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.

six things we learned at beijing international airport

Spending time on the tarmac

Dinner on the tarmac is not a good sign
You’re in trouble if the food and beverage carts rumble down the aisle before your plane takes off. Those little trays of soggy food are saying, “Don’t be angry with us but your plane isn’t leaving anytime soon; also, can we agree that your consumption of this yummy meal is like promising not to go stir crazy while we wait?”

You cannot have fries with that
An airport just isn’t the same after three runways worth of airplanes have been turned back because of “heavy storms.” Once the planes had disgorged their angry passengers, those passengers unplugged every check-in kiosk and used the outlets to recharge their cellphones and laptops. They banded together late into the night to shout indecipherable demands at airline staff. And they overran McDonalds and bought every last morsel of food that place had to offer. Once the crowds blew through the only thing left for a latecomer was a Coke… and there were no fries with that.

Beijing hotels don’t like dogs
But people love them. Strangers will take the elevator to come and meet your dog because they saw him from upstairs. Children will make him origami temples out of slivers of white paper. And fellow pet-owners will show you photos of their own pets which are safe at home. But while overnighting in Beijing with a dog is great for learning dog-related Chinese vocab, it’s not so great for getting a hotel room. Why? Because most Beijing hotels don’t take dogs. So even though a day of traveling across the globe has left you with a singular desire for a shower, you will instead spend the night in the airport practicing how to say, “Since you like my dog so much, do you think I could use your cell phone?”

You can sleep on anything
Ok, maybe you can’t but the Chinese travelers we saw could sleep anywhere. When the chairs and sofas were all taken, the floor was the obvious place to go next. But after that? Try the conveyer belts that trundle your checked bags away from the counter and towards the airplane. And those big plastic tubs they use for backpacks and odd-sized luggage? Put your kids in them or flip a few over to make a raised sleeping platform. But the real winners in the sleep Olympics were the older guys who’d managed to commandeer a small fleet of golf carts as their own personal dormitory. While the carts recharged in a corner, each guy got comfy on his own row of plush seats. Fortunately for them, this was out of view of the folks curled up in oversized Tupperware.

You shouldn’t cut in line
(But if you do, we’ll help you first)
When the airport is undergoing a period of intense turmoil there are two ways to receive assistance from staff. The most popular is to identify a group of people that is already waiting and shimmy your way up in front of the group. The alternative – deciding who is furthest back in the group and standing behind them – didn't seem very popular.

When we got to the check-in counter for “Fly To Chengdu Attempt #2” it was 4:30 a.m. and things were already a mess. The only option we had was to sidle up to a thick group of already-waiting travelers and see what happened. What happened was that we ended up in front of an English speaker who promptly told Shi-Wen (aka Stefano) that cutting in line wasn’t cool.

Shi-Wen knows cutting in line isn’t cool but he also knows that a prerequisite to cutting in line is that there is actually a line. Was there a line that morning? That’s debatable. Was it a good idea to talk to this guy about how frustrating the whole situation is to a newcomer? Definitely.

Not only did this guy appreciate our frustration, but he also helped make sure that when he got to the front of the line we were right there with him. When it was all said and done, with his assistance we had either cut in front of a great many people or waited in line local style. Success.

Strangers will let you use their cellphones
First we borrowed a cellphone to make a call from the tarmac after we’d been waiting there for over two hours. After we’d gotten off of that plane (still in Beijing) we used someone else’s phone to say we would not be making it to Chengdu that night. Then, after our night in the airport, we borrowed yet another phone to announce that we were on a new flight and finally! on our way to Chengdu. But after we hung up, there was an announcement saying the plane had a problem and we all had to get off. At that point we decided maybe it’d be better if we just stopped calling.

Flight attendants on airplanes = canaries in coalmines
After removing ourselves from Flight #2 we sat on a bus waiting for news. Zero announcements were made but the bus eventually dropped us right back where we’d started – in front of the same plane as before. Only now, the fire truck and the fire hoses from earlier were gone. Did I neglect to mention the fire truck and the fire hoses from earlier? My bad. What about the smell of jet fuel and the big puddle on the tarmac? Well those were gone too. However, if these changes weren’t enough to make you want to hop right back on the airplane and cross your fingers for Chengdu, you could always be like me and ask a flight attendant if it was safe to be getting back on the same plane. Her answer came with a big smile and oodles of enthusiasm, “We’re here, so don’t worry!” That’s great… Just promise you’re not planning to feed us right away.

eating in beijing

There's something you should know about China.

It's probably going to sound obvious but I consider the following piece of information to be incredibly important.

Chinese food is better in China.

When I say Chinese food is better in China, I don't mean it in that way that Thai food is better in Thailand. Of course Thai food is better in Thailand, but I've also had some respectable Thai food from a storefront restaurant in my old Chicago neighborhod.

