EQ 7.9

There is nothing funny about earthquakes. (Or shikumen houses*, for that matter.) Just to be clear, as a former insurance adjuster, an earthquake, for insurance purposes, is an “Act of God”; it is usually defined on the declarations page of your homeowner’s policy. For this you are usually uninsured.

I have lived through many earthquakes, shakers, rattlers, rollers. I do not like them. Most I experienced in Northern California as a child; cramming myself under my desk as part of an earthquake drill was a monthly occurrence. Once I surfed in a bedroom in Southern California – that one I heard before I felt it, a hideous roaring, whooshing noise moving from the back of house to the front. On December 26, 1994 we were awoken to one shaking the wooden house of my parents. Mr. Understanding and the newly baptized Thing 1 were in bed with me. Christmas was over and we were all together so, as my mother said, it would not have been a bad way to go. Then there was the time I was getting my hair cut in a second floor apartment in the Polanco section of Mexico City when everything began rattling; I grabbed the hairstylist and looked for a doorframe. There was none. We ran outside where my driver was waiting pale-faced on the opposite of the street looking like he was going to throw up. “I thought the buildings were going to smack together,” he told me. “They were about 2 inches apart from hitting each other.”

Right before moving here, I had many earthquake dreams, which I generally interpret as fear of upheaval.

Yesterday, however, I felt nothing.

Last night I hostessed bookclub at my house. The book, On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan, is a gem. (He is a genius writer, if I have not waxed on about him before.) On the final page he writes, “This is how the entire course of a life can be changed – by doing nothing.” Haunting. One of my book club friends, Mrs. Cookbook, said that her husband was in a tall building in Shanghai yesterday during the earthquake. He said it was worse than anything he felt when they lived in Tokyo. S-C-A-R-Y. Thing 2 left yesterday morning for Xi’an in Shaanxi province with his classmates. He was standing outside watching a martial arts performance when the earth moved. I have not spoken with him but know that he is safe even though he was much closer to the epicenter (this will make you get out your atlas: find Chengdu and Xi’an).

As I write this, the death toll steadily rises. Like Myanmar, the final tally is not in. Unlike Myanmar, China has nothing if doesn’t have bulldozers and heavy earthmoving machinery. They will get the people out. They are doing something.

* see my response to the last post’s comments.

Snippet

After several days of stellar weather, rain moved in and lashed the city today. Bea Long and I went on a walking tour of shikumen (stone gate houses) with a local celebrated artist and a group of fellow gringos, weaving our way through massive puddles, the rubble of razed houses, and clambered inside several dwellings. I like to think I am a tough cookie, that not much can shock or surprise me anymore. But this cookie is crumbling, the day’s events deflating me, in a kind of subcutaneous emotional beating that only true squalor can inflict on a mind accustomed to privacy, order, and softly scented dryer sheets. A figurative cyclone of wreckage in a metropolitan, man-made, functioning setting, this is no Act of God.

Prizeworthy

I am up and blogging at 4 a.m. because my mother wrote in that she was getting impatient for a post. A continent away, the Radish still holds sway. It has been holiday weekend here in the PRC, May 1 being Labor Day, the biggest date on the communist calendar. We had 3 days of glorious, pollution -free sun. By pollution-free I mean not visible to the naked eye. The Princess was busy.

Highlights:

*Family work parties on the 1st and 3rd. The junk is out of the upper hall and into my bedroom, but still. The vista is much improved.
*Furniture shopping with Bea Long for her house. I’m all about helping others spend their money and Bea was on a mission. The Things were with Mr. U at the X Games across town – we saw them on TV on ESPN while we were eating our pulled pork sandwiches at Bubba’s!
*Dinner party for 17 on Saturday. Many thanks to ayi, husband & children for helping make it a great success. Or so Princess Ai Lin tells me. She was laughing pretty hard at the other table and I wasn’t even sitting at it. Something about male waxing and plucking, both recurring themes on this blog. Everyone well behaved, can you believe? I am still stunned.
*Reading Bridge of Sighs, by Richard Russo, on loan from Princess Ai Lin. I am not sure this is my favorite of his but am withholding judgment until finished. (Currently, Straight Man is my all-time fave).

