Looking back to November 04
16 months after I started this blog I am finally posting again. The delay is mostly down to the fact that it has not been possible to access my blog from China. But now it is. Who knows why or for how long. So I am backdating a little bit and adding some posts from newsletters I have written to friends and family.
Here is a very early one from October 2004:
We have been living in the city of Chengdu in south-west China for three weeks, and in that time Isaac has eaten nothing but strawberry jam sandwiches. OK, the occasional bowl of plain pasta and once or twice a pork dumpling have sneaked into his mouth, but nothing else. This is one of several forms of mute protest about his situation. Perhaps ‘mute’ gives a misleading impression of quiet: we don’t get much of that in our household at the best of times and in a crowded city of 8 million people and several hundred construction sites it is an even rarer commodity.
What I mean is that he is not actively vocalizing his disapproval about being here.
In fact most of the time he seems quite happy to hang out at the playground with the Chinese pre-schoolers or go apartment-hunting with Ethan and I. We have tried to keep his routine as similar to home as possible, despite the 3 am starts and unexpected naps brought on by jetlag. It helps that we are staying with our wonderful friends Lin and Huang Mei in their large, comfortable apartment, rather than in a hotel. Isaac loves playing with their 18-month old son Yang-yang and his large collection of plastic semi-automatic weapons. Access to toy weapons is one aspect of life in China that has Isaac positively excited. Spitting is another, I’m sad to say. It’s hard to convince a four-year old boy that spitting on the street is not acceptable behavior when he sees it all around him all the time. This morning he announced, “I like copying Chinese people I don’t know and spitting on the ground”, then proceeded to give a convincing demonstration, sound effects and all.
But despite these excitements, the protests persist. In addition to the eating protest, there is the walking protest. Since we arrived he has refused to walk more than 10 yards at a stretch. He either parks his bottom firmly in the stroller or stretches his arms up to be carried, with a plaintive plea that takes me straight back to toddler days. It’s endearing to be reminded of that stage and to have those little arms wrapped around my neck again. Well, it is for about the first 5 yards, until my own lumbar protest starts up. So I have taken to bringing the stroller with us everywhere we go, much to the amazement of local people. Strollers are starting to gain popularity here, (along with many other previously unobtainable western trappings of parenthood, like diapers), but pretty much only for babies. Isaac is the only kid in town who can lob a spit-ball and handle a plastic shot-gun, but expects to be wheeled home afterwards.
Finally we have the speaking protest. This is not so much about speaking as being spoken to. He is not so bad with people we know, especially if they speak English, but he really does not like strangers addressing him in Chinese. I do understand this, he is still mastering English after all, and suddenly he is surrounded by people talking to him in another incomprehensible tongue. He calls English ‘Ditchling language’ after the small village in England where we lived last year and which he still considers home, despite vague memories of his ‘black and white house’ in New Jersey where he spent the first two and a half years of his life. So he will say, “I like Lin Shu-shu (Uncle Lin) because he talks to me in Ditchling language” or “that girl said hello to me in Ditchling language!”
The Chinese dote on children and pay them a lot of attention anyway, but a small blond one stands out a mile. Nearly everyone we pass smiles at Isaac and many of them stop to say how cute he is (they use the word ‘guai’, which means endearing and obedient, the two concepts being interconnected in their minds - at least until they encounter Isaac). The problem is that many also reach out to stroke his head or pat his cheek. He hates this, as indeed would I, and he responds with a loud and furious scream or by poking or pushing or spitting at them. They then change their opinion and back off with an embarrassed laugh or a comment about the rowdy behavior of western kids. “Why don’t they speak DITCHLING LANGUAGE?”, Isaac asked me in tears yesterday, and I explained again that we are in China now and people speak a different language, that they are only being friendly when they talk to him or touch him, that he will soon learn to speak Chinese himself. We talk about it a lot and will carry on doing so, whilst also trying to pre-empt the head-patting as much as possible.
