new wedding brand from antho

this has nothing to do with anything, except that i love (and miss) anthro and know there are people i love getting married this year who hopefully will read this.

anthropologie unveils a new wedding brand today... BHLDN

will undoubtedly be gorgeous. three years too late for me and my lovely bridesmaids, alas... :) have fun, brides-to-be

chicken pho: wanted

just got back from a wee trip to guangzhou...feels a bit like the san diego of china, just, you know...in chinar. ate lots of seafood complete with before-and-after pics...to come. i'll warn you before posting the really gross videos D insisted on taking of post-mortem fish. poor fishies.

ironically, my favorite meal in the culinary capital of china was vietnamese. also the cheapest. most delicious bowl of chicken pho with clear vermicelli i have ever had (don't be offended if you've ever fed me noodles, this soup was ridiculously good...ridiculous...so ridiculous that as i type i'm now wondering about the use of MSG...hrmm).

nevertheless, i'm now slightly obsessed with wanting to figure out how to make it in our new larger-and-cleaner-than-we've-had-in-china-so-far kitchen (okay, still severely lacking counter space, but it's all relative!).

Pho Ga recipes, anyone?

CNY from Shanghai

Happy year of the rabbit!

CNY in Shanghai has been slightly less ridiculous compared to the total mayhem we experienced in Beijing last year, but we heard it may be due to authorities cracking down with more "regulations" after the Jingan fire last Nov.

Nevertheless...still total over-the-top crazy-ness by any firework standard we ever knew growing up. This video is the view from our new apartment. Shortly after this video, someone started setting off firecrackers on the street to our left and they were literally shooting up right next to our balcony...at one point a loose amber flew right past...if our balcony hadn't been enclosed it may very well have flown IN.

oh chinar, such fun you are.

SH apartment fire...live

monday afternoon, suddenly saw the entire planning team on the other side of the office rushing to the windows to look outside...just a few blocks away, an entire building up in flames. totally scary and sad to see happen live. was too stunned to take my own pictures, but this is pretty much the exact view from the street outside the office.

thanks for those who called or emailed to check in, we're physically fine, just sobered. death toll now at 58. one of those perspective-giving days.

...and we're live

www.gap.cn
we "soft launched" yesterday in the middle of the nite...feels like giving birth

on your mark, get set...

GO! actually it's been kind of hard to stop lately, with the official site launch (and first store openings) in just a few days now (eeee!). but there's a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel...and it's growing SHINIER. more very soon...especially with special visitors on their way.

oh, and in case you ever need to get yourself from japan to china.
Google's directions
check out #43
oh Google.
(stolen from our friend karen...)

taken care of in the little things too.

been more homesick lately...maybe it's hitting the one year mark without a chance to go home for a recharge...maybe it's the nonstop pace of life right now. then there's the little things -- D gets Costco emails and gets kinda sad. Weekend Sherpa emails make me yearn for a hike in fresh air and mountains, not to mention the everpresent longing for crisp grapes and froyo.

after a particularly stressful week, with much homesickness lurking, i couldn't believe what opened across the street from our place! not as delicious as the pinkberries and yogurt harmonies of the world, but totally not complaining. SO not a coincidence, you know what i mean?

hot or not?

it has been HOT here...like the i-can't-breathe, everybody-on-my-commute-is-sweaty-ick kind of hot (okay, i cheat and take taxi when i can't take handle)...yet the official weather reports have been constantly 39 point something C (roughly 100+ F, not counting the humidity) when it most definitely feels hotter. weird right. we've since learned the good old chinarese g-o-v doesn't like to report official temperatures higher than 39.999999999 C. we wouldn't want anyone to panic that it's too hot, now would we.

A rare clear evening in SH.

Um, I know, no excuse could possibly make up for the delinquency of 3 months without a post. But pics will!! kekeke.

The last 3 months have been a blur, with back-to-back visitors (14 in total! 5 who stayed with us), a midnite trip to the emergency room for D (all better now), and a move to SH in early July. On top of work and class, it's been a blast but also kind of cra-zeeeeee.

We introduced you to our place in BJ and the "view" (of the snow mostly!)...here's the view from where we are staying in SH on a rare clear semi-unpolluted evening (D took the photo). BJ and SH are so different...both sprawling metros, but one very traditional, square and masculine, one more modern and feminine. Will leave you to figure out which is which.


We've been on the go so much that it's hard to know how to describe the latest transition...we miss friends in BJ heaps, and everyone at home. This transition has been harder than the one we made a year ago from the U.S. to BJ. But we're starting to meet friends here, and both of us having coworkers helps.

