A Day in the Life

I know that many of you are sitting back home and asking yourself, “I wonder what Debbie’s day-to-day life is like?”

Okay, here it is. Enjoy and try not to be too jealous.

7 a.m. – I’m awake. I grab my ipad and iphone to see what kinds of messages have piled up over the night. The ipad informs me that it can’t access my gmail, so I turn on my VPN and check Facebook while I wait for gmail to load. Facebook posts are from the night before, which means that’s not loading either. I reread old posts, which weren’t that interesting in the first place.

7:15 a.m. – I get up and feed the cat her imported and ambassadorial cat food. I exercise. Most days that means I half-heartedly lift weights in the living room because the air is too bad for running outside and because I’ve finally called it quits with Seasons Park’s terrible, horrible, no good gym.

8 a.m. – I call my mother. This phone call – my skype to her land line – may or may not be cut off mid-sentence. I retry the call. It’s busy because Mom hasn’t realized that I’ve been cut off and she’s still talking. I keep trying, and finally I get through.

8:30 a.m. – I have breakfast, usually yogurt mixed with fruit and muesli. I wash the fruit first in tap water and then clean bottled water. I make coffee.

8:45 a.m. – Uh oh. Stomach issues. Was that pear coated with pesticides? Hard to know.

9 a.m. – I get back on the VPN. If I leave my devices – computer, ipad, iphone – for longer than a few minutes the VPN goes away and I have to restart it. I get to choose my fake location, from Washington, D.C. (hello DC ren!) to Phoenix (hello Mark Athitakis!) to Las Vegas (hello Jessica Estepa!) to Los Angeles (hello Anne Reifenberg!). Yes, pathetic that I do this, but also kind of fun. Where should I go today? Miami? Sounds good.

9:30 a.m. – I work my way through emails, check Facebook again, check my Hotmail account.

9:45 a.m. – Whoops. Back to the bathroom.

10 a.m. – Damn. I was in there too long and I have to restart the VPN.

10:15: -- The cat wants attention. She wants to know why I’m not sitting on the couch so she can sit on my lap. That’s where she gets her best sleep, she tells me.

10:30 a.m. – Shoot. I forgot I have a Chinese lesson at 11. Must review. Must at least find the book.

10:45 a.m. – Then again, there is a really cute video on Facebook that involves babies and puppies.

11 a.m. – My teacher arrives. What ensues is a bit of a train wreck. How could I forget the characters from chapter 12 when I’m on chapter 20? Oh, because I didn’t study while I was hiking in the high altitudes near Tibet? Luckily, my teacher is kind and understanding, but I still develop a bad case of flop sweat during the lesson.

12 noon – Nothing in the house for lunch. Since I’m “working” I opt for finishing off a half bag of stale tortilla chips. The ayi mutters some comment about what I’m eating. The ayi is judgmental.

1 p.m. – We’re out of milk. I really should go out in the hazardous air to pick up a few cartons of longlife milk that is alleged to be from places like Germany and New Zealand, places where the cows are happy and no one, I hope, is putting other substances in the milk. Instead, I log back on the the VPN (hello, Kansas City!) and see what the Twittersphere is chatting about.

2 p.m. – Maybe I shouldn’t have had those chips for lunch. Stomach is unhappy again. I grab a paperback book because the internet connection in the loo is bad and I am NOT one of those people who simultaneously posts on Facebook and sits on the toilet. Nope, never done it.

2:15 p.m. – Kicked off VPN again. No one is answering my emails or texts. No one picks up when I call, because in China there is no voice mail on the phones, for some strange reason. The American side of the globe is sound asleep.

2:30 p.m. – I check Facebook anyway. Hello, insomniacs!

3 p.m. – Maybe I should review the lesson I had today in Chinese. Why do all these characters look alike? Why is the textbook offering characters in tiny tiny tiny script. Is there an extra line there or not? I CAN’T SEE IT!

4 p.m. – I get a text from Joanna. “Want to get nails done?” she asks. Yes, yes, I do.

4:30 p.m. – Joanna and I meet at the nail salon in the neighborhood. A lovely manicure there is 45 RMB, or $7.28. And the air conditioning unit no longer threatens to almost topple on her head the way it did one time.

5:30 p.m. – So many bars in the area have happy hour specials. I really should be working.

6:30 p.m. – I text Bob: “I’m having a beer with Nora. Where do you want to eat?”

7:30 p.m. – We choose dinner in one of the local western restaurants. I get a Caesar salad. The lettuce is brown, the chicken is so coated with pepper it’s nearly inedible, and I don’t taste any dressing at all. I complain to the waiter and he shrugs.

8:30 p.m. – Odd. My stomach is not right again. We’re almost out of toilet paper.

