It’s confession time. This will come as no or little surprise to at least some people who read this, though the extent may be shocking.
No, Mom, I’m not pregnant, and I wouldn’t tell the internet first if I was. BUT – this post has everything to do with babies. I am *deep breath* a birth junkie.
This has been going on for years. It started a sometime while I was still at UMich… I think someone on LiveJournal must have mentioned the forums at mothering.com because signing up there was probably the first thing I can really remember doing. Then friends started having babies and I learned things from them and from the things I gave them. Last summer I gave two books as baby shower gifts – Your Best Birth and La Leche League’s The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. I had to be careful as I read them because I wanted to make sure the book still looked nice enough for a gift.
I’ve researched various baby products like carriers and diapers. I’ve researched what birth options are available in Madison vs. what my insurance will cover. I’ve researched classes.
I watched The Business of Being Born by myself on my computer shortly after it was released. I have Babies waiting to be watched, and once I watch that, Orgasmic Birth is up next. I hear that last one isn’t actually as bizarre as it sounds. I always watch these alone, then discuss them with other non-mom birth junkies on the internet.
I currently have 8 birth-related blogs on my Google reader. One is just someone’s pregnancy journey, but most are written by birth activists and natural childbirth educators. For contrast, I have 3 related to eating gluten-free, and 6 dealing with my Kindle. Speaking of my Kindle, it’s nice and easy to read baby books with it since there’s no cover to make people say things like “Oh, are you pregnant? Congrats!” followed by the awkwardness that ensues if you decide to say that you aren’t. Not that it would go down like that in China anyhow, but at least I’m protected for my return to the U.S.
The result of all this is that I’ve managed to form VERY strong opinions about things that I have no experience with. In conversations with people who are actually parents, I often have to hold my tongue. If I have argued with you in the past, I apologize now. I was learning so much at such a rapid pace at one point that I was just overwhelmed and didn’t know how to either contain it or discuss it in a sane way. I feel like I have information and advice to give (if it’s wanted) but that I won’t be taken seriously because I am not Someone Who Has Been There. I’ve just read all the travel guides.
I uh, also bought a Tibetan baby carrier.
Anyway, the reason I’m laying this all out here is because occasionally I read something that I want to share. Without this very long explanation of just how into this I am, the reaction could be confusing and embarrassing. But I promise this will remain (at least for the next few months) a blog about me being in China. Once I’m home who knows what could happen?
Despite having read a huge amount of books here, it’s been quite a while since I’ve done a book review. It’s going to be a little longer, because I have to lead up to this review. 
Thursday, I was quite ill with who-knows-what, though I suspect it was a virus of some sort. I spent the entire day in either the bed or the bathroom, and started to feel better around 9pm. I took tiny sips of electrolyte drink as I woke up through the night, and felt much better the next morning. Newsflash: it’s difficult to teach when you ate NOTHING the previous day. I took another day off and napped. This morning I was starving and ventured out for food that was nothing like what I had thrown up two days ago. I settled on fried potatoes with cheese and some hot chocolate, and stared up at the TV while I waited for my food. It was a Chinese nature program with the sound off, because the cafe had it’s own preferred soundtrack. So, naturally, I got to watch baby elephants swimming to the tune of Knights in White Satin.
After stuffing myself and listening to a man complain about “boom boom nightclub music” until 1am (twice) I got up to leave and felt dizzy. Lucky for me, there’s a couch by the door and a table covered with books and magazines. Next to Amelia Bedelia (which I read, of course) was a book called Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China
If you’re interested in the ethnic minorities in China, if you wonder what we eat out here, if you want to see amazing pictures of food and people, and especially if you want to read the stories of Westerners who roamed China when it was barely open to tourists, then get this book. It has recipes alongside stories of how the couple met, encounters with notable folks, and the adventures and touching encounters they had 25 years ago when I was bopping around to Madonna’s True Blue album in my driveway.
In a half an hour (assuming my ride partners show up despite not having called me yet) I leave for Deqin to see the hubs for our first anniversary! From Deqin we’ll head back to Xidang, where we’ll hike over the mountain to Yubeng and visit a neat waterfall.
