Heading Northeast

We got out of bed to start our journey at the unholy hour of 4 AM in order to catch a flight to Hehei in the far northeast of China, just across the border from Russia. Flying from Beijing to Hehei involved a plane change in the rather larger (than Hehei) city of Harbin where we eventually ended out trip.

Our first adventure occurred on the way to the airport. While, if they can find nothing else, most taxi drivers in most major cities can get to the airport on autopilot. Ours could not. He was so carried away chatting with Ben that he missed the freeway exit to the airport and added nearly 20 minutes to our trip. Fortunately we'd allowed plenty of time and checked-in ok, despite the long line and the fact that for mysterious reasons the self-check kiosk didn't work for us.

We discovered quickly that China has not yet grasped the concept of checking luggage through to the final destination (we were forewarned that they permit absolutely no liquids in carry-on otherwise we wouldn't have been checking luggage in the first place). As a result we had to rush to collect our luggage in Harbin and go check in a second time. Fortunately they do manage to get luggage off planes significantly more efficiently than in the US so we accomplished the task with time to spare.

We arrived in Hehei in the heat of the day (and it was HOT!). After checking in to a perfectly respectable hotel we set off to check out the town, an interesting mix of Russian and Chinese. In Beijing we've grown accustomed to signs (and when we're lucky menus) in Chinese and English. In Hehei they are in Chinese and Russian.

Although the hotel was basically fine, the smell emanating from the bathroom (not an uncommon occurrence in China) immediately convinced me that I did not want to ingest any tap water, even the small quantity necessary for brushing teeth. Fortunately bottled water was available in the restaurant downstairs. In the first of many such episodes, the sales lady mistook us for Russians. When she told me the price she did so in Russian. I couldn't make heads or tails of what she was saying, but finally concluded she'd said 60 in heavily accented English. I thought that was steep for three bottles of water, but figured we'd get a few bottles and find it cheaper elsewhere (it's usually more like RMB3-5). I extracted a RMB100 note (not having RMB60 in smaller bills) and she looked appalled and unhappy. She reached for my wallet where she extracted RMB6 - a much more reasonable sum (just under $1 for three 600ml bottles). It finally dawned on me she'd assumed I was Russian and given me the price in Russian.

We spent the rest of the day listening to prices quoted in Russian, being shown menus open to the Russian page, and otherwise treated as Russian. Interestingly, when bargaining for items in a store (always bargain in China!) when we said we weren't Russian, we were American the asking price routinely dropped.

Heihe is a small city of about 100,000 so it was pretty quick to tour downtown which mostly consisted of little shops selling Russian (or pseudo-Russian) knick-knacks. Luke bought a bottle of AK-47 vodka (clearly for the name!).

Heihe sits on the shore of the Black Dragon River which forms the border with Russia. Luke, Linda and Zoe with the river behind them:

We spent an hour or so aboard a little tour boat listening to speakers blaring indistinct noise (we think advertising).

Unlike my experience a few years ago looking from a small German village at its counterpart across the river in Poland, the Russian and Chinese sides of the river looked pretty much alike – mostly non-descript, blocky buildings, factories with scary-looking smokestacks and the occasional modern building clearly modeled after classic Russian architecture (colorful domes, etc.). Can you guess which is which?

We learned from chatting with the other passengers on the boat (who, surprisingly were mostly local) that nearly 80% of the population of the Russian town across the river was composed of Chinese. They cross over to work in Russia where they can earn far more money than they can in China.

(Answer: Russia's on the top, China's on the bottom :) ).

The First Expedition

Ben and I have just returned from our first expedition: 8 days, mostly in Heilongjiang Province but finishing in Jielin Province. From the whimsy of air travel in China, to days spent with six people crowded in a small sedan, to overnights on a hard-sleeper, I will share over the course of my next several posts the adventures of traveling in China's far northeast borderlands.

Bees!!!

