1st November

We woke up to snow this morning, lots of small swirling flakes layering the ground with white powder, then a few hours later, it was swirls of big flakes, and now we're back to the small flakes again. Andrew remarked he felt like putting on some Christmas music, though I'd like for the government to start the heating first (they control when indoor heating begins and ends, I hear it starts in November sometime).


Outside our study window








I knew Beijing would start getting cold soon, but we weren't expecting snow until the wintertime (if at all). And with one month of Autumn left I was hoping our crisp blue sky yellow/red leaf days would last a few more weeks. However, I do enjoy a good snow (thank you Rochester for preparing me) and I guess this just means I get to break out my down coat a little sooner than I thought.


Outside our bedroom window looking down at the garden







It's funny to think that in the 3.5 years Andrew and I have been married we've never been through an entire winter season, Singapore and Hong Kong barely have a winter and our time in the US or the UK is never long enough to classify as a true winter experience, so this will be one of the first we'll have experienced together. We're happy to be living in a country with four very distinct seasons, Andrew especially so. And we particularly feel fortunate that the pollution in Beijing has not been as bad as feared and has allowed us to enjoy a wonderful Summer and Autumn thus far. I'll let you know how the rest of our Winter here goes! Especially once people outside the 3rd ring road start using their coal-burning fires for heating...


You can just make out someone building a snowman

Friends & Babies

I miss my friends from Hong Kong. This is us (me, April and Tara) just before I left in July. You can't really tell, but they're both pregnant, and they both delivered this month, just a few weeks apart. Now I'm aunt to a new baby girl and a new baby boy! Welcome Finley Mei and Jesse Raymond!
Can't wait to meet you both and catch up with your mums when I come down next month! :)

Happy Birthday PRC!

This year the PRC turned 60!
We (like everyone else apart from the hand selected crowd and parade walkers) watched it on TV. All three hours of it. Because we don't live too far away from Chang'an Avenue we even saw the planes from our windows as they flew in low over the buildings a few blocks down from us.
The parade was impressive, and the floats all stayed in Tian'anmen Square for the week following the celebrations so everyone who had come into town for the blessed occasion had an opportunity to see them up close and personal. You could even buy tickets to go up to the viewing platform where Hu Jintao stood watching it all pass by. I probably wouldn't pay money to do that, but I would pay money for the limo ride down Chang'an that he took after the parade was over, calling our "hello comrades" as he passed by all the military vehicles that lined the avenue. Now that would be awesome.

Well Andrew and I, being the low-key people that we are, decided instead of hiring limo's and calling out to random strangers on the street (fun as that would be) went to our local park (Ritan Park) to hang out and play frisbee for a while.

First however it was time for flowers. Flowers had magically appeared all over the city in the lead up to the 60th anniversary. And the parks were no exception. The Chinese in particular love flowers and especially love to take photos by them. I have yet to master the art of posing with them without looking awkward but I'll give it another year before I start losing sleep over it.













Playing frisbee, like all good waiguo activities, managed to amass a small gathering of interested watchers. The Chinese love to people watch, especially if they're watching foreigners doing foreign things. I guess we're much the same, we love to watch the Chinese doing very Chinese things, so that makes us even. Well they seemed very interested in frisbee which doesn't have a Chinese version, so it's an unusual thing here. We even had two local guys motion if they could join us. So we had fun playing with them, one of whom caught on quickly and played pretty well, the other was not what we would call a natural. But it was fun to hear them chat to each other in Mandarin about how they found the game, and how hard it hurt if you caught the frisbee wrong.

After the frisbee ended and our crowd had dispersed we did some posing - always a requirement for national holidays. I went for the celebrity pose (only fitting while in China) while Andrew, like all good supermen, tends to prefer the leaping over tall buildings without the slightest effort pose.

New in town

My Mum came to visit us this month. Not only was this a first for us in hosting someone in our new apartment, but I realised that since moving out of home at age 22 this was the first time I had ever hosted my Mum and shown her around somewhere I've lived. That somehow seems crazy! Anyway it was my Mum's first time in China AND her first time to spend more than a day or so with Andrew (without him being sick or asleep). So we were all about showing her a good time and hoping she still liked Andrew by the time she left.

He did well, because she when she left she told me I had a good one, and even though I totally agree with her, I personally think it was his massage chair that really won her over in the end :) We made sure she got a turn in that thing at least once a day, and I believe it made all the difference, nothing like wearing your mother in law's defenses down! :)

Aside from her daily trip in the massage chair, in the five days she was here, we took her shopping, to a spa, to the Ming Tombs, to the Great Wall, to the Summer Palace, to the Forbidden City, to the Dirt Market, to an acrobatic show, to Culture Street and to the hutongs. In addition we dined at almost all of our favourite restaurants: Taiwanese, Daizu (Yunnan), Peking Duck, Sichuan, Western, and one of our friends made us a local Chinese style burrito/spring roll dinner too. Here's a little photo montage of her visit:

(at the Mong Tombs and at one the Hutongs)












(at the acrobat show - ok these aren't amazing but the rest of the show obviously held us so captive we forgot to take photos)












(at the Forbidden City and Summer Palace)












(old men playing Chinese instruments at the Summer Palace)










(dinner at our friends house)










(on the Great Wall)










(taking the toboggan back down!)

