Huang Shan

(by Suzanne)

When I went to China in 1986, I intended to go to Huang Shan. Then I found out that Tibet had just officially opened to foreigners, so I went there instead. Tibet was totally worth it, but I've been pining to see Huang Shan ever since. So when we were planning this trip, and Tom asked, "Are we going anywhere pretty on this trip? I don't want to spend the whole time in big polluted cities", I immediately suggested Huang Shan.

According to our guidebook (Lonely Planet), there are three ways up the mountain: the short hard way (the Eastern Steps), the longer harder way ( the Western Steps), and the short easy way (the cable car). Guess which way we took.

From the top of the Yuping cable car, we climbed many flights of stairs up to a large plaza where there is a hotel, a tea shop, snack stands, and trinket vendors. Even on a Monday in the off season, it was mobbed. One reason is the presence here of the Welcoming Guest Pine, posssibly the world's most famous tree, as it is pictured on the 5 yuan bill.

The Tree itself

Tree on 5 yuan bill

For a stiff price, you can have your picture taken in front of it, otherwise you are not allowed to approach The Tree.

Other images from the mountain:

Three happy hikers

Uh...no comment

A staircase on a nearby peak

More stairs

Pretty

Explaining Lillia

(by Suzanne)

Before leaving for China, I asked our friend Yen Wen how to say “we adopted her; she’s from Guangdong”. I figured people would be curious. Are they ever. People do double takes, and talk about us as we pass; I hear “foreigner”, “child”, and occasionally “adopt?” Sometimes they come right out and ask, sometimes they just look so concerned or nonplussed that I feel compelled to explain. After my opening statement, I am often peppered with more questions. So my spiel is now more like:

We adopted her. She’s from Guangdong. When we adopted her she was 10 months old; now she’s five. We live in America, so she speaks English, but she’s studying Chinese in school.

Sometimes at this point I’ll pull out my ipod and show pictures of her in the orphanage (gueryuan). And lately, I’ve added something new. I’ve noticed that of all the many babies we’ve seen, at least 80% are boys. So now I say “wo xiang nuer bi erzi hao” (“I think daughters are better than sons”), just to give them something to think about.

Doggies and Kitties

One thing that has struck me on this trip is the number of well cared-for cats and fluffy little dogs we’ve seen. I take this as a sign of China becoming a developed country. In so many Third World countries (India comes immediately to mind, but there are many others), you see so many mangy and abused animals, snarling dogs with running sores and the like. And the only dogs I remember seeing in China in the ‘80’s were hanging in the butcher stalls in Guangzhou. So to see so many animals that are obviously loved is truly a wonderful thing.

In the Mao Er Hutong, Beijing.

Lillia making friends with a xiao mao in Xidi.

Huang Shan Tom

So here is a picture of Lillia at a picturesque spot on Huang Shan, close to the Welcoming Guest Pine, the masses of people behind us on the other side of a large boulder.

The tree itself. 800 years old, or so. One can have one's picture taken with the tree in the background for real money. Speaking of real money, the tree can be found on the back of the 5 RMB note.

And, finally, a portrait of the artist as a slack-jawed yokel. I have too many photos of myself with open mouth. Lillia took this photo.

Huang Shan is beautiful. Many, many carved stairs as trails I would have loved to have taken on. We'll come back when Lillia is a bit older and spend more time here. There are hot springs lower on the mountain where we will stay next time around.

Great Wall Tobogganeer

So... here are my two favorite people in the whole world, on top of the Great Wall of China at Mutianyu, about an hour and a half north of Beijing. You can see said wall snaking away behind Suzanne and Lillia, which it will continue to do for the next Several Thousand Miles, being not the Insufficient Wall of China. Of course it has been said that the Great Wall never really stopped an invading army (cf. Khan, Genghis and horde, Manchu), but fans of security theater at American airports know how important the illusion of safety is to a well-functioning society.

We had an exciting trip by both public bus and private conveyance. An entrepreneur with a mini bus took us over the last leg. He was a ruddy-faced, burly fellow with an anger management problem, evidenced by the amount of yelling he did over his cell phone as he drove us up the mountain, but we did get there in one piece, and home again.

And here's me with the Best Little Girl ever.

We took the chair-lift up the mountainside from the town, which felt more rickety than it was. It leads to a stainless steel toboggan run down from the base of the wall (designed and constructed by German engineers, the brochure reassures us) to the town below.

Lillia was totally into this. And so we bought tickets and stood in line, and stood in line. And stood in line. And then we were off in a double toboggan, Lillia in front, Tommy-boy as brakeman and human seatbelt for my five year old. It was actually quite pleasant sliding down the stainless steel track through the green turning to reds and yellows of the fall foliage, curving left and right again and again. Then, draped across the the track, a red flag with large letters, in English, warning "SLOW DOWN!", conveniently placed at a height to clothesline the unwary. I ducked, of course, but the bottom of the flag grabbed my glasses and tossed them somewhere down the slope. They were gone, and life was fuzzy.