9 p.m. – Folks in the U.S. are starting to wake up and check email, and I hear from some, but not all, of the people I’ve been trying to reach.

9:30 p.m. – Bob, Daniel, and I watch an episode of “True Detective,” bought at our local bootleg DVD shop. Now, that’s relaxing.

10:30 p.m. – I get in bed, checking Facebook one more time. I download five or six NPR news segments and fall asleep listening to the soothing sound of the NPR voice. 

Smudge and the Ambassador

This story falls under the category of hard-to-believe and hard-to-explain. But I'm game to try.

As my faithful readers know, Smudge is drifting into her golden years. She remains with five feet of me at all times, she jumps on my lap even as the outside temps approach 100, and she eats like an anorexic model. I had Daniel bring a five-month supply of Fancy Feast when he arrived from Denver in June, and she's been appreciating that, if by "appreciating" one can say she eats it with some slight enthusiasm. Before Daniel surprised me with the amount of food he was bringing, I did ask others to bring cat food, if they happened to be coming in the next few months.

Yesterday, I was sitting in the Subway in the basement of East Gate Mall waiting for Bob and preparing to go bowling, when Bob showed up with a giant plastic carton full of Iams cat food.

"It's from the ambassador," he said.

"Say what?"

Turns out that I might have mentioned to Ambassador Max Baucus's aide that I was in need of cat food. That piece of information got passed on to the Baucus family. Somehow they ended up in Beijing with no cat but an enormity of cat food. Bob didn't get the story completely straight, mostly because he was in partial shock at being handed a giant tub of kibble. By the ambassador.

No matter. We now have, courtesy of a cat who has been discussed in the highest levels of diplomatic channels, a supply of dry cat food that is likely to last longer than Smudge. I did worry, too, that Smudge might reject this ambassadorial gift. I'm not sure of her political affiliations, but I do know she is in possession of a little red book.

Luckily, though, Smudge seemed to enjoy the first half-cup of her gift. And I enjoy the story of how China makes us all resort to strange behaviors. Interestingly, not a single person at bowling last night asked us why we were sitting there with a giant tub of cat food. In the grand scheme of China moments, this one was barely worth mentioning.

Almost Tibet

We're just back from a visit to northwest Yunnan, a corner of China that is home to more ethnicities than almost anywhere else in China. This visit was very Tibet-intensive, since many of the people in the area of Lijiang and Shangrila were ethnically Tibetan. Their homes were Tibetan, their food (think yak, yak, and more yak) is Tibetan, and their faces looked Tibetan to me.

Even more interestingly, we saw many pictures of the Dalai Lama on the walls of homes and temples, a face that in other places in China could get you thrown into jail. Some theorize that Yunnan has such an important and growing tourism business that it makes no sense for the Chinese to bully the Tibetan Buddhists there. Others operate under the ancient philosophy that "the mountains are high and the emperor is far away." Although these days the outside world is getting closer and closer.

To aid in the growth of tourism and to harness the powerful and raging waters of the three rivers area there -- the Yangtze, the Mekong, and the Salween (or Nu) rivers -- a gigantic dam is being planned on the Nu. The immediate result is dirt roads carved out of the sides of very unstable mountains. We lost count of the number of times a rock or mudslide had wiped out most of the road, forcing cars and trucks to maneuver through on one very precarious lane. All of us were praying that the giant boulders we'd see sitting in the middle of the road wouldn't descend just as we were passing through.

Speaking of prayers, the area is a fascinating mixture of religions, too: Tibetan Buddhist, Muslim, and Christian. We watched as Qilin, our Tibetan driver, murmured prayers as he drove us along. Our Muslim host on Haba Mountain, Mr. Bao, served a potent form of his homemade baijiu, although he didn't imbibe himself. And the Catholic church in Cizhong was a peaceful oasis where a grinning deacon wearing a large wooden cross around his neck showed us the church and told us he heard confession and gave out communion. The community of several hundred Christians met for worship four times a week -- on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays.

We also visited other ethnic villages -- a very poor Yi village in which farmers lived in log cabins where the outside could be seen through the gaps in the walls; a bizarrely unfriendly Lisu village decorated with posters warning about the danger of cults (did they think we were proselytizing?), a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery where the nuns had shorn black hair and smiled shyly at us.

There was so much mud and so much rain, but all that moisture produced more wildflowers than I've seen in three years here, glorious puffy clouds in the sky behind which the snow-capped mountains peeked, and green everything.

Here we have a truck driver who has stepped out of his truck either to clear the road or to see whether more boulders were descending. When he started to run back to his truck, I said to Bob, "Get back in the car! Now!"

Hiking near Meili. It looked like the set of Avatar.

