Things on bikes

The Chinese use bicycles for transport of themselves and everything else. A short list of things I have seen being transported on bikes:

Plate glass for large windows
Pipes
Cartons of toilet paper and tissues
Lumber
A sofa
50 Mylar balloons
Plants for sale, as in a florist shop
Food stalls
Flattened cardboard cartons
Styrofoam packing material
Canisters of gasoline

Does Blanca speak Chinese?

Many have asked this question. We didn't know. After all, she didn't speak it to us. She'd imitate us when we tried to speak it to her, and she'd say "Xiexie (thank you)" with a good bit of prompting, but she'll say "thank you" in any language with a good bit of prompting. We asked her teacher, and the teacher said that she didn't speak Chinese. Tonight, however, unprompted, she counted in Chinese to about eight. We clapped and cheered and got very excited, and she did it again a few times. About ten minutes later I asked her, in Yiddish, if she could count in Chinese, and she said yes, and started counting: "Eins, tsvay, drey,..." in Yiddish. She thinks it's Chinese.

It's a long way to travel to get a real-life version of an old joke.

Bright lights, big city

I just spent two days in Shanghai. Big buildings! Amazing architecture! More organized traffic! Westerners! Higher prices! I went to the Shanghai Museum. I saw an amazing acrobatic troupe. I shopped. I had a meeting with my company's China branch. It was all great, and you can read about all of it except for the meeting in any travel guide.

It made me happier than ever that we are in Fuzhou.

When we told people who know China that we were coming to Fuzhou, the reaction was a unanimous: "You don't want to go there." The consensus was that it wasn't an exciting place and there wasn't much to see--expressed in much harsher terms. That's true; it is a generic Chinese city, and that's been perfect for us.

Fuzhou, capital of Fujian province, is about 25 miles from the southwest coast of China, across from Taiwan. It's about one-third surrounded by the Min River and two-thirds by mountains. These natural features give it what character it has and make it more pleasant than it would otherwise be. I can't say that the city itself is beautiful; few Chinese cities are. Even Shanghai, outside the incredible central areas, features the same cement apartment blocks and drab streets. Several of Fuzhou's mountains are in or easily accessible to the city. We climbed one the first week, and while we did not enjoy the climb, the forest scenery was lovely. Of course one doesn't get amazing vistas due to the ubiquitous Chinese pollution. Another mountain is about half an hour's walk from our apartment, and the lush smell of the subtropical vegetation overpowers the city's smells; it's nice just to sit at its base. We've spent some time at a riverside beach and today I took a walk through riverside parks.

There's a miniscule play area outside our building--I can tell my eyes are adjusting to Chinese spaces, because I no longer consider it so tiny--and the smell of honeysuckle is strong and lovely in the early evening. After school and work, kids and parents from our apartment complex gather here to play and talk. They try to talk to me, though I can't say much beyond "She's two," "Thank you," and "American." This perfectly landscaped little area also has a walking path and fishpond. This is in not more than 500 square feet. The play area probably takes up about half the space. The complex is a community and we are a welcome curiosity, even if we can't be part of things due to the language and cultural barriers.

Blanca's and my walk home from nursery school has several landmarks. We smile and wave to the people on the alley where her school is, then to the people on the small street leading to the alley, including the tailor who sets up shop under a tree. The other day we waved and said hello, and I actually understood when a neighbor of his laughed and asked him, "Your friends?" Blanca watches the fish pond outside a nondescript Chinese hotel and wine shop. Then we stop in to say hello to the shopgirls in the clothing stores on the larger street leading home. They rush out to greet and hug Blanca, who loves the full-length mirror in the men's clothing store. Then we stop at a very chic salon with a fishpond indoors, and large stepping stones leading to the salon area. We wave to the money-changing woman, the tea woman, and the fruit stand people, then the doormen, and then we are back to the play area.

Every day I wander around for a few hours; there's rarely anywhere specific to go. I've found tree-lined alleys filled with small shops each selling a single sort of merchandise. One nearest us has a canal running alongside, and old-fashioned three story apartment houses with vegetable gardens running in between. Just looking at that canal calls for a tetanus booster, and those houses have community bathrooms. It's probably some of the worst housing stock in the world, but it's a great adventure for me, if not for the inhabitants. One day I ran across a mustard-yellow Buddhist temple, all painted the same color as two of our living room walls. It was a large, pleasant complex, empty except for the monks and people working there. No tourists come because it's really not tourist-worthy; it's just a nice feature of the neighborhood.