It's funny what makes us homesick...when I find D in a contemplative mood, 9 times out of 10 it's because he got a Costco email. hehe. I think we both get a little homesick after good skype convos with you all at home, especially when we talk to the wee wittle ones. Me, I miss clean air and water and mountains for hiking. Oh, and crisp green grapes. Eat some for me.

More soon.
Love! c&d

long-lost post

sorry friends, we have been remiss...more than a month without a post. life has been a bit crazy (and will be for the next two months)...but fun! much has happened since march -- visitors (sophia! leian! vicky!), big decisions, lots of birthdays, transition from freezing to less freezing to slightly warm weather -- i wore flip-flops outside for the first time since last october, total bliss.

have been in tokyo for two days for work (i may also have gone shopping)...it's so interesting, it feels as if there are almost as many people in the center of tokyo as there are in parts of beijing, and yet over here they all wait for stoplights. when it turns green, the enormous mass of people start moving into the intersection, with no cars or scooters or bikes threatening to run you down. by the time it's red, all pedestrians are magically back on the sidewalks and then the cars and scooters and bikes start moving. could not be more different from china. i have no fear of being run over here. or of public bathrooms.

more soon!

their boyfriend's back and they're gonna be in trouble...

for those who've been wondering where the chick and the duck have been...sorry, still don't know. we've been wondering these many wintery months too...whether they've been consumed or are simply resting in comfort in some warm apartment around here.

but a sure sign that spring is around the corner...their boyfriend's back! i started hearing random cockle-doodle-doos yesterday and coming home in the afternoon, ran into this dude. he's gotten quite a bit fatter since i last saw him. gives me hope for the chick and the duck...


i'm personally hoping for some chickies and ducklets to randomly appear sometime soon.

too legit to knit

i've been bopping around the apartment this morning (it's saturday) going "too legit...too legit to knit" he-ey heeeeey. okay, it was the tagline from a DailyCandy email about made-to-order knitwear which promptly got MC Hammer stuck in my head. it also began a very-temporary-oh-we-should-start-a-website thought to a few girls here who help encourage my tendency for sporadic knitting projects. alas these random ideas go as fast as they come, but at least now we're going to try and make legwarmers. i have a pair of purple ones i got at the clothing market here that i wear all the time. i think everyone should wear legwarmers, they're awesome, and not just for keeping out ridiculously cold chinar weather. even the NYTimes says so: Don't Worry, Aerobics Are Optional

happy birthday mama!

today (U.S. time) is mama lo's birthday! D and I caught her before going to bed last nite so we could wish her "shengri kuaile" and she was in a great mood, laughing and laughing...she said it was because she had just woken up and sang "happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday to...mee-eeee, happy birthday to me" and it made her very happy. awesome.

she is on her own for her birthday in SD this year...we are in china, r&h working in norcal, and daddy won't be home until friday (he's had to travel a lot since taking the job in rochester, commuting across the country from SD so that mommy can keep living there). but every indication is she's having a rocking birthday...she told us she was going to do whatever she wanted all day, starting by going to a class at the gym, then going shopping and buying herself a cake (whatever kind she likes). again, so awesome.

we all did everything we could...video, gifts, treats...and of course lots of calls and skyping to show our love (daddy also wrote a long lo family email, in a way only he can, in honor of her birthday). but in the end, she was already happy. she doesn't mind being physically alone, because she knows she's really not. her loved ones are happy and healthy, and she is too. selfless mommies are the best. i mean, she's awesome.

since the four of us kids (R, H, D and me) could not be with her on her birthday, we made her a video. props to R&H for the editing...underneath their EECS & finance/accounting veneer, my brother and sisnlaw are budding creative geniuses.

A Nation of Pyros

Xin Nian Kuai Le!

or..."Happy Chinese New Year!"

The other night we went to celebrate at our friend's place on the 27th floor. We had a crazy view of the fireworks in our city district. Think U.S. 4th of July fireworks show times 100! No joke, from about 8pm-4:00am we saw, heard, and felt fireworks! A ton of them exploded yards from the windows we were looking out.

A few days before the 14th, little tents popped up everywhere selling the goods.

I took these pics from my friend's window on the 26th floor!! No zoom used

Naturally, my buddies and I wanted to join the action. Here are a few fireworks we set off. Unfortunately the pics didn't turn out quite as well. At the bottom you can see the building our friends are watching from.

Here's a picture I took before most of the real celebrations began.

The fireworks were so cheap. We bought boxes of 4 rockets for about 12 USD each. And everybody was (still is!) shooting them off. I've seen multiple grandmas showing the 10-year-olds how it's done. It's hilarious! As Cindy and I joke: It's a nation releasing its inner pyro! I guess they did invent gunpowder.

