Some Pittys, for Pitty's Sake

 

Infrequent greetings from the Mainland!

 

As is to be expected, our lives have filled with 'normal' activities, and this leaves less time for filling up space on the internet.  In this case, no news is actually good news, as it's just one more sign that real life has begun.  With the boys, language classes, market expeditions, and even some relaxation time, our days fill up rather quickly.

 

Nevertheless, it's fun to jot down a few words about the day, or share some photos we've taken.  As Jessica mentioned in the last post, our camera seems to have sprouted a pair of legs, but I've been using my camera phone.  Here are a few pictures that I've snapped in the past few days.  They're taken at a spot near our school, where a large building has recently been constructed.  These are shots of what I believe to be old housing for the workers.

Not much else to say, at the moment. In fact, I'm wasting valuable 'quiet time' (that is, the boys are in bed) and I should crack the books. My teachers are starting to expect more from me, and they've been cracking the whip a bit.  But I've come up with the perfect revenge.  They don't seem to understand why some of the sentences in our book should be at all hard to say.  So tomorrow I'm bringing in... Fox in Socks.  Try those socks on for size.

  

A Nanny in the House

Yes you read correctly, we have a part time nanny. Not because James and I are too lazy to care for our children, but rather because the increasing demands on our schedule necessitates some extra help. In addition to this, in a week and a half James will be gone for 10 days, leaving little old me with two boys in Beijing! This was the main reason for the nanny rush, since we wanted to get things adjusted before James suddenly left. We call her Aiyi (auntie)

Its very interesting having someone else in the house in the afternoons, especially since she is virtually a stranger and only speaks Chinese. We make all the food and she gives it to the boys. She also cleans the floors. Beijing is so dusty that if we don't sweep and mop everyday, we literally get dirt streaks on our feet, hands and faces.

We've already made fools of ourselves more than once. One of the first days I was preoccupied cutting up carrot sticks and forgot about the grilled "cheese" sandwich I was preparing on the stove. Of course I only realized that it was burning when she came walking in the kitchen hollering something I didn't understand in Chinese. I felt very foolish only being able to laugh, point at it and say "bu haochi!" (not delicious!) and "wo de" (mine).

A few days later, it was even worse because both James and I were in the kitchen trying to throw together some pancakes very quickly, and we managed to burn not one or two pancakes, but thoroughly the whole batch! Incidentally, we were extremely baffled that everything was burning within 1 minute of entering the pan (and no, we didn't have it on extremely high heat!). However, we couldn't communicate any of this to the nanny and looked even more foolish with TWO of us standing over the skillet looking baffled and giggling. We can only imagine what she was thinking "These strange foreigners obviously don't know how to cook and they think it is funny!" It didn't help that she then started asking us if we ever eat Chinese food and if we like it, and why we don't cook it! We actually do cook it, but all she has seen so far is our strange foreign burnt cuisine. She always curiously stares at the boys' lunch, even the not burnt things! By the way this is a google image, not our pancakes. They were not that bad.

Monday was a national holiday so both James' and my classes were cancelled but Aiyi still came to watch the boys. So we decided to kill two birds with one stone. We decided to spend our first afternoon alone together since coming to China and buy a bike for the boys out of our savings account in Canada. We had a lovely time and were excited to show the boys the bike, but when we got home... Well, first we just saw Aiyi knocking at the bathroom door knocking and hollering at the boys to let her in! When James finally got them to unlock the door we saw both of them in the shower covered in shampoo with their clothes on! It was everywhere!

We were not really upset about the shampoo, but the locking out was quite unacceptable (Ari definitely knows how to manipulate the locks). So we decided to creatively punish them in someway that they would remember....so into the shower they went! Shampoo clothes and all! Not too hot and not too cold, but from the noise they made you'd think were torturing them! The shower had the added advantage of washing them and cleaning the mess they had made. Ari was the most upset that we were getting his clothes wet! As if he hadn't done most of the damage! Then we promptly dismantled the locks.

So the first take home message is...if you decide to visit us in China, don't expect to be able lock the bathroom door! The second message is only burn food around people that you are able to explain yourself to!

Since the last posting aroused some concerned comments from many parties, I also feel that I must point out the other good things that have come from use being here. One is that we have spent far more time as a family and one-on-one with the boys than we were ever able to back in Canada. I have enjoyed very much being able to spend much time with them (playing "tickling blanket monster" and chasing them, singing loudly with them, helping Ari learn to write the alphabet, going for walks, reading books etc.) It is true that we are still needing to learn how to work around some of the inconveniences of living here, but I think that time will make a big difference.

I apologize for the lack of home grown pictures on this post. We seem to have misplaced our camera this last week. I'm wondering if little hands might have hidden it someplace...

