Family

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. ...

I’m waiting for our luggage to come rolling along the figure eight carousal when Yang comes by and says she’s bargained the car rental down to 300RM. RM is Malaysian money and I’m not sure what the letters stand for or how to say it. I certainly don’t know the exchange rate to either RMB or USD. For all I know 300RM is $1000 or $1 RMB. So I ask the next logical questions “for a single day or the entire trip?” I find I often do this..asking the exact right question but no having a clue what I would do with the good answer. Yang said for the trip and I said “sounds good”. Next dilemma is that neither of us brought our Chinese driver’s license. For some reason we just keep that license in our car. I have, however, carried my expired California’s driver license…apparently just for these situations…where the airport car rental agency just wants to see a license, and the expiration date is not important or at least ignorable. As we sign the forms the agent is trying to explain that for any damage to the car, there is a 20% copayment. No attempt to up sell more insurance. He used a RM number as an example, a number which didn’t make sense until later. Yang asked if it was a “new car” and the agent blinked once and said it was a “good car” which is when I knew we probably didn’t get the best end of this deal. He smiled and gave us his number in case anything went wrong. I used an ATM to get some RM cash – the exchange rate turns out to be about 3.5 RM for every dollar so the car cost us about $20 a day. Not bad, I’m thinking. We get to the airport parking lot directly across from the terminal. The car rental agency shuttle consisted of a young Malaysian man standing beside and opened trunk of a car parked right in the middle of the aisle. At first I thought he was smiling at someone behind us – perhaps a relative arriving from out of town. But he was in fact smiling at us. And the smile seemed genuine vs. laughing at the woman pushing a five month old while sipping a venti java mocha frappuccino and the man pushing a luggage cart containing two insanely large pieces of luggage and two insanely hyper happy children. It would be forgiven if he thought we were moving to the island and not just visiting for a few days. The “good car” turned out to be a Proton Miva. It had electric windows that opened on the passenger side, an empty tank of gas, and air conditioning that worked if you drove fast. After our luggage somehow fit into the trunk, the attendant gave us his card and like the front desk man said to call him in case we have any problem with the car. While his tone was even more personable than the front desk person, this time it came across as both a warning and a threat. Like this car can and will break down. And if you call anyone else, they will never know you rented the car from us. They next day when heading into town I noticed the toolbox in the trunk had the usual assortment of tools. Plus brake pads and a plunger. A plunger? Oh, and they drive on the wrong side of the road in Malaysia. Buckle up kids! ...

Lydia told us she did not want to go to Harbin after it was announced Aidan was going with me. For a few days before the trip she was more fussy than her normal fussy four year old self. At times she was simply a terror, screaming and inconsolable for large chunks of time. I think Yang even gave her a good smack on the butt once. When Yang booked our family Chinese New Year trip to Malaysia Lydia steadfastly said she did not want to go. She wasn’t giving an inch. When Aidan and I arrived at our hotel in Harbin I walked to the registration desk and stood at the counter. There were two young woman behind the counter looking busy shuffling and counting receipts. I waited for one of them to look up. And waited. Zero eye contact. Other guests walked up right beside me, said in Chinese to one of the women, and checked out. Someone did the same thing over my left shoulder. Eventually, I spoke up and we got our room. They same exact thing happened on checkout. I stood right on top of the front desk, didn’t say anything, and didn’t get any attention. When I got home I talked to Yang about it describing it as “very china”. She explained that unless you say you need something there is no expectation that you do. At that point it kind of clicked in my head about why lines are so problematic here. Why people just walk up to the front of a line and ask for what they want. Another case is driving and interaction with pedestrians and bikers. Often it seems pedestrians have either a death wish or have just been startled awake from sleep walking. One case recently, I was driving about 40mph and a middle age man turned his bike directly in front of me and attempted to cross three lanes of traffic. He survived. In another case two days ago, I was going through an intersection when a young woman jolted herself to a walking stop. It was as if she had no concept a car might be coming. This pedestrian/car interaction is the subject of much Chinese/foreigner discussions in China. I’ve heard many theories on why it is so different here than in the states or anywhere else with indoor plumbing. The theory which is sticking with me is this. In China, people driving are expected to be looking out for those with lesser transportation capabilities (bike, feet, cart) and not hit them. To, in fact, take care of them. So its not like they are being rude when they walk in front of the car just as the light turns green – just the opposite – they are trusting you. A few weeks back…mid December I guess…Lydia decided to spend the night with Cui Ayi. Cui Ayi has been our Ayi since we moved to Beijing and is quite close to Lydia. Lydia packed her little backpack and off she went. Aidan was crushed. As Lydia left, he came out of their bedroom with a couple Lydia’s toys, holding back tears, asking what toy Lydia would have to play with. Lydia’s mood has turned for the better. Just yesterday she said to me, “Baba, I’m going to Harbin” and she grabbed her little backpack. I asked her to wait. She said she was going. She walked to our front door, opened it, stepped outside, stepped back inside, and said “I’m back from Harbin”. ...