I’m not too worried about the protests though, they are all reasonable enough reactions to an overwhelming deluge of change and I am sure they will pass. But we do agonize over whether living here will have any longer-term impact on Isaac’s social and emotional development. As our plane touched down on the runway three weeks ago, I made a fervent wish that we should all leave in two years time in good physical and mental health; that Isaac would not suffer from the culture shock he was about to be plunged into or, worse, fall prey to one of the myriad hazards that haunt me – the potholed street, the lurching truck, the random avian-flu carrying crow. Some variation of this is every parent’s daily prayer, I know, but it comes with a little added fervor in a country where, at any intersection, a top-heavy motorcycle may bear down on you loaded with lead-piping, or sofas, or pigs.
Being here does add unwelcome layers of risk: I am scared that one element or more could go alarmingly, unpredictably wrong and bring the whole house of cards down around our ears. But the potential gains are great as well, from the work and from everyday life. Isaac, and maybe even Ethan and I, may become a little wiser and more compassionate as a result of the experiences that lie ahead of us.
Re-reading these I realise that I did not jump into this experience in an entirely positive frame of mind! Here is another, somewhat more upbeat one, from November 2004:
It is a beautiful sunny day in Chengdu, one of only a handful we have seen since we arrived. Blue sky does lift the spirits but, as a friend commented this morning, it won’t do to make plans on days like these. You have to remember the dreary, overcast, polluted reality of most days and plan accordingly - e.g. for a long holiday somewhere else. Perhaps I am not getting started on the most positive note, but I might as well tell it like it is. The climate and the air quality are two of the least attractive things about life in Chengdu. I’ll get on to some of the others later.
Exactly ten weeks ago I submitted my MA thesis and the next day we heard that Winrock International had got the grant they had applied for from USAID, Ethan was appointed Chief of Party and we would be moving to China where he would run development projects with Tibetan communities in Western Sichuan. Since then we have packed up our lives in England, raced back to the US, cleaned and painted our house, moved all our belongings into storage and turned our lives around to come here, all while Ethan was starting work on his new job. All of this only made possible by the logistical and moral support of family and friends – thank-you all! The good news is that we have survived, though we’ve had a bumpy old time of it now and then. But we are here, in our own place and slowly starting to feel more settled. We have rented an apartment and made it more or less functional, Ethan has worked all the hours God sends, Isaac has started to attend the local Chinese kindergarten and learned how to say ‘silly potato’ in Chinese.
We are living on the 6th floor in a modern apartment complex in the south of the city, close to the area where most foreigners live, but not too close. Jinguan New City consists of 12 high-rise blocks and a bunch of villas set in landscaped gardens. It’s a great location, within walking distance of all essential amenities such as Peter’s Tex-Mex Cafe and the Carrefour supermarket, as well as a vegetable market, post office etc. I also just discovered this week that there is an Austrian bakery, indoor heated swimming pool, sauna and gym in the clubhouse so I am definitely feeling that we made the right choice about where to live. The apartment itself is large and light and airy, a rarity in this gloomy city, and that was its major selling point. It also boasts a huge, mauve-flowered sofa, stripy tinsel curtains and an odd, moulded-plastic bathtub with jet sprays that squirt you in the neck as you squirm to fit your body into the odd contours, whilst not sitting on the pop-up bathplug that is absurdly situated right under your bottom. But once our shipment arrives and we make a few décor adjustments it should start to feel like home. Already, even with those curtains, it is a peaceful haven from the hubbub outside
It is a very impressive hubbub, I have to say. The first few days we were here I couldn’t stop thinking about the first time I came to China in autumn 1985 and comparing everything. It is fascinating to come back and live here again, very different from coming on work trips, and a great chance to experience China again at this later stage of our lives. In very many ways it is a different country from the place where Ethan and I were students in the 1980s. When Ethan was studying in Shanghai he once went to a Chinese family’s home for dinner, but they disguised him as he came and went in case any of the neighbours spotted him and got them into trouble. This time we stayed in the home of Chinese friends for three weeks and no-one batted an eyelid. And the home we stayed in was a large duplex apartment with 4 bathrooms and a roof garden. In the 1980s even a penniless foreign student was wealthy compared to all but the most privileged Chinese people. Now only the wealthiest ex-pats can keep up with middle-class Chinese spending habits. People have got rich and, as Deng Xiao-ping promised them, it is glorious. When I was a student in Bejing the only shop that stocked imported goods or anything that you really wanted to buy was the Friendship Store. Chinese people weren’t even allowed in the door. Now the streets of Chengdu are lined with international brand names: Nike, Prada, Ermenegildno Zegna. Imported goods aren’t really necessary, however, because everything is made in China anyway. Thinking about the economic and lifestyle changes in the last 20 years and imagining a similar rate of change continuing for the next 20 years, I have to agree with those who say that this will be China’s century. Or rather, by the end of the century this will be China’s world.
