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5.01.2022

Once in a Lifetime 一辈子一会

You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
You may find yourself in another part of the world
You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife
You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
-The Talking Heads



Back in 2012, I wrote in my first blog post, “So here we are, at the brink of our once in a lifetime opportunity: a move to a foreign land, with a foreign language, with foreign customs. And we can't wait.” (See Once In a Lifetime.) We sold our house and our cars, and quit our jobs. I gave up high heels and birdMAN his golf clubs. We packed two bags each and headed to China. We were excited. We were anxious. We didn’t know what would be in store for us.

What was in store? A lot of puzzling situations. For instance, why was it that every time I needed to pay for electricity inevitably there was some kind of hiccup? Either the place to buy electricity was closed, or the computer wasn’t working and you just had to come back later (later on, online electricity payment eliminated that issue). Buying electricity sometimes ended up involving several trips over two days.

While a lot of annoying stuff happened and challenged my western world sensibilities, and at times being away from friends and family was hard, we loved living on the other side of the world. After the pandemic erupted and forced us to take up US residence once again, someone asked me what I missed most about China. I thought for a moment and felt my chest brimming with nostalgia and emotion. The answer was clear. The people.

People. That’s why they were there.

For instance, let me tell you about Li Jie. She lived in a single room with her husband. Her room was flanked by identical rooms, which housed workers like her. She had a single water spigot for cleaning. The water came out cold. The public bathroom was just across the way, as well as a communal kitchen with a large sink for cleaning dishes. Undoubtedly, she was familiar with her neighbors' habits, and they with hers. They could see right into her place every time nature called or a pot needed rinsing.

This a hutong alley-- not Li Jie's but you get the idea.

Her hutong was behind a hospital where she spent most of the week in the hospital bathroom. Yes, she was the bathroom lady. I always thought being the bathroom lady was the worst job anybody could have. If you ever smelled a typical Chinese bathroom with its trash cans overflowing with used toilet paper, you might agree. But Li Jie was grateful for the job. Like many hardworking country folk, she came from outside Beijing to work and would send money to her family. Her 4 (or 5?) children lived apart from her in their hometown. Her school age children lived at a school dormitory and came to Beijing during vacations. Then that single room of the hutong across the way from the public bathroom would house four people.

She was rail thin with stringy waist length hair and wizened skin that aged her far beyond her years. She spoke Mandarin Chinese with a thick accent that I didn’t understand. Her life had been hard.

Somehow, somewhere Li Jie met one of our intrepid and loving friends. So she became our friend. That’s how one day, a Korean couple, a Japanese couple, an American couple (us) and an Italian man, ended up at Li Jie’s place for lunch.

We must have been quite the spectacle as we parked our bikes at the entrance of the hutong. We were a bunch of foreigners that clearly did not come from that part of town. We had gleaming white teeth and name brand backpacks purchased abroad. We had come from our respective apartments on the other side of the canal. In comparison to the hutong, our apartments with their mismatched furniture, cozy kitchens, and private bathrooms seemed like pure luxury. Our apartments were in high-rise buildings that were within walking distance of fairly prestigious universities and Starbucks. Li Jie’s neighborhood, although not far by bike, seemed like a different world.

We foreigners paraded down the walkway to Li Jie’s place. On the way, we glimpsed past the patterned curtains and through the open doorways into people’s homes. Each place was packed with a hodgepodge of blankets, clothes, and boxes. Red banners lined the doorways with the Chinese characters for wealth and luck. We got whiffs of garlic and the bathroom at the same time.

Li Jie welcomed us into her home with a warm smile and a feast set on small fold out tables. birdMAN and I perched on the bed barely noticing the concrete walls wallpapered with newspaper. Others sat on mismatched stools perhaps borrowed from the neighbors. Despite having a good sized window, the room was dim. The window faced a narrow alley and the light was blocked by the building and hanging laundry. The sounds of chatting neighbors, flushing toilets, running water, and playing children floated in and surrounded us.

Our host had gone to the butcher that morning and had ordered a chicken for slaughter. Not one piece of chicken was wasted. Every part except the blood was cooked into a soup or stir fry. She doctored up that chicken with garlic and onions. It was delicious. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I remember how easily we foreigners conversed in Chinese with sweet Li Jie.

A meal prepared by Li Jie at a later time. She made true egg rolls--
 pork filling wrapped in cooked egg.

When Dumpling was born, Li Jie delivered a big pot of
米酒 (rice wine porridge) and a ton of eggs to me. 

This experience, and many more like it, happened because back in 2012, we decided to make a BIG change. So thank you for being with us for the last ten years of this blog. I started this blog to document our life abroad, but our wandering days are over–for now at least.

But there is much, much, much more to come. Raising a child in the ever changing 21st century is a continuing adventure.

