Barbie in a Beijing Toy Store

Okay, I know they keep all the reject electronics and lead-painted toys for the local market, but this is RIDICULOUS.

Innocuously enough, on the shelf at the Disney/Mattel/Barbie toy store at The Place: a "Knitting Pretty Barbie and Skipper" deluxe set.

But check out what Barbie is actually saying:

Presumably because the high stress of knitting is taxing Skipper's limited intellectual resources. And yet she manages to come up with a witty response:

Hm. It actually took me until now (4 hours of lunch, playing legos, and a naptime later) to realize that the whole Barbie-Skipper exchange are all puns on the knitting theme.

ps. Sorry about the sloppy focus and flash burns, as I was taking these there was a frantic sales lady waving her arms in front of my face. Obviously she was protecting state secrets, but stalwart photojournalist that I am, I pretended not to understand while snapping the pics, and then used my two year old to cover my retreat. That's actually the same trick used by all the CNN and BBC correspondents in China.

Purchasing information: 4th floor, The Place, Guanghua Lu, Chaoyang District, Beijing.
Knitting Pretty Barbie and Skipper, 899 RMB (131 USD)

Skyving off from nursery school

Bella and I skipped out on a school field trip to the Beijing Aquarium today. Mik's mildly trying to guilt trip me about it, because my only "real" reason for not going is the precipitous brink of INSANITY that only a 45-minute bus ride to one of the most-packed indoor destinations in Beijing could bring me to. With 35 children between the ages of 1 and 6.

Here's what we did instead [Click here for cool underwater video]. That, and practiced saying, "Barack Obama.... YEAH!"
I was already skeptical about the trip, since this is the same school that yesterday, called me at 8:30 am to invite me to a "camp show," where the offspring would be "singing and dancing" at 9:00 am THAT SAME DAY. Okay, well, that's what a flexible schedule is for, I guess, so I hung up, washed my face, changed into a clean muumuu, and headed down to the school.

It actually turned out that the "camp show" was going to be preceded by a one-hour performance of traditional Chinese music, which the kids used to dance, screech, run around, and generally work themselves up into a tizzy. Here's a video of Bella starting up the dancing. So, that part was great, though those performers may refuse to ever play for an audience of children again. By the time they had Bella's class of 2-year olds up on stage (almost 2 hrs after the whole thing had started) to perform "Twinkle twinkle" and "If you're happy and you know it" the little monsters had completely run out of steam. Bella was so lo-batt that even she (of "She's a Brick HOOOOUSE" dancing fame) refused to get on stage without me, and then just sat in my lap, panting and occasionally making the animal sounds in "Old MacDonald."

So I kind of had a feeling that today's field trip would go along the same migraine-inducing, mayhem-like lines. I just don't get how these people work with small children every day and not realize that THEY CAN'T SIT STILL FOR VERY LONG.

Later on the duty is complacent

It's like a haiku, or poetry that you sort of understand:

The tickets sold out never return.
Please check the cash face to face,
Later on the duty is complacent.

A moment of zen before paying 20 RMB apiece (15 RMB for Bella since she is more than .9 meters tall) and entering the water park at Tuanjiehu Park on Saturday.

The kind of nonsense that goes on at our house

Also the reason why Bella may never get toilet trained.
He's practicing his throat singing, and she's speaking whale.

Click here if it tells you the video isn't available below (goes to Google Video).

Melonhead

Do I dare cut Bella's hair myself, or take our chances at the neighborhood salon with the unfortunate name??

Dog Wearing Shoes

Today's "Arf?", taken in front of our neighborhood deli this morning.

This is the dog whose "mommy" wipes his butt after he poos. I hope she kept her hands off the baguettes.

Yahoo answers: swallowed shard of glass

No no, everyone calm down, it wasn't the baby. It was just me. I ordered a glass of wine, and only halfway through drinking it did I realize that there was a chip on the rim of the glass. I didn't remember seeing the chip when they set the glass down in front of me, and then had a delayed memory of a sharp "ding" at some point when the waiter was pouring the wine. I inspected my remaining half-glass closely, and when I didn't see any telltale glints of light, drank the rest anyway. I thought of Austin Powers: "I, too, like to live on the edge." Hopefully not the internal bleeding kind of edge, but still. I was sure I'd be fine.

That was four days ago, and for the past couple of days, I've had a sharp, singular point of pain in my throat. Rather than ask any of my M.D. friends, my brother in med school, or, hey, go see a G.P., I decided that I could resolve my swallowing glass issues by Googling. The second search result led me to something called Yahoo! Answers, where apparently you can ask questions and people with absolutely no experience or expertise in the subject matter can contribute their gut reactions and heartfelt feelings. I didn't even need to ask the question myself; someone else had asked it for me about a year ago:

Question: Think I've swallowed tiny chip from glass. Do I need to worry?

