Daily Life: Monday

Mondays are long, long days. The car comes to pick R. up at about 7:45 and doesn't bring him home again until about 8:30 in the evening, after his Mandarin lesson. My own classes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I have make myself construct a plan for the day, or else the hours stretch out like a desert.

About 30 minutes after he left, I went downstairs (to the mall attached to our complex) and picked up R's dry cleaning - 32 kuai ($4) for a sweater and two pairs of pants - and got a latte from Starbucks (23 kuai). I hope no one will question my loyalty when I say they have drink quality issues there.

I try to spend the mornings - when I have the most energy - writing, or reading, or writing about reading. This Monday had me finishing a review (for Queens) of Coming Through Slaughter, by Michael Ondaatje. (He wrote The English Patient.) Curious about who could write about a legendary New Orleans jazzman Buddy Bolden (literally legendary, there are no recordings, only one photograph, and very little written record of him) with such aplomb, I looked him up - Ondaatje, that is. And ordered a copy of his magazine, Brick.

Although the weather was nasty (dark, foggy smog, no blue sky, even when I look straight up), by lunchtime I was itchy to be out of the apartment. I dropped off my keys at the front desk for the housekeepers (who come M-W-F for linen service, vacumming and light house-cleaning) and walked the five or six blocks to Sequoia for that yummy egg salad. The yam man had already set up his steel drum oven at the corner of Guangua Lu and Dongqiao Lu. I'd like to tell you I could smell it from across the street, but what I could smell instead was car exhaust and acrid construction dust. I'd worry about asbestos, but am fairly certain that the lightening rods on temples are about the only nod to fire safety in this old-new town. Here's hoping, anyway. Since I never smoked (does six months in college count?), if I get lung cancer, I'm blaming it on Beijing.

Due to construction next door to Sequoia (according to my blog sources, an old Beijing expat is reinventing one of his several holdings to a Texas BBQ joint), the eavesdropping was limited, but the egg salad was impeccable as usual. Two guys on laptops behind me, tapping away, but one of them smacked his gums as he wolfed down his roast beef on rye. I set to work on a new short story about a housewife who sells her husband's big screen TV on Craigslist.com.

About 4:30 R. called to say he'd cancelled his Mandarin class. "I listen to Chinese all day, and I don't understand a word; the last thing I need is someone teaching me how little I know the language." I get it. Come home I told him, not unselfishly. "Also," he said, "I don't know if I can cope with a new restaurant tonight." There's a Papa John's downstairs, I said. They deliver. I could hear the relief in his breathing.

Back at our building, I checked the at the front desk for my keys. The housekeepers hadn't returned them yet, would I mind to wait in the lobby? Indeed, I would not mind. The wireless access is less restrictive than my account my upstairs. I used the opportunity to check my blog.

When R. got home, we watched a little Squawk Box on CNBC. I studied Chinese while R. vented about his day. It sounded to me a lot like his complaints at home. Same business, no matter where you plunk it, no matter what language they speak.

Expat Staples

Reading back through the blogs I noticed I haven’t written about three of the most important discoveries here, crucial for maintaining our sanity and keeping a firm grip on our laowai (‘foreigner’) identity.

The first is Grandma’s Kitchen, a discovery made very early during our stay. After having some adequate-but-uninspiring mexican at Peter’s Tex-Mex Café (where the all Chinese wait-staff dress in the red, white and blue of the Lone Star state flag), we were a little skeptical about a place that billed itself as “a little taste of home”. But Grandma’s Kitchen has never disappointed. So far, they have the best breakfasts in Beijing: huge omelettes, pan fried hash browns, real crispy bacon. Sounds simple enough, but no hotel we ever stayed in China – and these include two five-star hotels – has ever gotten the trick of seasoning the eggs with salt and pepper. And you can’t get better biscuits and sausage gravy anywhere, yes, even in NC. Further testament to Grandma’s Yankee credibility: sitting next to two Aussies (complete in stereotypical rugby shirts) we overheard, “What’s a skillet? What’s a sausage patty?” And then in mock seriousness, “Waitress, can we have an English menu?” Go Grandma.

Discovery number two is a funny little concept called the Bookworm. It’s an English-language lending library (and not an amateur library either: their website claims 14,000 titles, and a quick browse reveals Carver and Keats next to Grisham and Gore.) The library is spread over three rooms, offers a full kitchen menu, 40-item wine list and a full-service bar. There is cushy comfy chairs or wide tables, and a mess of servers to bring you whatever you’d like while you read or write. Perfect for when you get sick of staring at your own four walls. Also perfect for seeing some very famous writers: Thomas Friedman (he of The World is Flat, among other books) was there last Sunday. We got there three hours early and just barely got a seat. One of my classmates said they arrived at two hours early and were told at the door they weren't letting anyone else in.

Finally, and most recently, I joined some classmates at a little sandwich shop called Sequoia. I was impressed by the egg salad in a pita. Also, so far, the best place to eavesdrop I’ve found (and this is saying something when you consider that 98% of the population speaks a language I don’t understand.) In the heart of the embassy district, I’ve listened in on conversations between a freelance journalist and a reporter for Reuters, listened to a woman who seemed to know everyone who walked in talk about her fellowship and her husband/boyfriend’s so far unsuccessful attempts to get into Darfur, and two very snooty looking Russian women speaking rapidly into cell phones, who didn’t look so snooty when they asked if my egg salad was good. “How do you call it? Ag Salad?” Close enough.

