The Rubik's Cube Record

I've promised Robbie that I will publish his latest exploit on the blog - a world record perhaps.

To paraphrase his Dad Geoff's words, when he emailed some photos; here are some shots of Robbie, who completed what we believe is a world first. At the 2670-metre Dome Shelter, near the 2797m (9177ft) summit of Mt Ruapehu, after his first ascent and aged 11, he solved his Rubik's Cube puzzle. Dome Shelter is the highest point that recreational climbers of the mountain are advised to reach.

It affords a great view of the often active crater lake, visible in the background in some of the pictures. We are confident that no one has completed their Rubik's Cube puzzle atop Ruapehu, but admit it might be difficult to prove this to the Guinness Book of World Records. Robbie has learned to complete the 3X3 cube puzzle in the past few days and has spent hours honing his skill and trying to lower his best time, which stands just below four minutes at present.

Unfortunately, the event took its toll and he couldn't do the cube after for a couple of days. The four hours in the snow was enough to give him a painful dose of snow blindness that required a 1am visit to our hospital's accident and emergency department that night. The next day he was a patched member of the I've-conquered-Ruapehu gang with two round, gauze pads stuck over his eyes and was been advised to keep himself in the dark for the day. Geoff was his seeing eye dog. The day after he was pretty much back to normal. No permanent damage, and the Rubik's Cube record is under siege again.

Two More Melamine-related Deaths

BBC reported today that two men have been given the death penalty for their involvement in China's contaminated milk scandal. We have been watching the trial in northern China on CCTV9, the government English-speaking channel. Dead men walking, you could see it at the trial, and the sentence is no surprise. The two men ran a melamine manufacturing business, making hundreds of tons of the stuff, which they sold to Sanlu and other companies, who then added it to raw milk to boost the protein content when tested. As well as milk and baby milk formula contamination, eggs and meat were found to be contaminated with melamine after it was also added to animal feedstock. Six babies died and 300,000 more became ill in this, China's second milk contamination scandal.

BBC also reports that the former boss of the Sanlu dairy at the centre of the scandal was given life imprisonment. They are among 21 sentences being handed down by the court in northern China, where Sanlu is based. I've not seen Fonterra's name mentioned in any of the reporting of the scandal since we've been here, although of course they owned 42% of the now bankrupt company. Fonterra have been subsequently criticised by Amnesty International who have raised questions about their role in the whole affair.

BBC again: Chinese dairy companies involved apologised in a New Year text message sent to millions of mobile phone subscribers. "We are deeply sorry for the harm caused to the children and the society," the text message said. "We sincerely apologise for that and we beg your forgiveness." It said a compensation fund had been established for the victims, including the families of thousands of babies still suffering from urinary problems such as kidney stones.

As a captive consumer of Chinese products it has left me feeling nervously careful of milk products here. As expiry dates of fresh milk on the supermarket shelf seem always to be past, I buy long-life milk. However the health protection authorities seem to be vigilantly watching the sector. I note with approval recently seeing a total clearing of fresh milk products from a supermarket's refrigerated section. Of course I don't know whether this vigilance is enough to make the products always safe, so I tend to just avoid milk products, although "Wonder Milk" looks promising.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the scandal, some other interesting advertising appears from time to time. Check out this ad for a New Year show.

And this packaging on my favourite eggs. Brand: EM Effective Microorganisms - yum - showing that they don't give their chooks additives or antibiotics:

The Road to School

I go to Chinese language lessons twice a week. I learn pu tong hua, which is the standardised, simplified Mandarin which is official Chinese and the language that everyone in China should understand. It's rather like the Queen's English. I started going every day, but two hours of private lessons generate 4-6 hours homework, so now I go twice a week which is much more manageable.

Chinese words can be written in our alphabet (pinyin writing). The trick is, although many words look exactly the same to our eye, the word can be pronounced with five tones. For example the word "ma" can mean mother, horse, hemp, scold or it can be the word you say at the end of a sentence to turn it into a question, all depending on the tone. Tones can be high, high rising, low falling-rising, high falling or a neutral tone. The effect is a sing-song way of talking, more in the high registers than I am used to. It has taken me quite a while to first actually hear the difference between the different tones, and second to get my voice under enough control to make myself understood, at least sometimes. If you don't say the correct tone for a word, you will be genuinely incomprehensible. As I have found it doesn't matter if I think I am saying exactly the right word; if I use a low falling-rising tone instead of a high tone it Just Won't Work. I am also learning to read and write Chinese which, as the characters are stylised pictographs and need to be rote memorised, adds another layer of complexity to the whole deal. All that said learning Chinese is challenging but hugely enjoyable and, as with learning any language, gives a great insight into the culture of the country.

I'll post a picture another day of my teacher, Dong Xu, also known variously as Liu Liu or Winnie. The polite way of addressing her is Laoshi (Teacher) Winnie. She's a lively 24 year old who looks ten years younger, is very enterprising and is a talented, encouraging and patient teacher.

I walk to class along a street that is very ordinary to Beijingers, but very interesting to me. The walk takes about 20 minutes. When I leave for class it is about 9.30. This appears to be the time when the old people in the neighbourhood take their grandchildren and their dogs for a walk. The size of dogs is government-regulated within Beijing to (my interpretation) no bigger than a breadbox. Small as they are, both children and dogs are dressed warmly and extremely quirkily. Children wear bright padded clothes. Their hats often have ears and cartoon faces on them, coats often have a cute animal tail.
Dogs likewise get along dressed in smart little coats, jumpers, dresses, and once - marvellously - I even spotted a wee canine superman. Occasionally I see dogs with shoes. Walking along I need to be very conscious of where I put my feet. Both children and dogs relieve themselves unselfconsciously wherever they are. Strangely when I walk home from class the pavements are relatively clean again.

At the end of the walk back home to the apartment there is a busy intersection at the corner of Jiangtai Xilu and Fangyuan Nanli. About a week ago a stall sprouted up on the corner of this intersection, which operates during the morning. The stall sells fireworks for the upcoming Chinese New Year. The fireworks on sale here to the general public put our fireworks in New Zealand to shame. I guess this is why they are only allowed to be sold at this time of year.

My Chinese language isn't good enough to read the names on the boxes which are no doubt wonderfully poetic and descriptive. If I could give names based on the size of the boxes and the lurid pictures, they would be "Big Boy Boomeroo", "Frighten Your Grandmother", "Deafen all Past Generations", "Dazzle Future Generations with Awe and Splendour", and "Keep Whole City Blocks Awake Far into the Night".

Ian is away for the week on business in the Sudan, and I go to sleep listening to the sound of gigantic explosions and flashes of light from the people who can't resist setting off a few fireworks in advance of the prescribed time during new year next week.

And a Happy New Year.

A very happy, safe and successful New Year to you. We hope it is everything you wish for, and the best and most positive year possible for you and for those you love.

We celebrated New Year with some friends, Casey and Selina. I managed to survive an attack from a shark part-way through the evening - I really don't know where Ian found the hat.

Harry Christmas!

Christmas is a wonderful time in Beijing. Despite being a secular country, Beijing seems to embrace all the fun aspects of Christmas. There are twinkly Christmas trees on every corner, improbable-looking Santas on all the shop windows and Christmas greetings everywhere. HARRY CHRISTMAS! is my personal favourite.
Determined to put a bit of the Christmas spirit into our apartment we went to the market in Ladies Street to buy a tree. It's fibreoptic and changes colours at a rapid rate, which I find entrancing. Here I am with our tree in a taxi, on the way home.
We had some of our new friends around for dinner that night and they helped us put the tree up, a new experience for them.
Here it is looking beautiful.
And here's my very own Santa!

It seems that the pre-Christmas twinkly decorations are as far as it goes in China. December 25 is a working day, just like any other here. After some excited present opening, Ian went off to work and I went off to my Chinese language class! We talked to family in the afternoon when he got home, and then walked to Traders Hotel, about ten minutes beside a frozen river from our apartment. We had Christmas dinner, turkey, cranberry sauce, Christmas pud, gingerbread, the lot.

Got Milk?

A glossy advertisement I saw today for a milk substitute:

Got Milk?
We don't...but we promise you won't get gout!
Sinloo Non-Dairy Milk products are made from 100% synthesised lactose
the perfect way to simulate an actual milk consumption experience.
Also works great as an adhesive!

Chi le ma?

Fast forward....and we're both in Beijing after a lovely long break in New Zealand seeing the boys and sorting out our affairs at home. We had a wonderful time catching up with old friends; missed out on a few friends sadly but fully intend to catch up next year!

Beijing is a lively, enterprising, sophisticated place, full of surprises. We've been learning the ropes; everything from how to do the supermarket shopping, catching taxis, going to a tailor, getting onto the local mobile network and bargaining at the market to the more involved skills like finding an apartment and, in Ian's case, getting to grips with the business environment in China.

Yesterday we treated ourselves to a day sightseeing. Ian's PA found us a friend of a friend who could act as our guide to take us to the Great Wall, to a hutong (small street where regular people live) and Silk Street, one of the big markets.

Our guide, Dong, picked us up at 8 o'clock and we drove north through the Beijing traffic to Badaling, where tourists go to see the Great Wall. Dong is in his early thirties, university qualified, and working as a national tourist guide, which means he is qualified to guide tourists around the whole of mainland China. His English was great, he was well-read, knowledgeable, opinionated, lively and open about his background and family. The day was a special one, mostly because of the personal communication we had with him. He grew up in the north, near the border of North Korea. "Chi le ma" is a a greeting that his mother uses, along with that generation that has known hunger. It means "Have you eaten?" We all really liked each other, so much so that he invited us to his place for dinner next weekend. Let's hope that it happens!

Some pics:








The Great Wall, stretching into the distance.










Our part of the Great Wall.















Ian got a medal which says, "I have climbed the Great Wall, Ian Hendeikse"










Ian and I with a group of off-duty soldiers. They are all aged 18-23, mostly from rural parts of China. After we had our photo taken with them one of them was heard to say to his companion, "Why did they want to have our photo taken with us"?








Our hostess at a specialist tea shop called "Dr Tea". She wore a nametag that said "Number 23". We bought some teas there and a special teaset. Its picture changes colour when you put hot tea into it.



















Of course we saw the Birdsnest.

When we arrived to take our hutong tour, we had just been discussing with Dong the English nicknames we have come across here that Chinese people have adopted - "Apple", "Cat", as well as some more conventional names.
"Hello, welcome to China! I am your tour guide", twinkled a lively young woman, "my name is Eleven!"
I'm sure I heard Dong gently snort beside us.

She rode beside our rickshaw on a bicycle, telling us the history and significance of the hutong. Her ambition is to be a national tour guide.

We had a padded rug put across our knees and off we went, past the people on the street corners playing cards and mahjong, past people coming out of the communal bathrooms with towels wrapped around their hair, past the bicycles and cars and the people going about their lives.

We were taken into a traditional hutong home, homes for the extended family grouped in a particular way around a central courtyard. We met Mr Zhang, whose family had lived in the compound for 72 years. He gave us tea and showed us old photos of his family, then told us to ask him any questions we wanted to. Pushing down a voyeuristic feeling I asked him if he had lived here during the Cultural Revolution. During this time in the 1960s land and homes were taken for redistribution in China. Mr Zhang was sent from his university studies to work on the land in the north of China for six years, and like other people of that generation, was unable to resume his studies. He worked in a factory for many years when he returned, but was able eventually to get a better job through his foster sister, who had been able to finish her studies prior to the 1960s. They were eventually able to repurchase their family home from the government, where his sister's family and his 91 year old father live still. Mr Zhang is retired now and was reserved, but courteous and warm. He told us he had visited New Zealand, where he particularly liked the geysers.