But for now there are many remnants of the old socialist China around, quite apart from the communist party itself. The quarantine hospital where Ethan had the health tests for his residence permit may use disposable needles, but not disposable gloves to wield them. Hey, they don’t even use disposable tongue depressors. Waitresses still occasionally tell you that an item isn’t available because they can’t be bothered to go and check. Young men still cycle past you on the street calling out ‘helloooooooo’ in high-pitched voices. Buildings still pretty much fall down or at least look horribly tacky within a few years of construction. There are still a gazillion peasants out there in the countryside. For all the money being thrown around, most people are still horribly poor. The road leading to Isaac’s kindergarten passes by a piece of wasteland piled with construction rubble and trash. Around the 20th time I walked past I realized that the wasteland contains rows of tumble-down shacks where the construction crew actually live. They may be busy building ‘French-style’ town-homes but they live in a garbage heap.
That brings me on to the kindergarten, a major feature of Isaac’s and my life. We decided to send him to a local kindergarten so that he can be in a Chinese language environment and hopefully will learn to speak fairly quickly. It is certainly an impressive-looking place, a purpose-built three storey building with large playground and great facilities. It is one of an exclusive chain, the ‘Golden Apple All-The-Way’ Kindergartens (don’t ask), and the teachers do seem smart and very nice. But it is a big challenge of adjustment for Isaac, as he has to adapt to a lot more than just the language. The attitude to education and to young children is so different here - they are on the one hand more cosseted and on the other hand more restricted than in the west. One of my theories is that in the west we control the environment around children: childproofing our homes and play areas and then letting them run around as they will. Here the environment is beyond people’s control, full of unexpected hazards, and so people control their children much more closely. Kids here learn early on to stick close to their parents and do as they are told. Probably Isaac could do with a little more of that spirit, I hear you say. I certainly felt that way on the day he disappeared down the up escalator into a crowd of people. But most of the time his curious, adventurous nature is a joy to be around and we don’t want to curb that. The emphasis at his kindergarten is on group activities, rote learning and following social convention. A lot of time is spent on group dance routines, all the kids standing on their designated spots, waving their arms and hands in time to the music, or pretending to be little flowers or whatever. Isaac just isn’t getting it and I can hardly blame him. But this stuff is so deeply ingrained in most Chinese people that some adults, when they see Isaac or another kindergartner, experience a sort of Pavlovian return to their early childhood, their eyes glazing over as they start a rhymic hand-clapping, head-bobbing kind of dance.
Isaac continutes to resent the attention he receives. Everyone who sees him says he is ‘guai’, a Chinese word meaning sweet, endearing AND obedient. Then they try to stroke his head or pat his cheek, he responds by poking or pushing or spitting at them, and they change their opinion. He takes refuge against the unfamiliar in stories and is always asking Ethan when he is around, or me when he is not, to tell him the rest of the story. So we have various adventure sagas on the go, mostly featuring Isaac as a warrior or sailor or explorer or some other intrepid figure, doing good deeds and battling the forces of darkness.