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This is an addition by James:

The other day when I was making lunch, Aiyi walked into the room, took a look at the spaghetti sauce I was preparing, and actually grimaced. I guess it just wasn't her thing. The funny thing is, she refers to it as "Yingguo cai", or English food. I don't have any plans of making Yorkshire Pudding, but it's all the same to her...

What's a Kid to Do? By Jess

Strangely enough, even after everyone's predictions that the boys would adjust to living here faster than us, the reverse seems to be true.  We've watched in bewilderment as they have done one uncharacterstic thing after another.  I find myself shaking my head as Jude refuses to move after spreading himself across the elevator door unaware of the doors about to close, or when Ari refuses to stop playing with eggs in the grocery store and throws a fit in public places.  These behavioral outbursts and bizarre happenings really are not like the boys.  They've always listened very well.

But as we've started to see it from their perspective it seems a little more justified.  While I have read in books written for expats that Beijing is a very child friendly city, my experience so far would say the opposite.  There's a lot of open space, but they're too young to run off by themselves and not get hit by a car. Perhaps if we had boundless energy and cash we could take them day after day to the many flashy child entertainment places that abound.

For example, in an effort to make a fun outing with them today, I brought them to the mall to look at the floor that is dedicated to children's stores.  In Winnipeg we could do this easily and they loved it, without begging and asking for things.  But today was pure torture, for all of us! Whining, crying, begging.

I was momentarily relieved to see that there were two child playgrounds.  One was closed in with glass and was a huge sandpark with sand toys and slides and the other was a netted in area where they could throw themselves into huge bins of balls (not unlike the notorious McDonalds balls).  We headed toward them (both boys very excited!) only to see that they charged an admission fee of 25 RMB ($4-5) per child.  Ouch!  That's steep!  That started the whining and crying over again, and I dealt with it in true parent fashion..."Ari, I'm sorry but what do you expect me to do?  We don't have buckets of money sitting at home!"  The only more classic parent line would have been "What do I look like?  A money tree?"

We have a playground outside in our courtyard, but there is only so long they can slide down the same slides without being bored.  Besides, they also have to contend with the fact that there are as many parents as there are children on the playground, so that at times, "playing" is standing in  a slow moving line.  They've also been reprimanded by other parents for carrying sticks or rocks around the play ground.  Today Ari was reprimanded by a guard for walking on a small strip of grass beside the apartment building. 

I certainly give credit to the Beijing city planners for trying to make up for the abundance of concrete and skyscrapers, by adding in plenty of beautiful ponds and fountains and vines and flowering trees.  As an adult I can fully appreciate them and even feel refreshed to spent some time in them.  But the boys are not as content to look as I am.  If they could jump in the pond and frolic under the fountain and climb on the craggy rocks that line the pond in our complex, they would be very happy!  But as it stands they can't even climb on the rocks that surround the pond because they are as sharp and dangerous as any lake in the Whiteshell.  We let them do it for a while once, until Jude took a very dangerous looking tumble.  One inch further and he would have bounced off of three sharp craggy rocks, hit a pipe and then fallen into the pond.  So we walk nice and slow, admire the fish and return home.  All these pictures of the fountains and ponds in our complex.  We can almost see them out our window!

We are very seriously considering buying Ari a bike for his birthday, so that he could whip around the concrete paths and maybe burn some of his energy.  Other than that, we try to spend time with them, play games, read books, go to the park on the weekends etc.  Maybe this is a time for development of the mind.  Maybe Ari will become really good at reading and writing before he even sets foot in a school!  But some days they are just downright bored!  What's a kid to do?  Almost as valid a question is, what's a parent to do?

On a side note, I remembered something today that momentarily got me down.  When I was purchasing groceries this last January at Pal's Grocery on Henderson Highway, I looked disdainfully at the big Cadburry Easter Eggs they were already selling (Give it a break, it wasn't even Valentine's Day yet!).  In retrospect though I realize that at that moment I should have bought and eaten Cadburry Eggs until I was so sick of them I wouldn't think about now!  Much as Easter has a far deeper meaning, I still have extremely fond associations with eating those shiny, individually wrapped eggs.  I used to freeze them and then eat them slowly, pausing to dig out the creamy "yolk" before finishing the second half of the chocolate.  

Ahhh, sweet chocolate memories!  I must admit that the indulgent side of me feels the loss heavily!  Its a good thing I'm made of a lot more than my indulgences!  

Boston is the Beijing of the West

 

Greetings from the Mainland!

 

In some ways, Beijing reminds me of Boston.  But it bothers me when people say that such-and-such a place is the so-and-so of the East.  For example, Phnom Penh was, in the days of French Indochina, referred to as the Paris of the Orient.  Pyongyang, believe it or not, was referred to as the Jerusalem of the East.  The Chinese city of Suzhou is called the Venice of the Orient.  And so on...

