Dear friends and family,
As usual, we hope this email finds all of you happy and healthy!
The weather here has been very cold since Joe's email on January 21st with strong winds and temperatures around -10 centigrade. It's curbed our wanderings a wee bit, but we've been continuing to have a good time. I'm fully recovered from my sinus cold, perhaps in part because the pollution has been minimal. Joe and I seem to be losing weight, probably because of the healthier Chinese diet and lots of walking around.
We've settled into our new hotel, the Xi Jiao. Our room has a small office area and a tiny kitchen that features a one element cooktop, microwave, tiny fridge/freezer and small kitchen table. We also have a tiny washing machine. It's cramped, but we're settling in comfortably.
In the last few days, we found a nearby grocery store and bought a bunch of essentials and last night we cooked dinner in our room for the three of us. We made Moo Shu pork and stir-fried lotus with mustard greens. I actually enjoyed the sense of being home that came from cooking and doing dishes. I also bought some picture frames to house the photos of our families that we brought from Canada, so many of you guys are adorning our desk top even as I write this - it feels nice and homey.
We also searched for our school! At first we had trouble finding it and all we could find was a burned out old office building with plywood on the windows. For a minute, we thought this building was our school and I thought "What have I done to poor Joe!!". But then we found the campus entrance and it turns out to be a large campus with about a dozen beautiful white buildings including a great fitness center and a big library. It feels quite funny to walk through the campus and see young students playing basketball, and think that we might be in classes with them in just a few weeks!
One of the good things that's happened lately is that a new subway line opened just down the street from our hotel. It connects to the downtown subway so it's easy and cheap for us to traverse the city quickly. This is wonderful for us since we had worried we might be a little stuck out here in Haidian.
As a result, a few days ago we went to the Hong Qiao market again, but this time, we were ready to buy some stuff. I bought a nice, Gore-Tex anorak jacket with a fleece liner made by The North Face ($29 - $Cdn), some silk place mats with napkins ($7) and some amplified speakers with a subwoofer so I can play music from my IPOD ($31). Madeleine bought a pair of Levi's ($13), two Louis Vuitton shirts ($31) and two beautiful silk cushions for her room ($13). Joe bought a CD case ($2), and a pair of silk pajamas ($25), which turned out not to fit him as the size tag on the bag didn't match the PJ's inside. Silk is expensive even here.
The Chinese New Years celebrations have been ongoing over the last several days. The city is quiet since people generally spend this holiday time with their families and many shops are closed. However, some of the Buddhist temples have holiday fairs. A few days ago we went to White Cloud Temple to see the celebrations there. It was mobbed with thousands of people! Vendors were selling food and all kinds of stuff for many city blocks around the temple. Inside the temple, the air was filled with incense smoke. People were playing games and praying along the way (the White Cloud Temple has small temples dedicated to long life, health, wealth, etc and people would burn incense and pray at each one, hoping that the Year of the Monkey will be lucky for them). It was too crowded to be mystical, but it was merry.
By the way, I found a horoscope for the Year of The Monkey. I was born during the Year of the Tiger and here's what my horoscope said: "2004 is not the year to be making any major job changes. The Tiger is best to stick to routine and cultivate skills in their current workplace. Both traveling and a switch in jobs is very inauspicious for the Tiger this year. ... In love, you'll be met with petty disputes and tiffs that will escalate into massive arguments. 2004 gives you a clean bill of health with few predictions of illness."
Oops! At least I won't be sick. :) Joe's was a bit better...
Today we walked around the campus of Beijing University - the equivalent of Harvard in China. It's beautiful with lots of park like settings, people skating on the lake and ancient Chinese architecture. Today, also, I had my first Chinese massage at our hotel spa. You might recall at our previous hotel we kept getting calls in the evening and early morning from a sexy voiced woman offering "massage" (NOT!). Today, since I don't speak much Chinese and they don't speak much English, a little part of me was worried that I was going to actually pay for more "services" than I wanted - if you get my drift. In Canada, spa massages typically involve incense, Indian flute music, a sense of hushed reverence, and about $70. As I was led into the back rooms where the massages were done, I passed by a room that had four middle aged men (customers) gambling around a card table, wearing scanty robes, drinking and smoking with a massage table sitting next to them. Seeing those four guys really raised my suspicions about what I was getting into.
As it turned out, it was perfectly wonderful. I was put in a separate room and a professional massage therapist showed up after a few minutes. The massage was very different than what you get in Canadian spas. In Canadian spas, the massage has evolved to give you the nicest experience during the massage itself, but they often have little long-term value. Today I got a therapeutic massage and my comfort during the experience was not the first priority. She did acupressure on my head, ears and feet. She massaged my stomach. She cracked all my joints. She twisted my legs every which way using her full body weight when required to stretch both my leg and back. She grabbed my hand and twirled each arm like they were jump ropes and then once she got a good twirl going she yanked on it to crack my shoulder and elbow. She cracked my fingers. She pounded me. She pummeled me. It often felt great but occasionally hurt. Afterwards I felt like an overcooked egg noodle and my wallet was $16 lighter. As I left, I passed by the four guys' room and peeked inside. Three of them were still gambling and drinking but the fourth was on the massage table getting a real professional massage. I guess my anxieties about the range of services on offer were unfounded after all.
The pace of our sight seeing is slowing down as we get settled in. I expect that within a week or so, the frequency of these notes and their length will diminish since we'll have a lot less to say. Anyways, in the meantime both Joe and I have been enjoying writing them!
Chinglish of the Day: Today we passed by a poster in the subway advertising a slick new condo development. The photo was of a beautiful white apartment building in a park-like setting. The English caption read:
"Welcome to Rainy Actiliving!"
Love to you all and may your Year of The Monkey horoscope be more promising than mine!
- Kim (and Joe)