When questioned about retrieving my $450 specs, the lift operator at the bottom said something in Chinese that might be approximated as "Dude, you've got to be kidding." So we left to return to Beijing.

Back at the Mao Er, Angela, our lovely hotelier, brought me to the local optometrist the next day and helped me through the exam. And about 3 hours later I had a pair of inexpensive, but quite serviceable, Chinese glasses.

No, these aren't those. The optometrist had me wear these for about 10 minutes to make sure the prescription was comfortable.

American tourist on a Chinese bus, wearing

Chinese glasses and holding Very Tired Daughter.

The Mao Er Hutong Bed and Breakfast

(by Suzanne)

Since the Mao Er was rated #1 out of 378 inns in Beijing on tripadvisor, we came to it with high expectations. Well, they were exceeded. This lovely little place is in an old courtyard house retrofitted with modern Western-style bathrooms and efficient wall-mounted heating units (which we needed, as our first three days in Beijing were bitterly cold).

Entrance to our suite

The rooms are all furnished with antique-style beds and cabinets.

Our bed at the Mao Er

The inn is in a wonderful old hutong neighborhood, full of great restaurants, cafes, and cute little shops, which is lively by day but blessedly quiet at night.

Panorama of the neighborhood in the evening

But what really sets it apart and garnered it the #1 rating is the staff.

Angela, the manager, bought us train tickets, drove us to an acrobatic show (where an usher, a friend of hers, moved us to some unoccupied VIP seats), and took us to an optometrist when Tom lost his glasses.

She and her assistant Julia loved Lillia and spent a lot of time playing with her, giving her fancy hairdos, painting her nails, etc. Lillia loved them so much that she never wanted to leave the hotel, and she teared up when it was time to leave. We really felt like we were staying with old friends.

Lillia with Angela (right) and Julia

Chicken Man

(by Suzanne)

I love Chicken Man. I’ve loved him since I first noticed and photographed him at the Temple of Heaven back in 1984. Since then I’ve seen him on many a rooftop, including in San Francisco’s Chinatown. But I’ve never known who he is. So after seeing him on hundreds of roof ridges in the Forbidden City on Tuesday, I decided to get to the bottom of this. I did a Google search of “Chinese roof ridge ornaments” and, well, he apparently doesn’t have a name. All I found was that he is serving the Emperor (in what capacity, it didn’t say) and that he’s actually riding on a phoenix. Quite disappointing. I was hoping for some impossibly cute legend about a chicken-riding superhero. Oh well. He’ll always be Chicken Man to me.

Bullet Trains and the Temple of Heaven

(by Tom)

Took the bullet train to Tianjin and back today for the ride. Train speed peaked at 331 kilometers per hour (205 MPH) which absolutely rocks.

Tianjin is a village of 42 million on the coast, and the train made the jaunt in exactly 30 minutes from Beijing South station. The cars on the highway we paralleled seemed, as they say, to be standing still. The automated ticket machines even had an English setting, which made the journey even easier.

Beijing South Station

Suzanne’s Mandarin skills are impressive. She has been complimented for her pure Beijing enunciation, and has certainly been getting the job done. Once again proof that I married the right girl.

After returning from Tianjin, we took a cab to the Temple of Heaven. Lovely structures and park but the air pollution marred an otherwise beautiful day and stung all of our eyes.

Though Suzanne (in denial) rejects my analysis and asks that I not inform Lillia, I suspect the Temple of Heaven is actually a gigantic Mandarin hat, sitting atop a fearsome golem that sits quietly for now beneath the paving stones. China rising indeed.

We moved quickly through the exhibit.

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.

Some Thoughts on Taking Lillia to China

(by Suzanne)

So here we are about halfway across the Pacific, and Lillia is, thank God, asleep. She was an unhappy camper after getting up at 4:30 to catch our first flight. Hopefully she’ll get enough sleep to not be miserable when we arrive in Beijing.

I am really hoping that Lillia will have fun in China. I know she’ll have a great time in Japan, because there will be lots of relatives there, plus Japan is the Land of Kawaii. But in China she’ll just have the two of us, and it’s a more challenging place to travel. She’s a pretty adaptable child, though. I don’t think she’ll have any trouble with the food, because I do a lot of Chinese and other Asian cooking at home. When she was a baby, she loved surprisingly spicy food. Then she turned two, and decided that she didn’t like food, period. After a year-long hunger strike, she started eating again, but never regained her love of chili. So we’ll have to be careful of what we order.