Our dining table has six chairs. Consequently our apartment came with six plates, six bowls, six forks, etc. We decided that a) six place settings wasn't quite enough and b) since our ayi (maid) cooks Chinese food, Chinese style dishes would be more useful than Western. The Insider's Guide to Beijing (which is proving indispensable) lists, among other things, a hotel/restaurant supply store which it recommends as a good place to get very inexpensive stuff for your kitchen. Saturday we made the trek and filled our cabinets with plenty of cheap Chinese dishes.

"What does all this have to do with bees," you may ask. Well, after purchasing a vast number of dishes (for next to nothing) we went in search of lunch. The first place we wandered into was closed for the between lunch & dinner break (we were searching for lunch at the uncouth hour of 2:15 PM). We stopped in at the next place where they were happy to serve us. After examining the (to me incomprehensible) menu, Ben selected a few items. The waitress gave him a surprised look and explained one of the dishes to him. He looked a little taken aback but said he'd try it (I suppose). It turns out he ordered fried bees...yes, that's right, bees. I'm willing to at least try almost anything...but I draw the line at bugs! Sure enough, he got a large plate of bees lightly battered and fried with chile peppers. I have to confess...seeing all those little bug eyes staring up at me from the plate kind of made me lose my appetite. Ben said they were pretty good though...

To each his own.

Until next time...from Beijing...

The Ayi

Any Embassy family and anyone with and expat package in China will tell you the ayi (maid) is an essential part of existence here. A good one will make your experience one you can't wait to repeat and a bad one will be devastating.

For roughly $200/month it is possible to hire a full-time ayi who will shop, cook, clean, do laundry, take care of children (sometime you pay a bit more for that) and pets and do virtually any other household chore you can dream up. It didn't take us long to conclude that hiring our ayi had to be a top priority. One trip into a Chinese grocery store and we knew we'd be eating in restaurants until we had an ayi. Of the food content of a supermarket (most carry some clothes, furnishings, small appliances and assorted other things), 90% is unrecognizable to an American (even one like me who really likes to cook and has at least one cookbook for every region of the world that has any kind of identifiable cuisine). Given that we can't identify it, we certainly don't know how to determine its quality, select it or cook it. An ayi capable of shopping and cooking was clearly essential. Cleaning we figured was less important (our building provides hotel-like housekeeping service twice a week), we have a washer/dryer unit that washes (it doesn't dry so well) and a dishwasher, but we were rapidly getting tired of restaurant food so we set about hiring an ayi.

The primary approach to this task is word-of-mouth. Unfortunately we didn't know too many mouths. We did have the weekly Embassy newsletter which, among other things, contains a listing of ayi recommendations from Embassy families moving on and leaving their ayis jobless. The first week one I tried was already taken and the other never responded. In desperation we called our real estate agent who has been extremely helpful. She referred us to a service who sent someone for us to interview. We also found a candidate through the Embassy newsletter.

They both came on Saturday for interviews. Neither claimed to cook well ("just home cooking...nothing fancy, not restaaurant food"). The Embassy contact had 20 years of experience working for foreigners and expected us to be gullible. We were only asking for 6 hours/day not 8. She asked us for RMB2000 (about $250), an extra month's pay as bonus, all Chinese holidays off (oh and it would be nice to get American holidays too; oh and she doesn't want to shop - one of the most important tasks for us). Never mind that we're an easy assignment. Not only do we have no kids, but Ben will be traveling a great deal and I'll join him when I can, so the ayi will often have just one to care for, and will occasionally have no tasks except to drop by and feed the cats. The very nice ayi sent by the service has never worked for foreigners, speaks no English at all (literally...bye bye is about it) and she speaks Mandarin with a strong accent from Anhui province making it difficult even for Ben to communicate with her sometimes. Nevertheless, she was willing to do everything we asked and when we offered RMB1500 she jumped at it. We felt guilty and tried to offer her holidays, bonus, etc. She said she would appreciate the holidays but would only take a bonus if we felt she deserved it...it wasn't about money it was about relationships. She's hired.