In the meantime, here’s a heads up: Mother’s Day is one week away. To my male readers, if you have toddlers or teenagers, now is the time to step up to the plate. As I believe I said last year, this day is akin to Employee Appreciation Day. Spare no expense. Bankruptcy be damned. Cards from the children are a must, preferably handmade. To my female readers, regardless of the age of your children, now is the time to be explicit with your family as to your deepest desires, whether that be sleeping til 10 followed by breakfast in bed, a house free of children for the day, or a new Coach handbag.

Mr. Understanding himself has been forewarned. This year I have ultra high expectations. He must run offspring bickering interference. He must be the decision maker, the go to parent. (A tall order for a man who asked me where we kept the knives during our dinner party). I do not want to make the reservation for the restaurant, remind the children to put on sunscreen, and tell them to clean the litter boxes. I like my coffee with lots of frothy foam (they already know this). This year I deserve a prize and I am guessing that most of my readers do too. How’s about a really nice bowl?

Now I am frigging tired and think I will return to Mr. U’s side. Don’t fret, Radish. The Princess will call, she will post. Stay tuned.

Tag Sale

I have been blog “tagged” by my mother, affectionately known as The Radish (www.grandmere.typepad.com) who was tagged by her cyber friend Sue Hepworth, a British author who somehow found my mother’s blog and sometimes writes in. Sue’s website is www.suehepworth.com.

Here are the rules:

- Post the rules on your blog
- Write six random things about yourself in a blog post
- Tag six people in your post
- Let each person know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog
- Let the tagger know your entry is up

I am only tagging Leezer (www.leezer.wordpress.com). Leezer is Mood Ring Momma’s dear friend and my virtual twin but, unlike me, Leezer actually uses her law degree and is 90 lbs. thinner. Nearly a year ago, Leezer adopted Anna, a toddler from China, and has a blog devoted to just this subject: www.asongforsongsong.blogspot.com (she hasn’t posted here in a long time). She is also the mother of smart-as-a-whip Georgia and wife of El Rod (I prefer the Spanish spelling). Leezer has a bawdy, scatological sense of humor and is a history buff. She and the Radish inspired me to have my own blog.

I am also giving a shout out to the blog www.leavingdominica.blogspot.com and/or livingdominica.blogspot.com. Fascinating reading for those fantasizing about expat tropical island living full time.

Lastly, there is www.redroom.com where you can link on to your favorite, participating author’s blogs, such as Amy Tan’s.

Herewith 6 Random Things About the Princess:

1) I wore 3 different, equally hideous, bridesmaid’s outfits to my younger sister, MCV’s wedding. Well, actually, one was quasi-attractive but it did not go with the other bridesmaids’ get-ups. As I was 5 months preggers with Thing 3 and living in Mexico, finding just the right outfit was well ‘nigh impossible. But no worries. The outfits were obscured by big, beautiful hats made by La Lucy, the nutty British milliner whose claim to fame was that she made hats for the movie

Four Weddings and a Funeral

. Mine was the biggest, as befits a rotund matron, and I had to stow it in the first class storage bin. The other 3 hat boxes were stored in the plane’s overhead cabinets. Quite the spectacle: me in the family way, two kids, 4 hat boxes, and a husband smuggling a box of cubanos in his waistband parading through Customs.

2) Speaking of weddings, I was sober for three receptions: my own, MCV’s, and Mood Ring Momma’s. Felled by food poisoning from MRM’s rehearsal dinner, a Chinese wedding banquet, I was barely able to make it to the church, let alone imbibe. And that was due to a lovely waxen pill inserted in an uncomfortable location. Awful. I stayed for an hour at the reception and then Mr. Understanding took me home, along with my grandmother. Utterly miserable at missing the fun of my sister’s reception, he fed me a piece of frozen wedding cake from our own wedding four months previous. What a guy!

3) I married Mr. Understanding because he is the epitome of patience, is generally quite civil, and looked good in a pair of short shorts. I abhor men who wear short shorts but obviously overlooked this wardrobe faux pas; it was the 80s after all. He is easy on the eyes, smells yummy, and is capable of learning a few new tricks. I am so not worthy of him.

4) I have fallen in love “at first sight” three times in my life: Things 1, 2 & 3. Sorry, Mr. Understanding.

5) Last week, I followed a man down a dark alley in a Chinese marketplace. Bea Long was with me and objected strenuously. We reversed our steps, still following the man, and climbed 6 flights of stairs and eventually came to the man’s locked room where he displayed bowl after bowl. While haggling, we heard a grinding noise emanating from the building. The man was simply trying to take us to the elevator. I would never have done this in Latin America but felt it was okay to in Asia. And it was. But don’t try it yourself.