4 Weeks Old

It’s raining here today, for the first time since we arrived, four weeks ago.

I’ve been struggling to come up with topics for this blog lately. I think this means that we’re acclimating. I’ve finally prevailed over the washing machine. (I use only a smidgen of liquid Gain I found at Jenny Lou’s, a market that carries everything imported from the States and western Europe. I don’t even contemplate additives like bleach.)

We’ve also overcome small obstacles like how to order extra drinking water. The water here isn’t potable, though no one can tell me why – why makes a big difference when trying to decide if it’s ok to cook with, for instance. Boiling will solve a bacteria problem, but not a lead problem. A classmate of mine works for an environmental research and advocacy program (not Greenpeace, which, according to my classmate, is banned here because they openly advocate for democracy). She said she’d heard that the water coming out of the treatment plant was safe to drink, but it travels through old, sub-standard pipes to get to residents. Another classmate’s father-in-law is a water chemist, and she’ll take a bottle of tap water back with her at Christmas and let us know what he says. . . In the meantime, I’ve switched to purified water for my tea now, and all cooking. And teeth-brushing.

Sights that a couple of weeks ago were eye-popping have faded into the everyday: Bicycles towing towering loads of water bottles, building materials, or any kind scrap forcing a Mercedes or Audi to screech to a halt in an intersection as it lumbers past; the street vendors selling delicious smelling yams baked in a steel drum oven on wheels (I was all set to try one, they smelled so good, until someone wondered aloud, “Where do you suppose they get those steel drums and what do you suppose was in them before hot coals and yams?”); the ‘Chinglish’ that appears everywhere (I realize I lack examples, I’ll make a point to get some). I’ve even gotten used to the staring. (Beijingers assure me that the only provincials are amazed by the site of fair skin and blonde hair. If that’s true, there are a lot of ‘provincials’ in Beijing.)

It's a little sad to feel the newness wearing off, to stop being so amazed every time I look around. I don’t feel like an insider yet – I still carry a phrase book, a map, and the Insider’s Guide, the Beijing expat bible, whereever I go – but I now know the difference between the Shunyi, Dongcheng, Haidan and Chaoyang districts. I know what the Ring Roads are and where they go (generally). I’m no longer limited to the restaurants within walking distance. I can look out my window and know whether it’s better to take a taxi or the subway or my feet (Bus 11, in the local parlance). I can even say these things in Chinese, though whether or not I can be understood by anyone other than my teacher is another matter altogether. A few (a very few) words and phrases now jump out at me on the street, in a restaurant, bright comprehensible gems among the cacophonous clutter. I’m no longer exhausted by 4 o’clock, just from being here.

My eyes and ears aren’t what they used to be.

The Other Kind of China Moment

When the boss’s wife comes to town and insists that you join her for an hour long foot massage at her favorite spa chain, how can you say no?

In a store front right around the corner from the East Gate of the Forbidden City, the small waiting room of The Dragonfly Therapeutic Retreat was well decorated, with the requisite sounds of gurgling water and new age music.

The similarity to spas at home ended there. The three of us (the boss's wife, her visiting friend, and me) were ushered through a curtain, stepping up onto a kind of raised boardwalk that led through a dim hallway lit by tea candles and jack-o-lanterns. (It was Halloween, after all, and this spa caters to westerners. No hack jobs here: the pumpkins were beautifully carved.) The room we were ushered into was so dark I couldn’t tell if there was a step down into the room. The three young men attending quickly saw the problem and raised the lights just enough to see the ramp by.

The room was small, just big enough for three plush, fabric-covered recliners, ottomans, and a small fountain. The recliners had small down-filled pillows for the lower back, which the men plumped before we settled in. The men left the room, re-dimmng the lights as they went, and we removed our shoes and socks in the near-dark.

A moment later they returned, carrying heavy wooden buckets, lined with plastic. (I was relieved to see this nod to hygiene.) After rolling our pants legs up over our knees (how do they do that without touching your skin?), they placed our feet in the buckets and agitated the hot-but-not-too-hot water with their hands. To allow time for the feet to soak, they came around behind our chairs and gave a neck and shoulder massage. Despite the awkward angle (for the masseurs), they managed to make this relaxing.

Finally, choreographed and in sync, all three men walked around to the front of our chairs and situated themselves at our feet. For a good ten minutes or so, they focused on the soles. . . working pressure points I could feel all the way up my back and down to my finger tips. He massaged parts of my feet I forgot all about, between the toes, even the tips of the toes. They massaged our calves front and back. Then back to the feet again, stretching the ankles and the toe joints.

An hour later, our feet and legs toweled dry, our socks delicately replaced, perched still and relaxed in those big comfy chairs in a dark room, massaged all away are the memories of the grit, the polyglot noise, the outrageous traffic, the inability to communicate, leaving just one thought in their place:

I love China.