Not only people on the street are thrilled to see us, but Zack's colleagues have been welcoming and kind, hosting banquet after banquet in our honor. Part of this is just the way China is; part is because Westerners are a rarity here. Had we been in Shanghai or Beijing, or even Xiamen, a small pretty coastal city we visited this weekend, we would have been among other Westerners and less of a curiosity. We would have seen far more sights, but have missed a lot of China.

The real reason China's destined to be a superpower:

They get their kids toilet trained by 24 months.

Yesterday we went to the river with our lovely new friend Cathy, a Chinese woman who's studying English, and her 20-month-old son (that's right, SON, notoriously harder to train than a daughter), and he was completely day trained. Blanca was wearing a pull-up for the excursion. The kids sat down to play with another little girl, just two, and her mother expressed surprise that Blanca was wearing a diaper. We hung our heads in shame.

All who are hungry

I can tell we're adapting to life here because we're eating well.

We eat rice and noodles with some vegetables, beans, and fish. We also eat a lot of fruit. We have two electric burners and a microwave in the apartment: no oven. We don't know if Chinese don't have ovens in general or if just this apartment doesn't. With Pesach, we'll supplement our diet with matzah. The produce is excellent, bred for flavor rather than appearance and longevity, as in the US. The only drawback to that is that we need to eat what we buy within a few days. There is very little fat in a traditional Chinese diet, but we supplement with Western exports such as Oreos and Dove chocolate, as do the Chinese. I guess the Chinese also get their fat from meat, especially pork, the main meat.

Today I went to the food store at the housewives' hour, while Blanca was in school. I'm sure my bruises from being pushed and shoved by grandmothers as we fought over the apples and carrots will heal quickly. The concepts of personal space or waiting in line just don't exist here. Thank God this store doesn't have shopping carts, or I could have sustained some serious injuries. I don't really have to go to the main store, except for specialty items such as milk--dairy sections are laughably small. I could buy pretty much anything from the backs of bikes, large wheelbarrows, people carrying baskets on their shoulders, and large tricycles. There's a meat vendor at the corner of the street where Blanca's school is. He sells raw meat from his large tricycle under a tree, in the heat and humidity. Don't worry about sanitation, though; he uses his handheld scales to keep most of the flies off.

Fish are sold live. A friend of mine who hunts and I have discussed the hypocrisy of being willing to eat meat but not kill it. I am a hypocrite; I send Zack for the fish. He's working on learning to fillet it, because they don't do that for you. Zack also cuts off their heads.

I have also been sampling street vendors' and small restaurants' wares. Each one specializes in one item. For lunch I usually buy rice and vegetables with fish, eggs, or beans, from the small rice and vegetable restaurants. If I want noodles, I go to a noodle stand. For scallion pancakes, I go to the scallion pancake place. The other day my stay in China became completely worth it when I found a dumpling place with "vegetable" dumplings down a small alley. There are also fried things, sweet things, cake things, and stuffed buns. I know what very little of this is called. I just point and eat.

Traffic

I love to watch the traffic from our 17th-floor apartment. It's like a carefully choreographed ballet. There are three sections: the middle one is supposedly for cars, trucks, and buses; the lane nearest the curb is ostensibly for bicycles and motorcycles; and the sidewalk is for pedestrians. In reality, things are a lot more fluid. Vehicles go where they want. Bikes and motorcycles are on the sidewalk as a matter of course (to be fair, they sometimes are entitled to HALF of it); cars drive on it occasionally. People walk in the cyclists' lane. It's amazing from above. Being out in it, however, is another matter. Nothing stops for nobody; everyone and everything just keeps moving. Cyclists don't always stop for red lights. All vehicles can turn right anytime, with no stopping. When I'm out walking, I can't flinch and freeze if a bus seems to be heading straight for me. I try to remember that if I just keep going, that bus will miss me by a centimeter, as the driver has carefully calibrated. Our intricate dance would look beautiful from the 17th floor.

Living large

When we were packing to come here, I suspected we were taking as much stuff for our six-week-stay as Chinese families use in a year. Now that we're here, I'm sure of it. The man who arranged Zack's job and met us on arrival was politely shocked at our two large suitcases, one large duffel bag, and four carry-ons. Of course, those did include 100 diapers, 5 pounds of matzah, and 3 bottles of wine.

