Monday, August 3

What a busy few days it’s been. Saturday we didn’t do much during the early part of the day. I felt a cold coming on (which was averted!) and Kacie was very sad because her cousin, who has been very ill with cancer, had died the night before. She spent the day beginning to mourn his loss--thank God for Skype and international phone cards, for she was able to “be with” her family.

I stayed in bed until noon and finished The Help, by Kathryn Sackett...an interesting book about the Civil Rights movement in the ‘60’s that I didn’t want to put down. (Since I’ve been here, I’ve also read American Shaolin by Matthew Polly, Case Histories by Kate Atkinson, The End of Overeating by David Kessler, and Shanghai Girls, by Lisa See. Thank you, Phil--the Kindle is amazing!) Now I’ve started David Eggers’ story about Valentino Achak Deng, What is the What, but you might notice it’s not quite in the same vein as the others. I’m not sure I can read it--so sad, so terrifying--about a lost boy of Sudan.

Late Saturday afternoon, I went to the Beijing Gold Store to check out buying some earrings and chains for my St. Margaret’s cross and my RN. I couldn’t find any earrings I like (the ones I really want are Italian gold...) but did find a couple of chains. Was all set to slap them onto my Visa, but they wouldn’t take it without my passport (Ying and Kongli had told me I don’t have to carry that around, can use a photocopy and lock the real one up.) Hah. I tried to get the money out of the ATM, but my Chinese daily withdrawal limit is lower than my American, so I couldn’t do that, either. Hmpf. The interesting thing about gold jewelry in China is that most of it is 24K. My 14K cross & RN looked dumb on that really yellow gold, so I had settled on 18K.

Saturday night we went out for supper with Duo, Leon, & Ying--Japanese noodles--and then we gals got our nails done. What a hoot--decorating the polished nails is quite the thing here, so now I have little flowers on both fingers and toes (remember Holiday Nails, J&K?) Kacie has never had a mani/pedi before in her life, and is delighted with her decorated digits. Ying has flowers on her fingers and diamonds on the tips of her toes! We were at a pretty ordinary, middle-class mall (not the Sanlitun of Abercrombie & an Apple Store!) and there were lots of families. Near our nail parlor was a swimming pool where kids were floating around in little boats, and of course, next to that was a pool almost as big with goldenfish (koi).

Sunday was a great day. I had met some ex-pat friends of a friend a couple of weeks ago, so I called them and we decided to get together. I knew I had to do something on my own--being attended to constantly isn’t my style--so I figured out which subway to take, and took it in to the center of town! Although there is very little advertising in the Beijing subways I did see a poster for--you guessed it--Cats--which is coming to town in September. On the train itself there are no ads, but there is TV! I got off at the right stop, and crossed one street (always an adventure) and walked down another, and met my friends exactly where they said they would be! It was fabulous--speaking English with other folks my age (or close to!) and eating a Chinese dinner with them. I made a serious mistake, though. I just didn’t realize how hot the peppers in a Szechwan meal can be and I put one in my mouth.

I thought I had stopped breathing. I coughed and coughed. I couldn’t speak except to rasp out, “Excuse me...” and I staggered to the bathroom where I coughed even more and breathed fire and wiped my eyes and sucked in air, trying to persuade my throat that it was still alive. When I got back to the table, pale and shaken, one of the guys said, “Pepper, eh?” “Yeah.”

After lunch Sue, who has lived & worked as an art historian in Beijing on and off since graduating from college in GB in the ‘60’s, invited me to go to Liulichang with her. That’s Culture Street, a place I had been with Primary Source ten years ago, and was eager to return to. Sue told me it had been “tarted up a bit” for the Olympics last year, but was still filled with fascinating shops which sold original paintings & calligraphy, art supplies, and books. We stayed longer than I had before, walking from one end to the other. She wanted to buy a piece she had been visiting--a relatively inexpensive horizontal contemporary work to go over the couch in her sitting room. Alas, not only was the work gone, but so was that particular shop. We did find a fabulous, carved inkstone that was going for 1,358,00 Y ($198,798.00) but she said it was a bit out of her pay grade.

I joined the Boston Ivy folks (have I mentioned that “Boston Ivy” is the name of the venture Ying and Kongli are launching this summer with our teaching at Business College of Beijing Union University?) later and we all went with Kacie to get her haircut at a spiffy Chinese salon. There was one person to wash her hair, and the haircutter, and a third to help the cutter hold her hair as he blew it dry. It looks very elegant.

