We had a great weekend – so want to get it down before I forget all that happened.
Us with Acrobatic troup, Mr Li, director of school in white, Chris, from ISB in light blue, small older woman in polkadots I believe is director
Starting Friday:
When we first arrived, Celia was super excited to be reunited with her bass guitar. She quickly plugged it into our amp, then plugged the amp into the wall – no converter. 220 V into an amp set for 110 V. Fried. She didn’t realize and plugged our second amp into the wall. Same result.
Apparently our large amp was a big hit for karaoke at school parties at the house last year. We are hosting a staff party at the house this coming Friday – so people thought our lack of a functioning amp was a major crisis.
Dan told me someone from the school was coming to fix the amp. Mid day Friday five men showed up to fix our amp – two department heads and three other men. After changing the fuse and messing with it a bit, they took the amp back to the school with them. Promising we’d have a functioning amp for the party.
Saturday:
Celia and I went food shopping. She hadn’t yet been to a local,what the foreigners call, wet market – so I wanted to bring her to one I’d been to a couple times. They are apparently called “Wet Market” because of the fish tanks there – where fish splash water onto the floor. I haven’t noticed much splashed water, but they do sell fish in tanks – both for eating and for pets – along with everything else possible : from produce stalls, to fresh baked Chinese delicacies, to toilet bowls, plants, antiques, …. And the only foreigners I’ve seen there were the one time I went with a few others. I really wanted to do some tasting, and figured Celia would indulge with me.
Celia driving me on her scooter
In the past I have biked or gotten a ride to the market. This time Celia offered to take me on the back of her scooter. I have to admit I was a bit nervous, but it wasn’t too scary. She did a pretty good job of driving safely. We bought a lot of produce and some barley, and some snacks. Having to do all our communicating in Mandarin and not recognizing everything we see, made it more of a fun adventure than a chore. Plus we had a couple super yummy Chinese fried dough filled with some greens! I wish I had a picture of it!
Sunday morning:
Celia and I did some frantic cooking for Rosh Hashanah dinner. Then we got ready to go to see some acrobats. We weren’t sure exactly what we were going to. Dan had told me someone had invited us to see some acrobats. Other than that he didn’t have anymore information. Dan had put it on our calendar at 10 am – I didn’t realize that was just a place holder. Wednesday I received a message from his assistant that the show was in the afternoon and the director invited us to join him for dinner. I was in a bit of a panic. I had no idea who had invited us, what they exactly invited us for and I didn’t want to insult anyone or be ungrateful but it was also Rosh Hashanah and I didn’t want to cancel our evening holiday plans of services and dinner at Roberta and Ted’s. I explained all this to Dan’s assistant – who also didn’t know anything about the acrobat plans. She got back to me saying it would be okay to go to the show and have dinner another time.
We headed out in the car around 2:15. Dan quickly noticed we were going in the opposite direction from Roberta’s – not the direction he had expected – so our already tight schedule suddenly seemed impossible. The driver told us it would take an hour to get to the acrobatic school (which is apparently where we were going). We were supposed to be there in about half an hour. Not only were we not staying for dinner – we were also now running half hour late. WeChat messages were quickly sent and then we tried not to stress about it too much as there was nothing more we could do.
The director of the school, Mr Li, and Chris, a man who works at ISB, Dan’s school, who was the intermediary for this invitation, met us at the school gate. They walked us through, telling us a little about the school. It’s a boarding school for kids who are training to be acrobats. They enter at age 10 and live and train and do their schooling there. Professional acrobats also train at the school. We then got to a large building and as we entered, the crowd inside stood up and applauded our entrance. It was overwhelming – and I felt like a complete jerk that we were half an hour late, weren’t staying for dinner, and they were applauding our entrance. – not to mention – who the heck are we that they are applauding us? They had set up chairs on the stage – just for us. All the performers circled around the performance space. A group of female performers were spinning plates on multiple poles in their hands.
We then watched one of the most amazing acrobatic performances I’ve ever seen on the floor below the stage. The young men performing were already professional acrobats. After they performed for half hour or so, they had us get up and they moved our chairs to the floor in front of the stage and the show continued on the stage. The girls who had been spinning the plates when we arrived were still spinning the plates. Their arms must be burning! They were students. They performed for next half hour or so. Also mind bogglingly amazing – walking up and over one another while still spinning the plates. At one point they were dancing on their toes without toe shoes – in shoes similar to ballet slippers. Celia wondered what it does to ones face – smiling all that time. When it was done, the performers came around us and the director said a few words in Mandarin, which Chris was translating to Dan, about how it’s such an honor to have us here, how Dan is the head of this very important school… And then he asked Dan to say a few words to his students. Luckily Dan is good at making speeches off the cuff. We then asked the performers some questions – which the director and a woman I assume was the choreographer – answered. Then they walked us back to our car.