I'll summarize the answers: No less than 15 random people chiming in with various versions of "don't worry, you'll poop it out," a few of the "OH MY GOD MY UNCLE DIED FROM INTERNAL BLEEDING, HE DIDN'T SWALLOW GLASS ACTUALLY IT WAS AN AX YOU HAVE TO GO TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM NOOOOOOWWWWW!!" type, and then one person who says, "a small chip? not a shard? dont [sic] worry about it, if you have no pain or tenderness in your throat then it'll be fine in your tummy, and come out naturally tomorrow..."

Uh. Well it WAS a shard, and what if I DO have pain in my throat? And we don't have those German-style toilets with the inspecting platform, so I have NO idea what does or doesn't come out on any given day. On to search result #3. It actually turns out to be a shady site, which my antivirus software says is trying to launch a trojan horse, so I won't include the link. But I love the related search list:

- i have a very small shard of glass in my finger, do u think it will work its way out
- When they say to eat 6 small meals a day what is considered a small meal?
- I swallowed gum?
- Swallowed Plastic?
- about a desecant swallowed?
- I swallowed mothwash. Do I need to worry?
- How wil you know if you swallowed a bone?
- I accidentally swallowed a quarter, will I be OK?

and my favorite:
- I hit myself in the head kind of hard, will I be OK?

Bizarro Beijing

About a year from now, when Beijing's air quality index is back in the 300's and I am having (as one is bound to have now and then) a Bad China Day, I know my lousy memory will kick in and I'll think that these were the two best weeks I've ever had in Beijing. It can't be denied: it's a cleaner, kinder, politer city than it was just a month and a half ago, and who knows how long it will last after the last Olympic tourists board their flight home?

Yeah, it was smoggy to begin with; but since the sky opened up and dumped out sheets of rain on Thursday, even the weather is now idyllic-- the sky is blue and the sun is shining, but with a perfect slight breeze to keep it cool. Saturday morning, it was pleasant enough to go for a run OUTSIDE. Which I did. I didn't step in any dog or kid poo, nor slip on a phlegmy loogie (which really did happen the last time I went for a run outside). There were no staring dusty construction workers, squatting at any of the five job sites I pass on my route, smoking their cigarettes and marveling at the wanton waste of energy bouncing by their very eyes. Later that day, walking with Bella, a car actually STOPPED and waved us across at a crosswalk. That absolutely NEVER happens. Even Bella, who always yells "STOP, CAR!!! Bella CROSSING the ROAD!!!" at the top of her lungs whenever we cross a street, was amazed. Oh, and this one I'll be telling the grandkids about when I'm 70: earlier in the week, I was hailing a cab, which ended up stopping in front of someone else, but the guy LET ME HAVE THE TAXI since I had been waiting longer. I am telling you, this is not "normal" Beijing.

I am probably walking around with a puzzled look on my face, which has undoubtedly been a good thing, since tourists approaching to ask how to get to the Silk Market assume that I must be a lost tourist too. Part of me is mildly bothered by the false impressions that tourists and athletes will have of Beijing - both on the good side and the bad. Though cleaner and less chaotic, this Olympic version of Beijing is, well, kind of scary. Like, in a martial law kind of way. Heading out to the Opening Ceremony parties last week, I had chills up my spine when driving around the eerily empty streets, where there were police and military at every traffic light, highway exit, bus stop, and pedestrian overpass. And, as Bella would put it, where are all the peoples? Apparently they have been asked by the authorities to stay home for the duration- Mik and I have been wondering exactly how that particular announcement/request/command was worded.

Despite having lived here for four years, I don't think I have ever thought of Beijing as "my" city until these two weeks. Having railed for so long about people spitting in the streets and small children doing their business in the bushes, I find myself unable to parse my irrational nostalgia for the non-Olympics Beijing, where there was at least a perversely soothing predictability: people aren't either rude or polite, they're just divided into people you know (who will be unfailingly kind and polite) and people you don't (who just won't bother). Now, with the entire city on a mandated mission to "warmly welcome foreign guests," it's all been turned topsy-turvy.

And it's not just the day-to-day stuff. Since the games have started, I've almost been embarrassed to think of my pre-Olympic rants (thankfully all done with sympathetic friends at bars, and none of them online or in print) about non-human-rights-improving, freedom-of-the-press-hating, minority-culture-destroying China. And the IOC who allowed themselves to be taken in by a series of not-quite-really-but-the-rest-of-the-world-thought-they-were promises. Perhaps they've been shooting some kind of happy gas into the air along with those silver iodide rainmaking rockets, but I even find myself feeling much more charitable on the "serious issues" these days: at least they're making progress.