6) I swam in a river in Brazil where anaconda are reported to lurk. Later the same day I held a boa constrictor. I hate snakes and was trying to overcome my fears. My three Things all draped the boas all over their bodies, one slithering up Thing 1’s face. Having been there and done that, I feel no need to ever repeat the experience.

Plucked Up Close

I was too inept to post this photo at the same time as the other but here are the Laundry Ducks up close:

It’s Thursday and I am out the door, late for my bowling league.

Earth Day

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust …. Yesterday Thing 3 and I commended her turtle, Tiny Tina, to a muddy grave lined with camellia blossoms. Amen. I have never liked turtles, a Chinese auspicious symbol of longevity, ever since I received one on my 5th birthday from Elizabeth Gregorio as a present. My mother made me clean the turtle’s bowl regularly. Turtle output is copious. I think I did this for a few weeks and then said, “Enough”. I was directed to return the turtle to the giver; I can still remember the face of Elizabeth’s younger brother, Richard, as I handed him back the turtle in a brown paper bag as if it was a hot potato and said my carefully rehearsed speech: “I am sorry. I can no longer keep the turtle.” I then turned on the heels of my red leather Mary Janes and hoofed it back home as fast as I could. It’s really no wonder Elizabeth punched me in the arm at the bus stop for years. Then again, her parents were getting divorced.

So when Thing 3 asked to adopt a turtle from Thing 1’s friend, I was leery. “You have to clean the bowl,” I told her. I told the teen-aged giver of the turtle I was onto her and that she had to agree to the return of the turtle if Thing 3 was overwhelmed with, well, shall we say, turdle output. I had been making vague promises about turtles ever since we visited the Projeto Tamar sea turtle project in Brazil several years ago. Thing 3 was fascinated by Tiny Tina and cared for her lovingly (we know it was a her because girl turtles apparently have longer tails). For about a month. I had even gone so far as to negotiate on Tina’s behalf an attractive porcelain turtle bowl. So much for longevity. My suspicion is that the cat scared her to death. Arms and legs stuck straight out of her shell and eyes wide open all pointed to the fact that Tina met her maker in a panic. The cat has been known to get on the table ….

**************************

In other news, Carrefour is a dream to shop in now that it is being boycotted by the Chinese. A groundswell of text messages and emails from the populace have created a China Tea Party. Dodos, the French, biting the hand that feeds them. Sarkrazy is for sure not my moral arbiter. The headlines today were beyond absurd. While the French government has apologized for the roughing up of the torch bearer in a wheelchair (who does that?) by a pro-Tibet activist, they did not apologize for boycotting the Olympics themselves. Hunh? So while I can now freely wheel down the aisles of my least favorite grocery store, it makes me sad. There’s nothing like being lumped in with the French, eyed with disdain as you purchase your milk and cheese. For those of us living here trying to make a positive, and I don’t just mean capitalist, contribution to the culture, boycotting the Olympics is not a solution.

Wannabe but Not Quite Catholic

Bad girl, bad girl, not blogging for a week! Excuses: continuing Poppy Letdown, Recipe Club (I am too old for that kind of drinking), round 2 of the watered down flu (this time for Thing 1), a return to the gym, bible study, book club (Thirteen Moons by Charles Frasier who also wrote Cold Mountain), coffee morning with the ladies of the Jewel Box community whom I have not met before, American Idol highs and lows, a birthday lunch at a cool new restaurant, travel planning, bill paying, camp signups, and Season 2 of Ugly Betty. Total naughtydom. Total lunacy.

And did I mention the interior decorator, Mrs. Pom? She might really be my NBF. Half the women I’ve met here are already moving. And, as my mother says, sometimes you have to buy your friends. I have been in contact with her ever since I was stationed on a home tour in her house in the French Concession. After Poppy left and she was home from jet-setting on various continents, I rang her up:

“I need someone to ride to my rescue. The house is an organizational disaster. I cannot think straight.”

“I’m saddling up, darling!” she cheerfully replied in her British accent.

She came the next day and made me buy some plants for instant gratification. At the birthday luncheon, I had heard that snakes frequently live in houseplants; one has to poke to soil to make sure they do not pop out. When I told her this she said:

“Rubbish,” Mrs. Pom said. “Worms, maybe, snakes no.”