I think she had a great time, and although Beijing was perhaps, unexpectedly, a little too modern in places for her, she is planning on coming back next year! Yay! We cant wait :)

Today I almost bought...

... the smallest dog I have ever seen, a one month old chihuahua. Not that I've ever been in the market for a chihuahua, but this one was hard to pass up. I held him for close to half an hour trying to decide if I should buy him or not (for 100RMB). He spent that time, quivering and trying to snooze curled up in my hands and into my jacket. When I put him down to show Andrew (who I'd called to come down and have a look), he tried climbing up into my jean leg to keep warm and cosy.
Unfortunately as we evaluated our situation and ability to be good dog parents, we made the sensible decision not to buy. At least not yet...we'll have to wait and see what happens the next time a man is selling adorably cute puppies on the street...

(FYI - this was not my dog, but a very similar, if much younger, one - picture care of ehow.com)

Home

So, I must confess I am loving our new home. Loving this city, loving being able to speak some of the language, loving the food, loving knowing how to get around (well almost), and loving the friends I am making here. I am especially loving the weather, pollution is not what is was a few years ago, and we had many many wonderful blue sky days over the Summer and into the Fall.

Last month Andrew and I bought bikes to make getting around easier (not to mention quicker and cheaper!). I have a regular pedal bike, while Andrew decided to get an electric bike. He absolutely loves it. He loves that it takes him only 7 minutes to get to work, that he can zip down the bike lanes, avoiding the traffic jams that usually fill up the roads in the morning rush to work or the afternoon push back home. I'm going to let Andrew interject here to explain his feelings for this new machine (toy) of his:

"I have three words for my dianpingche (electric bike, or eBike, as I like to call it): Rocks the hizzzouse! Seriously, it's a revelation...I'm a new man with this piece of technological ingenuity. Not only does it look awesome (I love that it has the rugged mountain bike wheels, complemented by the sleek metallic blue design exuding total coolness), but it's very practical for my commute, and makes great economic sense. If I walk to work it takes me about 30 min door to door. That's an hour round trip everyday, which is not inconsequential given my work schedule. My other alternative is a taxi ride. That would take about 10-20 min one way, depending on traffic, which is a huge variable here. But even at 10 min, that makes it no faster than my eBike, PLUS it costs RMB10 each way, or about $3 round trip. My eBike cost me RMB1,400, or about $200, but since there are basically no operating costs associated with it, it will have already paid for itself after 70 round trips to work, not to mention all the other commuting/errands I'm able to do on it that would normally require a taxi (grocery runs, etc.). Fortunately, it's also a smooth ride, and it has a great name...huoyanniao, or Firebird. So basically I drive a Firebird to work everyday, something I didn't think I'd achieve this early in my career. And don't worry mom, it's pretty darn safe, since we have designated bike lanes here, which are usually separated from the road by a metal gate. And since I've recently added a nice padded seat on the back, it's now an eBike built for two, so mom you can ride with me...Nicola's mum is a willing reference for the quality of my driving (see above picture), right Mary? :) The best part about it is that it has no emissions and requires no petrol, so it's environmentally sound. Frankly, it would be a great option for US cities and university towns to adopt this...remember the big to do about the Segway? Well, this is a cheap and more practical version of that movement. We have a good friend who has started importing them to Seattle and San Diego in case anyone's interested!"

I too love our bikes (electric, or man-powered) as the best way to get around the city, though I like to go at a slightly slower pace, though I won't pass up a ride on the back of Andrew's. I love the freedom to cycle around and take everything in with the ability to stop, get off, and look around. Admittedly it's a little harder to get the weekly shopping and to balance it all home on your back and in your front basket, but it does the job and is much better than having to lug it all back by foot (not to mention the hands and shoulders which I did many times in HK and Singapore).

Aside from our bikes, I am loving our apartment, having our own things and setting up a home. What a blessing it's been to have a little more space, and to decorate it with our own furniture and belongings. We're still sorting out a few things here and there, but it should all be done by mid November, and we couldn't be happier.

waiting for inspiration to strike

and time to write it all down for posterity...

bear with me :)

Forced Hiatus

With the October National holidays came the shut down of the program I was using to access blogger, and I only just got around to finding another way around the system, hopefully this one works a little longer than it's predecessor!

