Fashion, Food, Spirit, and Sports
Dan went to Shanghai for a long weekend for the APAC conference – an inter-school competition – the first in three years. That Friday night a friend invited me to a fashion show and after party of the designer Hu She Guang. The previous show, two years ago – due to Covid – looked pretty crazy so I signed up. There ended up being a group going and they hired a photographer to photograph us! The show was held at the InterContinental Hotel in Sanliton – a fancy neighborhood downtown. Evening was super fun but the business model was nothing I have ever heard of before. I didn’t realize it until someone pointed it out to me, but most of the models were seniors – not as in highschool but as in older adults. Apparently there were about 60 runway models. Maybe 7 of them were professionals. The others were seniors. The seniors were women who like the designer’s clothes and they buy a membership – which gets them pieces of clothing and then they become the models for the show. The Huang Rui doesn’t sell to stores – it is all by membership.
The next day I took the kids to check out the neighborhood and (most importantly) a bookstore I’d heard about near Tiannamen Square. The kids were so excited – it was a very large beautiful bookstore with many books in English! Afterwards we went out for a lovely Lunner (Celia was too hungry to wait until dinner time) – that had an amazing view of the surrounding hutong neighborhood (the traditional one story with winding pathways neighborhood). After Lunner we wandered around the neighborhood for a while before heading back home.
Other than those events, Morton has been playing a lot of volleyball. His season ended last weekend with a big tournament. The team didn’t do their best for the final horrah – but their playing has gotten better and better.
Celia has been doing lots of senior spirit events:
Dan and I had a nice night out with a couple friends going to an art opening of Huang Rui – a historically important Chinese artist – followed by dinner at a yummy Chinese restaurant.
I have been playing more and more tennis as things have opened back up. Yesterday was the first time I got bumped off the courts at school. We couldn’t believe it. The woman in charge of organizing the tennis afterschool lessons came over to kick us off for a lesson and when we introduced ourselves to each other she said to me, “Oh – Ganish (the coach here) said you have big balls”. I was a little surprised/ confused. I think somewhere between the Indian teacher, the Chinese organizer, and the English being spoken to me there was a translation malfunction – but it definitely gave me a good laugh.
