August to October, U.S. to China to U.S.
Typically I have gotten way behind on this.
A couple quick photos from summer.
Dan’s family reunion picture – so fun to all catch up!
and Judd sweeping the club tennis tournaments for the third year in a row. I was sorry to already be back in China and couldn’t cheer him on.
When I got back, my friend Dong and I went to The Red Brick Museum – which is the most beautiful museum -made at an old red brick factory with an amazing garden which I highlighted during my first year in China. We saw a really interesting show by Tomas Saraceno. In one dark room glass cases are spot-lighted to show glowing spider webs, in another wires are woven through out large room and when visitors touch a wire it plays a note (picture above). It was lovely.
Afterwards we had lunch overlooking lovely garden.
Later in August we hosted our local Kehillat shabbat dinner. It was nice to catch up with many of the members we hadn’t seen all summer.
Morton playing in an Ultimate tournament.
Morton is taking a “Passion Project” class in which he has proposed setting up a permanent Disc Golf course on the school property (at this point in time he actually has I believe three holes installed on campus). Anyway, as he had never actually played Disc Golf, I proposed we find a course and play – which we did. We found a course not too far from where we live in a very large park. It took us quite a while to find the course in the park but we had fun exploring the park and ultimately playing – Morton lost three of his new discs into the lakes! Apparently that’s part of the sport.
Morton got me to take him to Jenny Wang’s, the nearby foreign food market, in search of dessert. We ran into friends who told us they always come to this market to buy cereal. Morton talked me into Reeses Puffs for dessert. We sent this picture to Celia who wondered who had abducted her mother – as she knew I would never buy that cereal. (I thought it tasted nasty. Morton disagrees).
This fall I reached out to parents of Morton’s friends to see who would be interested in a weekly Saturday night, no screens, get together for the boys. It’s been really great – I highly recommend it – but this is a picture of the group one night out for dinner.
Back in College, my roommate Betty studied in Beijing and at the end of her semester, the Chinese student she was paired up with, Wang Lei, told Betty she was trying to get out of the country and needed a sponsor. Betty helped her and Wang Lei has been living abroad ever since. Wang Lei contacted me in September to tell me she’d be passing through Beijing to see her mother and would love to get together. It has been around 20 years since I had seen her. It was super fun catching up and seeing her being overwhelmed by all the changes in Beijing – And funny seeing the trouble she was also having navigating necessary Chinese Apps and banking that I thought was only difficult because I don’t read Mandarin. Apparently that’s only a small part of the difficulty!
At ISB I put together an art show of staff and parent’s art work. I got one of the highschool art teachers to take it on with me. I had no idea if we’d get many submissions but we were overwhelmed. It was great! It was also interesting how there were many submissions of paintings of master works – many of them quite lovely – but I can’t imagine people in the United States would submit copies of master works. In China there is a much stronger tradition of copying. It was very surprising and interesting. We decided to make a special section of the show for these works.
We had ordered pedestals to be made special for the show. The morning of the opening, the pedestals still hadn’t arrived. Yvette, my collaborator on the show, called the art department at her old school. They said we could borrow their pedestals but they weren’t in good shape. We quickly borrowed a van, during her free period drove over to that school, picked up a ton of pedestals – and they were in bad shape. I spent the rest of the day quickly sanding and painting the pedestals – installing them just in time for the opening!
A friend invited me to see the Dior show which everyone was talking about. I had seen the beautiful show in Brooklyn and thought it might be interesting to see how the show differed in Beijing. The first surprise came when we were waiting to get in and my friend told me the tickets were free. I was very surprised. She explained that if they charged for the tickets maybe they’d get 1000 visitors but with free tickets maybe they’d get 10,000 visitors and they’d sell expensive perfume in the gift shop and make much more money. I’m sure she was correct and that set the tone for the entire show. In Brooklyn, the show went through the different Dior designers, showing their designs, organized so viewers could understand their different influences and styles. The dresses were beautiful and the way the show was laid out was informative and gorgeous. In the Beijing show, the layouts of each room were stunning. In one you could smell all the different flowers used to make their perfumes. In another room they created a Yoyoi Kusama Infinity Room installation with perfume bottles. It was all amazing but about marketing perfume. So different!