As I helped the delivery men slipped the palms into their gigantic pots, I remembered Adinilton, the keeper of the palms in Brazil, and laughed. He would have approved of the purchases.

Moving along …

Yesterday Mr. Understanding and I awoke to the Pope and went to bed with him (no sniggering, it’s not funny). Lovely to have him book-end our day. The singing/chanting was over the top and it confirmed why I am a Wannabe but Not Quite Catholic. (Did anyone else notice the four types of Italian marble columns at the back of the Washington church?). One cardinal, assisting the Pope in the baseball stadium, was absolutely beatific, his happiness radiating out from him like a contagious disease. I could feel him beaming through the TV. I was so happy for him.

Part of my ability to fake out many a Catholic, besides my name, is my love of their religious accessories, for both the home and body. Juan Diego, the Virgen of Guadalupe, and a donkey adorn the top of our bar/armoire. Doves, symbols of the Holy Spirit, form a cote on my coffee table and in living room. Around my neck I wear I medal I bought with Happy in HMB in the Insurgentes Market in Mexico City years ago. I thought I was buying a Mary/Guadalupe medal, which it is, of sorts. Happy in HMB is Catholic and even she did not understand the medal. At least there are rays coming out behind the virgin. My driver Polo tried to educate me on this point but although I wanted to understand, I did not quite. The medal is worn on a chain my grandfather gave me along with a cross I bought at the Zocalo as I was leaving Mexico, a mini Brazilian Christ the Redeemer charm Mrs. O’Leary gave me, and a locket Mr. Understanding gave me for Valentine’s after Thing 1 was born. I wear this necklace in times of distress, especially when traveling, and have pretty much not taken it off since arriving in China. Talismans of faith, as it were.

During my clean up this week, I came across a book Maria the Dentist sent me. It is about St. Catherine of Laboure. She bought it for me in France on my birthday last year (there is another story here but it is hers to tell). I sat down for 15 minutes to read it and was immediately sucked in. It was the most illuminating 15 minutes of the week. There, in the middle of the book, is an explanation of the medal I wear around my neck, the result of a vision by a young girl in France who tirelessly served the poor. Voila! I have my explanation after all these years. Happy in HMB, for the first time ever, and Maria wrote in on the blog within hours of each other, the cyber convergence of friends. Coincidence? I think not.

And I did not go back for that damn bowl.

*the photo was taken in Beijing, from a car.

Bowled Over & Clucked Up

“Dude, that’s insane!” Thing 3 said to me last night.

“I KNOW!” I replied gleefully.

I was showing her photos I had taken earlier in the day, after a naughty trip to the junk market, a doctor’s appointment, and the flower market. I think it might have qualified as my best Shanghai morning ever. No traffic, blue sky, eyeballs no longer burning with smut and grit.

Last week with Poppy I had seen a porcelain (?) bowl in the junk market that I became obsessed with, sky blue on the inside and chocolate brown with gold chrysanthemums on the outside. The asking price was outrageous as befits my white face. I knocked the price down a bit but did not go much higher, left the vendor, and purchased some other more reasonably priced goodies. That damn bowl stayed in my mind ‘til the end of the day and I actually went back. But it was gone. Of course! Come back in a week, the vendor next to him said.

I was beginning to think I was a little crazy, to be so possessed by this bowl. I have a lot of bowls. In my heart, maybe I am replacing all of my beautiful Mexican ones dropped by the movers. I had only used them for special occasions, keeping them out of the hands of the domestic help and children so they would not be chipped or shattered, kept pristine with disuse and esthetic admiration. All to be broken by an unknown group of movers. My mother’s Mexican bowls are chipped but she still uses them. Hmmm, what’s the lesson there? Then I was reading

The Year of Pleasures

by Elizabeth Berg and the main character, too, had a bowl fetish. Relief! Vindication?

“How old is this bowl? V3 asked.

“No idea. Old but not too old.” I said.

“Old, like 100 years, 50 years, or old-new, like one and a half years?” He asked.

I knew what he was talking about. I am sure half of the things I have purchased were made a year ago and have had dirt vigorously rubbed onto their surfaces.

“Who knows? You tell me when I get back!”