She started Tuesday. Ben didn't make it home in time for her arrival and I had her all to myself for 2 hours. Communication was a disaster and a half. Thank goodness we'd written down a list of chores and Ben had translated it. I think maybe she was insulted when I showed it to her. She does know her job. We couldn't begin to discuss what she might buy at the store so I handed over the laundry and showed her how to operate the machine. That went ok, but then she started looking for other work to do. Housekeeping had finished shortly before she arrived so everything had been mopped (most of the floors are marble), dusted, etc. I failed utterly to communicate that housekeeping had just come. She set about mopping (we had a mop but that's about it for cleaning supplies). She then tried dusting with a damp cloth, washing windows and I don't even know what else. I made one desperate phone call after another to Ben trying to reach him so he could give her some guidance. No luck...except in the front areas where spouses are permitted, the Embassy prohibits cell phones, cameras, etc. Ben was, of course, in a meeting in the protected area.

When Ben finally got home we started to make some progress. The three of us went off to the supermarket together (and, lo and behold, she knew a fabulous supermarket much closer than the decent one we'd located on our own). We negotiated the vegetables where Zhang Ayi wanted to know which we liked and which we didn't. I don't like celery. Other than that, I either didn't recognize the vegetables or like them just fine. We got sauteed eggplant, blanched greens of some sort and a light broth with mushrooms and a bit of egg. We got more-or-less vegetarian yesterday, too. I think Zhang Ayi feels we need a good system cleansing after eating so many meals in restaurants. I think she's right. Her food is light and delicious and all protestations aside, she's an excellent cook. So what if she doesn't know how to cook western food. I don't want it anyway :)

Zhang Ayi not only cooks well, she seems to be an excellent shopper and a good steward of our funds. We offered to let her have more-or-less as much cash as she needed to outfit the kitchen properly (it came supplied with a soup pot, a steamer, a pressure cooker, some knives and not much else). She insisted on buying just what she needed as she needs it. Watching her pick over vegetables to get the best ones for the best price certainly puts my shopping style to shame. She must have spent ten minutes poring over the oils to select just the right type for the right price and ordinary salt (just about the only thing in our cabinets) wouldn't do...we must have "health salt." I'm not sure what that is, but the food tastes great and it's a relief to be eating light, clean and at home.

Not only does Zhang Ayi shop and cook every day, but she cleans our giant apartment from top to bottom every day, regardless of whether housekeeping has been there before her. Laundry is done daily (which is ok since our mini-washer holds about 1 day's worth of clothes), the beds are made, cats fed, everything ironed and put away neatly.

Today Zhang Ayi took me to the post office to show me how to mail letters (we can do it at the Embassy through the USPS, but I thought our family/friends might enjoy getting mail with cool foreign stamps). It's a 2 mile walk to the post office. Then you have to shuttle back and forth from counter to counter...it can't go in the envelopes I'd used...it has to be stamped (not with pretty foreign stamps just with something that labels it "letter")...and on and on and on. Sorry guys...if you get mail at all, it's going through the good old USPS. The post office adventure did, however, have a positive outcome. Zhang Ayi and I started to overcome our communication barrier. I still can't exactly talk with her and vice versa, but I did manage to understand that she's determined to teach me Chinese (good...I'm determined to learn it! :) ). I learned the words for bag, key, stop, turn, right and left. After I almost got hit by a car that came out of nowhere (drivers don't stop at red lights before turning right here...I'm really going to have to get used to that fast if I don't want to die!), I even managed to tell Zhang Ayi (so that she understood) that I hadn't expected the car because in the US they stop before turning. Ok...so I can't tell her we need more apple juice or to please pick up my favorite treat at the bakery, but it's a start.

I fear we're going to be very spoiled when we get home and I'm pretty sure that a full-time housekeeper in the US charges a little more than $200/month!

Our First Amazing Adventure: The Orchestra

Last week Ben was on the subway and noticed a woman carrying a pipa (pronounced something like pee-paw):


True to form, he couldn't resist chatting with her and before he knew it, we'd be invited to hear her group play on Saturday. Now...we're thinking...street musicians, casual afternoon "jam session"...