The view from our window at the Songtsam Meili. Hard to leave.

More stunning views of the Baima mountains.

A Tibetan monk and his water bottle.

The view from the nunnery. 

Since I'm a rooster in the Chinese zodiac, I love these beautiful fellows.

After dinner with a Tibetan family, we saw this stunning rainbow. Hard not to think the heavens bless this special region.

And then the grand finale: a torch festival in Shangrila. How lucky that we've had two chances now to wave around burning pine sticks and smear ashes on each other.

Numbers Game

Today the temperature outdoors is higher than the AQI. It's 95 fahrenheit, but only 63 aqi. Normally in Beijing, if the air quality registers in the double digits, we all rush outside like hostages suddenly released.

Today presents a challenges to the parents in particular. "Should I let Leah play outside?" My friend Rachel texted me.

"Maybe just for a short time," I responded.

Earlier today, I had an interview to do, and it was tucked away inside one of Beijing's hutongs. My taxi driver decided to drop me off at the end of the street that was most convenient for HIM, which meant I had to speed walk up Nanluoguxiang, a busy hutong, dodging garbage carts, people posing for pictures, young men carrying their girlfriend's enormous purse, motorcycles, bikes, and even the occasional car, which forced me to step up on the doorway of a store to avoid the crushing of my toes.

By the time I got to my interview I was dripping. Here I was, trying to make eye contact, take notes, and sound interested when the sweat was stinging my eyes, my hand was sliding around on my pen,  and my legs were sticking to the back of the chair. For women of a certain age, there are different heat reactions: the initial, normal, whew-it's-hot reaction, and then, as many as ten to fifteen minutes later, a second wave that comes out of nowhere and looks really stupid because it seems unconnected to what's happening at the moment. I suppose it could be called a hot flash, although it's more like a hot aftershock.

I finished my interview and then could not find a cab to get home. At one point I was standing next to a stick-thin schoolgirl who was also looking for a cab, and I had the uncharitable thought, "I could take her."

I finally did get a cab, a blessed air-conditioned cab. I went home, ate some watermelon, and typed up my notes. I eventually stopped sweating too.

Taking a break, I decided to sit on the couch, and Smudge decided that she needed to curl up on my lap. She's a little obsessed with sitting on my lap and I don't have the heart to turn her away. It's hard to believe she wants warmth, but possible she's looking for comfort because she doesn't feel well.

So that's love: sitting with a skinny, gray, purring heating pad on my lap on a 95-degree day while I type on my iPad and pretend to study Chinese. Pretty much sums up the incongruities of my life in China.

Happy July Fourth!

I may end up sounding whiny on this post, but that's only because I am.

It's days like today that can make Americans feel homesick and so far removed from the U.S. We woke up to hazardous air which, coupled with high humidity and heat, creates an almost literal soup that we walk around in. Yesterday I had to cover a talk, which required me taking a pedicab to the Norwegian embassy (required mainly because I was too lazy to wait for a cab).

As we careened through the streets, cutting off buses and shooting the wrong way down bike lanes, I wondered if reporting on the natural gas pipeline from Russia to China was worth my limbs and lungs, and how Bob would fit all these details on my tombstone.

I did make it, and covered the event. Today, when I went to write it up, I realized that I was no longer able to get on Google to check just how many miles the pipeline ran or what John McCain actually said about Russia (He called it a gas station with a government. Good one.). This was even though I had my VPN on and I could access Facebook, Twitter, and even the New York Times. I finally figured out that I could do Google searches on my iPad. Shh, don't tell China.

All this is happening while I'm watching Facebook posts of friends at beaches, lakes, watching sunsets, sitting outside, celebrating our country, complaining about the weather. It's hard to take, but I guess the purpose of Facebook is to make others jealous. Well done then.

I know our country isn't perfect and that we've made so many mistakes. But I miss the place where the mistakes are also MY mistakes, and the stupid things said on the Internets are American stupid things, not other country's stupid things.

Happy birthday America, the land of red, white, and blue cakes, idiotic rom coms, cars the size of an elephant, and ice-cold water at every table. Stay real.

Update:
Well, I found some Americana in Beijing, thanks to, you guessed it, Great Leap Brewery down the street. I will not comment on the fact that a pub named for one of China's most horrible moments made me feel all warm and happy. Until we couldn't get in and satisfied ourselves with burgers at Big Smoke instead.

Our Neighborhood

Hanging out at the Peking duck place across the street.

Our kids tease us about the fact that in the evenings, we rarely venture far outside our little neighborhood, a mixture of all kinds of Chinese restaurants -- Sichuan, Peking duck, Yunnan, dumplings, noodles -- plus all kinds of other Asian restaurants -- Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai -- plus a decent selection of western restaurants.

