Houhai Bike Ride

Well, believe it or not, I went on a bike trip around Beijing with three other women today. A little nerve-wracking at first but it was good fun. Biked on the main road to a small hutong and then around the lake at Houhai and stopped for lunch in a dim sum style place that you walk around to various stations and choose what you want to eat. It was a very interesting place but I didn't have my tester (Steve) with me so I was pretty cautious about what I ordered. (photo below)

I also managed to open us a bank account today at Bank of China (a little cheating because Steve's secretary Carol helped me fill out the forms in advance).

As The New Year Begins

March came in like a lion in Beijing. Snow began falling Lantern Festival night (February 28) and continued until morning. Total accumulation 1/2 inch. Just enough to make cars and sidewalks white and streets wet and slushy. It was difficult, but the end of Spring Festival revelers managed to get off their fireworks, but to a lesser extent, I think, than they would have had the weather been more cooperative. When I think about our February here, it was jam packed with settling in, experiencing new things, and welcoming new opportunities.

Each day continues to be an adventure. Some are fun and interesting; others bring the realization that we are strangers and at the mercy of others. The biggest impact is the helpless feeling that accompanies the inability to communicate with people around you or the frustration that comes with being illiterate in the country in which you are living. It limits a full appreciation of what is going on around us and I continually wonder what I am missing. Ignorance should be bliss you say? Was the Chinese message on my cell phone an advertisement or is my service being canceled? I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

We are both enjoying our language classes. That being said, we can communicate very little with non-English speaking Chinese at this point. My big accomplishment today was ordering a cafe mocha in Starbucks in Mandarin. However, I didn’t listen to what the order taker was saying to the person who makes the coffee. It took an American behind me, who was paying attention to my order, to direct the clerk to make the coffee I had ordered and payed for. The American told me I had ordered correctly but the clerk had miscommunicated the order. It’s not just the speaking, it’s the paying attention to and understanding what is being said around us. Oh well. I’ll try again.

My big news is that I was hired by an international school, Beijing City International School, to be the Admissions Manager. I begin work on March 15th. I learned about the job in an English language magazine. Applying for and securing the job was learning experience in and of itself. I'm sure the next couple of months will be a real adjustment in many ways. But I am looking forward to the challenge and I am glad to have more of a purpose to my day to day activity. The school website is www.bcis.cn if you want to check it out. It is relatively new (about 5 years) and the people I’ve met so far are motivated and friendly. In a nutshell, I will be responsible for interfacing with prospective parents and students and building relationship with embassies and expat community groups.

Steve’s work keeps him busy. He hasn’t been required to travel much although he has an engagement or two that are outside of Beijing. He comes home with handfuls of business cards, the primary way people introduce themselves here.

We are beginning to find some weekly routines. Our Monday evening activity is the Pub Quiz at the English language book store/cafe called The Bookworm. The first week we went we sat by ourselves and were decidedly the old folks in the crowd. The next week was pretty crowded so a young couple joined us at our table and then a few others and we had a team. Now, after four weeks, a group of six of us (Americans and Brits) convene, have dinner, chit chat, and then partake in the quiz. We do pretty well until we get to the music portion. Mostly modern songs that we have never heard before. We’ll keep trying for that bottle of wine prize!

We did a little sight-seeing this past weekend. We went to the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, a porcelain museum and a eastern medicine center. We also attended a Chinese opera Hua Mulan, the basis of the Disney movie Mulan. The most interesting aspect of the opera was how is appears that the vocalists, both men and women, imitate the sounds of the instruments in the orchestra. We wondered if that is the origin of the Chinese singing style. Anyone have any insights to share? The National Center for Performing Arts, which includes the opera house, is a spectacular building, a must see for anyone coming to Beijing. It is shaped like an egg from the outside with very high wood vaulted ceilings. The floors are marble, a variety of colors and patterns. One enters the building under a pool of water which you can look up through when you travel down the main corridor to the performance spaces.