Driving to Roberta and Ted’s was faster than expected, so we made it with a few minutes to spare before the service started. In all communication about the Rosh Hashanah plans, the location was obscured, no one would say where it was. We were confused for a while and then realized they didn’t want authorities to crack down on the gathering of so many people – despite there are currently ZERO cases of Covid here in Beijing. It’s a different world here.
Roberta led a lovely service in her side yard and then we carried our chairs inside for dinner. Roberta makes incredible challah and Ted made a fantastic vegetarian matzah ball soup. Food and company are always lovely there.
This morning, Tuesday, there was a breakfast for parents of juniors and seniors. It was lovely but one thing that I struggle with at these things – and Celia says it is the same at school- is how not to have events segregated. I walk into the small restaurant and there is a buffet set out for us. All but four of the parents appear to be Chinese. The few Westerners are seated together. I don’t want to insult anyone but decide to sit with some Chinese mothers I don’t know. They are lovely and we chat a while but their level of English is varied and my Chinese is certainly not enough to hold a meaningful conversation. Eventually they start talking on their own in Mandarin and I turn to a Western father to my left and chat with him. I try to reengage with some other Chinese parents, but it’s hard to enter when they are engrossed in conversation in Mandarin. I then go talk with a couple Western mothers I know a bit. At one point I look up from my conversation to notice I am talking with the only other person woman in the room. We are here to experience China but integration is hard.
Random Reporting
Crazy visa required medical tests
To change our visas from a short stay visa to a long term visa I had to go get an official medical exam. I had to go downtown to the official medical facility. ChangYang, who works at ISB, and I waited for the place to open and then hurried in, to get ahead of the line. We ran in, she registered me on the computer and then we waited my turn. After being called, I signing in, appropriate green codes were checked, paperwork completed, questions answered, and I payed the fee. Then I was sent upstairs to the medical maze. I was sent from area to area – a rat scurrying through – to get the appropriate stickings and scanings. One spot they took blood, another – a chest x-ray, another they put circular stickers all over my body with wires that connected to a monitor (any doctors out there know what this was for?), yet another they took my blood pressure … It was all very officiant and felt quite crazy! With that completed, a few days later the kids and I went to the Chinese visa office, had our official pictures taken, met individually (I couldn’t be near desk during kids meeting and vice-versa) with the visa agent. They took our passports and said they’d return them when the process was over. That was a bit unnerving but a week and a half later or so our passports were returned with our new year long visas. We need to reapply every year – though I believe without the medical experiments.
On a completely different subject, a couple Fridays ago we went to Roberta and Ted’s for Shabbat. Roberta had just come back from going to a more remote area of China to have many women (I forget the number but it was impressively high) get tested for the HPV virus. She told an incredible story of how they got so many women tested. Normally we get undressed, go onto the table, put our feet in the stirrups, and a doctor gives us a papsmear. Using this method would take too long to get so many women through the process. To be more efficient, they had a large number of women come into a room and get into a circle around a table. Then, through some laughter and group encouragement, they would get the women to drop their pants and under garments, squat and take their own samples. So amazing, crazy, and brilliant. Why don’t we do that?! – though not sure about the group aspect. All the more incredible as I have learned that tampons are not part of this culture – they are very difficult to find here. … . .…. OTHER RANDOM EVENTS:
MY NEW LOOK
I went to the hair salon. They insisted on blow drying my hair. They promised they were drying it curly. This is me with ”curly blown dried hair”! The kids couldn’t even look at me. I took some silly pictures then quickly washed it out.
New Family Member
Celia finally got a cat! Celia picked it up from it’s foster home one evening. We had guests over and they knew the cat. It had been rescued not far from our home and had been through two foster homes. It came with the name Toto – which Celia instantly switched. Dan wanted to call it Chairman Mao ze Dong. I suggested Chairman Miao. Celia calls the cat Milo. The cat doesn’t answer to any of these things. It spent the first few days hidden inside a tiny bathroom drawer. We couldn’t find him for about 24 hours – when Celia opened her bathroom drawer and yelled with surprise. Now Milo comes out to pester Celia at night, but spends most of his days hidden in bedside tables or the back of closets and he’s very skittish. On a regular basis we are doing something like putting our clothes in our bureau and the cat comes bounding out in a fearful panic from the tiny crack below the dresser. Hopefully he’ll adjust to us. But Celia is thrilled to have him.