Occasionally and increasingly infrequently people thinking of moving to China ask me what they should expect. I tell them the absence of expectations is the best way not to have missed expectations. Birthday cakes in Beijing are generally awful..these light tasting, over sugared, over fruited imitations for the real thing. What I want instead…what I expect…is something that tastes like the cake my Mom used to make for me. So what I did was go to Jenny Lous and buy Betty Crocker chocolate cake mix and chocolate frosting and made it myself. I baked in on the morning of my bday so that it would be nice and cool for the frosting. When I got back from my bday lunch with Yang (fabulous) I found Yang’s mom and eaten a good 10% rectangular chunk from the rectangular cake. Well, plenty of frosting then. The cake came out a bit dry. Dry as in take all the water out of your throat dry and cause you not to pee for three days. At least Yang’s mom liked it, she took most of the leftovers home to share with her Majong friends. My birthday was on a Sunday, which I expected to have off work but this being China Sunday was switched to a working day in order to extend the New Years holiday by a day. The following weekend Aidan and I travelled to Harbin home of the best winter ice festival in China. I have wanted to go for the past few winters but haven’t because Yang was a bit disinterested. Ok, she flat out did not want to go. The reasoning was something like…It’s 20F degrees in Beijing and you want to go to some place below zero. Have a nice trip. Anyway, I decided to just go this year and then Aidan got wind of it and tagged along. We took the overnight train up and checked into the a four star hotel. If one has never been to a 2nd tier city four star hotel then one might expect it to actually be four stars. Well, the lobby was. The room itself would round down to a two. But ok. Foreigners get a lot of attention in 2nd tier cities but the ice festival draws more than the occasional foreigner so most of the attention we got were from hawkers trying to sell us hats, scarves, and face covers. It was cold, but not bitter, bitter cold and we managed to enjoy an dog sled ride and a inner tube slide. ...

Yang got the call from Lydia’s teacher on Christmas Eve. She was yanking Lydia as the English MC. The English MC’s job entailed standing in front of the audience and saying “Good afternoon ladies! I am from the middle class. Happy Holidays and lets get on with the show!” It seemed Lydia had no inclination to learn these lines. She can sometimes get a little nervous when told to do something but is quite fine when allowed to find her own way. A bit like her father. And most grownups. So instead she performed in a couple of dance routines and I must say she was the best dancer. I must say. Actually, she was pretty good. Especially compared to the MC who replaced her. See for yourself..Lydia is leading the charge on stage proud of her new hairstyle (she rejected the first three). ...

Yang and I are in a mall in the Zhongguancun (中关村) neighborhood of Beijing. It’s where Yang grew up back when it was considered the boonies. Aidan calls and wants to make sure Santa knows what toy he wants. We get home after some less than successful shopping — my basic approach is to reject everything until i am so tired of shopping that i make the worst possible choice – and Aidan asks about his toy. Diligent, that one. Yang tells him she told Santa and Santa knows exactly what he wants. Then Aidan makes a connection better not made. He asks Yang if she knows the English name of the toy. No. Then how could Santa know since Santa only speaks English. Yang tells me at which point I tell Aidan that of course Santa speaks Chinese. ...

It is cold outside so we are cooped up inside without much to do. Aidan and Lydia have roller blades on and I am not sure whether I am more worried for their safety or our floor’s safety. Or maybe simply the safety of our toes since we don’t where shoes inside the house and Aidan and Lydia are not skating in a very assured way. I am on the computer playing with some new photo software when I notice a picture of Lydia taken at about the same age as Elisa is now. I show it to Lydia and ask who is it. She says “Elisa”. I say “No, Lydia”. Lydia holds her ground. It is definitely Elisa. You judge for yourself. ...