The approved first anniversary gifts are paper and clocks, and I’ve been racking my brain to figure out what to get him that would survive the drive and the hike. Answer: hypothetical gifts of paper, and the gift of time.
Thanks to a neat idea shared by a friend a few months ago, I will suggest that we use our anniversary as a day to take an annual picture of ourselves and any future members of the family. Once we get home, I can print them and start sticking them in a book. Made of paper.
I am a pretty adventurous eater, within my annoying dietary restrictions. Even when it comes to meat, if I am presented with something unusual or special I will at least have a taste. I don’t think I was all that adventurous as a kid though, since I ordered the chicken a la king at Bill Knapp’s every. single. time. My brother would always think long and hard about the most disgusting thing on the menu and order that to gross me out. You should have seen the smile on his face when the liver and onions came out, followed quickly by the look of fear that came when he realized he had to actually eat it. Chow down, bro’. I’ve got my chicken a la king.
I have often been in situations here where a refusal would have been incredibly rude, so I’m polite, and I eat up. Even though it means eating fatty salt pork while I’m on my period and retaining water while on a hike at above 3000 meters. I thought my wedding ring was going to cut off circulation in my shiny little sausage fingers.
Today though, oh god, today…
I should start by saying that the cook here is awesome. He makes generally great food, and despite being mostly deaf and only speaking Tibetan, manages to crank out gluten-free vegetarian food for me. When the starch is bread, I usually get a buckwheat pancake, and when the main course is meaty there are 2 dishes of veg food for me and one of my students (he aspires to be a monk). Today was like that, except the leftover tomato and egg from lunch had an extra ingredient in it. It was cubes of congealed pig blood.
I am not Carrie. I want nothing to do with pig blood. It took some time and 2 of my students to figure out for sure what it was. Imagine this scenario: I get the cook’s attention, point to a cube, and mime slitting my wrist. He shakes his head no. One of the students tries a cube and mimes the position of various organs. Is it a heart? Is it a kidney? I still stick by the blood theory. I’ve seen this stuff in the market a lot. The chef draws a square in the air with his fingers. He means a cube, which means I’m right. For him to put it in our bowls would mean that he didn’t know what it was.
Luckily the other half of the plate was tofu. I quietly got another bowl and picked off the top layer of tofu so as to avoid whatever was seeping into the bottom layer. I am not an “omg THE MEAT JUICES!” type of vegetarian (anymore…) but hi, that’s blood. My student was not as careful nor as polite. He just grabbed his bowl and dumped the tomato/egg/blood cube mix into another bowl and walked out. Actually, he did it like any 14 year old boy probably would. No delicate plucking with chopsticks. That’s for 30-year-old foreign chicks.
This is different from me (formerly) eating my steak rare.
Yes, it is.
Because it just is.
I’m not having this conversation with you anymore.
A rare break, talking to my Uncle Hans.
By interesting, I don’t mean good. It’s been a mix, really. The biggest thing to happen was the death of my uncle. I’ve been avoiding making a blog post about it because I’m afraid that anything I say will be trite. It seems even worse to say nothing at all, especially since it’s been on my mind so much. He was the uncle responsible for making my rocking horse when I was little, and also for taking more photos of my wedding than the paid photographer! He was full of love for his 4 kids, his uncountable nieces and nephews, and his grandkids, as well as the adults. He helped my grandma just as much as her sons did. Everyone was full of love for him, and he will be missed in a huge, huge way.
And here’s the hardest part about this post. What do I say next? Nothing I guess. Everything else can wait.
I’ve been wanting to write about Taiwan, but traveling from a deliciously hot location back to a rainy, chilly, rather dreary one has left me utterly uninspired.
Suffice it to say that I LOVED Taiwan – the weather, the people, and the history. It’s had a rather strange trajectory, and it’s interesting to consider what would have happened if the other side had won. On the surface, it reminded me a lot of Seoul. Every block was crammed with private English schools, and traffic signals were respected by cars and pedestrians alike. I found myself telling the hubs that he should get a job at Taiwan University. “You can read traditional characters! We could live here!” (I could drink iced tea and nobody would think I was insane!) I would certainly have no trouble finding a job as an English teacher. Also, Taipei has a subway, so I got to be a subway nerd again.
