Catching Up II- Random Crap

Warning:  This post is not going to be presented in any sort of organized fashion or chronological order.  See title "Random Crap".  

I love Chinese food.  I never liked the stuff that is attempted to pass as Chinese food in the states. I'd always watch travel shows where they talked about Chinese food being one of the greatest cuisines in the world and thought that the tasteless glop served in the US couldn't possibly be what they were talking about.

Well, I'm happy to report that Chinese food is fantastic.  There is so much variety, too. There are actually about 8 distinctly different cuisines within the category of Chinese.  For example, the preparation of Sichuan green beans is different than the Cantonese preparation of green beans.  By the way, I've never liked green beans, but I can't get enough in China.  They are a totally different thing when seared in a wok.  I could go on and on.  Hot pot rocks and Sichuan eggplant is da bomb.  Cantonese steamed buns of every variety are the ultimate comfort food.  Gung Bao (known in the US as Kung Pao) is totally different that what I had in the US and is so, so, so tasty.

OK, next topic.  Back at the beginning of October, my Chinese friend Vivian took me shopping in a hutong.  Hutongs are the ancient, traditional housing in Beijing, which usually consisted of about 4 family homes arranged around a central courtyard.  What's crazy is that people still live in the hutongs. It blows me away that these remaining hutongs in Beijing are literally hundreds of years old.  Hutongs actually originate as early as around 1000 BC, but obviously the remaining ones in Beijing are not quite as old.

Nanluogu Hutong

The particular hutong we went to is now a shopping area with restaurants and bars, but it is still the original buildings.  Really amazing.  Plus we had the best lunch there, Gung Bao chicken pizza.  

Moving on to the last thing because, frankly, I am getting tired of writing and feel like the content is getting a little boring.

I've been thinking lately about how I will adjust to life back in the US when we move.  Granted, I've got awhile but I'm getting so comfortable with all the amenities to my expat life such as housekeepers, ayis, drivers and the amazing international school Oleg gets to attend.  Also, American expats tend to be coddled and treated like giant babies by the Chinese in a lot of ways.  Life can be really hard for an expat, don't get me wrong, but there are some lovely perks as well.  And, let's face it, living in China is exciting.  Everything is changing so fast all around you in every way.

Funny story.  I had this craaaazy notion that I was going to mail something to the U.S.  All the information I could find online about the Chinese Postal system was vague at best.  So, I headed downstairs to reception to ask my girl, Helen Yang, what the deal was.  She literally laughed at me when I said I wanted to mail something.  However, being the lovely person she is she made me the following:

This is a map of where the post office is, plus a statement that says "I would like to mail this letter to California in the United States."  I guess I was expected to tape it to my forehead and hand my letter over to the postal worker.  This seemed, well, strange, so I thought I'd get the expat opinion at the bus stop.  Again, I was met by more laughter.  One of my New Zealand buddies is married to a woman whose parents are Chinese.  They happen to speak Cantonese, but have passable Mandarin and they had to go to the post office 3 times just to get a letter mailed somewhere else in China.  Clearly ChinaPost is not for me.  I figured out a way to do what I needed to do online.  That explains the lack of a greeting card market here.

Until next time.

Catching up-Holidays

Wow, it's been a long time since I have posted.  I don't really have an excuse, except while the Chinese 18th Party Congress was going on, because doing anything remotely interesting on the internet was impossible.  Now that Chinese Congress "elected" their next Communist leader, we can all continue with our normal governmentally- regulated internet lives.

Here's how I'm going to break this down.  I'm going to do a couple of blog posts.  One will be holiday stuff and the other will be random crap that I have found funny and/or interesting about my life in China since the last time I posted.  You, dear reader, can decide what you want to read.  I'm all about choice here, people.

Halloween

Halloween turned out quite a bit more festive than I thought it would.  It's sort of catching on with the younger generation that has kids around here.  We went to a Beijing-Kids (expat group) Halloween party, which was really fun.  Here are some pics:

Pumpkin bowling

We also went trick or treating.  There is an expat compound across the street from us called Central Park in which all the shops are open for trick or treat.  It was pretty good, although some of the treats were a little weird (like, croutons, no joke), but that was ok, it was still trick or treat.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was very nice.  It was actually the first Thanksgiving as an adult that I was not totally stressed out by cleaning, food or family.  We ate at a restaurant called Tim's Texas BBQ and it was great.  Perfect traditional Thanksgiving and all the patrons that day were American.  It was delicious, cozy and quiet.  No one knew each other but we were all sharing this unique experience of celebrating a US-only holiday in China.  There was football on TV and seasonal decorations.  Lots of ND football talk-GO IRISH (sorry, had to put that in there). Very special.  Then we came home and decorated our apartment for Christmas and put up our 4 ft Christmas tree that I found at IKEA.

Thanksgiving Beijing-style.  I don't know why the alcohol seems to be the  focus of the picture.  What? You don't need to drink on Thanksgiving????

All the Christmas decorating photos are on Steve's phone so I can't publish them here. We were using my phone to listen to the excellent Christmas playlist I put together in what I feel was a very productive use of my spare time no matter what Steve says.

Christmas

The Christmas season is turning out to be quite lovely here.  Our apartment is very festive, and there is Christmas music and holiday decorations in all the apartment and major business buildings.  It's actually quite nice as everything just started this weekend, rather than the U.S. cram-Christmas-down-your-throat-until-you-vomit-up-tinsel-and-twinkle lights-style of celebration/capitalism.

All the international schools have Christmas bazaars and they have been really nice.  They usually have a lot of little Beijing-based expat businesses selling their really unique wares plus great expat food from every country.  There is always a charity twist as well which is fantastic.  I've picked up quite a few interesting items, including a homemade bottle of Finnish Glogg (made by the Finnish mom contingent at Oleg's school).

Anyway, Christmas has been much simpler here than the month long stress extravaganza that it can be in the US and although I miss a lot of things it has been nice in it's own way so far.  Don't get me wrong, I CANNOT WAIT to get back to the U.S. on December 15th to celebrate with friends and family, but I'm really enjoying the quiet here.

My Christmas table

Our tiny tree

If you can't say anything nice.....

You know the rest.  This is mantra under which I am operating right now, so I apologize for the lack of blog posts.  Just not inspired to write and am even a couple of weeks late submitting a post for the other blog for which I write.  Maybe it's the holidays, or maybe its because I can't maintain a vpn connection for more than 2 minutes (I've had to reconnect about 3 times just to write this).  I think the lack of connectivity has to do with the change of power going on right now within the Communist Party.  I have done and seen a lot of interesting things, I'll just have to post when I can stay connected for a reliable amount of time.  OK, just reconnected for the 8th time.  I better publish this before it happens again.