here we arrrr

Welcome to our new Chinese city... 

Beijing with its complex dumplings and classic ducks and giant pancakes folded into sandwich bags. With its pirate-pronounced Mandarin all heavy with R's and weather bursting with the sun and the wind.

There is still bad air. So bad that it keeps us inside until we want to knock down the walls and run for the hills. (Except that we’ve heard the air is bad there too.)

On the good days we go out and seek places that are historic or delicious or normal or not. We see and eat and ramble our way. We look for a Beijing life.

The other days – the inside days – are not so different from the inside days where we lived before. Except that here there's more sunlight sneaking onto the walls.

So in Beijing when we climb the walls, they will be bright.

We're already getting to know our new home.

summer home

We lived here when we were young like our son. When our small soft feet followed our mothers and fathers. When our grandmas and grandpas were all still alive, living where they always lived.

When we were small everything about this place seemed so big and huge. But then we grew and grew until our eyes were so high that we could see beyond where we were.  

And then we decided to make that big beyond our own backyard.

So it will be hard for our son to imagine a life in one place. He wakes in new cities and speaks new languages and his body already knows that the world is large. His life will move and bloom in place after place.

But when there is time we will all come back.

And when we're here we'll tell him that this is the home that doesn’t change. That this is the place where we drive past old houses and dig up our memories and hug the people we love. We’ll hold hands and run in the grass and breathe in the big blue sky.

Because no matter where we go, there's one small place in this world that's ours.

Home.

done eating 吃完了

Plates emptied and napkins wadded – and the last photo I took in Chengdu. On to the next meal...