, he went to the store clerk and asked (in chinese) “what do you got for 25?”. Smart boy. On the walk back to the car Lydia fell asleep in my arms but before she was out she kissed me on the cheek. Her first unprompted kiss that I can remember. Sweet….or was she just planning he next shopping expedition? ...

Aidan, you are six today and I can’t be more proud of you. Not proud because you turned six healthy and happy – this is a relief – but because of who you are. At some point in the past year you became a boy and the event almost slipped by without my noticing. But I did notice, the way your body folds on the bed is now longer and slightly awkward, the way you tolerate Lydia when she’s fussy vs. whacking her up side the head, the way you sit down and diligently do your homework, the way you likewise work to assemble your legos, the way understand when ask for more and when to ask for less. There have been other changes too, of course. You’ve had a few tough stretches at school where the bigger kids picked on you (your father can relate) and you came home with scratches and bruises. But you have adjusted to it and have improved your kicking skill. You’ve even adjusted your story a few times about what happens at school which means you are beginning to lie and discover what us other humans can detect. Keep in mind the two principles about lying that I’ve already told you. First, never lie to your family. Second, only lie about something important. When you are mad you bend your head and storm out of the room, not making a sound. You don’t get mad very often, and less often as the year passed, but when you do it is mostly because me or mom said we were going to do something we didn’t do. Like buy you a toy. At some point during the past year you stopped taking naps but you did start getting scared at night. Right now you wake up most nights and say in “very scared” in Chinese. I don’t so much raise you as I observe you and do everything I can to make sure that the part of you that is your essence does not get stepped on and recedes. Because your essence is so beautiful and uniquely you. It is in everything you do. When you cry when I leave on a business trip, when you beam with pride when you assemble a bionicle, when you run with joy chasing me, when you talk endlessly with your sister explaining what is real and what isn’t, when your voice is always too loud for a restaurant and you lower when i ask. Lower it for a good syllable or two. Your essence shines through in the photos of you, from day one to today. ...

I’ve been telling bedtime stories to the Aidan and Lydia and I enjoy it pretty much. I stand in between their beds, lights off, and walk back and forth talking away. Sometimes I aim for a moral, sometimes just try to be funny, sometimes just to get them to sleep. Lydia allows no scary stories. A couple of days ago…on the last day of the Chinese New Year celebration Beijing’s sky lit up with fireworks. It felt and it sounded like people where emptying out the inventory. We drove to a nearby Santana Row-ish mall and walked around with the kids. I was a bit tired and wanted to sleep but the kids wanted to light fireworks so we headed off to a fireworks stand and bought some. Aidan and Lydia enjoyed it quite a bit but the overwhelming sense from the people around us are that Chinese people are a bunch of pyros. They just have this look that I imagine an arsonist who enjoys his work has. Speaking of which, on the way home we saw fire trucks heading towards the business section of Beijing. Don’t hardly see fire trucks here, even more rare to see them with lights on rushing somewhere. But hey, it was national shoot flames night. And when I got home, I found out that is exactly what happened. One of my facebook friends who lives near the new CCTV complex reported a huge fire. Luckily the building was still under construction and vacant although sadly one firefighter died. Some pictures: ...

Yang told me that Cui Ayi and her daughter had left for Chinese New Year. And that when they said goodbye to the kids they cried. I told Yang that I guess they just quit. Occasionally I get asked on how to find a good ayi by someone who has just moved to Beijing. I give them the run down – mainly all the problems with finding a good one vs. the best way to actually find one. I then close by saying that Yang handles the ayi hiring thus significantly lowing the value of the wisdom I just bestowed. Then comes the whopper…I tell them we’ve had…give or take…15 ayis since 2005. At which point my “ayi hiring for dummies” is viewed as “dummies hiring ayis”. And, well, the numbers actually get worse. We’ve had two ayis at a time, one live in and one that comes in during the day. Until two weeks ago, the one that came in during the day was the same person, Cui Ayi. So the other 15 were from the live in position. And even there, we had one ayi that was with us for a good eighteen months. Here are the “long haulers” of our ayis: ...

Our trip to Malaysia was the first time I had been to a predominately muslim country and a bit to my surprise I found it quite comfortable. But then again I’ve always found diversity more comfortable than a lack of it. Which is one of my struggles here in China, because there are…well…a lot of Chinese people here and my lack of language skill means I see people in less than their full dimensions..and they I. But, anyway, back to Malaysia. We are at our resort, located in the center of a small bay on the island of Langkawi. I am following Yang and the kids down the path to the beach. Walking up the path is a blond eastern euro women who is not too young, not too pretty, and certainly not too shy about wearing a bikini top over her rather substantial assets. Walking directly behind me is a muslim man and his wife. The wife is wearing a black burqa – you know the head to toe, only the eyes showing (if that) outfit some muslim women wear. The man is in a pretty contemporary western style outfit. Even though the burqa is as black as night I’m pretty sure the muslim couple are on their honey moon because they are holding hands and have “that look”. At least from what I can see. I can only imagine what the woman in the burqa though when the blond woman walked past. I don’t need to imagine what the man was thinking. Have you ever wondered whether the united states has more churches or gas stations? I’m not sure what the point of question is, but I’m guessing gas stations are the clear winner. Well, in Langkawi mosques outnumber gas stations by, I would estimate, 10-1. And not for a lack of cars either, its just seemed that every mile or so there was another mosque but it could be an easy 10 miles before you came across a gas station. As we found out leaving the airport with an empty tank of gas and asking ourselves “hey, you think mosques sell gas?”. In addition to mosques there are prayer rooms in public places like airports and hotels. The prayer rooms are broken into men and women sections and it is very easy to mistake then for restrooms as the signs reads “men/women’s prayer room”. I’m not saying I walked into one thinking it was one, but I’m not saying I didn’t either. ...