When Mik and I are asked if we like living in Beijing, particularly by people we want to be honest to, we're usually unable to give an unqualified answer. We tend to go in cycles: weeks when all we can think of is how the hell do we get out of here, followed by a period of time when we swear to improve our putonghua, sign up for traditional ink painting lessons and actually GO to a mixer organized by the Swedish chamber of commerce. Then the smog will roll in, Mik'll get into a fight with a cabdriver, Bella will pick up her 3rd stomach bug of the month, and we'll start all over again.

I can't predict where these two weeks will wash within that spectrum - I think it will end up being unchartable on so many levels that we'll think of it as a blip, an outlier - 16 days of an alternate reality, when Beijing was Beijing, but still not Beijing, for a family who loves it when we're not hating it, and somehow manages to enjoy every minute here, on days when we're not longing for the fresh air, poop-less sidewalks, and green green grass of home.

Painting on paper is for squares

Olympics Tip of the Day

Tip #2: If you are half-naked and wearing body paint, never agree to be interviewed by a camera crew whose language you don't speak. They're probably trying to make fun of you. And it will be easy.

Noonoo

Bella and her noodles at Din Tai Fung. Mmmm.

Procrastination

I have 5 (yep, count 'em, FIVE) articles to write about various internet trends in Asia, so OF COURSE I decided to make a dress for Bella. Unfortunately, Bella can't always be persuaded to wear or even try on any of the things I make for her. I've found that adding pockets, flowers, or making a matching outfit for one of her "guys" (that's what she calls her posse of stuffed animals and little plastic barnyard animals) usually helps convince her that it might not be the end of the world to put it on.

I already spent all morning making and attaching the stupid little flowers, but if measuring and sketching out a pattern for a dress for a stuffed giraffe doesn't knock me into my senses and make me realize that IT'S TIME TO GET BACK TO WORK, I don't know what will.

Hanging with the Neighbor Boys

So THIS is what she's doing out in the playground when I'm not around! AARGH! I guess it could be worse... she could be riding around with them on little toy jetskis. Or mini Hummers. It could be worse.

Olympics Tip of the Day

EAT BEFORE YOU LEAVE HOME.

Mik is notoriously useless (sorry, babe) when his blood sugar is low, and he hadn't eaten much throughout the day, so was in imminent danger of walking through a plate glass window. We had read about, and were counting on, the multitude of food options supposedly on offer in the Olympic park. By the time we were in the security line, where only two queues were open and they were processing about 2 people an hour, Mik had gnawed through his left arm and was about to get started on the meaty Australians ahead of him in line.

Once we were in, we made a beeline for one of the snack bars, where we debated extensively on whether to get hotdogs or "sandwiches" (to me, always a crapshoot), only to find that neither was actually available. Which is why we ended up eating these mysterious and thoroughly REVOLTING packaged sausages (4 rmb each, that should have been a clue), along with another 30 kuai worth of junk food. At least it was cheap? The most appetizing of the bunch was actually the dry packaged ramen noodles that we just ate like granola bars (Mei you hot water, sorry!).

Luckily, there was Beer. Carlsberg, Yanjing, AND Qingdao. Three choices. AND we were allowed to bring it into the stands, despite the warnings about "designated alcoholic zones" on the official Beijing Olympics website. Perverse foresight on their part, I suppose-- if you're offering three kinds of cheap beer and no food, you'd better have a designated zone for what you end up with.

Made in China from Imported Parts

I've been wanting to make a shirt like this for Bella ever since she was born. Now that the Olympics are here, we discovered that she doesn't have any Finland OR Philippines gear to wear around town (actually, she does have a blue SUOMI sweatshirt; out of the question in this heat). Amazing what kind of goofy schwag you can put together just with Power Point (I don't even have photoshop) and some transfer paper.

The other shirt I've always wanted to make for her is one that says, "It's OK... I'm jetlagged!" That one is for the occasions when we've just arrived in the U.S. from China and I have Gabriela in a Northern Virginia restaurant at 9:30 pm and can feel the indignation coming from other toddlers' moms whose offspring have been in bed since 6:30. Of course, that shirt would be completely unnecessary when coming back to Beijing, where four-year-olds consistently stay out in bars later than I do.

We Got Spirit, Yes We Do!

For lack of any natural upwelling of excitement for the Games in our household, I did a little shopping yesterday and BOUGHT us some goshdarn Olympic spirit. Bella loooves her Fuwa glasses (I think she's supposed to be the one called "Jing Jing"; I don't know what her super power is) and would wear them all day if she could, but the glasses are quite cheap (in construction, not in price) and are constantly flopping off her face.