 

My beef, so to speak, is not that we're making comparisons between cities (refer to post title).  It's that we're calling the unknown (East) a replica or a mirror of the known (West).  The comparison between Venice and Suzhou is a good one, actually.  Both are crisscrossed by numberless canals, both boast beautiful architecture.  Both are very old, with pasts that disappear into legend.  It's kind of silly, however, when we say that Lhasa is the Dallas of the Orient, or Louangphrabang is the Steinbach of the East.

 

How do we feel about a reversal?  New York is the Tokyo of the West - an imitation of sorts, only a shadow of the glorious magnificence that is the seat of Japanese power.  Doesn't seem quite right.  Comparing cities with Paris is easy.  All you need are a few tree-lined boulevards that zero in on an arch of some sort.  But making comparisons with Kuala Lumpur?  Not so easy.  I wonder how much of it has to do with the simple fact that, while we know quite a bit about Paris or London or San Francisco, most of us know jack-squat (yes, I said jack-squat) about most cities in the "Orient".

 

Anyhow, back to today's content.  Boston is the Beijing of the West.  It's true.  For any of you who have ever travelled to New England, you will know that Boston offers some of the worst drivers in the world.  Folks there drive their automobiles with the recklessness of young African elephants that have just grown tusks.  Beijingers don't really fare much better.  Crossing the street is putting your life on the line.  Crosswalks are somewhat irrelevant, and a pedestrian must not expect any courtesy.

 For example, I witnessed as a taxi and a bus simultaneously whipped past an old, cane-reliant woman, one to the left and one to the right.  She was halfway across the crosswalk, and I think she nearly died with fright.  If only Lei Feng, the legendary Chinese do-gooder, had been around to escort her.

 

In some ways, it's an adventure.  But when you've waited at a light for 10 minutes to cross, but a jillion taxis keep swerving around you on all sides, the charm wears thin.  I keep looking around for the RCMP officer that would roundly bust their proverbial chops back in Winnipeg.  Lei Feng might do it too.
 

There are other commonalities between Beijing and Boston.  Consider tea, for example.  It's completely possible that the tea that was tossed into Boston harbour, in that unforgettable display of nascent nationalism, was grown on a hillside somewhere in the Middle Kingdom.  (Probably not, unfortunately.  Given the time period, it probably came from India or Ceylon, but if you can't tell, I'm grabbing at any straw I can to draw connections.)

But the real meat and potatoes of my argument comes in here.  Chinese is really a hodgepodge of languages in a common family.  The language that is most used, however, is Standard Mandarin, which is theoretically also the language used here in the capital.  I only say theoretically because there are people from all over China here in Beijing, each using their own dialect.  Some of the differences between dialects are small, and some are quite big.

 

However, even those Beijingers who speak what would be called Standard Mandarin, have idiosyncrasies of their own.  They add a strong retroflex 'r' to the ends of certain words.  For those of you who don't know what a retroflex is (I counted myself among this crowd until only a few months ago), the simple answer is that your tongue is placed in such a way that it adds a strong nasal quality to whatever consonant it's used with.

 

In the diagram above, you can see how the tongue (that hideous red thing) is touching the roof of the mouth.  Try putting your tongue to the roof of your mouth, pulling it back as far as you can (towards that dangly bit at the back of your throat), and then saying "Germany".  You'll probably sound a bit more Chinese if you do.

 

So folks in Beijing add a retroflex R to the end of a lot of words that don't have one in Standard Mandarin.  The interesting thing is that the character for whatever word they're saying remains the same (if it is written down, that is), and the character 儿  is added after it.  For example, the words gong yuan mean public park.  But if you say, "I'm going to the gong yuan", a Beijinger will say, "Ah, I love the gong yuanr".  (It's not pronounced yuan-er, but rather yu-ar.  The 'n' seems to disappear right up their nose.)

Boston, on the other hand, doesn't seem to realize that some words end in R.  Car = cah, for example, and water = watah.  Alexandah, go get the fiah extinguishah!  I'm curious to know what would happen if you put a bunch of Chinese students in an English school with teachers from Boston, or vice versa.

 

I've just come to a realization.  Here I am, at the end of my post, and I now see that I've just undone my argument.  With the exception of the drivers, Boston is the Un-Beijing of the West.  If you dug a hole in Boston, you would eventually come out somewhere in Beijing, astonished to hear this mysterious sound... RRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!

 

One final comment.  I stumbled across the beautiful specimen below, and just had to add it in.  Just think of it as an appendix to the "Bonny Bins of Beijing" post.

 

Warning: May be Poisonous

 

A Haircut Befitting of the Revolution

Greetings from the Mainland!