So yesterday, I went back up into the market, the only foreigner in the jam-packed place, second-hand smoke filling my lungs to the brim in search of this bowl. The bowl was not there. Of course. Come back in a week, the vendor said. What, were they making the bowl? Probably. So I visited another vendor from the week before and knocked the price down off a lesser bowl but one that was still pretty. My real find, I thought, was a rice (?) bowl with a sky blue interior and black and orange goldfish with gold detailing on the outside. Wouldn’t this make a nice hostess gift, I thought to myself. The interior looked rather worn and discolored. A group of women stood off to the side watching and giggling. As the vendor was boxing it up, there was another one which he sold me too, the Chinese liking to make things in pairs. Had I been had again? Of course. I pulled my money out of my Mexican wallet, my bra, which everyone loved, and left with my arms full of treasures.

Back in the van, I showed V3 my finds. I lied when I told him what I paid for them but he still said he could get them cheaper. The goldfish bowls he thought might be old-old but the bowl he thought was old-new. Whatever.

At the flower market I bought bought peach tree branches, orchids, and peonies and an azalea for the pots by the front door. The peach tree branches remind me of weddings, the white and pink blossoms like the froth of a skirt or veil. Gorgeous. V3 bought his wife a bunch of roses and, as he perused my purchases, told me he could get everything I bought cheaper. As we drove home, he slowed down at the section of the road where we saw the chickens last week.

“Let’s look for the chickens,” he said.

Slowly we drove by. V3 started to speed up as we were coming to the end of the area where we thought they had been, almost pulling back onto the freeway, when suddenly there they were!

“Ducks,” he said, “not chickens!”

“Go back, go back, go back!” I shouted, laughing. I stuffed a camera in my purse this morning at the last minute, aware somewhere at the back of my brain, that I should be prepared.

I have posted a photo below, one far away so you will get the idea of their actual location of the elongated bodies without me getting run over in the middle of the freeway.

My advice to you: Use your bowls. Keep a camera handy. Remember that someone can always get something cheaper than you but might not have enjoyed buying it as much. Buy your wife flowers. Look at the flowering trees and remember a wedding, even if it’s not your own.

It is good to have a good day, even if it is a half of one. And I am not going back for that bowl next week. It will just have to find me again.

Daily Dish

We are experiencing Poppy Letdown. Mr. Understanding flew to Singapore in the middle of a rain storm, but even before he got on the plane, he was glum. Me too. I spent Monday in bed watching a terrible movie, Feast of Love with two of my favorite actors, Greg Kinnear and Morgan Freeman. The message, in the end, was good, but some of the imagery made even me blush. I threw it in the trash that afternoon. That is one of the nice features of $2 movies. It costs less than a latte and if it is junk, you can just throw it away.

Part of Poppy Letdown is not having someone to share the daily wonders as I am chauffeured around Shanghai. First, there is the chauffeuring. My father would agree that I need one. Currently, Voldemort 3 is working out just fine. He is a cautious driver and a wealth of information. He gave my father a souvenir plate of Shanghai before he left, in a nice gift box. Poppy’s name was properly spelled on the tag, a feat most Americans cannot accomplish. In all my years as an expat, I have never had an employee give a visitor a gift.

Then there are the unusual sights themselves, such as a worker motoring home on a scooter with an upside-down dead chicken, its feathers flapping in the breeze, and a sack of oranges strapped to the luggage rack. Or, my recent personal favorite, approximately twenty plucked and trussed chickens hanging on poles like laundry by the side of the freeway, the fumes from cars and trucks smoking them. If we could have, we would have turned the van around to take a photo, it was that unbelievable.

In the midst of the staggering pollution, flowers, bushes and trees persistently bloom splashing pink, purple and white blossoms onto the gray landscape as if in defiance. They will not be choked. Is it defiance or is it hope?

I think about these things as I am transported by V3 from point A to point B. Yesterday, he took me to bible study. He later asked what bible study was. I tried to explain. He had never heard of Jesus. To be fair, I do not think he had heard of the other world religions either besides Buddhism, which his mother practices. I wondered what he thought the churches, for there are a few even if they are empty, were for, long ago; the crosses still grace the roofs. Regardless of your religious status, it is stunning to actually confront a vacuum of knowledge. Where to start? The world is not flat, people. Except for here.