Our sea shipment finally arrived this week. We were most grateful to receive our bed. Seven weeks of sleeping on the low, hard Chinese style mattress that our landlord was kind enough to loan us was six weeks too many! We are mostly unpacked now and ready to receive any of you who want to have a taste of the East.

Celebrations

Chinese New Year (aka Spring Festival). February 14, 2010. The Year of the Tiger. Also Valentine’s Day and 30 years since Steve and I were engaged. A Big Day!

Let the fireworks begin! Well, actually they began almost a week before Chinese New Year with firecrackers and little displays going off randomly around our neighborhood at dusk. The US fire marshals would have fit if they saw how fireworks were stored and used here. Everyone is entitled to purchase fireworks. (In our apartment foyer a notice states that you can store up to 60 lbs. of fireworks in your unit.) About one week before New Years, little government-sponsored huts appeared on street corners that sold a variety of firecrackers from sparklers to quite extensive displays. The largest variety we saw came in box about the size of a records storage box filled with canisters connected to one fuse. You light it and run. They cost about 2000 RMB which is about $250 USD. People bring their explosives to any street corner, alley, or open area they choose and set them off.



After having New Year’s Eve dinner in our apartment (I made sweet and sour chicken), we had a great view from our apartment window of some of the displays. We then went outside around 10 pm to check out what was going on. We found some of our apartment residents (primarily French citizens) with their young children setting off all kinds of fireworks right next to our building! New Years revelers began setting off fireworks late in the afternoon on February 13 and continued without stopping until well past midnight. We fell asleep to the sound of fireworks and woke up to some in the morning about 8 am. They will continue for the next week or so until the Lantern Festival which marks the end of the New Year holiday.

The Spring Festival is a family holiday and, as such, it is a big travel holiday in China. People travel to their hometowns to reconnect with family and friends. There are noticeably less people in Beijing the past couple of days. On New Years Day we went to a older neighborhood in Beijing called Liulichang at the recommendation of my Chinese tutor Lucy. We saw the old hutong type houses and wandered through the narrow alleys and streets. It was quite cold so we made our way back to our apartment to warm up. At the recommendation of Steve’s work colleague, we went to dinner at a restaurant called China Grill on the 66 floor of a Central Business District office building. It was fun to see the lights of the city and the fireworks displays dotting the panorama. The food was great too!

Happy Year of the Tiger!

A Visit to Hong Kong

We’ve been in our apartment now just shy of one month. The newness of being in the city has passed, although I still don’t feel like a resident yet. We had a quick trip to Hong Kong for work and visa related missions and as we re-entered Beijing and came though immigration, Steve asked me if it felt like I was coming home. It did not.

Hong Kong is a fascinating city; a collision of Western modern, traditional Chinese and colonial British. Hoards of people, skyscrapers and markets everywhere. We stayed at a hotel on Hong Kong Island and spent most of our time there. The streets are narrow and hilly. Thank goodness for the escalators and stairs which are available inside and outside of office buildings to assist with the steep terrain. In addition, covered walkways connect the sidewalks two and three stories in the air to take pedestrian traffic off the sidewalks and out of the cross walks. It is maze-like in that not all the covered walkways connect to a building or a sidewalk. Many times I found myself backtracking to get to my desired destination.

We visited the “Peak” which is a high point on the island where you get a view of the downtown business area and further onto Kowloon, which is the part of Hong Kong on the Chinese mainland. Because we went there at night, we saw the lights of the city and missed out on seeing views of the China Sea and other natural terrain. The weather was not particularly cooperative during the daylight hours, sun but lots of haze. Maybe another time.

On our trip to Kowloon, we had a chance to visit with fellow Crotonite Ally Goldberg, who is in Hong Kong teaching English at a local university. She took us to markets in Kowloon which were even more crowded that the ones on Hong Kong Island! Bird market, goldfish market, ladies’ market, flower market. Lots of shopping going on for the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) which begins on February 14th. We had dinner at a restaurant near the ferry terminal with beautiful views of Hong Kong Harbor and then watched a laser light show that is presented daily at 8 pm. (It reminded me of the light show at Epcot.) We then ferried back to Hong Kong Island.

