Repatriation

We are back in the good old US. The weather has been great with blue skies and fluffy clouds and nice humidity levels (low). I took one spin on the bike with EF and did ok. I did pick up a summer cold rather quick after returning. BF is continuing her calligraphy at the home. We are back with family which is really nice. We are back to celebrate our parents 50th wedding anniversaries>>>

I am wishing all our friends in Beijing all the best and stay in touch. We really hope the Olympics are a great success for China. I am confident they will put on a great show.

What a wonderful time we had in Beijing. Clearly very memorable event in our lives that we are sure has changed us in one way or another.

This concludes the Life In Beijing blog. It has been a wonderful chronicled adventure to be cherished for ever. Thanks for reading............

July 4th in Beijing

July 4th was just another work day in Beijing. BF and I did go to Tim's Texas BBQ for a good old American dinner and then off for a foot massage. Trying to get a taxi was quite an event since it was raining so hard. We had a hard time getting back to the apartment with street flooding near our apartment.

Tokyo

We went to Tokyo for a long weekend with two couples from our apartment building. We had the good fortune of going with a couple who had lived in Tokyo for 10 months as Canadian Expats prior to moving to Beijing. We even got to travel out of the new Terminal 3 airport building from Beijing (out trips to the US still leave from the old terminal 2).

We left on a Thursday night and got in too late for the Express Bus or trains into Tokyo. Fortunately, Air China had provided buses to everyone free of charge to the center of Tokyo. The ride was over an hour. We then took taxis to our hotel in Roppongi area, near the US Embassy. Below is a view from our hotel which had a couple of elevated highways right outside (a little noisy).

This is a street scene in the Roppongi area which is known for catering to the foreign devils (expats). At night we had to walk by a couple of busy street corner where men would solicit you to visit gentlemen clubs. They did not care that we were with our spouses.

We did a lot of shopping, eating, walking, riding subway and taxis throughout the weekend. The meals were spectacular and just seeing the city was a treat. It was so different than Beijing (clean, people queued in lines, little car horn blowing, good air quality, no spitting, people spoke quietly, little talking on cell phones (lots of text messaging going on)

We happened to walk by this corporate sign. This will be a collector item some day since the branding for J.P. Morgan will be changing this summer back to the old branding and losing the octagon.

We ate at Gordon Ramsay's Restaurant (Hell's Kitchen for you Reality TV watchers).

The ladies were given a complimentary sparkling wine for their meal.

Amazingly Krispy Kreme had a 45 minute queue the first day we went by it. The last day which was very rainy the queue was a manageable 15 minutes.

We did have a couple of good Japanese meals as well.....

BF and Calligraphy

I want to share with you something that I am doing that is so very interesting to me (BF).

Today was my 4th calligraphy class. I take class with a girlfriend of mine. Our classroom is located in the park that houses the ancestral temple. It is at the south east corner of the Forbidden City (Imperial Palace). The school is for those sitting for entrance exams into Art School at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctorate levels. I have a card with the schools name on it and my own name Fei Pu Lan that lets me into the east side of the Palace grounds. It is beautiful and our door faces a rock mountain that has stairs to climb up high to see. How cool is that? Way cool.

We attend class once or twice a week and are learning the most recognised style of calligraphy, the Cai style. We copy the work of a master from a book. The book is of rubbings taken off steles. That is how work is immortalized.

Our teacher is a famous calligrapher, painter, and carver in his own right. He tells us that to be a good painter we must have the firm grounding of well done calligraphy. From this our own style will emerge and then we can move onto painting (or, writing a picture).
This is one of his works of calligraphy. He likened it to being in the perfect state of mind to create and this is the work that resulted. He could not duplicated the emotion and feeling of this work. He dips his brush only once in a while, unlike us, who want perfect characters.

He is the son of an artistic family. His mother created beautiful embroidery. She embroidered with silk on silk. She created birds with eyes that looked alive and beaks that looked as though in song. His father was a very skilled caligrapher.

He began practicing calligraphy in school at the age of 6. By the age of 10 he was a very popular choice with the people in his village to paint the new year greetings the are hung by the front door.

To be considered a master painter, one must write the picture, create a poem and have beautiful calligraphy to apply it to the painting, and to create and carve your own chop (the red stamp).

Our teacher was interested in learning how to carve chops when he was young. The stone is expensive so he would fashion a block suitable for carving from clay to practice on. He went on to study this form of art at university. He has won many awards for his chops. His chops are small works of art.