Then Kacie and I went to dinner. Jasen, one of the professors we had in our Conversational English class at BCBUU, had invited us earlier in the week to his house in the Northwest part of the city. He lives in a fabulous three-bedroom apartment with his wife Tina, an accountant, their son, Jimmy (who speaks English!), and his parents, who left the countryside and moved here to take care of the baby when he was born four years ago. Again, we were treated to an unbelievable meal--three kinds of green vegetables, a whole fish, soup, potatoes, chicken, rice. Jasen’s parents speak no English at all, but his dad kept offering toasts with that infamous white Chinese wine. Both Kacie and I stuck to peach juice, but did toast him back. The table conversation was fascinating and included our discussing many different aspects of American and Chinese life (“Are the cities safe in America,” the older man asked a few times. We told him usually, if you know where not to go...) They were impressed with my age, my mother’s age, my Aunt Amy’s age, & the number of grandchildren I have. Little Jimmy did some screaming (at the table) and jumping (on the couch) a few times and was never corrected or chastised, just cuddled and smiled at. He is the center of their world!

After the meal, we played Mahjong! I was in a total fog the whole time, with Jasen advising me on my every move. Tina helped Kacie, and they won the first hand. I won the second, and Jasen’s mother won the last two. Grandfather (who is 55) didn’t win any. He accepted his losses in good grace. We used playing cards as money to pay our gambling debts, not cash.

Then Jasen, Tina, Kacie, and I went to the neighborhood park. It is absolutely gorgeous! Huge wide brick-laid paths and many large gathering areas. There were a couple of men (Hui minority--Muslims) who were singing and playing away (electronic keyboard with bass & drums included), a crowd watching. There were men flying kites with lights attached (one let me fly his--I almost brought it down. He said to me the same thing Liu Laoshi had said when he gave me the Tai Chi lesson--relax, relax, easy does it...breathe from the belly.)

We got home late and were going to sleep in this morning (Monday) but, darn it, I woke up at 5:30 and never did fall asleep again. Read. Looked through pictures. Made my bed. Swept the floor. You know. Then Duo called--it was 9:45 and time to go to the Zoo. Kacie wasn’t even up yet. We had sort of hoped we wouldn’t have to go today--it was predicted to be 95° and we knew there would be the large crowds we had been meeting at every other public place recently. But off we went.

The Beijing Zoo! When I was a little girl, I had a (toy) panda bear. I loved that black and white bear. Now I find out that the Chinese name for panda, Daxiongmao, means Giant Bear Cat (or Cat-bear if you say maoxiong.) That explains it, doesn’t it: Cats--me--kitties--pandas: it all goes together.

Some readers might remember my reaction to visiting Disneyland. Well, I had the same reaction to being at the Beijing Zoo: I couldn’t talk because I was busy controlling my sobs. Beijing Zoo! Not just one little pair of on-loan, goodwill pandas! Dozens of pandas, hundreds of pandas, millions and billions and trillions of pandas! Pandas here and pandas there, pandas, pandas, everywhere! Here there really was a feast of panda bears. They are HUGE but they look cuddly. They look happy as they chew on those bamboo leaves. They look up at you with leafy bamboo twigs hanging out of their little mouths. I couldn’t stand it. I was jumping-up-and-down happy.

(Before I tell you anything else, I have to state my concerns. There were no guards that I saw, and visitors were throwing things into the cages. Things like food, water, and even trash (plastic bottles) to stir the animals into action. Some of the beasts had just old-fashioned concrete cages and were alone (“Maybe they would fight each other?” asked Delfino [Li Xing] when I expressed that concern.), although most had access to an outdoor area. The zoo grounds were immaculate, and there were countless sweepers cleaning up litter and bag ladies going through the trash and collecting empty plastic bottles. There were soft drink sellers, souvenir vendors, and ticket takers, but no one was telling the tourists not to bother the animals. I was just wondering if maybe I do have some German blood, longing for some respect for the posted rules as I was, when Kacie came to me and voiced my own concerns. I had a hard time not chastising people, like the father who was encouraging his little son to push popcorn for the squirrel monkeys through the space between glass panels. But I held my tongue. I am a visitor in this country...I am a visitor to this country. Ask me about how people stand in line and wait for service at a counter...remember: breathe from the belly...)

Okay, the other animals. There were lions and tigers and bears. There were many many kinds of monkeys. There were zebras (ban ma: striped horses) and giraffes (chang jing lu: long-necked goats) and snakes and Chinese alligators and marmosets and ibises and cranes and elephants and kangaroos. But you know what was the best, besides the pandas? None of the three kids who were with us had ever been to a zoo before. They had never seen any of these animals except in books or on TV. When we saw the gazelles and gnus, Delfino said, “It doesn’t really look like in the cartoons, does it?” Kacie and I were hot, sweaty, and oh-so-tired by 1:00 but we stayed for two more hours: these young adults were running on the paths from one exhibit area to another, poring over the map and chatting away. When we hinted that we were exhausted, Jinglin said, “But if we leave now, we will miss so much!” and so we stayed.

Thanks for reading.
Love, Chris