At the school art show an alumni parent submitted a beautiful coat she had made. I went to where she shows her work, bought a green coat, had some wonderful tea. It was so refreshing to see her creations. I have seen almost no crafts in China. When I asked her about other craft people she brought me to her neighbor who designs the dishes for the official state meals. They were amazing to see – and fun to see photos of all the world’s leaders eating from his different dishes – each important meal he is asked to make new dishes!
At last minute our lives were upturned, causing us to head back to the States for a very quick visit (especially for Dan and Morton who had to be back at school in one week).
Right before leaving we were told we would have to delay our departure a day as we were invited and could not refuse to 75th anniversary of the Peoples Republic of China. We weren’t too thrilled to change our plans but it was quite an experience. The comings and goings of the guests was very controlled. We went with the school leadership group. We live on the way north side of Beijing. We had to meet a school bus at the school to take us south of center city to the official pick-up spot, the Friendship Hotel. It took us about an hour and a half to drive there. At the Friendship Hotel we got into the official bus to drive us back north to the dinner at The Great Hall of the People. This was another 20 minute drive back tracking during which all traffic was stopped for our bus to pass. We were not allowed to bring any electronics into the Great Hall of The People – a pity as the building is really impressive. I wish I could have photographed it. We sat at something like table number 105 which put us around the middle – there were a lot of tables – it is a GREAT hall! We were told that everyone was to sit quietly and wait for “the important people to arrive”. I couldn’t believe it – people sat quietly for around 15 minutes until apparently “the important people” arrived. I couldn’t see anything. Everyone stood. There was music of pomp and circumstance, there were speeches in Mandarin I couldn’t understand, then we were served a not very good meal. There was no lingering. Music came on. I assume “the important people” walked out, then there was an indication that everyone else was to leave. Back to the buses. It probably took 45 minutes just to get all the buses loaded and out of The Great Parking Lot. It was made very clear that we were not allowed to just walk out of the gate and get a Didi (a taxi). We had to leave on the official bus – going 20 minutes in the wrong direction – stopping all traffic and causing amazing grid lock throughout the city. Before getting onto back onto our school bus heading to Shunyi (the neighborhood we live).
Dan went directly to the airport after the dinner – don’t ask him about it unless you want to hear hours of how fabulous business class is on Emirates and how he hung out at the bar lounge on the flight.
Morton and I left the next day and did not go to the bar on our flight – there was none.
We popped into New York where I was so happy to catch my friend Manju showing her work at the Affordable Art Fair and to get together with my Art Luck gang to make some art. – always some of my favorite evenings!
We spent a night with Jeanhee, Luke and Chiara before Dan, Morton and I head up to Boston for a couple days with Celia, my brother Elon and cousin Jane. Sadly no pictures of Elon or Jane, but it was lovely seeing them. We had a lovely time hanging out at Jane’s house and we went to Rosh Hashanah services with her and her daughter Dora.
We got to see Celia’s new apartment, her work. We rented Boston’s Blue Bikes, their bike share, and explored the city for a day.
Unfortunately the boys had to leave after a couple days and head back to Beijing. I stayed a couple more days getting in more time with Celia and Elon, thrifting, going out to eat, and going to see a movie.
I ran down to Philadelphia to pick up my mom and Bev. We spent a lovely ten days at the beach.
Judd and Ilie came to visit for a couple days and I even slipped in a couple tennis games.
My flight left from NY at 2:30 in the morning, so I went up to Brooklyn for the day. I met Herb and Fumiko at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens for lunch and a walk and then caught the Brooklyn Artists show at the Brooklyn Museum with friends. I had dinner with Chris and Anita before heading out to the airport for the long flight back to Beijing.