Chinese Word of the Blog: 一辈子一会 Yībèizi yī huǐ
English Translation: Once in a lifetime
Chinese Word of the Blog: 去中国生活是一辈子一会的。Qù zhōngguó shēnghuó shì yībèizi yī huǐ de.English Translation: Living in China is a once in a lifetime experience.


Here are some pictures and IG posts from China. Oh nostalgia...


June 2013 birdMAN makes 饺子
September 2013 Xialian shows me how to haggle like a local

September 2013 Everyone wants to be outside today! The weather is fabulous.
January 2014 Dancing around Cambodia
June 2014 When it's hot, there's nothing better than BBQ and beer

October 2015 Sun's out, belly out

October 2015 Blue skies making us a little excited

September 2016 Every corner needs a barber



January 2017

Febuary 2017 


December 2017 We take Dumpling to Thailand

April 2018 Dumpling's first visit to the Great Wall
September 2018 Dumpling feels the rhythm
October 2018 Dumpling visits Cuandixia
December 2018 Playtime in the courtyard
April 2019
April 2019 A sweet new bike seat! We are going places.

April 2019 Dumpling blends right in


January 2020 Making dumplings make a very happy Dumpling

April 2022 We are in the USA. Life is good!


4.25.2022

The Burglars 小偷

When I was young
we used to put
alarms on our doors
and screens like a burglar net 
now that I'm older I'm sure that's absurd
that's the word for the man
who collects
who's he stealing from next
-Animal Collective

This is what the burglars saw.
That jewelry is what the burglars got.


One Thursday morning, the sky was wild with sunshine. We were feeling pretty sunny ourselves looking forward to a weekend in Santa Cruz, California. Since July 2021, the three of us - BirdMAN, me, and five-year old Dumpling- have been living with my parents. Sometimes…getting away is just nice. So we spent the morning packing and preparing. We locked up the doors, shut the garage door, put the dog outside, and drove away with not a care in the world.

We didn't worry too much about leaving the house unattended. In the 38 years that my family has lived in this house, neither have they been robbed or feared being robbed. The greatest worry of uninvited intruders came from the skittish skunks that occasionally spray the dog or the rattlesnake slithering amongst the hydrangeas. Oh, and those pesky squirrels that love to feast on the summer tomatoes. A burglar? Nahh. We often left the garage door open all day and forgot to lock the doors.

I was so unconcerned about robbery that I had stashed a fine booty of gold and jade (along with a mismatch of cheap jewelry from Target and H&M) in a jewelry box . That box sat on top of a dresser. In the closet. In plain view. In the most obvious of spots for jewelry.

Those guys were strong! This deadbolted door didn't stand a chance.


Sometime between 10:30 am that morning and 5 pm that evening, intruders bashed in the back door and entered the house through the garage. They skittered like frantic ferrets on the hunt scarcely noticing the array of family photographs hanging in the hallway. The sheepish grins of my nephews as little boys. The black and white photos of my sisters and me as teenagers. A wedding photograph of me wearing a Swarovski necklace and a delicate gold bracelet.

I will never see that Swarovoski necklace and delicate gold bracelet ever again.

After pillaging my jewelry stash, as well as swiping an old Timbuk2 backpack presumably to pack the loot, those sneaky crooks ransacked my dad’s bedroom. They upturned and scattered the contents of the drawers and the closet. They probably were dismayed to find no gold jewelry, but elated when they came upon a two firearms. One was a Smith & Wesson 357 Magnum revolver gifted to my dad from his younger cop brother. The other was an old rifle that my dad bought as a teenager.

By some miracle, they did not bother with my mom’s room (my parents keep their stuff in separate bedrooms). They would have made off with a jackpot of gold and jade. Even so, they scored big in this old country house in the middle of nowhere. In the end, they made off with all my jewelry (both fine and costume), a revolver and rifle, photography lights, a stash of battery chargers, and birdMAN’s road bike. We estimated the monetary value stolen at about $18,000.

The cops profiled the burglars as two or three young men from South Sacramento or the Bay Area. These types of criminals look primarily for three things: jewelry, guns, and money. The burglars never stay in a house for long, maybe ten or fifteen minutes. They are long gone should there be a silent alarm and the police show up. Little did those crooks know in our house, they could have taken a nap and helped themselves to a sandwich with time to spare.

So here’s the lesson: Do not leave thousands of dollars worth of gold and jade in a box on a dresser—even if you live in the middle of nowhere. Other tips from the cops are: leave the lights on at night, get an alarm system, and put valuables in a heavy duty safe.