And it is this small fact that weighs me down more than any other and yet, paradoxically, buoys me at the same time. Perhaps we are living here to offer a different perspective. Not to convert, just to be ourselves. To have our eyes opened as we open the eyes of others, to witness the transformation of a tacky souvenir into a gift of love, an act of respect: the “quotidian mysteries” as the poet Kathleen Norris refers to them. Like a child being handed a complicated, time-consuming homework assignment, I thrill and despair at the same time. Fortunately, in my case, it’s not due for a long time but I know just where to start.

This Ain’t Disneyland

There are many things I like about my father. For starters, he is a great traveler. He took in all the filth, funny signage, and funky food with nary a complaint. I could tell he was getting a little tired of the populace hawking up their left and right lungs in unison, not to mention jettisoning their contents on the sidewalks, but the man showed no outward display of disgust. Secondly, he is always good in a crisis. He is a careful weigher of facts, which is useful in problem solving. (Today there are no crises so we are in good shape.) And finally, for purpose’s of today’s blog post, he does not warn of imminent danger until well after it has passed. Why alarm anyone if not necessary?

One year my whole family met us in Zihuatanejo, Mexico for Thanksgiving. We stayed in a charming group of condos near the beach. Secluded. Quiet. Hotter than hell. My father spent most of the time in the shade underneath a palm frond cabana shelter. He does not like beach vacations per se. The rest of us do, even if we do not like donning bathing costumes. Poppy, as my children call him, knows how much the women in his family fear snakes. So when he spotted a 6 foot sea snake in the water while we were frolicking he said nothing about it until about 4 years later. He knew it would ruin the vacation. Naturally, if we had been in danger, he would have piped up.

On Sunday we came home from our Spring Break vacation which finished up in Xi’an, home of the Terracotta Warriors. Xi’an is a city of 4 million with an additional 4 million living in the surrounding environs. The smog is thick, factories everywhere churning out puffy white toxins with great gusto. We stayed at the Bell Tower Hotel, smack in the middle of town. It was “high season” and they could only offer us one plastic hotel key per room; we all took ours home as souvenirs. I nearly swiped the sign by the bed that read “No smoking in bed please” but one of the ten commandments got the better of me and I put it back. The carpet was worse than any found in a fraternity house, but other than that, it was clean and comfortable. I like my children to know what a Two Star hotel looks like.

There is a lot to see in Xi’an besides the Warriors. We saw a Tang Dynasty music and dance show, toured a recreated Taoist temple (the original was razed during the CR), and visited a farming family living in a cave made of mud. A million people still live in these caves. The only electricity is a single bulb of light dangling from the ceiling. No indoor plumbing. The bed was built on a platform with a brick oven underneath to heat it. One cave’s walls were plastered with posters of the premiers, starting with Chairman M. I told Thing 2 that instead of being shipped off to military school if he doesn’t behave, I will send him to live in a cave instead. He was suitably impressed and began to appreciate the two star hotel even more.

Having said that, going to the farmer’s house felt a little voyeuristic to me. The farmers receive no money for the visit, unlike the residents of Beijing’s hutongs dwellings who are making money serving lunch at their homes, but the tour guide gave them cigarettes and packets of peanut candy. They liked having their photo taken. The farmer we visited inherited his cave from his grandfather. It was sort of like visiting a favela without the threat of being gunned down.

On our way out of town, we stopped at an antique market where Things 2 & 3 bargained for old currency. Thing 2 wants to sell his goods on ebay this summer. I found a baby in a papoose type body with a spinning head. I knew I had been had when the woman selling it pulled out a second one and offered it to me as well. The most chilling item I found, in a used book stall, were three ceramic nuclear warheads. I am kicking myself for not buying them. Can you imagine if America sold replica plastic waterboards for decoration?

It was only while we were eating pizza on Sunday evening, back at home, that my father told us that our Hainan Airlines plane back from Xi’an was the oldest 737 airplane he had ever ridden on. He knows planes and he said it had to be 40 – 50 years old. I had noticed that the tray table had been painted over but since it wasn’t a Tupelov, I was not so concerned. Ever since my friend Donna, a Chinese/Dutch woman, told me that all the old, tourist planes fly out of the Pudong airport I had been careful not to book those flights but apparently not careful enough. I will just have to pray twice as hard when Thing 2 goes back there in May for his class trip. All’s well that ends well.