If we lived there, I’d have to re-learn how to eat. Spicy doesn’t mean the same thing there, unfortunately, and I managed to eat some fries that had been breaded. The wedding banquet featured 10 gluten-free courses, 7 of which were seafood from the sea. Not carp. Heck yes I ate it. Other edibles included a egg-tapioca-shrimp pancake covered in pinkish sauce at the night market, a daily breakfast consisting of sticky rice wrapped around various fillings, and multiple servings of “egg pudding” (it was flan) purchased from 7-11. I passed on the stinky tofu. It was already stinking up my airspace, so why let it stink up my stomach?
I have pictures of tropical oddities and video to post, but that would require effort that I don’t have the energy for right now. Weather plus new (temporary) neighbors with a weird schedule have rendered this broad rather blah.
I attended a large gathering of mostly Americans last night, with a few British, Australian, Canadian, and Chinese thrown in. Whether living here or just passing through, the word got out that there would be a 4th of July barbecue and some fireworks.
I made a giant bowl of potato salad, starting with 3 kilos of potatoes. With all the other stuff added in, I’m pretty sure we had at least 2 gallons of the stuff. I thought it needed more salt; nobody else seemed to notice. It disappeared within an hour of my arrival.
The fireworks were fun, but required us to explain to some of the locals what the big fuss was about. After all, fireworks are for the lunar new year. They nodded, but of course I have to wonder if they understood at the same level as we do. I want to say more, and my VPN makes it look like I’m posting this from Hong Kong, but I feel like I can’t post what I really want to say if I want this stupid little blog to remain accessible within China. After all, some foreigner just got deported for his actions on the internet, though he was clearly a bit of a stalker and a total nut. It sets a precedent. I hope that my reluctance to say what I want here speaks volumes, though I don’t want anyone to get the idea that I dislike everything here. I just hate the glaze of dishonesty that covers much of the official communication, so that one never really knows what’s going on.
P.S. For a happier ending to this post, imagine a handful of last night’s partygoers singing at least a few bars of our national anthem while the fireworks were going off. There was no all-encompassing chorus of patriotism, but a few were inspired, including myself.
After saying for months that I want a bike, not knowing where to buy one used, and trying to rent a bike from a friend who owns a travel company (it was too big…surprise!), I was told that basic bikes are only 350 yuan new. Today, I went and bought one. With a basket on the front and a lock for the back wheel, it came to 370. I briefly considered the folding bike since I could take that back to the states with me, but it was over 500 and not really a feature that I need. It has but one gear (freewheel, not fixie) and is a pleasing shade of lime green. It won’t go home to the U.S. with me, but it gives me more incentive to build that 3-speed I’ve been thinking about.
I got some taters in mah basket!
My first task with the bike was picking up the ingredients for the potato salad I’m making for the 4th of July at the wet market, where I was reminded of the #1 rule for market shopping: don’t wear sandals. I waver between wanting to know what made my foot wet and being glad that I don’t know. I was successful, and am now the proud owner of a huge jar of miracle whip, a small jar of yellow mustard, and all the veggies I wanted except for little red radishes. Gigantic bludgeon-a-whale sized daikon are the only available radishes.
The biggest shock, bigger than mystery water on my foot, was that I didn’t have to buy creepy Asian mayo that is shelf-stable for a decade or so. I had the choice between Hellman’s and Miracle Whip, and I chose the Miracle Whip so I could be faithful to my grandma’s recipe. It wasn’t until I made it home that I started to vaguely remember that the gluten content of Miracle Whip is unknown to me. I thought I remembered something about the fat-free variety being okay, but the original being off-limits. Luckily, multiple fora and the Kraft website informed me that I was wrong, and I can eat their HFCS-laden (you can’t win ‘em all…) goo to my heart’s content. The mustard also turned out to be ok. This is the downside of usually making all my food from scratch — on the rare occasion I need to buy something processed, I haven’t memorized the list of safe products.