CNY = dirty coats

I took a couple sweaters and our wool coats (smelling of smoke + pollution + miscellaneous unknowns) to the cleaners yesterday, and after going through the marking of extra dirty spots, the taking of my information, and the informing of total price, cleaner guy says:
okay you can come pick them up on the 28th.
me: Um, that's 20 days from now.
guy: Yeah, we go on vacation starting tomorrow.
me (in my head): (Are you kidding me? You're closed for 20 days?)
me: Okay...can I have them back?

The slowdown for Chinese New Year has officially begun. People have been clearing out of our part of Beijing and heading home. The cashier girl at melon mart downstairs has been gone for almost a week, meaning I actually have to look up the weather instead of having her tell me if it's going to snow, or be extra cold. Our favorite fruit & veggie sellers downstairs have gone home meaning we've been banana-less for three days and are quickly running out of apples. Good thing we're going on vacation on Monday, we (okay I) might not survive without fruit. :)

thunder, no lightning...kaboom

just a few minutes ago we heard a thunderous earth-shaking crash. then lots and lots of sirens and alarms going off at once. the most likely conclusion being a really really big car crash in the crazy intersection outside. we can't really see anything from the window, hopefully it's okay...

i "got into" my first real "accident" here last week. i was in the backseat on my way to the airport when the car i was in hit the back of a taxi...lightly, but enough to make both cars stop and pull over. after a quick discussion, driver A pulled out a wallet and paid off driver B with a wad of cash. i didn't even see any damage. i guess it's just easier that way?

we've been surprised that we haven't seen more...other than the occasional bike on bike accident, or bike vs. deathcab (these tiny "taxis" that hold only two people) skirmish. D explains it as an unspoken traffic hierarchy...everyone knows that the bigger guy always wins, so pedestrians yield to bikes who yield to scooters who yield to larger scooters who yield to deathcabs who yield to taxis who yield to trucks who yield to buses...and so on and so forth. our motto is always DBTB (Don't Battle The Bus). it's safer that way...

it's freezing, hence the impromptu dance party

the frequency of our occasional two-person dance parties has increased recently...egged on by pent up energy due to the total don't-want-to-go-outside freezingness, the acquisition of some little white and blue chinar speakers (50 kuai), and great playlist additions thanks to beijingdou and google.cn music (speaking of which, we'll miss you if you leave chinar, googly friend...sad week).

at the top of our chinar-is-cold playlist: Glee albums 1 & 2, Beyonce's Sasha Fierce, MGMT. please help us add to our list.

so close, and yet so very far...

i'm the first to admit i have a bad sense of direction...so bad that in the states, when driving to new places and uncertain of my way, i learned to go the opposite way of the direction i would naturally go by instinct. unfortunately, this did not always work as i knew i was tricking myself and thereby got extra confused. thankfully, D has a very good sense of direction. on our way to a wedding last weekend, we came out of a subway station i'd been to before, but he hadn't. the directions we had been given were to go north...he kind of looked around and went "i think that way is north." i had thought north was 180 degrees opposite to where he was pointing. sigh. had i been on my own, i would have gone in the complete opposite direction.

obviously, going the wrong way often happens when i'm on my own. this past week, i had a couple new places to get to on my own and...as to be expected, got really lost trying to find a new friend's house one night. and another time, literally went in and out of the destination subway stop four times before i figured out the right exit (the subway stops here have like 10 bajillion exits sometimes).

the thing is, i would like to think that here in chinar, it is not all my fault. sometimes it's just confoundedly confusing why things are built the way they are. this view, for example, was what i got coming out of a subway stop trying to get to walmart. the walmart sign is smack dab in the middle...


i knew walmart was off this subway stop but had never taken the subway before. every exit i tried to come out of, all i could see was a railroad track blocking me from the walmart. i think it would have been better if i couldn't see the sign at all. but it was there, and i was determined to get to it. so i kept popping in and out of different exits like a meerkat, trying the find the right one. i even asked security guards how to get to "wa er ma." they said, just go out and walk along the road, and you'll be there. so...although that made no sense based on what i'd seen, given that there is a big railroad track in the way, i dutifully popped my head out the exit and tried again. umm...yeah, the road didn't go there. i think he was just trying to give me an answer so i'd leave. finally, i studied the map of the station really hard, and tried going all the way through the subway stop (paying an extra two kuai as if i'd taken another ride). walked all the way through as if i was transferring to another line. went out the tiny exit and around the corner was a small wal-mart supercenter sign. VICTORY!!! i mean, it took going through another tunnel, up another flight of stairs, through a commerce area, through another tunnel, and up another flight of stairs before i actually made it to the store. but it was so worth it.

i took a taxi home.

p.s. D's last day of teaching for the semester is this coming Tuesday. He's been grading final presentation dialogues and some of them are hilarious. you should lobby him for a post...

What we now know...

Happy New Year! It’s been a year o’ lessons for us...about Chinar, about ourselves.  