Quack Quack

When I was in 4th grade, I came home sick from school one day to find my mother slaughtering our gaggle of ducks. To be fair, I knew in advance that she was going to do this. But, being nine, I did not really understand the scope or consequences. I went in through the back gate on the advice of my in-town grandma, Nana, who had collected me from school. The first clue was the little rope hanging from a redwood tree, the feathers ringing the inside of the noose. Apparently, that did not work out so well as I found out when I entered the sliding back door off the back patio, an overwhelming stench greeting me and permeating the whole house.

Stunned, I sat in a chair in the family room watching my mother singe feathers at the kitchen sink. After about 10 minutes I asked Nana to take me back to school. She obliged. For a year or two, I would gag every time I went to the freezer in the garage and saw those tiny oblong bodies lying next to the ice cream. Under protest, I never ate a bite then or since.

Today, however, in the capital of Peking Duck, I was cured.

Ty, our tour guide, took us to the “hot and noisy” (a Beijing term to describe the atmosphere) the flagship restaurant of Guang Ju De, a three story restaurant in the center of town, nicknamed Big Duck. There are several other locations, one near a hospital called Sick Duck. We were the only foreigners or Big Noses (da bis?). The ducks are force fed at a ranch outside of town to get them big and fat. “Cruel!” Thing 3, my nine year old, proclaimed.

We ordered the set meal and a few other items, nicely labeled in English, along with our one big roasted crispy brown duck. The duck was a far cry from the pale and puny imitator my mother served up in the early Seventies. Robust, it fairly gleamed with confidence, knowing it would satisfy all comers. The duck slicer, if he is worth his salt, can slice the duck into 186 slices of crispy duck skin and meat. Bundle a few slices in a pancake with some plum sauce and scallion and you have a tasty little packet of duck love. Things 2 & 3 abstained from the duck fest. Thing 2 had had two duck sandwiches the day before which did not settle well with his tummy, the contents of which came rushing back at him at 11:30 at night the day before. Thing 3 balked on grounds of cruelty. Sigh. That is the sound of history repeating itself.

We received a certificate in an envelope with the trillionth duck number served since 1864 which I think I will frame for posterity. On the one hand, I am glad my mother is not tromping everywhere with us. The sights here involve a lot of walking. Today, for instance, we saw the Capital Museum and the Temple of Heaven and a group of Chinese families with adopted Chinese babies, a sight the tour guide had never seen before. Maybe we can just go on a food tour instead?

Spring in Beijing

Don’t call them Pekinese. Those are little dogs. Call them Beijing people instead. The wind has kicked out all the smog today, leaving skies blue and hordes of tourists chilled. I cannot imagine this place with even more tourists but come they will in August for the Olympics. The weekend found us climbing the wall, literally, in the resort we were staying in. It was a bit dicey but we came down from the summit intact, including my father. Crazy, his climbing up there. As was Thing 3 climbing up there with a broken foot in a walking boot. We went on to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall later in the day. As advertised, the toboggan run was a big hit but even the tour guide, TY, said he didn’t like going over the trestle bridge on the way down.

I don’t like being on the road for Easter, even though we were vacationing in exotic locations. This was our 3rd one on The Road: the Pantanal, Rio, and now Beijing . The EB left the baskets of chocolates at home and there was no church. We had a lovely lunch at a restaurant called The Orchard. Dinner, by forfeit, was at a wacked out, beyond tacky, Thai restaurant called The Banana Leaf. The food was excellent and the entertainment: a group of singers serenaded the restaurant and individual birthday revelers with song and dance. Who wrote the song Whoa, Whoa, Hey, Hey? Leo Sager? Is that even his name? It was like turning back the clock to the late Seventies/early Eighties. This might qualify as my most surreal Easter.

The red flags were flapping in unison at T Square this morning. There are a lot of incidents and stories in the news we are not discussing at the moment. You can read about them in your newspapers but we cannot. I can’t access hotmail either or make international phone calls from Mr. U’s concubine, the dreaded crackberry. Lunch today was at a fantastic restaurant, Baijia Dayuan which is also called Dazhaimen. We ate like the emperors, even though we steered clear of the fried donkey with peanuts. Outstanding items: almonds coated in sesame seeds, sandwiches with roast duck, and braised beef medallions in birds nest noodle baskets. The waitresses wore traditional garb, including platform shoes and dangly headdresses. They have a food hot-line which I might dial for the almonds seeing as how I forgot to order extra to take home, they were so tasty.

