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.
Last installment of : THE NEVER-ENDING BATTLE TO GET TO BEIJING
Sunday at noon we were scheduled to finally be released from quarantine. That morning all of our Shanghai Green Codes – that allow us to enter the airport – had turned Red. After a number of frantic messages on WeChat, the app that is used here for everything, we were assured it would turn back to Green in the next couple hours.
At 10am, I was chatting on the phone and trying to finish the above painting – before having to pack the painting into the bottom of one of my bags -when the haz-matters came to our door and said we needed to get out NOW. We frantically started throwing the rest of our stuff into our bags. We dragged our eight humungous bags out into the hallway and were waiting for the Michael/Boyle family before loading everything into the elevators. Then another haz-matter showed up and said we couldn’t go until noon. We left our bags where they were and we hung out in groups, reconnecting and waiting to be released.
At Noon we dragged all our luggage downstairs and were told to quickly go outside to do our checkout – they wanted us out of the building as quickly as possible. Outside it was bright – sunny and 96 degrees. Walking outside the hotel – which looked post apocalyptic – we realized the hotel pre Covid must have been quite posh with a golden camel out front.
We spend the next hour outside the hotel, trying to deal with paperwork and what happened to the SIM cards we ordered, where was the van that was taking our luggage, and making sure we had all the correct paperwork and green codes on the appropriate apps. Once all was in order minus our Shanghai codes which we were told would turn Green, we were told we had to leave the hotel grounds. They pushed us out to the sidewalk to wait for the airport shuttle bus. We waited out front, gulped our water and tried to crouch in little areas of shade to evade the extreme heat.
Eventually the bus showed up. The next hour was quite a lovely drive, looking out at Shanghai.
When we arrived at the airport we needed to scan our Shanghai Green Codes to enter but our codes were still red. We sat outside, in the 96 degree heat and sweat.
After a little while, the hazmatted guards allowed us to enter just inside the door. Two guards began to go through all our paperwork which showed that we had repeatedly tested negative for Covid and were released from the quarantine hotel. Eight of us, three pieces of official papers from each of us. Two guards. They each needed to check and photograph each of our three official papers. Then each guard needed to repeat the process – asking to rephotograph all eight of us – each of our three papers again. And then a third time. And then a fourth – at which time we sat down. A number of hours had gone by. It seemed like they were just killing time – making it appear they were doing something.
After about three and a half hours one of our codes went Green. We call cheered. Five minutes later, another person’s. Five more minutes another – until all but Leo, the son in the Michael/Boyle Family, had gone Green. Forty five minutes passed. Leo felt terrible. Then Dan started receiving messages saying he had been a close contact and he should not travel. He started to panic. ”If we don’t get through security quickly – we are going to get taken back to quarantine”. He started yelling and trying to push our way through. It didn’t help get Leo in. Security did tell us those with Green codes could go in and get some food and bring it back out. Dan, Celia and Carolyn, did just that. Like a miracle, Dan also returned with beer. Just as we were settling in to eat and passing around a beer, Leo’s Shanghai code went Green. We quickly dropped our drinks – which couldn’t go through security – and ran in. We had long missed our flight but were able to get tickets for one a few hours later.
And from there – things were actually smooth. Short flight to Beijing. Some colleagues waiting to welcome us and Driver Li waiting to take us home.
Shanghai Airport to quarantine hotel
To continue our moving saga: We made it to the Shanghai airport. They have turned what once was one of the world’s busiest airports into a crazy empty maze with completely hazmat suited workers including goggles and taped on gloves. As we pass they quickly wiped everything down including their gloves.
We spent the next 6 hours navigating the airport: down one corridor to show our green code, another to fill out more paperwork, another to get our mouth or nose swabbed, another corridor to fill out more paperwork, then through the slowest passport control ever – there was no line but they checked that each letter was correct. Then we went through another maze to get our luggage, then we navigated through to a holding area for passengers that eventually will be going to Beijing. When we finally released from that area we were led though the maze to a quarantine hotel shuttle. A colleague of Dan’s, on the phone was concerned they were sending us the wrong way. We got one of the hazmats to talk on the phone and indeed, we were put in with the regular population while the colleague had arranged for us to go to VIP accommodations. An hour later we had been rerouted, re-held, redirected, until we were in a different area getting onto a different quarantine hotel shuttle.
We sat on the bus for an hour to our hotel. As we entered the hotel grounds, the weeds were hip high and growing through the driveway, the front door was boarded up and the windows were so filthy you couldn’t see through it. Inside the lobby was also make-shift and filthy. It was shockingly not what we’d think of as VIP. As we were being signed in, it became clear they were going to separate Celia as she is considered an adult in China. Luckily we had been warned this might happen and had her doctor write and official letter, which as had translated into Mandarin, that she could not be separated. The Hazmatters were unhappy about the note and unsure what to do, but they eventually agreed to let Celia and I be in a room together. Dan and Morton were sent to the room next to us and the Michael/Boyle Family got the two following rooms. We went up to the 17th floor – where our rooms were and were quite surprised, considering the lobby, how nice the rooms were.
They put a table in front of each room with a paper indicating how many people were inside and we went in. Lunch quickly arrived onto the tables: flat plastic containers with five compartments of heavily oiled and salted sautéed food, another container or rice, and tiny drinkable yogurt and an orange.
We unpacked some of our stuff, settled in, and fell asleep. It had been a crazy long trip.
On Our Way!!
Greetings from quarantine in Shanghai! I am reviving this blog to report on our new adventure.
We had a wonderful, yet abbreviated summer before setting off to China. First Dan finally returned home! We spent a few weeks at the beach. My brothers, the Kimelia’s, Anita and Chris came to see us before we flew off. Morton went to camp with his good friend Julien for a couple weeks and Celia went to the New York Times writing program for two weeks. Dan ran around spending time with as many people as he could before returning to China. We all went to New York for a few days before flying off -quickly getting some time in with Dan’s aunt Masako and cousin Keiko, doing our final packing, meeting the movers and seeing friends. I am very grateful for everyone who worked in time to spend with me (and us) before we flew out. (I am so sorry that I wasn’t better at taking pictures to mark these wonderful moments)
Above is a picture just before we left our hotel in Detroit for the airport to catch our flight to Shanghai. We had to spend a few days in Detroit, getting a couple PCR tests before we’d get our Green Code from the Chinese government to be able to board our flight.
We spent these days seeing a bit of Detroit, which was super interesting, and, best of all, catching up with Betty, my college roommate, and her daughter Evelyn.
Our last day in Detroit was a panic – when the kids and I didn’t get a Green Code – we got a Red Code. After hours of panic we found out we had submitted pictures of our expired visas from last October!
Finally got our Green Code and we loaded our crazy large EIGHT bags into an SUV car service and went to catch our 11:40 PM flight.
Dan finally home:
time with family and friends (wish I took more pictures!):
Time at the beach:
Suzanne’s opening:
