Happy Women's Day

It's Women's Day here in China, and we're celebrating in style at Starbucks with 'buy one get one free drinks'. But wait, before any fellow Beijingers run out to the nearest 'bucks, it's not actually a Starbucks special because of Women's Day, but our friend had coupons that could be used on holidays, and this was the last holiday that he could use them. I've been doing some reading and writing here, and the venti Caramel Frap has got me as productive as a late-summer drone ant. I have a friend that claims that the Renaissance was due to the introduction of coffee to the European continent. Hmmm...maybe, although that certainly bucks against my wholesome LDS upbringing. :) I digress.

You've probably heard the Chinese proverb "Women hold up half the sky". You might have heard of it here (not a bad time to try out our new Amazon Associate links):

Or you might have heard of it here:
Half the Sky Foundation

If you get a chance, pour a little out for women today, because they're awesome.

I think M probably should have written this post, but she's busy cramming for the HSK this week, so you're stuck with me.

Pew! Pew! Pew!

(In case you're wondering about the title, that's the sound I make for shooting things off.  If any of you have played Desktop Defender, it's pretty similar to some of the sounds for towers shooting.)

A belated happy Chinese New Year to all of you (or Spring Festival as it's known over here.  or just New Year, which would make sense, since they don't call it 'Chinese' food over here, just, well, food). I'm feline a bit tigered of all the tiger puns, but they're not nearly as bad as all the "Happy 牛(niu) year" jokes from last year.

The video backstories:
Our friend K, who lives in the next building over, threw a party for New Year's (since we'd be up anyway with all the fireworks going off), but since it didn't start until 8pm, M and I decided to take the plunge and make dumplings from scratch.  And since I was already halfway there with the dumplings and potstickers, I finally tried to make Xiao Long Bao (Soup Dumplings) from scratch too.  Both of which are deserving of their own post, so you'll have to wait to hear about how those turned out.
Our fireworks adventures from last year were sufficiently lacking in death and dismemberment that I still wanted to set off a few this year just to join in the revelry.  I paid $6 for a small box, exactly the same as one that we had set off last year.  Halfway through the New Year's party, a few of us (including DC, who has already posted an excellent write-up of the festivities over at BBQGrapies) headed downstairs and out onto the street right in front of K's 27th floor window.  We set off our friend Jeremy's $12 box (which happened to shoot just about 27 stories up) and were so pleased with ourselves, we decided to walk down to the fireworks store on the corner and buy some more.
After some haggling, we decided to get the same $12 box and a significantly larger $24 box.  Still feeling that giddy boyish thrill prompted by fire and explosion, we decided to stay in character and treat ourselves to Mcdonald's ice cream.
When we got back, M and CC broke away from a game of scattergories to come set off the small box we'd bought, at which point, our friend John decided to jump over it.  Needless to say, he was shot in the butt by a low-grade explosive, thankfully to no permanent harm.  Cue my hysterical giggling.
The next video is us shooting off the big box, which was actually really exciting to watch.  My favorite part of the whole experience is the bits of cardboard and ash that rain down into my hair.
Where I grew up in California, fireworks were banned, so I didn't have the privilege of doing all this as a kid.  I've got to say, other than the whole "Oops, we burned down a billion dollar hotel" fiasco, the odd firework for New Year's is a total blast.  At midnight, thousands of families around the city set off similar (and even bigger) fireworks, ostensibly to chase away evil spirits for the year. It was quite a sight to behold.
Surprisingly enough, we didn't have any trouble falling asleep, even with the explosions continuing late into the night and starting up again around 7am.  How's that for native street cred?

Backlogged: Halloween

The distant future.  The year 2009.

I know, I know.  This is super late, but since I'm playing around with this email posting service over at Posterous, I thought I'd attach a picture.  And what better way to implement social media innovation than through robots.

Definitely took some inspiration from:

and my late 80s, early 90s childhood.