I’ve also tried to prepare her for the inevitable squat toilet. Fortunately, she seems more intrigued than disturbed by the idea of a new kind of potty. I just hope we don’t run into any really scary ones. We will be entirely in Eastern China, in relatively prosperous and heavily touristy areas, so maybe it won’t be a problem. When I was traveling in China back in the ‘80’s, scary toilets were pretty much the norm, especially in the hinterlands. I’ll never forget the first pit stop on the 4-day bus trip from Urumqi to Kashgar. After drinking a bowl of green tea, I asked where the toilet was, and was pointed out the back door. And out the back door was…a large rectangle of bare dirt being used as a toilet. Hmm. Well. When ya gotta go, ya gotta go. That was probably my most memorable Chinese toilet. Then again, there was that one in Chengdu with the live rat in it….

But I digress. I should probably wrap this up and get back to reviewing my Pimsleur tapes. Tom only knows a couple dozen Chinese words and phrases, and Lillia’s Kindergarten vocabulary will be of limited usefulness. (Though should we find ourselves in need of a little white rabbit, it’ll be her chance to shine.) Otherwise, I will be doing all the translating, God help me. I guess we’ll find out in a few hours how useful the Pimsleur Audio Course is. As fun and fascinating as I find Chinese to be, there were still a few lessons where I thought my head was going to explode.

Well, Lillia is waking up, so I really have to sign off.

Hats, fire engines, and robot hamsters

Two pictures:

Lillia helping me to demonstrate the Art of Hats. Below: Lillia visits engine #1 in Walnut Creek in April. We are trying to visit my mom every couple of months now, when possible.

Our daughter turned five a couple of weeks ago. Lillia received a zhu zhu pet for her birthday today--a belated present--a hamster robot named Tex that moos like a cow and Yee Haws like a cowboy. Noisy. Active. Perfect for the five year old set. It may yet come to an "unfortunate" end. Warning on the bottom to not dispose of in the trash so it must have something in it that they don't want in a landfill. We will be careful not to eat it.

PICTURES, PICTURES, PICTURES!

The outcry regarding our neglect of Lillia's blog continues.  Protesters have discovered my pager and cell phone numbers.  It is getting messy.  So without further delay...

First we have a photo of Lillia and her Aunt Janet in Taos, NM, last August prior to the great haircut massacre of 2008.

Lillia travelled to Hawaii twice this year.  Once prior to said massacre and once afterwards.  Here we have a picture of Lillia with her self-described ideal mate, a tiki man outside of our rental home on Moloka'i.

The view from our lanai.

Next we have our bathing beauty on a beach in November.  You will note the lack of icy detritus, Moloka'i being a tropical isle.

She enjoyed the flight from Moloka'i to Maui, during which we sat directly behind the pilot in a little propellor-driven 10-seater.

Our view:

And lining up for landing:

Halfway up Haleakala, is the town of Makawao and the Banyan Tree B&B, a relaxing spot for a little girl and her mommy.

And for making new friends, like Radha, the little girl who lived at the Banyan Tree.

Next we have two cheesecake shots (Lillia, not me) of our daughter in her favorite environment--our hotel pool in Kihei.

And a family photo in the Iao Valley in the west Maui mountains.

And lest we forget that Denver is home, some photos of the first snowman of the season.

And Lillia and me.

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Love, Tom, Suzanne, and Lillia

Holidays, Fall and Winter

We didn't travel this Thanksgiving.  It was just the three of us, Suzanne, Lillia, and me, offering our thanks around our table.  Suzanne and I were thankful for the same things: our lives--which are truly blessed, our families, each other, Lillia.  I'm sure Lillia is thankful for these things, too, at least as she understands them.  Lillia was also thankful for pumpkin pie (as was I).

I bought a new laptop with a video camera built in, and Henry, my brother-in-law, showed me how to set up Skype on it so we could video conference with family in New Jersey over the holidays.  It was quite the hit, especially with Lillia, who kept returning to the closed laptop asking to speak with Grandma Joan again. Here is the moment of that first connect, captured by Henry in New Jersey.

Janet, Joan, Betsy in front.  Molly and Ken behind.  I believe they are all amazed by my new beard.  And of course Lillia by video.

And speaking of holidays, here is a picture of Lillia, after a hard evening of trick or treating on Halloween, still wearing most of her butterfly disguise, cleverly designed by mom to baffle the authorities during that evening of extortion:

Notice she has already removed her antennae. Clever girl. She will prove useful to La Famiglia. 

It is 18 degrees and snowing.  Suzanne says the grey sky today is reminiscent of the battleship skies of winters of her childhood in New Jersey. Lillia was, of course, refusing to dress this morning, insisting that naked and shoeless is best.  This is one of the unexpected drawbacks of central heating.  I opened the front door for a moment with her in my arms wearing nothing but a diaper (Lillia, that is) and suddenly she saw my wisdom, allowing me to dress her without further argument.  

Anyway, a few pictures from the last few weeks, before Denver became the large Frigidaire it currently is:

Suzanne, my wife and mother to la principessa, and Benjamin, the long-suffering King of Bunnies.

Our backyard, nicely gnawed by said King of Bunnies, mere weeks ago.

And now, staring into the refrigerator of our backyard.  Where is that pie, anyway?

So long, friends.  I'll try to write again soon.

Tom