Saturday came and Liu Taitai (Mrs. Liu) picked us up from the designated subway stop. She drove us to a rather non-descript building and we followed her into the basement where we found...

...an entire Chinese orchestra, complete with strings both bowed and plucked, dulcimers and other harp-like instruments, flutes, shengs (another wind instrument) and a conductor. Liu Taitai proudly informed us that they were rehearsing for the Olympics (well...she modestly admitted not the Opening Ceremonies) and that they are the number 2 ranked competetive amateur music group in Beijing. Wow!

Ben and me with Liu Taitai and her pipa:



We spent two phenomenal hours listening to them play. Invitations were pressed on us from all sides to come back any time and to bring our friends. When it was over we thought it would be polite to do something to thank Liu Taitai so we invited her to join us for dinner. Wrong move! I fear we embarrassed her. She graciously excused herself on some grounds related to her husband (he was not there? out of town?). On the way back to the subway station we asked her to recommend a restaurant in the neighborhood. Wrong (right?) move again! She wouldn't hear of us eating at a restaurant. Instead she called her friend, Yang Laoshi (teacher Yang), the orchestra's composer/arranger and invited us to his house for dinner.

Ben with Yang Laoshi:


Yang Laoshi lives in the hutongs, a twisting network of tiny alleways bordered by walled compounds housing anywhere from one to five or six families, mostly in miniscule, one-story buildings with a courtyard in the center, generally with shared neighborhood toilets (of the squat variety). Yang Laoshi's home seemed to consist of three small rooms with a cooking shed in the courtyard (two propane burners, a cold water sink and not much else). Another family lived in the front half of the compound.

Yang Laoshi and his wife couldn't have greeted us more warmly, despite the fact that one must generally get to know someone quite well before you are invited home. Yang Taitai disappeared shortly after our arrival (I suspect to buy food for the unexpected guests). Yang Laoshi, Liu Taitai and Ben chatted away about music and who knows what else (my Mandarin isn't exactly up to conversational levels!).

At some point Yang Taitai arrived and food started appearing. First came a magnificent bowl of cherry tomatoes and cherries. Then we got some kind of salty, cured pork (cold), and a scallion omelet. We had to keep reminding ourselves that it was normal that we were the only ones eating. It's quite common for Chinese hosts to spend the entire party preparing and serving the food their guests eat, but it was definitely culture shock for us! The capstone of the meal was a huge bowl of classic Beijing-style noodles with the scrumptious sauce whipped up fresh by Yang Taitai in her miniature kitchen.

I'm not entirely sure how Ben excused us, but after a delicious meal in an extraordinarily charming setting with wonderfully gracious hosts, we finally headed home. I wish I knew how to respond appropriately.

How often in New York does someone you randomly talk to on the subway respond, let alone invite you to her orchestra rehearsal, never mind arrange a phenomenal dinner in a friend's home?! Truly a local adventure and a warm welcome to a culturally rich and gracious country.

Settling In

We've now been here a week and a half. I can't say we're settled but we're making progress.

We arrived 6 (large!) suitcase, 4 (large!) carry ons and 3 (anyone who read this before I caught my mistake and fixed it must have thought we were totally nuts to bring 6 cats!) cats intact. My husband's colleague met us at the airport with a 15 passenger van plenty larger enough for us and our mountain of luggage (cats traveled separately courtesy of the service). We were greeted at our compound (yes...I meant compound) by a welcoming party of many (I was too tired to count). Porters appeared and whisked our bags away, the manager, real estate agent and I have no idea who else showed us to our apartment. We proceeded on an interminable tour of the 2600 square feet to count that we in fact had 6 plates, 4 bath towels, 1 black trash can, 1 large ashtray, 1 medium ashtray, 3 small ashtrays, etc., etc. As far as I can tell, we did. I'm not sure what all the other people standing around were for.

By the time everyone left it was nearing 8 PM and we'd been traveling for something approximating three days (we started Mon. AM in Los Angeles and arrived Wed. PM in Beijing). We were thrilled to discover in the rather vague information packet we received that room service is among the amenities available at our hotel (oops! apartment). Menus, apparently, are not among the amentities. Nevertheless, my husband succeeded in ordering something which appeared ten minutes later, tasted ok and cost a lot (relatively speaking).

Bright and early (i.e. 7 AM!!!) the next morning my husband's colleague reappeared to shepherd us to the Embassy (rather a longer commute than we expected) where I was deposited in Starbucks with the colleague's wife while my husband and his colleague went off to "super-secret" (aka "wives not welcome") briefings somewhere. I got a tour of the parts of the Embassy I'll have access to (the post office, cashier, etc.). We stopped by the clinic where we learned that air purifiers and humidifiers are a definite must (a few days of experience without taught us they weren't kidding) and that the Embassy provides coupons for free drinking water (not that water's expensive, but there are some definite benefits to being quasi embassy employees).

After a long day at the Embassy we stumbled home to a mountain of suitcases and an empty fridge. The staff (virtually all of whom seem to be trainees) directed us to a nearby street to find a supermarket and restaurants. The supermarket is sketchy and we had mediocre and overpriced food at the only restaurant in sight.

A week and half later we have only two suitcases left to unpack. We've located a much nicer supermarket a long-ish walk or short-ish busride away. We've acquired Chinese cell phones (a must-have), gotten the shots we didn't get before came, schlepped back and forth to the Embassy any number of times, acquired hangers, then more hangers (our large 3 bedroom apartment came furnished with 8 hanges total...a few short of enough!), figured out how to work the washing machine (but not the drier), bought a very high-tech air purifier/humidifier (I woke up unable to breathe every morning until we started using it), and, finally, today hired an ayi (maid) who, if all goes according to plan will do most household chores (except the heavy cleaning which our hotel...um, apartment, provides twice a week) including shopping and cooking.

Today we also had our first amazing local experience but that's a story for next time.

Signing off from Beijing...

Getting There

I arrived in China less than a week ago...getting here is a story in itself so let me start with that.

It starts with the cats. I have three of them. I wasn't about to move half way around the world and leave my kitties behind so I started making arrangements for them to move with me. A little web research made it clear that it was possible, but not easy so my first order of business was to engage the services of World Care Pet Transport. The first thing I discovered is that Beijing will only admit one pet per passport (my husband and I make two people, but there are three cats...you do the math!). Note that this restriction is unique to Beijing. If we brought the cats in through, say, Guangzhou we'd have no problem. Too bad you can't fly from New York to Guangzhou...at least not easily! Not to worry...World Care assured me they had a system (use your imagination) by which they could arrange for three cats to be admitted with only two passports; the only hitch is that the cats would have to travel as excess baggage. Ok...no problem...or so we thought. Continental has a particularly good reputation for pet transport and I've taken the cats on Continental in the past and had good experiences so I negotiated with the military travel agent to get us on Continental and made reservations for the cats. Oops! Continental only flies animals as cargo...they must fly as excess baggage for the import trick to work. The difference??? Beats me! (Well...probably you collect cargo somewhere different and it goes through a different customs office, but they travel in the same part of the plane so it's a little silly.) So...I ask World Care for an airline recommendation and they think United will work. Lucky for me, military travel is flexible and the agent was very nice about rebooking us on United. I called United to make reservations for the cats and...you guessed it...a new snag. Chinese regulations say one pet per passport so United will not accept more than one pet per traveller period, end of story. It also emerges that United flies into the new international terminal Beijing has constructed in the runnup to the Olympics and customes there is somewhat tighter. Now I'm really in a panic until a b-school friend makes a fantastic suggestion...maybe one of the students heading to China in mid-May for a class in Beijing would take the cat. Sure enough, email to members of the Facebook group for the trip brought in a flood of offers (thanks to all you fabulous Sternies!). The first cat successfully traveled to China about a week and a half before we did. We arrived last week and all three cats are safely at our apartment. Whew!