Posted via email from Beijing Dou

Thanksgiving Eve

It's weird, normally the fourth Wednesday afternoon in November is a really exciting time. Oh the schoolday buzz of rushing out of school and hopping in the car to drive (through bumper to bumper traffic) to either Phoenix or Moraga to see the grandparents. But I finished work, dodged a couple complaining students and headed home to an empty house (M's on her way home from the airport).

But there is some anticipation too, since we were able to get our hands on a good ol' American turkey. Our small group is crazy enough to attempt all the fixin's too. Cooking a 14 pound turkey, who we've named Kanye (since he's the biggest turkey I know), in an oversized toaster oven should be exciting. We'll let you know how it turns out.

On a random note, I discovered a street vendor outside our house who makes chow mein and chow fun to order. For less than $1. So awesome.


And by way of plug, we're not sure how many of our readers are Beijingers like us, but we wanted to spread the word about the coolest thing in Beijing:

On Demand Pie Delivery Service from the Pie House




Basically, one of our friends is starting a pie baking business. If you live near enough, you can call and have a pie within like 5 hours. That's just freaking awesome. These pies are tasty too, head on over to their site and take a look at those bad boys. So anyway, if you're in town and need a pie in a few hours, who you gonna call?

Happy Mather's Day

It's hard being away from our family, especially on holidays like this one. We're on a one way ticket, so who knows when we'll see them next! We did get to see M's family in March, which was great, but it's been a while since I've seen my family. So sad.

Kungfu Valentine

I'm not too big a fan of celebrating Valentine's day, but I've learned from past experience it's just better to play along than to take a stand. I wasn't expecting much out of the nation of China; however, apparently young Chinese couples go bonkers for Valentine's day here. People were all upons with flowers and chocolate and what have you.

Which made me feel a little bad that I had to work and hadn't really planned any festivities for the Missus. Some of my classes were canceled on account of my students going back to school this weekend, but I still had a few ones. Unfortunately for M, I was scheduled for class from 6-8pm.

I spent most of my Valentine's Day (poorly) drawing bad puns on the board for my students to mimic:

Yes, that's a sad sad attempt at a panda. I had forgotten how the black/white pattern goes.




M and I met during a break in the afternoon; we walked to a nearby mall and encountered this bad boy:

This stage was set-up in the middle of the mall for an amateur fashion show, audience karaoke competition, kissing game, and more. We stuck around just long enough to watch this guy get his groove on and listen to a couple crowd members croon the latest Chinese love songs, before we decided to move along.

After I finished class, M and I had a nice Indian meal at a restaurant called Ganges. They have great food, but I'm not so stoked on the name since it calls up mental images like this Google image result (which I consider pretty tame as far as shots of the Ganges are concerned):

春节愉快！(or Happy Spring Festival!)

As most of you probably already know, tonight is the eve of the Lunar New Year. We celebrated by enjoying some delicious dumplings and home cooked Korean food, playing a traditional Korean game called "Yut," and setting off some underwhelming but still very fun fireworks. (We were beginners, and the guy who was lighting the fuse risked blowing off his arm plenty of times as it was...)

Finally, J and our two visitors hopped on the last subway home. When we got through the door, it was about 11:30pm, and it felt like we were in the midst of enemy fire. But of course, it was really just our friendly neighbors celebrating the biggest event of the year in style.

This was the view just outside our window, from our apartment on the 17th floor. Apparently, most fireworks sold in China are designed to explode right about...oh, the 17th floor. We know this because those puppies were popping right into our frickin' faces, like so:

From Beijing Dou

And also:

From Beijing Dou

Oh, and check out this cool double helixy one:

From Beijing Dou

"But, Marilyn!" you exclaim, "Those fireworks are exploding not more than 20 yards away from all those residential high rises! That can't be safe!"

Never fear, my friend, because we currently reside in a glorious nation whose iron-grip government does not regulate the sales of such explosives on the open street, nor the whims of ordinary citizens as they set them ablaze. If the good ol' CCP's not worried, we needn't be, right? All in good fun! (Ok, maybe that's not entirely true. We've heard people aren't allowed to set them off on private property...but wait, how does that keep up from blowing our limbs off? Or each others' faces?)