Today has been a good day. We're pulling out of a prolonged cool spell (although still warm compared to the type of March weather we would expect in Canada). The forecast for the next couple of days (which I received from one of my teachers at the language school, so it must be reliable) is for sunny days in the mid-20s.  But I won't believe it until I see it.  Unless it comes out of John Sauder's mouth, it don't mean a thing.

 

A notable transition has occurred in my life.  I've finally emerged from the awkward No-Man's-Land between Beard-dom and being clean-shaven (I found myself reading Psalm 23), and I no longer flinch when I don't see a beard on my face.  In fact, I shave every morning, except Saturdays!  This is big news for any of you who know me well.  Facial hair found an unqualified welcome on my face sometime around my 18th birthday.

 

My attitude has always been, "If it grows, let it".  Of course, fingernails are the exception, and my toenails never seem to grow.  I think the last time I trimmed them was shortly before my wedding, when I felt obliged to do everything I could to 'spruce up'.

 

But for the last week or two, I was beginning to feel unduly slovenly.  It had everything to do with my hair.  In a previous post, Jessica alluded to the fact that I sometime wrestle with the state of my hair.  Baldness, or shall we say 'the B-word', has chosen me.  I am reminded of the short story, The Lottery, in which a woman receives a slip of paper with a black dot on it, and is therefore doomed to die.

 

Hang on a minute... baldness and death in the same paragraph?  Comparing the two is, first of all, a heinous injustice to bald, balding and so-to-be-balding men globally, and secondly, is just plain melodramatic.  I'm fascinated by society's obsession with thick, perfectly manageable hair, and my decidedly thin, unmanageable hair just doesn't fit the mould.

 

If there is a complaint to be heard from these lips, it is merely that in this in-between time, this hazy netherworld of sparseness, I would rather just lose it all, Daddy Warbucks-style.

 
The reason I got on all this is because today I went out and got a haircut.  Heads are a bit like topiaries, if you think about it.  Going into a barbershop is a bit like entrusting your precious bush to a stranger's shears.  I picked a place that looked inexpensive (tucked at the edge of a neighbourhood that's all torn up with construction, and directly across from a worker's shantytown of sorts).  The women inside were surprised to see me come in, but very nice.

 

I asked how much for a hair cut.  10 yuan, she replied, for a haircut, and 20 for a wash, haircut and scalp massage.  I indicated that I only wanted a cut.

 

In the chair, it soon became apparent that my wishes had not been properly communicated.  I got the full scalp treatment, a rinse, and a dry.  Then the cut began.  A different lady did the cutting, relying mostly on a large set of clippers.  She was very meticulous, and her precision was really something.

 

One interesting feature to life in China is the much larger role that massages seem to play in daily life.  You can see massage shops all over, and it seems that even barbershops offer massages.  There's something about massages that make North Americans automatically edgy.  I'm not alluding to the darker side of massages... the parlour side of things.  I mean massages in general.  Strangers touching you with for the purpose of giving you pleasure.  I know people in Canada who have gone for massages, but it is generally because they hurt themselves at the gym, or for some specific purpose.  Here, it is sort of a general past time.

I didn't get the full-body massage (it would have been an extra 40 yuan), but surprisingly, it didn't seem as though it would have been a big deal if I had gotten it.  Of course, at some point I was forced to try to answer some of the many questions being directed at me.  Where was I from, what was my name, how old was I, where did I work, how long would I be in China, did I like Chinese music?  She knew a little English, but I was able to catch a lot of it in Chinese, and answer accordingly.  It's one thing to have your language teacher ask you carefully scripted questions, when she knows exactly what words you know and don't know.  It's another thing entirely when it's a total stranger!  But it's way more satisfying too!

 

Here's the finished product.  If I could provide you with a panoramic shot, you would get a complete feel for the militaristic quality of the haircut.  Quite in keeping with a certain type of cut you see frequently in China.

 

In other news, I was asked by someone back in Canada how expensive groceries are.  This is the first of two photos that I will put up (the other in a later post) that attempts to illustrate relative costs.  All the food on the table was purchased with about $27.  This was purchased at the grocery store.  The other place we shop is a vegetable market, where prices are more 'flexible'.

 

However, a second, and more immediately available fact comes through in this photo.  Everything, from the tiniest cracker to the biggest bag of rice has about twice or three times the packaging that it would back in Canada.  For example, we bought one item that was packaged in individual bags, inside a larger plastic tray, inside a large plastic bag.

 

Ordinarily, we would just not buy something with that much packaging.  But there are no alternatives.  It's as if someone said, "Hey, we have a billion tons of plastic wrap sitting in the warehouse, and we need to get rid of it NOW!"

 

I'm sure that as time goes by, and we learn the subtleties of shopping, we will be able to reduce our waste.  But for now, all our food has a slightly guilty taste...