We are off to the Temple of Heaven tomorrow. We’ll send our prayers upwards, in thanksgiving for avoiding the flu for some of our family members, for safe travel, and longevity. The Lord is risen indeed.

Box of Frogs

There are some times in life when I wish I had a tape recorder rolling. Last night, in the van on the way to dinner, was one of them. Thing 2 is in 6th grade.

Thing 2: So today in school we got to dissect frogs.

Me: Really?

Thing 2: Yep. I thought I was going to barf but it was pretty cool.

Me: Tell me about it.

Thing 2: Well, I felt the frog’s heart and then we went digging around.

Me: Isn’t the smell of formaldehyde like cherry cough syrup?

Thing 2: These weren’t in formaldehyde. They had been frozen alive.

Me: So were they icy?

Thing 2: Nope. The teacher had defrosted them. But it did smell really gross when we poked their poop sacs.

Me: Say what? Poop sacs? How can a tiny frog’s poop sac make that much smell?

Thing 2: Well, the frogs were big, bullfrogs, and everyone was doing it.

Me: I see. So where did your science teacher get the frogs?

Thing 2 (giggling): Carrefour.

Me: Carrefour?

Things 1 and 3: No way!!!!

Thing 2: Yep. He walked in and bought a box of frogs, took them home, and put them in the freezer in a garbage bag. Alive.

Me: Let me get this straight: you can just buy a box of frogs at Carrefour?

Thing 2: Yep.

Me: That must have made a lot of noise, 25 bullfrogs, banging around a freezer.

V3 (new driver): Frog is good. I like frog. Good to eat.

Can you guess which restaurant we were traveling to? Blue Frog. I swear. Ribbit Ribbit. Happy Spring and we will write from Beijing, from the foot of the Wall, even if I have to go back to my old tricks of using a guest blogger.

The Health of the Hag

I wrote my last post too soon. Afflicted we were, yesterday, yet again, with the untimely illness of Mr. Understanding. I was going to honor my favorite saint with a post but swabbing toilets took precedence.

St. Patrick’s was a low-key event. After the re-xraying of the fractured foot, Thing 3, Poppy and I lunched at O’Malley’s in the French Concession while Mr. U recouped in the Chamber of Doom. Poppy had the Ulster fry. The little lamb kidneys creeped me out so I had a steak sandwhich. O’Malley’s was decked out for a big party in the evening. Maybe we can go next year? At home we had a humble meal, a little of The Chieftains’ Irish heavenly harp music, and Irish coffees. I pulled out my little Irish Toasts book which we read before dinner. Things 1 & 2 read traditional blessings I’d handwritten for place cards for a party in 2001. Thing 3 read the following from the book:

“May you be poor in misfortune,
Rich in blessings,
Slow to make enemies,
Quick to make friends.
But rich or poor, quick or slow,
May you know nothing
But happiness
From this day forward.”

Thing 1 commented that she thought all toasts were made in homage of drinking, to which Thing 3 replied, “Oh, I can read one of those too.” She was aided by a picture of creamy Guiness. So herewith, a toast to publicans everywhere and good health to all. It seems appropriate after the last two weeks.

“The health of all Ireland and of County Mayo,
And when that much is dead, may we still be on the go;
From the County of Meath, the health of the hag,
Not of her but her drink is the reason we brag;
Your health one and all, from one wall to the other,
And, you outside there – speak up, brother!”

Bootstraps

Yesterday I attended my very own pity-party. I was going to extend invitations to you all today but the sun is shining, the nausea quelled, the barking cough reduced to a dull roar, and my father is winging his way here. Can you hear the trumpets sound as he rides in to our rescue? Ta dum ta dum ta dum!

Various medical clinics and institutions received a lion’s share of my husband’s wages this week in attempts to battle chipped bones, irritated throats and ears, and disgorged tummies. My beloved Dr. Wok was kind enough to throw antibiotics at us yesterday, even though our bodies were masking infection. The bloom is finally back in Thing 3’s cheeks after one week. Now the poor child has to face the task of fractions with her father and the casting of her foot on Monday.

I, having found my bootstraps, am pulling them on to go sell teddy bears for charity with Bea Long. I am doing it in honor of Kenny. He is my muse. For if a man who can rise amongst the ranks from hair sweeper to fabulous colorist, I can roll out of bed to sell some bears.

Rest up, folks, because the Beijing Adventure starts next week, walking cast or no.