Travels with Lillia

(by Tom)

Lillia, in The Forbidden City

Greetings from behind the Great Firewall of China. Facebook? Never heard of it. Blogger? Sounds subversive. Twitter? What do we look like? A bunch of birds?

Spent yesterday recovering from our travels to Beijing. A short flight, delayed from Denver to SFO. Because of the delay there was not enough time for a meal at the airport. The food aboard United economy class was, I’m sure, quite economical for the airline: the chicken soaked in some sort of a briny solution and molded in a modified parallelogram, flat as and about the same thickness and flavor as a hockey puck, surely deadly if left frozen and used as a projectile weapon. The gentleman in front of me complained loudly to the flight attendant about his inability to upgrade to business class, he ALWAYS flies business or FIRST class domestically, and said that since he was placed in a seat in the emergency exit row, with both leg room, and a responsibility—nay, a duty--to open the exit door and jump out first in case of an emergency; that, given this heroic duty he was charged with, couldn’t he get better food, or perhaps free wine?

Lillia did very well during the trans-Pacific flight. You could not ask for a better five-year-old traveler. She was bored and restless, of course. Couldn’t sleep more than 2 hours but held up very well otherwise. The last 2 nights in Beijing have been hard, though, living with a circadian rhythm that is being asked to flip by just about 180 degrees. Suzanne and I are trying to push through it, but Lillia doesn’t really know how, and explanations as to why she can’t sleep and what she needs to do to make things better are not really helping. She woke me up 4 times yesterday complaining that she couldn’t sleep, and the last time I lost my patience, and became angry with her (which made no sense, of course, and helped not a whit). “Stop waking me up to tell me you are bored!” Even worse: “Stop crying! Let me sleep!” I was not covering myself in glory as a parent.

Another gigantic courtyard in the Forbidden City

The morning eventually improved, and we went out to the Forbidden City. Many large plazas, many palaces. Tales of court intrigue and concubines murdered, whispered over the headphones of the self tour, in British English, tinged with a Chinese accent. Heavy.

In front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, with the Great Helmsman in the background. Notice the guy on the far left. What are these bignoses doing with that Chinese child?

Then, leaving the Forbidden City, not 10 feet from us, in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace under the gaze of a giant portrait of Mao and across from Tiananmen , a single protester shouted something and threw a sheaf of papers into the air, pulled a knife from his belt and slashed his left wrist. He screamed at the police as they tackled him and struggled for the knife. I was holding Lillia in my arms as this was going on and she faced me as I faced the melee. I kept my hand on her head and her face pointed towards mine as I moved away. Several people in the crowd snatched at the papers blowing across the sidewalk, but I made no such attempt. My hands were full with Lillia and I was busy moving us away. I have no idea what was shouted, or written on those sheets. It was such a small scene in that huge crowd that I doubt many people who happened to be much farther away than we were even knew anything had happened. The police looked well-practiced at removing protesters.

Lillia and me, with a break in the crowds. No protests here.