My next task with the bike is to pick up the cake I ordered for a friend’s going-away party. She’s been an incredible co-teacher, and starts at Berkeley in the fall.
Just before dawn this morning – no idea what time it was – I started hearing loud banging. In my half-daze I just assumed someone was banging on the metal doors of the Thangka Center next door, but really had no idea why someone would need to get in that early. Eventually shouts of “Fire!” carried to my ears and the banging reached our door. We were told, quickly, that it was not our building or the Thangka Center, but the one behind it. Still, it’s not uncommon here for one roof to touch another, and everything depended on the wind. Since it was still dark, it was shocking to see the orange glow lighting up our whole block.
As I looked around, knowing that we were easily safe enough to grab whatever we wanted, I couldn’t choose. Everything is replaceable. To eliminate the possibility of hassle, I grabbed my computer, wallet, camera, glasses, and Kindle. I saw that the hubs was pausing to put on actual clothing, so I figured jeans would be an improvement over fleece pants. I tossed on a sweatshirt and my hiking boots and was out the door with a bucket. Next door, I went upstairs and started removing some of the thangka paintings from the walls and handing them to one of my students. Given that the right side of his body is badly scarred by burns he was handing things surprisingly well. No fear, no panic, just happy to have something to do and someone telling him to do it. I’m not sure how that person ended up being me.
As I was removing one of the paintings, I realized I could feel some warmth through the wall and decided to stop where I was. I grabbed the largest buddha statue on the altar, and the hubs successfully got a very old thangka down that I had struggled with and gave up on. I knew it was old, but we found out later that it’s a few hundred years old. The three of us headed down the street, and my student laughed and said he didn’t know where we were going. Again taking charge, I told him to take us to the student dormitory. He nodded and showed us the way.
We passed a firetruck sitting in the street in front of what used to be a guesthouse, but no water was pumping. A crowd was gathered to watch it burn, it seemed. We went back to our room and gathered less-essential-but-good-to-have items including clothes, books, and medicines, and took those down to the dormitory too. I had put our phones and cameras in a bag rather than a pocket, so the hubs asked me to bring him his phone and disappeared.
As it turned out, nobody was fighting the fire because there was no water pressure. I called a nearby friend to make sure he was up, then went to look for my husband again. He was on a nearby roof, probably helping remove shingles so there was less fuel. I never thought to ask. So I watched the guesthouse burn. I stood in the courtyard, and it sunk in that the woman crying next to me was the owner. By this time, there was water pressure and they had a few hoses going from each side. With my hand on her back in what I hope was a comforting gesture, we watched the men jump back as the roof collapsed, then watched more men come forward with long, hooked poles to pull down the large beams in a more controlled way.
View from the Roof. The side walls are packed earth and not in danger of being burned. The small windows did make it hard to get to the fire on the 2nd floor though.
I moved up to the roof of the Thangka Center to get a better view of the fire and my husband. My students were all up there helping to hold a hose to spray from the side, and I sat with the student who had helped me move the paintings. He watched, but did not seem any more disturbed than the rest of the crowd. I watched a few rather absurd things happen. Water pressure dipped again, and the firefighters took a drink from the hose and lit up cigarettes. On the roof containing my husband, someone took out a pack and passed out smokes to everyone who wanted one. Someone said, “where’s Kristin?” and I called the other English teacher here to find out. She had heard some commotion but was too groggy to comprehend and just went back to sleep. By that time, the danger had passed and she didn’t bother to move her things. I went back to the dormitory to make sure our bags were not being looted.
The aftermath. What the camera didn't catch is the stream of water still coming in at the top left.
In the end, they got the fire out, but the building was destroyed. To my knowledge, nobody was hurt. We hauled our things back, and the students proceeded to light a fire in the stove and cook breakfast. It was a little surreal. I’m asking the owner for a fire extinguisher today.
The hubs just walked in and handed me a baked potato. I almost got teary-eyed while imagining it was covered in sour cream.
Some people have expressed interest in seeing pics of our abode. Before I post these pictures, I must remind you that we have ONE ROOM in this house. It’s pretty huge, and I’m glad I don’t have to clean all of it.
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