The Last Blog

Monday, August 31, 2009

This is my last blog from China. Duo is picking me up in less than an hour and we’ll go to lunch with Ying’s parents, then on to the airport. My flight leaves Beijing at 4:10 PM and after flying over the North Pole, it lands at Chicago’s O’Hare at 4:13 PM--the magic of jet travel (and a 12-hour time difference.) A couple of hours to clear customs, and on to Boston and a mother-and-child reunion. (Jen is picking me up...)

It is far too early for me to have any perspective on my summer in Beijing, but here are two things I do know.

If I were to spend any longer here, I would immediately sign up for both spoken & written Mandarin lessons. It seems rude to others and terribly limiting to me to live somewhere and be so ignorant of the language. Unlike a country that uses the Roman alphabet, I can’t even look words up in a dictionary. My brain has a hard time comprehending that characters are not letters, and I desperately want to “sound things out.” I do try to speak the language, but the tones aren’t the only difficult part of Chinese. There are many sounds that are crucial for understanding but are hard to make (differentiating between “ts” and “dz” for instance.) So I learn sentences that Duo has given me to memorize, like “Ni hao, jing tian wo YOW chewuh meiguo. Xie xie” (Hello, today I am going to America. Thank you.) And the people to whom I am being polite and grateful just nod & smile at me, unaware that I am speaking Chinese. I cannot tell you how many times Ii have said to a taxi driver, “Maliandao” (the name of my street) and then say, “Maliandao? Maliandao? Ah! Maliandao!” and I can’t even hear how their pronunciation is different from mine.

I will never travel again without a book of piano music with me. Now, this has been a rule of mine for years--a rule I often (usually) disobey. I am not a pianist--I play at the piano. But it is a source of great comfort and relaxation to me, and when I am stressed, lonely, or tired, a few hours at the keyboard does wonders. The sad thing is that I have nothing memorized. I can play only the beginnings of Für Elise, Aragonaise, Solfeggietto, even Happy Farmer, dammit. So when I do chance upon a piano and I long to tickle the ivories for a while, I end up more frustrated than before, not more relaxed. Carrying music with me solves that. I ran into pianos twice here in Beijing, once at BCBUU and another at the home of an ex-pat friend. Luckily, many evenings upon returning from wherever I had been, I was happy to hear a piano being played here at 15 Maliandao, by a pianist of varying abilities. I finally realized that a piano teacher must have an apartment on the first floor, for nothing else could explain that one night she could play a complicated Chopin Étude and the next night stumble through keyboard exercises. I longed to meet her. But, having no Chinese so I could ask the doorman about her, I never did.

It has been clear to me that I would need to get another suitcase to get home, for I have bought so many, many things. (I do have a HUGE one at home, which I could have brought, with the larger one I did bring inside it--I got it the first time I was in China, just for bringing back all the loot I had purchased on that trip. I chose not to do so, reasoning that I had already purchased all the trinkets and souvenirs I needed. What I forgot was that many things have changed in the eight years since I’ve been here. I have four grandchildren! Friends have kids! Silk is inexpensive and I’ve used up what I bought before! Chinese tea is still different from/better than American tea!)

Ying and Duo convinced me, though, to be Chinese about this situation: don’t spend money/flight weight allowance on luggage! Use a cardboard box! So yesterday Duo and Kongwe (Ying’s brother-in-law) came over and packed me up. My belongings aren’t all that heavy (how much do panda bears, silk, and tea weigh after all?) but they sure do take up space. So now I’ll check the big suitcase and the cardboard box, and carry on my knitting bag and small suitcase. Whew.

Saturday night, Amelia, her friend Hope, and I went to a Hot Pot restaurant for supper. I had already decided that I would take no more pictures--couldn’t bear the thought--so I didn’t bring my camera. Foolish me. This restaurant, Hai Di Lao, is so popular and lines are so long that the owners provide entertainment for diners waiting the (sometimes) two hours for their turn at a table. Besides snacks, cards, & Chinese chess, they offer manicures and foot rubs while you wait. And the food! The side-by-side hot pots contained a mild broth and a spicy Sichuan one. Yum. I tried everything except the tripe--never have gotten used to eating cow’s stomach lining, although my parents used to love it. As an extra treat, one of the courses was handmade noodles--a talented young mein-guy (mein, as in chow mein or lo mein) came & tossed and flipped the dough around, rather like those ribbon twirlers we all saw at the opening ceremonies to last year’s Olympics.

Yikes! I guess this is it: look at the time! What a summer. Can’t wait to see you.

Thanks for reading--
Love,
Chris