We have a two-bedroom apartment on the 17th floor of a modern high-rise in central Fuzhou. The view would be spectacular if not for the grey-white haze that hangs over everything. It's a nice building by most standards and positively luxurious by Chinese standards. Most Chinese live in horribly ugly six-story cement walk-ups. We have about 800-900 square feet, perfectly adequate by New York terms for a family of three, or even four. I suspect this is enough space for a Chinese family of six: grandparents, parents, and two kids (the one-child policy has eased somewhat and was probably never strictly one child in this provincial city the way it was in Beijing or Shanghai). We have 24-hour hot water (that's a big deal), a small refrigerator, and a washer. There are two balconies, one for general use and one for laundry. There are no dryers, so that's where the laundry hangs, though it takes a long time to dry due to the humid subtropical climate. This luxury building comes complete with a built-in washboard in the laundry sink. The washer holds about three days' worth of laundry and there's just about enough space to dry that much. The refrigerator probably holds about the same amount of food. So we have to do laundry and shop for food every three days at most.

Given the limited facilities for taking care of our stuff, we did in fact bring too much. We in the US own too much. We eat too much. We use too much. There is one little garbage can in this apartment. One. In the kitchen. Probably for foodstuffs. We are probably the highest garbage-generating unit in the building, and that with the fewest people. There are towels for washing dishes and wiping the table rather than throw-away sponges. Kids are toilet trained earlier because disposable diapers just aren't as widely available or inexpensive. People use handkerchiefs, not tissues.

Of course, China's getting rich off the West's appetite for stuff. Many of our toys, clothes, furniture, computer parts, autos, books (yes, I'm part of creating that superabundance--I don't know how to reconcile it, either), and on and on are produced here. Today Blanca and I rode a bus past the Fujian Color Printing Plant; they work on a lot of full-color Western books. A Honda plant was on our way to the mountain we climbed a week ago.

When I leave China--when I finish any long-term trip--I'll toss half the clothes I brought. (I don't know whether clothes get extra-worn and grubby travelling or whether it's because I bring worn clothes to start with--also, I need grubby clothes for childcare.) I don't even need to replace them. I have more pajamas, more sweaters, more t-shirts. My two-year-old already has enough dolls and stuffed toys for a lifetime.

Long-term travel is what taught me I needed less stuff (not living in Manhattan, though that helped). It's not environmental; it's aesthetic. If most of the world can live with so much less stuff and if I can live with the contents of a duffel bag for months on end, then I don't want to be weighed down with all that excess baggage in my daily life.

Learning Chinese

I was woken in the middle of the night last night by someone yelling "Jiu ming!" or "Help!" on the street. For a moment, I was pretty proud of myself for understanding until I realized that this was not a language tape and someone actually did need help. Fortunately, a police car pulled up, and I guess they spoke more Chinese than I do and were able to help.

White girl

In this Chinese provincial capital, I barely rate a second glance on the street, while Zack rates a double take for his white-blonde hair and height. Blanca, however, is a star. Heads turn, bikes and motorcycles stop, people lean out bus windows. Gifts and food are proffered. Sunday we climbed a mountain (we had no idea what we were getting into; it was an 1800 meter staircase UP); people waited for our very slow party for a look at Blanca and even, for two girls, the chance to carry our 30+ pound daughter up the stairs.

Even at nursery school, she's treated as a favorite. She gets milk first and more of it. A little boy is shooed away from the teacher's piano, but Blanca is helped onto a chair to play with it. I have no idea if she recognizes this preferential treatment. She's going to be there a month; I hope they recognize that she's just another toddler soon, or they're in for a rough month and we're in for a rough aftermath. I can understand this a bit; it's as if a character from television or the movies stepped out for them to touch and play with. Even some of the other two- and three-year-olds want to touch her hair. Her blonde hair and blue eyes are starting to look a little surreal to me, too.

Blanca goes to school from 8:30-11:30, though it's an all-day daycare for most of the kids. I pick her up after lunch and before naptime. We are acutely conscious that few of our fellow parents in the US would allow their children to go to this school. The girls' potty is two chamberpots at the side of the room. I believe they are emptied twice a day. There's a bucket for the boys. There are 14 runny-nosed kids for one teacher. There's a TV-watching period. That all being said, there's plenty of wonderful play and songs and dancing. The other day they learned three colors. The other kids are remarkably good at sitting at the table and learning, a trait I hope our American daughter will pick up. They're also all potty-trained, going without prompting and getting pants down and usually up. I have a hard time believing they're two and three years old, but I might be losing something about their ages in translation.

The other day I showed up at 11:15 to see Blanca with a hunk of cake in front of her while the other kids had soup and bao. I conveyed to the teachers that she has to do and eat what the other kids do and eat. If she doesn't want soup, so be it, but she doesn't get cake if they don't. We want our six weeks in China to be a good experience for her, as long as she remembers to eat bao like the rest of the populace.

We second guess our decision to come to China at least once a day, though mostly we think it was a good idea. But we chose this adventure; Blanca did not. We don't know if this is a great idea for her or not. We're guessing yes and figuring she won't catch anything lasting.