Being western, we tend to lean heavily toward the western. One is called Frost, and the chef/owner is always experimenting with new dishes, some of which work and others that fail. But his tofu skin lasagna is great, especially for those avoiding gluten. It's possible it's because he loads the tofu skin up with cheese and good sauce, but who cares? Across the alley from Frost is the second of what Bob calls the "holy trinity" of restaurants we favor, called Big Smoke. There, we'll get the chimicurri chicken and the beet salad and the very good guacamole.

And finally, the third place in what others called the Bermuda Triangle is Great Leap Brewery, which offers a respectable caesar salad and very good burgers, plus good beer.

But in addition to having a good basis of western comfort food nearby, the neighborhood is really and truly a neighborhood. Now that we've lived here almost three years, we realize it's virtually impossible to go out into the neighborhood and not run into friends, neighbors, and the kids we know, from our own offspring to the little ones of our younger friends. Our apartment complex has one of the few decent playgrounds in the area for kids, so it becomes a hangout, and I feel only slightly creepy when I walk out of the complex by way of the playground on the chance that I might see one of my little ones.

Daniel laughs at us because the alley we like to frequent is actually not that pretty, just a short side street lined with tippy tables, hard chairs, and a pet shop where overbred cats and dogs wait out their days in sad mesh cages. Cars manage to squeeze down this alley because there's a well-known hotpot restaurant also tucked away in it, meaning that if a driver in a big Mercedes is trying to take his boss to the restaurant, he'll lay on the horn to make sure that pedestrians, little kids, and tiny dogs get out of the way. And I wonder why I have ringing in my ears.

In any event, it's not that much to look at, but when the weather is good, it's the place to be. Back in DC, we certainly run into friends at the Safeway, Starbucks, and CVS, but it's more spread out. Bob compares it to the years he lived in Oneonta, where he did know just about everyone in the place. Funny that a city of 22 million can be that intimate.

Bob at Big Smoke.

This is the Seasons Park playground intended for adult "exercises." The woman is standing on a disc that goes in circles. What this does baffles me, but it makes a fun seat for little ones.

Cab Conversations, Continued

Today I encountered one of Beijing's chatty cab drivers. I could tell I was in for an experience when he corrected my pronunciation of my street -- Chuxiulu. I always say something that sounds like TWICHN-CHOO-LU. Actually, the real way is to say TWICHN-CHEEYU-LU. See the difference? Me neither.

Anyway, after he corrected me and I apologized for my poor Chinese, the questions began. (This is a conversation all in Chinese, so apologies for the parts where I half imagine where the conversation is going.)

Where are you from? he asks. It's always the first question.
"America," I say. "Of course."
"But where in America?" he asks. "I have a sister living in America."
"Where?" I ask.
"Luo shan ji," he says. (It's not until now that I figured out that Luo shan ji is Los Angeles.)
"I live in Washington," I say.
"Shenme?" he says. What?
"The capital," I say. (Jing!) "Obama!"
OBAMA! he responds.
"Oh, do you like Obama?" I ask.
"No," he responds. "Do you?"
"Yes," I answer. "Why don't you?"
(Here he mutters something about other countries. It's the place where my language abilities fail me. Dear UN -- not ready for translation work yet.)
"I like Old Bush," he says. (Lao Bush, which is what the Chinese call HW Bush.)
"Do you like Xiao Bush?" I ask (Little Bush, or W).
"No," he says.
"Me neither!" I say. We laugh companionably.
"Do you have children?" he asks.
"Yes, a son and a daughter," I say.
That gets me the thumbs up and a big "hao!"
"Do you have a husband?" he asks.
"Yes," I respond. "He's a journalist." (Keep in mind that my natural tendency to volunteer information to complete strangers is abetted by my limited vocabulary. If I know a word, I will use it, sometimes occasionally to ill effect. But you all know that about me.)
"Where are your children?" the cab driver asks. "America?"
Now, I realize the conversation is getting slightly complicated.
"No, my son is in Beijing. He's studying Chinese," I say.
"Hao!" he says. "And your daughter is in America?"
"No, she's also in Beijing. She's working," I say.
This so suitably impresses the cab driver that he runs out of questions for me and we drive along nearly mowing down pedestrians in companionable silence again.

When I get home, I realize that my ayi has cleaned and then left me a half-warm and overly sweetened cup of tea to greet my arrival.

These are the nice things about life in Beijing. I'll end with a few photos from the week.

Sunflowers in the alley.

Hiking to a water hole.

Nothing more fun than photobombing Danielle.

A butterfly landed on my shoe. That's good luck, right?

You don't get days much nicer than this.