Some of our top China-related learnings from 2009:

1. Stomach problems aren’t just for foreigners. The number one reason D’s students are late to class: “Teacher, my stomach was giving me trouble.” The number one reason D’s students ask to leave class: “Teacher, my stomach is giving me trouble.” The number one reason D’s students miss class: “Teacher, my stomach was giving me trouble.”
2. This is a highly-impersonal-yet-immediate-bff (best friend forever) society. Try not to feel offended, just introduce yourself. Don't be surprised if someone that doesn't know you closes the elevator door on you (literally!), refuses to help you, or fails to hold the door open for you and your scooter though you are just 2 or 3 feet behind. But also don't be surprised if, after meeting someone for the first time, they invite you over for dumplings and treat you like their brother or sister, inviting you to spend Spring Festival with them in their hometown. It's confusing, yet endearing, and once you get used to it, quite understandable. We’ve met such sweet-hearted friends.  
3. To go with lesson 2, there are a lot of people in Chin(ar). Duh, the country’s population is over 1.3 billion. Yes, we thought we knew that too. But living here, you realize the sheer MASS of people surrounding you on a daily basis, trying to get from Point A to Point B. Jostling you on the subway, narrowly missing your feet with their bikes, trying to get you to buy their stuff at the market (as opposed to the exact same stuff at the stall across the aisle), competing with you for taxis…it’s an adventure and sometimes you get pooped. It’s okay. Reward yourself with a 2 kuai McDonald's ice cream cone on the bad days, it helps.
   
4. Speaking of pooped…if you can get one main errand done a day, call it a good day! Early on, our friends cautioned us that getting stuff done here is not always straightforward, and can be exhausting…for cultural and language reasons, and also just purely logistical ones. We quickly learned the wisdom of this. Not to mention the fact that at home, “going out to run errands” meant stopping at several stores in our car, and loading the goods into the trunk. Here, we’re lucky if we can get the goods home from one store home on our scooter. It took us a long time to get used to just one big task a day (feels highly inefficient even now), but really, it’s a good rule to not make yourself crazy or dead. 
5. Night-showering is key here. We’ve both converted from morning-showerers to evening-showerers. It’s a necessity..
   
6. We take credit for granted. It took us a good two months to adjust to living in a largely cash-based, very “pre-paid” society. (More than once, I found myself without the means to check out at the grocery store...after spending 45 minutes winding my way around -- or bumping into -- people in the store.) Few people have credit cards, and the cards that are used are mostly debit. Electricity is pre-paid: we have to take a credit-card sized card to the bank, stand in line, pay cash to have it charged, take it home, call the building maintenance people to come and charge our electricity meter. Internet is pre-paid: we go to the bank, stand in line, pay cash into our phone company account, and in return our internet is not shut off. Gym memberships are pre-paid: a year, sometimes 18 months at a time. Rent is even pre-paid: six months, sometimes a year at a time (who DOES that?). The first time we paid six month’s rent in cash, we freaked out at how much cash we were carrying...I have never held so much money in my life. We dearly miss checks and credit cards… \
7. Socks just don’t get as clean when your washing machine only has cold water. All of our socks have taken on a slightly brownish tinge. Ick.
8. There's a reason Chinese people wear face masks everywhere, and it's not just for fear of H1N1. Think Air Quality Index (AQI) that’s off the charts... D’s taken to wearing the hard-core 3M masks with a little filter that my mom got us before we came. I sometimes wear a cotton one with bears and an ice cream cone.
9. There are ways around (almost) everything, as long as you know the right people. Unfortunately for us, this is not always the case. Which is why it took us 6 weeks to figure out the initial visa stuff. But still a lesson, nonetheless.
10. Just because you don’t get it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense. Be quick to listen. Slow to speak. (Sometimes out of necessity if you don’t know how to speak.)
    

yup, it would serve me right.

On our way to a friend's house yesterday, M and I passed a little girl in the sunday class D and I teach. We stopped to say hi (and wave excitedly...she's 4), exchanged "happy new year" with her dad, then went along our way. M mentioned that she'd seen the pair in the courtyard before, and each time, the girl was always babbling along, with the Dad patiently going "uh-huh" every 15 seconds or so. this is also the state of things in class...she's our master tangent-er. she's adorable, don't get me wrong, but requires a lot of attention and must take an infinite amount of patience at home.

C: [laughing] "watch, this is what my daughter will be like..."
M: ["hehe"-ing mischievously] "it would serve you right :p...that was what you were like when you were a baby huh."
C: "mmm...yeah. i talked before i walked. or crawled. i think i was pretty much an immobile blabbing blob."

Oh dear. Hopefully, D's genes will help ameliorate some of this.

(p.s. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!)