We went to a Tea Museum in Hong Kong Park that has a wonderful collection of tea pots and other tea related items. We learned about the various types of tea, how they are prepared, the different types of pots, the health benefits of the various types of teas, etc. The Park also has an aviary with many spectacular bird species. They attract the birds for public viewing by hanging fresh fruit near the elevated walkways in the aviary. The birds would swoop by, fill up, and fly off. It made for good viewing.


I can get around Beijing pretty easily now. I have learned to use the subways and found a street map that has the subway stops marked on it. Steve and I have both begun our Chinese lessons. Our tutors have very different approaches. I have learned how to introduce myself (wo jiao Diane), to identify my family members, and how to count. He has learned counting, food and restaurant vocabulary. Between the two of us, maybe we’ll have enough to get by soon. So far, in a pinch, I haven’t had words at my fingertips what would have been useful. But, we’ll get there.

City Living

It is hard to believe that just over two weeks ago I was in was living in sleepy, suburban town outside New York City and now we are trying to settle into a bustling metropolis of over 10 million people. I haven’t lived in a city in over 30 years!

Our apartment is very comfortable; a living room/dining room combination, 3 bedrooms, 3 baths and a modern kitchen. Located near Chaoyang Park, it is pretty central to most things we have attempted to do so far. It is about a 15-20 minute commute to work for Steve, which makes his work day quite a bit shorter than in New York.

Our area is more western than most and nearby are a number of foreign embassies. In addition, it supports a variety of ethnic restaurants, some western style grocery stores and several several malls. The Apple Store, where I have attended One-to-One tutorials, is just a 15 minute walk away in Sanlitun. Settling in, therefore, has not been too difficult especially when we can travel to places on our own, guided by English language maps. The difficult part is communicating with non-English speaking taxi drivers who seem so convincing when they assure you that they know where they are going, but you wind up on the wrong part of town! We begin language lessons this week, but I am sure it will be quite a while before we can converse and understand what people are telling us.

A fun place we have discovered is called The Bookworm. It is a combination pub, coffee shop, English language book store and library reading room. They have nice food, great coffee and all kinds of books to read. I think I might become a regular there. You hear a variety of western languages spoken as you move throughout the shop.

I have met a number of Steve’s colleagues here and they have been very helpful. Also, I have connected with former Croton resident Carter Mailk and she has introduced me to a couple of groups for expats. Everyone has been terrific.

The weather here has been pretty cold and windy although we have had a few days above freezing with no wind. Dust storms appear from time to time (from the Gobi Desert) and create a haze about the city. Lots of the manufacturing plants have move out of the city we have been told so that the pollution problem has been minimized.

Crossing the street here can be an experience. Like in many parts of the US, vehicles here can make a right hand turn on red. The difference is that in Beijing vehicles, both cars, bike, peddle carts, etc., approach the intersection to make a right turn as if they have the right of way. While I’m sure this helps with congestion by keeping the traffic flowing, it also causes almost a war between cars and pedestrians (who has the right of way?) when crossing the street with a green light. We try to stay with the packs of people when crossing--safety in numbers! But you must always be looking over your shoulder. The funniest thing we have seen here so far is McDonald’s delivery cyclists. A new meaning for fast food.

To my rug hooking friends: I have begun the friends rug: Amy’s Indian Head square and Ching’s lantern square next to it. Seems a fitting parallel right now. Decorations are starting to go up for the Chinese New Year (Spring Festival). I will try to post some photos of that soon.

Keep in touch. I would love to hear from you. My email is drskalak@optonline.net.

Going Away Party

A group gathered at Tricia's house to send us off.

Culture Shock?

Steve and I began our culture training class in New York before the big move. He seems pretty relaxed about things, wouldn't you say?