First Day of School
Two weeks down of new school. Kids are overwhelmed with how nice the school is. I have never seen a school with such nice facilities! I am enjoying the beautiful indoor tennis courts and swimming pool. Kids are enjoying the fantastic school food – breakfast, lunch, and endless snacks – and being able to go hang out and eat free snacks in Dan’s beautiful glass cube office. Celia can’t believe how light the schedule is: four classes a day with a couple study halls and no PE, vs. the eight classes a day she had in Brooklyn. Of course the real school work hasn’t really started yet – school eases kids back for first two weeks – so we’ll see if her tune changes once the real school work kicks in. Celia is also enjoying that her classmates are, across the board more academically engaged, than in Brooklyn. Morton has signed up for a plethora of at school after-school activities: volleyball – indoor and out, table tennis, golf … They kick in next week. And he’s trying to get a biking club set up.
At Forbidden City
A couple Friday nights ago we invited a few families over for dinner and to watch The Last Emperor. I hadn’t seen it since it’s release in late 80s. We projected it on the wall of our playroom and took breaks for dinner and dessert (it’s a long movie). It was a great prelude to our Sunday morning trip with the Rubin family to the Forbidden City.
Celia in an Olafur Eliasson art installationAnd who doesn’t love a cat video?
After going to the Red Brick Museum, and getting a wonderful tour from a curator there, I returned to show Celia the place and the show. There was a beautiful Olafur Eliasson installation and then a really interesting video show. And then we walked through the small garden and ate in the restaurant there. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more beautiful, well thought out garden. Ever step we took there is another magical surprise – every viewpoint has been considered.
Last Thursday I went to an art show of an adult class where they copy traditional Chinese silk paintings. The care with the brush strokes were unbelievable – like Indian miniatures. It was so interesting to see. And everyone was very warm and inviting to me. It was lovely. The gallery space is in a mall and the manager ran after me as I was leaving to offer me a tour of the building. There are many fancy restaurants in the building, a small art gallery, a Japanese food market, and an entire area of fish tanks where fish wait to be ordered by customers at the restaurants upstairs. The building was finishing being built when Covid happened, so a lot of the building that looked like it would be a fun farmers type market and another area that should have been a beer garden, sat empty. It was a shame. The next night I did bring Dan back to have dinner at one of the restaurants. We had these amazing croquettes.
This past weekend was Zhongqiujie – Mid Autumn Festival. Everyone eats moon cakes – which are usually individually sized cakes that come in many flavors. Many people gave them to us. It was so nice – though Celia and Morton may have eaten a few dozen too many! Sunday the Wang Family, the dad is on the school board and one daughter is a school graduate and the other is an eighth grader, invited us to a fabulous 10 course vegetarian meal. Most of the dishes I couldn’t recognize, but were so beautiful and delicious. Morton opted out of this meal. Sitting at a meal for three and a half hours didn’t sound bearable to him.
This week I took Morton to have his eyes checked. Maybe they do this in the States, but I’ve never seen it. They figured out his new prescription then had him wear the new lenses in these funky glasses for ten minutes or so before we could go to make sure they didn’t give him a headache. I thought they were super fun science time travel type glasses!
While most people in the U.S. hardly remember there is (was?) a pandemic going on (we checked the online front page of NYT yesterday – nothing about Covid was even mentioned that day) – here it a major part of life. Apparently there currently are 15 cases in Beijing (in a city more populated than NYC) – so all schools had to put up plexiglass between students in the lunch room. Feels horrible but I just have to remind myself – as long as they don’t make school go remote – I should/will be happy.
Lastly for now, Yesterday a friend, Hanbin, took me to another local art museum – the Song Art Museum. The grounds were also beautiful. The museum was showing an exhibit of very young contemporary Chinese artists. Hanbin knew one of the artists’ fathers, so the artist, Zhang Ji, agreed to meet us near his work to discuss it. His work was really engaging – more emotionally driven than much of the work I’ve seen here so far – which I appreciate. Ends up he studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, as I did, and under at least one of the same people. His concepts about his art and insights into the current Chinese art world were really interesting to hear about. He had some large scale paintings, with amazingly varied and yummy textures, and he had some more quick whimsical drawings. Below are some drawings he did on tiles that he then baked onto the tiles. I love that idea of the quick gesture becoming a solid permanent object.