We worry about the transition of course, and what impact it will have on him, but on the whole he seems to be handling it quite well. We spend a lot of time at home with familiar toys and games or outside running around, and the kindergarten is getting easier, I think. Although he clings to me every morning, he seems very cheerful when I go to pick him up and the teachers say he is getting along well with the other kids and hitting fewer people every day! So we will see. If it doesn’t work out, the alternative is a small international school where Isaac already goes to Wushu classes. We have met some Western kids there and one, a 5 year-old German girl, lives in our complex and plays with Isaac at the weekends. He is totally in love with her and wants her to come and live with us so they can play his charming game called ‘shooting other people’ all the time.
I realize I haven’t said much about what we are actually doing here. For my part that is because, as an ex-pat housewife, my main concern is how well the Amah has dusted behind the sofa. I have joined the Chengdu International Women’s Club so I can really get to grips with this issue. I also spend a fair amount of time gazing at pig carcasses, wondering which part translates into a pork chop, then giving up and buying bean curd instead. My other misadventures have included having my wallet stolen, and getting locked out on our balcony and having to be rescued by a security guard shinning up the drainpipe from the floor below. Apart from that most of my attention is focused on Isaac, as you can tell from the contents of this letter. I do occasionally remember that just a few weeks ago I was busy writing essays with titles like, ‘Constructing Community in Place, Process and Population’, but for now that is mostly eclipsed by all the hours spent playing ‘Buzz Lightyear blasts the space robots to smithereens’. Nevertheless, around all that excitement I am starting to make time to pursue some projects of my own.
Anyhow here we are and will be for the next two years. We have a guest room and are hoping for lots of visitors, so if I haven’t put you off completely, plan ahead and book yourselves in now for your China vacation. There are lots of great things to see in Sichuan and we are only a few hours away from the spectacular mountains and grasslands of the Tibetan plateau. And we promise not to make you eat Sichuan hot pot more than once.
Here is a very early one from October 2004:
We have been living in the city of Chengdu in south-west China for three weeks, and in that time Isaac has eaten nothing but strawberry jam sandwiches. OK, the occasional bowl of plain pasta and once or twice a pork dumpling have sneaked into his mouth, but nothing else. This is one of several forms of mute protest about his situation. Perhaps ‘mute’ gives a misleading impression of quiet: we don’t get much of that in our household at the best of times and in a crowded city of 8 million people and several hundred construction sites it is an even rarer commodity.
What I mean is that he is not actively vocalizing his disapproval about being here.
In fact most of the time he seems quite happy to hang out at the playground with the Chinese pre-schoolers or go apartment-hunting with Ethan and I. We have tried to keep his routine as similar to home as possible, despite the 3 am starts and unexpected naps brought on by jetlag. It helps that we are staying with our wonderful friends Lin and Huang Mei in their large, comfortable apartment, rather than in a hotel. Isaac loves playing with their 18-month old son Yang-yang and his large collection of plastic semi-automatic weapons. Access to toy weapons is one aspect of life in China that has Isaac positively excited. Spitting is another, I’m sad to say. It’s hard to convince a four-year old boy that spitting on the street is not acceptable behavior when he sees it all around him all the time. This morning he announced, “I like copying Chinese people I don’t know and spitting on the ground”, then proceeded to give a convincing demonstration, sound effects and all.
But despite these excitements, the protests persist. In addition to the eating protest, there is the walking protest. Since we arrived he has refused to walk more than 10 yards at a stretch. He either parks his bottom firmly in the stroller or stretches his arms up to be carried, with a plaintive plea that takes me straight back to toddler days. It’s endearing to be reminded of that stage and to have those little arms wrapped around my neck again. Well, it is for about the first 5 yards, until my own lumbar protest starts up. So I have taken to bringing the stroller with us everywhere we go, much to the amazement of local people. Strollers are starting to gain popularity here, (along with many other previously unobtainable western trappings of parenthood, like diapers), but pretty much only for babies. Isaac is the only kid in town who can lob a spit-ball and handle a plastic shot-gun, but expects to be wheeled home afterwards.