Here is a sample of my work. Our teacher is a very simple and humble man. He will circle the characters that are good and paint over the incorrect strokes.

I think his technique for teaching us is to start us on this style of writing and sit back and see what we do with it. He waits for questions from us.

We spend 4 hours each class painting. We stand to practice the calligraphy. We will be studying this same style painted by the same master when he was much older and more mature. We also hope to learn one other style.

I hope to supplement my painting with understanding of what the character means and how it fits into the poems we are copying. I understand from my friend that this is not the traditional way that she learned. This is a much nicer way. I will take her word for it. Our teacher has work displayed in this 300 page book. He graciously offered to sign a book to each of us. The inscription is read from right to left and top to bottom. The first line says to student Fei Pu Lan and some sort of courtesy. The second line is the date. The third line is the name of the school we attend. The last line is two characters and is our teachers name.

He has incorporated 5 chops onto the dedication. Two are his last name. One is an art piece. One is the town he is from and the last is his first name. They are really interesting.This is a piece that my teacher is helping me to learn. These four characters together mean family and all of the best things that family life brings. This is his writing. My task is to copy it, and learn it.

I am off to practice my calligraphy for today. I am asked to practice one to two hours a day. I like to do it when it is quiet.

Nice Visit with #3

We had a very nice visit with AF and her Scottish boyfriend. BF and AF played the tour guides for Stephen. I know he really enjoyed the whole experience and will have some wonderful memories to last a lifetime.

It was so nice to have AF back here. The time went by very quickly and we are suddenly empty-nesters again. Here are some sample photos from the visit:

Birthday in China

BF surprised me with my last birthday dinner in PRC with some great friends at our favorite restaurant. The two couples are long-term expats in Beijing from the US and have been such a great help and friends to us here.

After dinner we walked to a night club which was a very pleasant surprise. It turned out to be a Jazz club with a very nice band from Detroit. We even ran into a waiter that we knew from our Friday night Beligian restaurant. He has left that restaurnat to work at the this new dinner and Jazz club.

First Snow in Beijing

On Monday, December 10th we received our first snow fall. It has been cold enough to snow here but Beijing just does not get much precipitation.

Wedding Anniversary

This year was our 26th wedding anniversary with no big celebration. We went to Morel's Belgium Restaurant in Beijing. We are looking forward to celebrating our anniversary next year in our usual tradition of Thanksgiving in Corning, NY and dinner at Pierce's 1894. Maybe we will visit Pierce's at Christmas time in 3-4 weeks.

http://www.pierces1894restaurant.com/

US Trip in November

BF went to the US to be with MF for his knee surgery. He is getting to be very experienced with joint surgeries (just had shoulder surgery last Christmas). He is going to a Baltimore doctor and hospital as opposed to Philadelphia this year (proximity to school). Surgery during the Christmas break was out this year as he needs to attend class in South America to satisfy his graduation requirements during the Winter break. His on November 8th went well according to his surgeon. Now he needs to undergo physical therapy.

I love the "yes" handwriting on the left knee and the "no" handwriting on the right knee. Better safe than sorry.
While in the US, BF had an opportunity to spend time with EF and celebrate her 20th birthday. Happy birthday E. (although, I know you do not read this blog)! ! !

Elevator Numerology

In the US it is not unusual to see a floor 13 missing from a high-rise building. In China it is not unusual to see floor number 4 or 14 missing. At our office in Beijing we are on the 20th floor of what is really a 17-floor building. We are missing Floors 4, 13, and 14 (I guess they want to accommodate both western and eastern idiosyncrasies with numbers).

Here is a little explanation on Chinese number 4 and 14:
The number 4 is seen as bad luck especially in dialects where its pronunciation is homonymic to the word "death" (死). In fact, many apartments in China do not have a 4th floor due to the substantially lower property values.

Number 14 is considered to be one of the unluckiest numbers in Chinese culture. Although 14 is usually said as "shi si," which sounds like "ten die", it can also be said as "yi si" or "yao si", literally "one four". Thus, 14 can also be said as "yao si," literally "one four," but it also means "want to die".

Wonderful Two Weeks

One of BF's closest friends was able to make her first visit out of the US to spend some time with us in Beijing. We had a wonderful time sharing our life in Beijing with her. The two weeks went by very quickly. BF was able to share all of her experiences in Beijing and some new ones as well. One of the more exciting things the fearless twosome did was to stay overnight and visit with 5 local Chinese families in a small rural village outside of Beijing.

Here is a sampling of some of the fun pictures and experiences: