Discovering a new sister

Ian hasn't seen his sister Judy for over nine years. We've been looking forward to Judy and her daughter Candice coming over from Capetown to stay. It has, of course, been a great reunion for Ian, Candice and Judy and it has been a great surprise to me to find that meeting Judy feels like meeting a sister. Apart from the obvious things like no beard and having lots of hair, she is just like a feminine version of Ian. Enjoying getting to know each other would be an understatement.

It has been more fun because it has snowed, really snowed in the time they have been here. We've walked through falling snowflakes, thrown snowballs and explored Beijing coated in an icy coat.

We have explored a hutong by pedicab, which again included a cup of tea at one of the locals' places, a wonderful retired woman who has lived for over 50 years in her family home with the same neighbours all that time. Judy left her gloves behind and we decided not to go back or say anything, when the tour guide called, "Who left their gloves behind"? Someone had found them and then rushed after the group to give them back.

We explored a Buddhist temple in the snow, have been to the Shaolin Monks performing "Chun Yi - The Legend of Kungfu" which has just got back from a North American tour, have had numerous meals out and had the odd cocktail or two. Judy's been to my Chinese lesson with me, been to a friend's dinner party and been to the Beijing International Newcomers Network meeting where all the newbies in town meet to network and make friends. Here's us walking under the 80 metre television scrren at The Place.

The Forbidden City - A day of perpetual walking

The Forbidden City is an enormous palace complex that lies in the very centre of Beijing and is surrounded by a moat. All the ring roads around Beijing are concentric to the Forbidden City. It was the imperial palace for the Ming and Qing Dynasties and was off limits to ordinary people for over 500 years. Twenty-four emperors ruled China from here until 1911 and the buildings and treasures inside represent some of the high points of ancient Chinese achievement. As a symbol of imperialism it was narrowly saved by Premier Zhou Enlai from being trashed by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. It's now called the Palace Museum and you walk into the complex under a large picture of Mao Zedong.

After we ran the gauntlet of tour guides offering their services, map sellers, flag sellers, book sellers, art touts, Chinese tour groups and people wanting to practice their English ("Helloooo, helloo where you from?") we walked through the Meridian Gate, over the Golden Stream (frozen) and through the Gate of Supreme Harmony. We found ourselves in another world.

The outer courtyard was where all the business of ruling China happened, in the three main buildings, the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Hall of Middle Harmony and the Hall of Preserving Harmony.

One of the less harmonious moments in the outer courtyard's history saw thousands of crates of the palace treasures removed by Kuomintang forces during the Cultural Revolution. They also scraped off the gold from some of the urns used to store water for firefighting in the Forbidden City. The treasures eventually ended up in Taiwan where they are now housed in a newly-built national museum there.

The Inner courtyard, partitioned into various parts, was the home to successive emperors and empresses and of course the many concubines and eunuchs who were part of the court.

The gardens lie beyond and are full of fantastically-shaped rocks and trees, pavilions and walks.

I want a lodge like this at my place!

Wood panel detail from the concubine's area in the West Inner Courtyard.

There are museums within museums here, including a clock museum and a jewellery museum.

The Nine Dragon screen.

I will go back to the Forbidden City. It seems to occupy not only the central part of Beijing but a central part of the Chinese psyche. People we saw today are tremendously proud of the Forbidden City. My words can't describe the immenseness of the complex; let's just say it's an all day job to visit.

Embracing Chinese Cheese

Clare, Ian and I went to Longqing Gorge about an hour and a half north of Beijing and just north of Badaling, one of the popular sections of the Great Wall. Longqing Gorge is a dam, but in winter it is transformed into an ice sculpture wonderland. It is artistic, wonderfully kitch and downright cheesy by turn, full of people enjoying themselves walking through each evening. I loved the artistic cloth and wire sculptures, lit up from inside - very ingenious - and some of the ice sculptures in the main hall. There was plenty of kitch - millions of twinkling lights, coloured fluorescent lights encased in ice, and lots of cartoon characters. Some of the more odd moments included coming across goldfish frozen into an ice goldfish bowl, seeing some fluorescent palm trees at the bottom of a frozen waterfall next to some cherry blossom trees, and best of all, a whole cave full of a plastic flower display that must have taken weeks to build and where, inexplicably, no photography was allowed.

Still, we ate our five-spice flavoured sausages, nibbled rows of toffee fruit, ate baked sweet potatoes, watched singing and drumming, and just enjoyed the whole spectacle.

Clare and the Hotpot

My dear friend Clare is staying with us at the moment. She and I went off to have hotpot the evening she arrived, despite the old chopstick technique being wobbly and her being convinced that she was unteachable. Full of optimism that my favourite hotpot place, "Little Sheep" would provide her with a fork in her hour of need, we ordered a fine feast, but were told that there were not any knives and forks. Clare is living proof now that necessity is the best teacher and here's proof of her newly acquired chopstick technique!



Hotpot is one of the joys of Beijing. There are lots of regional variations, but basically you order a big pot of broth and it is kept bubbling at your table either with a little charcoal burner, or in the case of this particular restaurant, through a magnetic induction element at the table. You then order the bits that you want to cook in it, for instance a plate of mixed vegetables. The one pictured has lotus root, black fungus, three different types of mushroom, lettuce, tofu, yam, pumpkin, greens and that well-known vegetable, crabsticks. You order a plate or two of meat, which is rolls of shaved meat. You then just put in whatever you want to eat and it cooks almost instantly. If the broth is boiling hard it's wise to hang on to your little morsel as it can be hard to find it again.

Actually Clare did much better than Ian and I did when we went a few days earlier. We splashed and dropped things so badly that the restaurant staff took pity on us. With great ceremony they put aprons on us and we had to eat the remainder of our meal wearing the Aprons of Shame.

Daxing Spring Festivities

Yesterday Ian and I went with some friends on a day tour through the China Culture Center. We drove for an hour to a little village in the Daxing area to the south of Beijing; a place, we were told, distinguished only by its ordinariness.

The day was special for several reasons. The village people open their homes and village once a year to 200-odd curious westerners. They are poor, weathered, communal, dignified, friendly, real, humorous and hospitable. The deal is great - they get paid for putting on food, going about their normal celebrations and to organise the day, and in return get some income, get paid to make loads of spring festival food for the visitors and their own families, meet big-nosed westerners and get to see professional entertainment themselves in the afternoon. As a brief overview, we were greeted mid morning when we arrived by thunderous firecrackers - of course - then two local villages doing their traditional spring festival dances - local people in their own little main road, went to eat lunch with a local family, and then were treated to entertainment in a big courtyard in the afternoon - a magician, a puppet show and general entertainment which felt like the kind of thing that could have gone from place to place in China in the last thousand years.

Like Beijing street vendors sell toffee fruit on sticks; haw fruit, strawberries, grapes, water chestnuts and other things I couldn't identify.

We had lunch with Mr Liu and his family. He makes paper funeral models for a living and makes a maximum of RMB1200 a month (about NZ$300). The models take a week to make and look like the biggest pinatas you have ever seen. They are sold to be burned at someone's funeral for good luck in their next life. The model pictured is in his family courtyard and will be used for an old woman who had died the morning we visited the village. Traditionally an additional model is made for women who have died - a cow. It is believed that through various celestial ways, a funeral cow will mean that a woman works less hard in her next life.

We ate dumplings for lunch in Mr Liu's home. They made us the traditional Spring Festival dumplings, like delicious oversized ravioli, different kinds filled either with herbs and garlic, minced pork, or cabbage ginger and peanuts. Here is Mrs Liu, cooking the dumplings.

Randomly, the other special thing that happened was that we met a couple during the day from New York, who we hooked up with that evening before they flew out today to Holland and then London. He's a marketing executive, she's an executive coach. We will be friends, and will see them when they are back in town next.

Xin Nian Kuai Le!

Today was the first day of Chinese year 4707. It was welcomed in last night with a thunderous explosion of fireworks which broke out over Beijing and continued through the night, lit by people welcoming in the year of the Ox. As I write this a night later, the night outside is a continuous barrage of sound and light. I now really know the meaning of the word "boom".



Chinese New Year is calculated by the lunar calendar, one of the calendars used by the Chinese. Chinese New Year, also called Spring Festival, starts with the New Moon on the first day of the new year and ends on the full moon 15 days later. Chinese years are named in a twelve year cycle after animals, and each year is believed to have certain characteristics, as are the people born in those years. People born in the Year of the Ox are said to be patient, speak little, inspire confidence in others, are mentally and physically alert, generally easy-going, can be stubborn and hate to fail or be opposed. I wonder if there is an inbuilt need for horoscopes throughout humanity? This coming year of the Ox has been described as prosperity through fortitude and perseverance - very apt at the moment.

It is a supremely happy time; the equivalent of our Christmas. Shopping malls are decorated to within an inch of their lives with twinkly lights, red money trees and lanterns.

Chinese workers usually get a week of holiday over Chinese New Year to spend time at home with their families and visiting relatives. It is a family affair, a time of reunion and thanksgiving and feasting. The celebration was traditionally highlighted with a religious ceremony given in honor of Heaven and Earth, the gods of the household and the family ancestors, uniting living family members with those who have passed away.

I went for an after-dinner walk this evening, along with the people with their little dogs. It's pleasant, though cold, and the river next to us is still mostly frozen. Walking around at the moment can cause some heart-stopping moments as someone lets off a loud firework in close proximity. Doorways are decorated with traditional and not-so-traditional paper cutouts of oxen, scrolls with poetry on each side and red chinese lanterns. People wish you "Xin Nian Kuai Le" - "Happy New Year".

Here's the doorway into what I think might be a shop in the little ordinary hutong community next to our apartments.

Here's the entrance of our very own Richmond Park Apartments:

Not to be outdone, I've decorated our own doorway with our very own New Year decorations. Happy new year everyone!