Finally we have the speaking protest. This is not so much about speaking as being spoken to. He is not so bad with people we know, especially if they speak English, but he really does not like strangers addressing him in Chinese. I do understand this, he is still mastering English after all, and suddenly he is surrounded by people talking to him in another incomprehensible tongue. He calls English ‘Ditchling language’ after the small village in England where we lived last year and which he still considers home, despite vague memories of his ‘black and white house’ in New Jersey where he spent the first two and a half years of his life. So he will say, “I like Lin Shu-shu (Uncle Lin) because he talks to me in Ditchling language” or “that girl said hello to me in Ditchling language!”
The Chinese dote on children and pay them a lot of attention anyway, but a small blond one stands out a mile. Nearly everyone we pass smiles at Isaac and many of them stop to say how cute he is (they use the word ‘guai’, which means endearing and obedient, the two concepts being interconnected in their minds - at least until they encounter Isaac). The problem is that many also reach out to stroke his head or pat his cheek. He hates this, as indeed would I, and he responds with a loud and furious scream or by poking or pushing or spitting at them. They then change their opinion and back off with an embarrassed laugh or a comment about the rowdy behavior of western kids. “Why don’t they speak DITCHLING LANGUAGE?”, Isaac asked me in tears yesterday, and I explained again that we are in China now and people speak a different language, that they are only being friendly when they talk to him or touch him, that he will soon learn to speak Chinese himself. We talk about it a lot and will carry on doing so, whilst also trying to pre-empt the head-patting as much as possible.
I’m not too worried about the protests though, they are all reasonable enough reactions to an overwhelming deluge of change and I am sure they will pass. But we do agonize over whether living here will have any longer-term impact on Isaac’s social and emotional development. As our plane touched down on the runway three weeks ago, I made a fervent wish that we should all leave in two years time in good physical and mental health; that Isaac would not suffer from the culture shock he was about to be plunged into or, worse, fall prey to one of the myriad hazards that haunt me – the potholed street, the lurching truck, the random avian-flu carrying crow. Some variation of this is every parent’s daily prayer, I know, but it comes with a little added fervor in a country where, at any intersection, a top-heavy motorcycle may bear down on you loaded with lead-piping, or sofas, or pigs.
Being here does add unwelcome layers of risk: I am scared that one element or more could go alarmingly, unpredictably wrong and bring the whole house of cards down around our ears. But the potential gains are great as well, from the work and from everyday life. Isaac, and maybe even Ethan and I, may become a little wiser and more compassionate as a result of the experiences that lie ahead of us.
Re-reading these I realise that I did not jump into this experience in an entirely positive frame of mind! Here is another, somewhat more upbeat one, from November 2004:
It is a beautiful sunny day in Chengdu, one of only a handful we have seen since we arrived. Blue sky does lift the spirits but, as a friend commented this morning, it won’t do to make plans on days like these. You have to remember the dreary, overcast, polluted reality of most days and plan accordingly - e.g. for a long holiday somewhere else. Perhaps I am not getting started on the most positive note, but I might as well tell it like it is. The climate and the air quality are two of the least attractive things about life in Chengdu. I’ll get on to some of the others later.
Exactly ten weeks ago I submitted my MA thesis and the next day we heard that Winrock International had got the grant they had applied for from USAID, Ethan was appointed Chief of Party and we would be moving to China where he would run development projects with Tibetan communities in Western Sichuan. Since then we have packed up our lives in England, raced back to the US, cleaned and painted our house, moved all our belongings into storage and turned our lives around to come here, all while Ethan was starting work on his new job. All of this only made possible by the logistical and moral support of family and friends – thank-you all! The good news is that we have survived, though we’ve had a bumpy old time of it now and then. But we are here, in our own place and slowly starting to feel more settled. We have rented an apartment and made it more or less functional, Ethan has worked all the hours God sends, Isaac has started to attend the local Chinese kindergarten and learned how to say ‘silly potato’ in Chinese.
We are living on the 6th floor in a modern apartment complex in the south of the city, close to the area where most foreigners live, but not too close. Jinguan New City consists of 12 high-rise blocks and a bunch of villas set in landscaped gardens. It’s a great location, within walking distance of all essential amenities such as Peter’s Tex-Mex Cafe and the Carrefour supermarket, as well as a vegetable market, post office etc. I also just discovered this week that there is an Austrian bakery, indoor heated swimming pool, sauna and gym in the clubhouse so I am definitely feeling that we made the right choice about where to live. The apartment itself is large and light and airy, a rarity in this gloomy city, and that was its major selling point. It also boasts a huge, mauve-flowered sofa, stripy tinsel curtains and an odd, moulded-plastic bathtub with jet sprays that squirt you in the neck as you squirm to fit your body into the odd contours, whilst not sitting on the pop-up bathplug that is absurdly situated right under your bottom. But once our shipment arrives and we make a few décor adjustments it should start to feel like home. Already, even with those curtains, it is a peaceful haven from the hubbub outside
It is a very impressive hubbub, I have to say. The first few days we were here I couldn’t stop thinking about the first time I came to China in autumn 1985 and comparing everything. It is fascinating to come back and live here again, very different from coming on work trips, and a great chance to experience China again at this later stage of our lives. In very many ways it is a different country from the place where Ethan and I were students in the 1980s. When Ethan was studying in Shanghai he once went to a Chinese family’s home for dinner, but they disguised him as he came and went in case any of the neighbours spotted him and got them into trouble. This time we stayed in the home of Chinese friends for three weeks and no-one batted an eyelid. And the home we stayed in was a large duplex apartment with 4 bathrooms and a roof garden. In the 1980s even a penniless foreign student was wealthy compared to all but the most privileged Chinese people. Now only the wealthiest ex-pats can keep up with middle-class Chinese spending habits. People have got rich and, as Deng Xiao-ping promised them, it is glorious. When I was a student in Bejing the only shop that stocked imported goods or anything that you really wanted to buy was the Friendship Store. Chinese people weren’t even allowed in the door. Now the streets of Chengdu are lined with international brand names: Nike, Prada, Ermenegildno Zegna. Imported goods aren’t really necessary, however, because everything is made in China anyway. Thinking about the economic and lifestyle changes in the last 20 years and imagining a similar rate of change continuing for the next 20 years, I have to agree with those who say that this will be China’s century. Or rather, by the end of the century this will be China’s world.
But for now there are many remnants of the old socialist China around, quite apart from the communist party itself. The quarantine hospital where Ethan had the health tests for his residence permit may use disposable needles, but not disposable gloves to wield them. Hey, they don’t even use disposable tongue depressors. Waitresses still occasionally tell you that an item isn’t available because they can’t be bothered to go and check. Young men still cycle past you on the street calling out ‘helloooooooo’ in high-pitched voices. Buildings still pretty much fall down or at least look horribly tacky within a few years of construction. There are still a gazillion peasants out there in the countryside. For all the money being thrown around, most people are still horribly poor. The road leading to Isaac’s kindergarten passes by a piece of wasteland piled with construction rubble and trash. Around the 20th time I walked past I realized that the wasteland contains rows of tumble-down shacks where the construction crew actually live. They may be busy building ‘French-style’ town-homes but they live in a garbage heap.
