Melanie Fischer

We had a great weekend – so want to get it down before I forget all that happened. 

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. 

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.