Update:

We’ve taken care of the problem.

I do love cheese, though, and so does P.  In fact, her very first word wasn’t “mama” or “dada” – it was “cheese.”  Our cheese-loving ways make living in China somewhat frustrating.  Fortunately, I’ve managed to find American cheese slices, and although my American-dwelling self abhors the stuff, my Chinese-dwelling alter ego looks at it and sees nothing but cellophane-wrapped, processed slices of love.   Here’s what we had for dinner last night.

If you think it’s impossible to wok up a mighty fine grilled cheese sandwich, you’re wrong.  P ate inhaled two and cried this morning when I told her she’d have to wait until dinner tonight for another one.

I have to wonder if there’s a Chinese mother living in the U.S. who is, at this very moment, writing about her newfound ability to satify her child by preparing donkey cartilage in a FryDaddy.  I so hope there is.

There were streets and streets outside the Lama Temple selling nothing but incense.

The next few shots are all from inside the temple grounds.

What’s the deal with the banana offering below?

I’m so glad I saw the below sign in time – I was just about to torch my camera.  Whew!

This sign was at the ticket counter at the Temple of Confucius.  I ask you – how does one know if one is a ranker?  Are we rankers?  Could we have gotten in free?

The next few shots were taken as we were leaving the Temple of Confucius.

We saw this tiny, pickaxe wielding woman on our way to Beihai Park.

Somehow, the beach umbrella in primary colors makes this guard seem a little less imposing.  Don’t ya think?

No idea.

The rest of the shots are all from Beihai Park.

These possible rankers had a good day.

It amazes me how much there is to see and do just in our immediate area.  Last week, Chris and I biked over to the Old Summer Palace, which is adjacent to Tsinghua University.  Here are some shots.

The gift shop had all the stuff you’d expect to find at a historically important Chinese tourist destination.  You know, stuff like joint-smoking Rastafarian dolls.

And, of course, a white girl doll with blond hair, who speaks Chinese.  I’d love to know what she says.  I would so buy her if I learned she said things like, “No stomach lining, please,” or “…but, that’s a hole in the ground.  I asked for the toilet.”

Dear Professor,

Today is a special day for our Chinese People. We call it Tomb-sweeping Day. During this day, we would go out for “Spring Country Walk” to get close to the nature and feel the coming of spring. Also, we will take this day to go to the tombs of our ancestor, our relatives and the martyrs for the country, to show our memorize and worship for them so that they would not feel lonely.

So just go out and enjoy the sunshine!

Yours,

Kid (Kid is the English name he chose for himself, by the way.)

We heeded Kid’s advice and took P out for a bike ride around the Tsinghua campus Saturday morning.  Here are some shots from our ride.

Below is a shot of P and Chris in front of a statue of Confucius.  When P first saw it, she said, “Look!  It’s a Chinese statue of the greatest Chinese thing ever.”

Directly in front of the statue was a group of women singing together.  We met an elderly man (a retired Tsinghua administrator), who happened to speak English and who translated the lyrics for us.  Song after song had similar lyrics that all went something like this, “Oh, Chairman Mao, how great you are.  Look, the sun rises in the East.  This is because of you, Chairman Mao!” 

The irony of the Mao-loving singers standing beneath the looming Confucius statue wasn’t lost on me.

P, as always, got a lot of attention.  Lately, the attention makes her really mad, but she tolerated these women and even allowed them to take her photo a couple of million times.  She didn’t even take a swing at them when they said, “Hello, little American baby,” over and over.

As you can see, spring has almost sprung here.

These dancers clearly got Kid’s email, too.

So did this guy.

So did these guys, who spent the morning taking it easy under a statue of Wu Han.

Even though we didn’t get a chance to “memorize and worship” our ancestors, relatives, and martyrs, I’d say it was a well-spent Tomb-Sweeping Day.

Here’s the outside of our apartment building.  You’ve got to love 1960’s Soviet style.  Oh, what character – joke.

Our “garage.”

I covet this ride.  It’s a Chinese minivan.

Here’s our entrance.