Anyway, all this leads to probably the most spectacular, and profuse, display of fireworks I've ever seen this up close. I didn't really capture the full effect on camera, but a quick glance out our window revealed layers upon layers of exploding balls of light for miles in every direction. It's now 2 hours since we've gotten home, and it's still going strong...

So, to finish this post as we head to bed (assuming we can fall asleep to the sweet tunes of sporadically exploding gunpowder), I will borrow an overused and groan-inducing pun that we've been seeing EVERYWHERE here:

Happy 牛 Year!!*








*[FYI, "牛," pronounced "niu," is the character for "cow" or "ox," which--conveniently enough for punsters everywhere (have I mentioned how much Chinese people love puns?)--happens to be the Chinese zodiac animal representing the new Lunar Year.]

Merry Christmas

To all our readers, dear friends and family, we wish you a joyful and merry Christmas.

A little bummed about not being able to spend it with our families in California, we settled for the happiest place on earth:


I'd been to Disneyland Hong Kong a few years back as part of a family reunion, but M had never been. We figured Christmas was as good a time as any to go. Unfortunately for us, so did several thousand other people.

I'm sure M will have plenty to write about this wonderful place, but in the meantime, for your viewing pleasure:




Not my gumdrop buttons!


And to all a goodnight!

Thanksgiving in Beijing

As this was our first Thanksgiving outside of America, we were a little unsure about how we'd fare. I'm a big fan of the traditional Thanksgiving spread. Mostly because I can only get that particular combination of dishes and flavors a couple times a year. The week before the big day, M realized that she had to go to a lecture at Beijing University at 6 on Thanksgiving Day. Oh no!

It quickly hit us: Thanksgiving is American. For most of the rest of the world, it's just some random Thursday. Speaking of which, who was the wise guy who put it on a Thursday? Seriously. I mean, it was nice to be able to get Thursday and Friday off back in the day, but really, it just caused heaps of trouble. Anyone else remember the Tuesday night all-nighters, stumbling to that 4:00 class the next day to take that mandatory midterm from a very un-thankful professor? Or the 12+ hour bumper to bumper rides from Norcal to Socal and back again? Oh America!

Since I had a couple hours of work in the morning and M had the lecture at 6pm, we weren't really sure how we'd celebrate. But some of our newly reunited friends here in the city invited us to their potluck shindig that started at 3pm. Perfect! And what a shindig it was. M has repeatedly exclaimed that it was quite possibly her best Thanksgiving meal ever. She's still whining about how that lecture prevented her from just eating non-stop all night. It's possible we've been craving normal Western food for so long that our taste buds were in withdrawal, but the meal was freakin' awesome.

Those of you who know us well enough are probably laughing by now, since you probably figured we'd just gush about the food first. Yes, we're a couple of mini-gluttons.

We are thankful though. The holiday was a nice opportunity to step back and reflect on the near overwhelming sense of blessing and provision we've been feeling lately. We talk a lot of trash about being here in China, mostly for a good laugh and to keep the blog interesting, but also because there are times when we're genuinely freaked out about being here. In all of the craziness, though, there are these amazingly clear pinpoints of God's love and provision--surprising and exciting job opportunities, chance encounters with friends we needed to see, great conversations with new friends that we really enjoy, the list goes on. And we're nothing special; I guess all I'm really trying to say is that Beijing has, in many ways, made me more grateful, more able to see and appreciate the ways we're being cared for. I need these reminders, ungrateful wretch that I am.

On that note, a happy belated Thanksgiving to all of you!

PS: I totally rickrolled one of my classes today. I brought my guitar to some of my classes, and one of my younger classes, 7-8 year olds, was acting up while I was trying to sing them some kid's song, so I stopped. Paused. And said, "Ok, fine, now I'm going to sing you a very famous song." I just couldn't let them down.