On to the visas...naturally the week before we went to get our visas, China severely tightened the restrictions on visa issuance and, of course, we hit a place where we fall through the beaurocratic cracks in the system. My husband is traveling on his tourist passport, rather than his government passport for obscure reasons that I don't understand and therefore can't explain. As a result the military passport/visa people won't assist in obtaining visas. My husband found a visa agent who does exclusively Chinese visas located just a few blocks from the Embassy. My husband was to apply for a tourist visa which he'd convert to a student visa once he arrived in China and received the complete paperwork from the university he'll be associated with. The visa agent initially told him not even to bother...he had no chance of getting a visa. When he explained the situation the visa agent agreed to give it a try if my husband included a letter explaining that I had a job and an apartment in Beijing. It worked an my husband got his visa. Then I needed to get my work visa. Fortunately, the nice travel agent (see above) was able to convert our one-way tickets into roundtrip tickets and we had, by the time I applied, signed a lease. With an invitation letter from my soon-to-be-employer, round-trip airline tickets and a lease I was able to get a non-resident work visa. As it stands, we're scheduled to be here for 14 months. We're each holding 12 month visas which allow us multiple entries into the country but do not allow us to stay more than 30 days at a time. My husband anticipates converting his visa into a resident student visa this week, but I may have wait until after the Olympics before I can get a resident work visa. In the mean time, we'll be making monthly trips out of China. If it weren't for the LOOOOONG waits at immigration it wouldn't be so bad.

Then there's the saga of the official passport. Both my husband and I are supposed to be carrying official passports (pursuant to his orders). Although we're not traveling on the official passports orders say to have them in our possession. An official passport has a brown (or red depending on who you ask) cover. My husband got his with no problem. I had timing issues. The first problem (from a passport standpoint only!) is that we got married in December which meant I needed a new tourist (blue) passport with the correct name. My travel plans for the winter/spring looked something like this: Bermuda at the end of December, Germany in mid-January, Tanzania in mid-March, China at the end of May. That mean there were two gaps long enough for passport processing. I changed the name in my passport between the Germany and Tanzania trips. No problem. As soon as I got back from Tanzania I took my regular passport to the military base nearest my home (an hour and a quarter away) to start the processing for a government passport. When early May arrived with no word I called. The passport wasn't in. Miraculously, the next day it arrived and I trecked an hour and a quarter out to the base to pick it up. The agent hadn't opened the envelope. We discovered that instead of the brown (or red...) passport orders required I'd been issued a second blue passport with a special stamp (more common for military spouses). Fortunately that passport could be used to obtain the brown one and I was able to take my regular passport home to start the visa process. Unfortunately, the "rush" job on the brown visa wasn't so "rush". A week later when it should have arrived it hadn't. The agent was unreachable for days. When I finally reached him he swore he'd been calling the State Department every ten minutes to no avail. I left for California (a 10 day trip immiediately prior to the China departure). The agent had instructions to FedEx the passport to me there. Nothing. Voicemails unreturned. Email had an out of office response. I'm now in China sans official passport with no idea where it might be or where it might get sent (it's tough to pick it up in Brooklyn, as of today my apartment is occupied by tenants, and FedEx-ing it to my uncle's office in CA won't help much). Keep your fingers crossed for me...hopefully it will eventually reach me (preferably before I actually need it for something!).

And then there's the furniture...my husband was in a somewhat odd situation. He had to move out of his home in CA in November and put most of his things in storage (some marked to move, some to stay in storage until we come back from China). He went on temporary assignment until the big move at the end of May. Way back in November, though, there was no way to guess whether we'd be getting a furnished or an unfurnished apartment so he labeled his furniture to ship. When we finally signed the lease it was for a furnished apartment. We were saved by an error that would otherwise have been infuriating. The moving company somehow failed to ship our stuff on time. My husbaned brilliantly told them the way to turn a bad experience into a good one was to take the furniture off the shipping manifest and keep it in storage instead. They agreed. We'll see what arrives and when.

At any rate...we're here...cats are here...mountain of luggage is here...apartment was ready for us (sort of, but that's for another day). I think I've gone on long enough. Stand by for more...