We’re on the fourth floor – no elevator.  We’re going to have buns of steel by July.

Here are a few shots of the living room.

There’s a porch off the living room.  Ayi hangs out there a lot, and it’s where we hang our clothes to dry.

Here’s P’s room.  She loves it.

Here are some shots of the master bedroom.  P decorated it herself.  Can you tell?  Note the sleeping Wee P in the last one.

Here’s the dining room area.

The fridge.

The kitchen.

Finally, here’s the view from the kitchen window.  I spend my evenings standing in the window, shoving food in my mouth, and spying on the people who live in the next building.  Note to self:  Don’t shower at night.

They are among the kindest, most generous people I’ve ever known.  The chicken who once walked on those claws would have likely had other thoughts…

P is quite a fan of their kid, too.

Here’s to new friends and a new lease on sanity!

I’m in P’s bedroom on the computer.  I just heard Ayi in another room tear a piece of paper out from my notebook. She’s scribbling something. I know what this means. I’m going to be doing some decoding in a minute or two.

If you’ve ever watched old World War II movies, you are aware of those scenes that always pop up now and again of the American guy or the Nazi guy sitting here in a small darkened room with headphones on in front of some obsolete looking electronic equipment. Suddenly, in comes another guy with the all-important slip of paper. He says “Read this!!” or “This just in!!” Quickly, the guy at the table starts trying to hurriedly figure out what all the weird symbols or pictures on the piece of paper mean. Right – it’s a newly intercepted enemy message and it’s his job to figure out what it all means.

I’m the guy with the headphones on, and P’s room is the darkened decoding room. Only in my situation, there’s no enemy, just an Ayi (the Chinese nanny who watches Paige and does housecleaning here 6 days a week). She speaks no English at all (though she is learning some, like “okay!” and “lunch!” and “bye bye!”). Most of the time, we interact with Ayi through hand signals, miming, Pictionary-like communication, or any variety of linguistic charades. Basically, whatever works at the time is what we do. Here’s Ayi:

Sometimes the communications are complicated, and Ayi needs to get a point across that she thinks is important. So she writes out a long string of words in Pinyin (that’s the letter-like version of Mandarin) and then she shows it to me and says verbally what it says (which to me always says the same thing: “This just in!!” or “Read this!!”). Now my job begins. First, I have to take each word in Pinyin and use my Pinyin-Chinese Character translator on my computer to locate the Chinese character (the picture-looking symbol) for the pinyin term. Then I take the Chinese character and I pop it into a different computer translator that goes from Chinese Characters to English.

This takes time, and it’s pretty tedious. Finally, at the end, I wind up with my word-by-word translation of Ayi’s message. At that point I have to then do some further translation to figure out what the sentence was meant to say (there are always words that have contextual meaning, and that gets lost in word-by-word translations). Sometimes I get it, sometimes I have no idea, sometimes I get a part of the meaning.

I remember one time I spent an inordinate amount of time translating a particular string of pinyin, thinking that there was a problem and that I urgently needed to figure out what Ayi’s desperate message was before it was too late. By the time I was nearly finished, I had it figured out: Ayi said that I needed to buy Comet (the Chinese version) so that she could clean the sink properly. I felt pretty stupid doing all that rushing. Other times, though, the messages are cute. One said “The baby is very good, she sleeps well today!”

Of course, it would save a lot of time if we just dedicated all this code-cracking time to learning Chinese (both of us are getting one-on-one tutors soon). Speaking of which, today I uttered my first full sentence to Ayi and she actually understood what I meant. I said (with all my tones forcefully enunciated): “Ne yao chi wufan ma?” (which means, no doubt badly, “do you want to go to lunch?”) and she said “yes!” and went out to do so. When she left the apartment I strode around like a peacock proud of my colorful plumage. No need for translations now! Ha Ha!

Oh jeez. She’s coming — here’s comes that sheet of paper now. And it looks like a long message. I better get cracking.

We have so much to report, but we’re off to buy bikes now.  Expect more soon.  Don’t worry.  All posts from this point on will be typed at an actual desk.  Good thing germs aren’t transmitted electronically…