That brings me on to the kindergarten, a major feature of Isaac’s and my life. We decided to send him to a local kindergarten so that he can be in a Chinese language environment and hopefully will learn to speak fairly quickly. It is certainly an impressive-looking place, a purpose-built three storey building with large playground and great facilities. It is one of an exclusive chain, the ‘Golden Apple All-The-Way’ Kindergartens (don’t ask), and the teachers do seem smart and very nice. But it is a big challenge of adjustment for Isaac, as he has to adapt to a lot more than just the language. The attitude to education and to young children is so different here - they are on the one hand more cosseted and on the other hand more restricted than in the west. One of my theories is that in the west we control the environment around children: childproofing our homes and play areas and then letting them run around as they will. Here the environment is beyond people’s control, full of unexpected hazards, and so people control their children much more closely. Kids here learn early on to stick close to their parents and do as they are told. Probably Isaac could do with a little more of that spirit, I hear you say. I certainly felt that way on the day he disappeared down the up escalator into a crowd of people. But most of the time his curious, adventurous nature is a joy to be around and we don’t want to curb that. The emphasis at his kindergarten is on group activities, rote learning and following social convention. A lot of time is spent on group dance routines, all the kids standing on their designated spots, waving their arms and hands in time to the music, or pretending to be little flowers or whatever. Isaac just isn’t getting it and I can hardly blame him. But this stuff is so deeply ingrained in most Chinese people that some adults, when they see Isaac or another kindergartner, experience a sort of Pavlovian return to their early childhood, their eyes glazing over as they start a rhymic hand-clapping, head-bobbing kind of dance.
Isaac continutes to resent the attention he receives. Everyone who sees him says he is ‘guai’, a Chinese word meaning sweet, endearing AND obedient. Then they try to stroke his head or pat his cheek, he responds by poking or pushing or spitting at them, and they change their opinion. He takes refuge against the unfamiliar in stories and is always asking Ethan when he is around, or me when he is not, to tell him the rest of the story. So we have various adventure sagas on the go, mostly featuring Isaac as a warrior or sailor or explorer or some other intrepid figure, doing good deeds and battling the forces of darkness.
We worry about the transition of course, and what impact it will have on him, but on the whole he seems to be handling it quite well. We spend a lot of time at home with familiar toys and games or outside running around, and the kindergarten is getting easier, I think. Although he clings to me every morning, he seems very cheerful when I go to pick him up and the teachers say he is getting along well with the other kids and hitting fewer people every day! So we will see. If it doesn’t work out, the alternative is a small international school where Isaac already goes to Wushu classes. We have met some Western kids there and one, a 5 year-old German girl, lives in our complex and plays with Isaac at the weekends. He is totally in love with her and wants her to come and live with us so they can play his charming game called ‘shooting other people’ all the time.
I realize I haven’t said much about what we are actually doing here. For my part that is because, as an ex-pat housewife, my main concern is how well the Amah has dusted behind the sofa. I have joined the Chengdu International Women’s Club so I can really get to grips with this issue. I also spend a fair amount of time gazing at pig carcasses, wondering which part translates into a pork chop, then giving up and buying bean curd instead. My other misadventures have included having my wallet stolen, and getting locked out on our balcony and having to be rescued by a security guard shinning up the drainpipe from the floor below. Apart from that most of my attention is focused on Isaac, as you can tell from the contents of this letter. I do occasionally remember that just a few weeks ago I was busy writing essays with titles like, ‘Constructing Community in Place, Process and Population’, but for now that is mostly eclipsed by all the hours spent playing ‘Buzz Lightyear blasts the space robots to smithereens’. Nevertheless, around all that excitement I am starting to make time to pursue some projects of my own.
Anyhow here we are and will be for the next two years. We have a guest room and are hoping for lots of visitors, so if I haven’t put you off completely, plan ahead and book yourselves in now for your China vacation. There are lots of great things to see in Sichuan and we are only a few hours away from the spectacular mountains and grasslands of the Tibetan plateau. And we promise not to make you eat Sichuan hot pot more than once.
posted by Cat Platt at 10:36 am
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