So the forced blogging hiatus probably ended up being a good thing(?) as September/October have been pretty busy...but I missed reading all about your adventures and goings on. I'm trying to play catch up now, it seems the summer was full for everyone!

Anyway, life seems to be getting back to normal and I am hoping to start work on several projects that have been sitting on the back burner for the past few months that I'd like to complete before the end of the year. I might have to give myself an extension, but we'll see how I do first. I might even catch up on all my travel blogs from earlier in the year! :)

In the meantime though we're still working on getting the apartment sorted and settled. It's not all been work though, my Mum came to visit for a week, so that was fun to show her around. Plus it meant we got to eat out every day - no complaints there either :) It's certainly hard to be living so far away from family, but we appreciate our visitors who bring home a little closer!

Celebrations

I'm starting to realise more and more what it means to live in a country as peculiar as China, more especially so in their capital city. And when I say peculiar, I mean that in a good way, or at least in an interesting way :)

(image care of news.chinaa2z.com)

Next month is the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China (中国的六十年大庆 or "zhong guo de liu shi nian da qing" as we like to call it around here) and this huge event (and by golly it will be huge) has the city swept up in preparations for the forthcoming holiday. Our new complex (and probably every other complex in the city), has little national flags and big red lanterns (did you know it's also Mid-Autumn/Moon Festival the first weekend of Oct too?) all over the place, and mooncakes for sale in every good grocery store. All buildings under construction (we've heard) are being told to tidy up or finish up quick, potted plants and flowers are appearing along every road and pit stop, and the occasional road blockage are all becoming common occurrences. Tomorrow the building where Andrew works has been ordered to have everyone leave by midday so they can do some more preparation for the big day (Oct 1). I guess that means Chang An Avenue (where the big parade will be marching through) will be closed, some buildings that overlook Tiananmen are being told to close their blinds so they can't see what's going on in the square. Apparently there are firework practices and all sorts going on, we even saw the Chinese special forces one evening hanging out in GuoMao near one of their tank-like machines. Our taxi driver told us each special forces man could fight against 10 men! Apparently they are martial arts specialists. I'm going to stay as far away from them as I can, interested as I am, I don't want to become an innocent bystander caught up in any potential fray. Not that anything is actually likely to happen, as the government is sure to prevent any possibility or potentiality of anything messing up their plans (i.e anniversaries of things not so fantastic as the founding of the PRC - google it if you're not sure what I mean). That is after all what they work at doing best. Social Stability and Harmonious Relations or whatever they want to call it :)

The funny thing is on the day itself they are telling everyone to stay away from Tiananmen and just stay home to watch the festivities. Many of the major roads leading to the center of the city will actually be closed anyway and no cars, buses, taxis or pedestrians will be allowed in unless you're part of the parade or in the army. That counts us out. Which is a shame as my Mum will be here and I kind of wanted to show her what China does best. Looks like we'll have to miss the Beijing highlights and just go for the less blocked off lowlights trip, you know, depending on the traffic.

Back to the anniversary celebrations though, this year they're even making a film for the festivities. Not just any film but a propaganda blockbuster - "The Great Cause of China's Foundation" - you can read about it here. I hope we can pick a copy up at our local pirate DVD stall :)

As for our own preparations for the 60th anniversary, we'll be spending this weekend getting our own little palace of heaven organised and in ship shape condition. We promised our families an MTV cribs-style video of our new digs, so we're in for an entertaining time, even if only for ourselves. That and I'll be making some yogurt - step forward my new domestic goddess-ness. Yes folks, I am making my own yogurt. This is big for me seeing as we're still in our pasta or burritos every night mode, but at least I'm making strides in the breakfast arena, you gotta start somewhere right?! Next up on my goal list is bread and cheese. I'll let you know how that goes in say, oh a year or so! :)

New

It has been a busy week full of unpacking and setting up and settling in. We're almost there now, just a few more things to sort out before everything is ready to go. Andrew and I keep wandering around the apartment finding the whole thing a little surreal as we get used to all this space, having our furniture and various other belongings we haven't seen or used for a while.
We got to use our new dishes for the first time, new silverware, glassware, furniture, bedding, appliances, etc. I guess this is how it is for normal newly married couples! We're only three years behind! :)
I think we actually overpacked a little in terms of what we shipped over, as we were so excited to finally have a place big enough to send all the things we've been wanted to use. When everything arrived on Tuesday we weren't sure if it was all going to fit in, but fortunately now that everything has been taken out of boxes and packaging, it all seems to be fitting in perfectly. We feel very blessed to have this place and this time to settle ourselves and enjoy some long term stability.
Anyway we're currently testing out the guest room while we finish off getting the master room set up, it's very comfortable so you can expect a good nights sleep when you come and visit!