But the food we feasted on in Beijing? Not a single meal failed to surprise us in the best ways. We had plates that were light and fresh. Nuanced and complex. Most were steaming, all were delicately seasoned, and none left us starving an hour later. I've never tasted anything like it from a white take-out container.

Our Thanksgiving meal consisted of Peking duck with its luxurious crisped skin, savory sauces, thinly sliced vegetables, coarse sugar that we'd all assumed was salt, and thin pancakes to hold it all gently together. I assure you that no one missed the turkey.



Each morning we would walk around the corner from our hotel and visit a small restaurant run by two young sisters. Each time we came in, the sister with the crimped hair would be snoozing at one of the tables, her head cradled in the crook of her own arm. The other sister would be standing directly under the TV that hung in the corner, staring at whatever drama was playing that morning.

The food that the two sisters would alternately bring to our table was homey and filling. The dumplings were made in a small nook of space near the cashier which was closed in by a wall and the windows, and when the chef finished crafting his savory and wonderful packages of vegetables, or fish, or pork... he would have to leave that space and then leave the restaurant.

He would step out of the front door, turn left, and then walk down the sidewalk past the restaurant's windows. Presumably he would enter a separate door that led to the kitchen. Luckily he could use a small sliding window joining the kitchen and the restaurant to deliver any soup we had ordered. He would pass the bowl through to one of the sisters, its steam leaving a trail.



One afternoon we shared a never-ending lunch best compared to watching a clown car unload. The energetic game of charades we'd played with the waitress to place our order had gone well enough and soon after she left, food started to appear.

And then more food showed up. And then a little more. No one in our party was sure it would ever stop and on several occasions when we thought that it had stopped, we were corrected by the appearance of yet another delicious entrée landing on our table.



We had no real complaints because the food was varied, delicious and dirt cheap. Vegetables were combined with complex sauces but remained light and fresh. Other dishes had a caramelized richness that added flavor but managed not to weigh down the ingredients. There were fish dumplings with coriander, and other dumplings fluffy with the combination of egg and tomato.

We also wandered down a hutong for our second taste of peking duck. The duck was not as delicate as it had been in our first meal but the surroundings were as if we'd plunked ourselves down in someone's back room. The tables were mismatched, the ducks were hanging next to my Mom, and the owner was swatting flies throughout the meal.



Lively surroundings are the accompaniments that make good meals great and China is all about the surroundings. There are people yelling, chomping, and chop-sticking. There are teapots, bicycles, and small pitchers filled with vinegar. You sit on different chairs, you eat from different plates, and the food is - no doubt - better for it.

I don't know what I expected from the food in China, but I know what I'll expect from now on.

beijing for beginners

The most compelling sensation that you will experience in Beijing is the knock-down, drag-out fight between China's past and present. With its 5,000 year history, China has existed for an eternity in comparison to the bright-cheeked newborn that is the United States. Yet China is also throwing itself into the present with such vehemence that it's impossible to tell whether China's greatest glories will be those that jump-started recorded history or the advances that the country is so doggedly pursuing today.



For Americans, China is the other side of the world, an "other" that is represented by Lo Mein in little white boxes and "Made in China" tags on most of our consumer goods. China is a country that communicates in a language most Americans don't understand and cannot read, and is known for something like a billion people on bicycles. We close our eyes and see Chairman Mao, or a defiant silhouette in front of a Tian'anmen tank, or the serpentine wall we're told can be seen from space.



The 2008 Olympics, however, offered an education in what China wants us to see. They pulled the billions off of their bicycles, and organized them in perfect rows of perfect moves on the floor of the Bird's Nest. The structure itself was a confident run past tradition and into trend-setting, and gave the country a new calling card. It's no accident that China is now nearly as famous for its modern architectural choices as for its traditional staples of tea and rice.

Despite these visions of a new tomorrow, tradition can still be found in Beijing. There are the tourist sites and there are the tours, but what is in question is how long the sites without paid admission will last.



One of the greatest pleasures of travel is seeing how other people live; walking down small streets in search of real life. The best place to wander in Beijing is down the dusty honeycombed blocks called "hutong," which are unfortunately being cleared for newly-commissioned beauty.



For a visitor, the beauty of Beijing is found as much in the hutongs as anywhere else. These snug streets edged with homes and small businesses and real people are where you can see life being lived. There's the woman repeatedly slamming a large fish on a doorstep before handing it over to her customer for dinner. And the man selling sweet potatoes from an oil drum attached to his bicycle. And kids playing, and TVs glowing in dark corners, and stockpiles of green leafy vegetables behind red wooden doors.



Beijing's hutong are dusty and different and they are disappearing. I don't live in Beijing and I hadn't been there before, but even I could see China's future steamrolling right through its living past. It's tough because while progress can be picturesque, reality is often even more so.