Maybe we'd be in better shape if I had started teaching her the official Olympic cheer a few weeks ago, but it may be too late for that, considering how much trouble I'm having getting her to say the far simpler phrase "I want to go potty" in ANY language.

The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow

Guess it doesn't need pointing out that it's THE DAY BEFORE THE START OF THE OLYMPICS.

"Arf?" #2

At Athena restaurant in Sanlitun today.

How It Begins

Here, Bella is writhing and absolutely WEEPING in frustration because her fancy glittery shiny shoes are now two sizes too small. No way could she be coerced into choosing another pair to wear. Amazingly, she eventually managed to wedge her feet into these and wore them out to the playground. I scolded her mildly about her vanity, and then headed out myself and walked four long Beijing blocks in heels. In the rain. This, despite the fact that as a former NYC commuter, I keep a pair of flip flops in my enormous purse all summer long. Who would've thought that the madness of girls and their shoes would begin at age two?

A Picture that Explains Bella's Relationship with Noodles

Scary Things Happen When Mama's Bored

Embroidered and embellished purple toddler slippers, made of knitted and felted wool, with non-slip suede soles. Still don't know if they fit, as the uncooperative Bella refuses to put wool slippers on when it is 91 degrees outside.

No Mo' Boobas

We were at Beihai Park on Sunday, where Gabriela showed a marked aversion (as in, grabbing my hand/hair/clothing and throwing all her weight in the opposite direction) to entering any of the temples or pagodas.

"NO WANT BOOBA!" she would scream.

We were a tad confused, since she hasn't been breastfed in years, and no one was running around naked as far as we could tell, until we realized that she meant "Buddha" and that many of the statues in the temples would be pretty darn frightening to a 2-year-old. She didn't like the statue of the turtle with the lion head and fangs, either.

Spotted in Beijing: Hybrid Taxis

Quick pic of our ride to Sanlitun this weekend... shifu was very proud to say that it was one of only 50 hybrid taxis in Beijing (and here we were, wasting it on a 11-kuai cab ride from Jiali Zhongxin to Sanlitunr jiubajie...).

That's 50 hybrids out of 60,000+ total taxis in Beijing, according to the The UN's Beijing Olympics 2008 environmental review. No wonder this was only the second one I had ever seen in Beijing. I'm convinced they spend most of their time in the taxi ranks at the St. Regis, the Ritz-Carlton, etc. This one must've been slumming as we caught it at the Grand Millenium.

Today's "Arf?"

In the cushy restrooms at Shin Kong Place...

Today's Beijing Adventure: The Olympic Venues

Saturday morning, with the sun shining (and the temperature starting to climb), we decide to go have a look-see around the Olympic Park. Actually it was a toss-up between that and a phatty phat hotel brunch, and believe it or not we opted for the Olympic park adventure.

Mik had been perusing a map of the area, and Forest Park, the "green lung" that stretches out north of the Water Cube and Bird's Nest, looked like an appealing Saturday morning destination.

We took the brand-spanking new #10 line up to Beitucheng (the transfer station for the #8 "Olympic" line), where after discussion with no less than 5 blue-shirted English-speaking Olympic volunteers, we were told that we couldn't take the #8 line without a pass. Actually, that's an extremely abridged version of the conversation that took place, which was more like:

Volunteer #1: Hellogoodmorning! May I see your pass?
Mik: We don't have a pass.
Volunteer #1: Sorry, you need a pass to ride Line #8.
Mik: Well, we just want to go to the Forest Park.
Volunteer #1 (whispering to Volunteer #2, in Chinese): Can they go to the park?
Volunteer #3 (swooping in out of nowhere, still in Chinese): No, no, no, no, not possible.
Volunteer #4 (in English, trying to be helpful): You could take a bus.
Mik: Oh, great - where does the bus leave from?
Volunteer #4: Uh... (pointing and spinning around at the same time, obviously not sure of where the bus leaves from)
Mik (a little suspicious): So we can take the bus all the way to the park, right?
Volunteer #5: Oh no, it's not possible to go to the park today. But you can take the bus.

Hm. We started walking. Later we spotted an enormous sign for the "Olympic Help Line," which we called, as an experiment, to see if they could provide an answer to our question.

Help Line: Olympic Help Line, howcanIhelpyou?
Mik: Hello. Can you tell me the best way to go to Forest Park?
Help Line (a real person, not a recording): We have no information about that.
Mik: Well, it's the park near the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube. Can we enter the park today?
Help Line: We have no information on that.

Uuuuuh. Olympic tourists, good luck to ya!

More pictures here.