For about a week after the burglary, I was feeling pretty foolish. Would I leave thousands of dollars of cash lying around? No, of course not! Yet that is what I did with all my gold and jade. Oh my heart hurts thinking about the simple gold chain and oblong shaped jade that my grandmother gifted me as a baby. My baby jade being handled by some sneaky, no-good, BAD guy! Oh that makes my blood boil!

Oh how stupid of me.

No, not stupid, a friend pointed out. Innocent.  Well, I guess I am not so innocent any more.

Chinese Word of the Blog: 小偷 Xiǎotōu
English Translation: thief
Example Sentence: 几个小偷偷了我的珠宝!Jǐ gè xiǎotōu tōule wǒ de zhūbǎo
English Translation: Thieves stole my jewelry!

My jewelry boxes emptied.
What will they do with my wood medallion earrings I got in Cambodia?

They abandoned the pink bike, but took off with birdMAN's road bike.

The golf club got abandoned on the way.  From this, we know the getaway route. They hopped the fence and trekked through theproperty.




12.29.2021

Young and Beautiful 二十年

Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful?
Will you still love me when I got nothing but my aching soul?
I know you will, I know you will, I know that you will

-Lana Del Rey



Well, this is a long neglected blog. I owe my lack of blogging enthusiasm to the fact that our American life seems rather unremarkable. Who cares what I found on sale at Sprouts? Furthermore, blogging seems to be going out of style. Vlogging on YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram are replacing blogs like high-rise jeans are edging out skinny jeans. On that note, my 16 year old self would be shocked and horrified to know that my 40 year self wears high waisted mom jeans (gasp!) and runs around in public (even dining out) in workout pants and running shoes. Back to the early 2000s practice of blogging... Does anyone read this anyway? Does anyone read a blurb longer than two sentences?

Even if my blog readers mainly consist of our mothers who we see nearly everyday, leaving out one of 2021's major milestones in the birdMAN and Huixin saga does seem remiss.

So here goes...We have been married 20 years! Our marriage is now approaching the US legal drinking age of 21.

We celebrated our twenty years anniversary in true birdMAN style: we went to Moonraker Brewery for beer and picked up In N' Out cheeseburgers on the way. Yes, this was a few months ago back in September when the weather was still dry and hot.

So happy anniversary to us! May we always be young and beautiful.

Chinese Word of the Blog: 二十年 (Èrshí nián)
English Translation: Twenty years
Chinese Sentence: 我们结婚二十年了!(Wǒmen jiéhūn èrshí niánle)
English Translation: We have been married twenty years!

2021 makes 20 years of marriage for the Bai's and us,
more than 20 years of friendship, and countless burgers and brews.

Burgers + Brews = Celebration
Burgers + Brews = Celebration





5.21.2021

Give it Away 给别人

What I've got you've got to give it to your mama
What I've got you've got to give it to your pappa
What I've got you've got to give it to your daughter
You do a little dance and then you drink a little water
- Red Hot Chili Peppers



Over the years that we lived in China, we inherited a lot of stuff from people that emptied their apartments before heading home or elsewhere in the world. Afterall, there's only so much you can bag in a bag.

Each time I used something that had been passed on to me, I fondly thought of its previous owner. Each time I slow-cooked carnitas or baked banana bread, I thought of fellow Californians Zhiruo and Xueshan who bequeathed us a slow-cooker and mini oven before heading to warmer climes. The one time I attempted to make gluten-free cookies with coconut flour, I thought of my French amie and health nut. Before settling back in the land of baguettes, she had unloaded gluten-free flours, flaxseed, and blueberry tea on me. Each time I used a cute plastic bag, a pink and white polka dotted cupcake liner, or floral contact paper, I thought of prolific baker and big-hearted Taoyu. She really baked the scrummiest (as they would say on the Great British Bake Off, my quarantine guilty pleasure). A caboodle of clothes, cleaning supplies, stationary, face masks, utensils, Japanese flavor packets, etc dotted our shelves from a succession of people that have come and gone.

And I remember each and every one of them. Each inherited thing is like a hello from a friend.

Here is Zhiruo saying hello

Now we are part of that great crowd of those who have come...and gone-- except we didn’t have the opportunity (uh hum! hassle) of purging our stuff accumulated during the seven plus years living in China.

As you may know, back in January 2020 we had left China expecting to return three weeks later. More than a year later, we had yet to return and decided conclusively that Beijing would not be a part of our immediate future. For nearly the whole of 2020 and the early part of 2021, our Beijing apartment collected dust. Now the time had finally come to deal with our abandoned apartment and the stuff in it. This task (uh hum! hassle) primarily fell on fellow Californian, Xialian, and local friend, Fanglan.

Fanglan along with two other Chinese friends had already cleaned out the food in early January 2021. They had oohed and ahhed over the booty (bottles of wine, the bag of quinoa, the stockpile of dried beans, rice, nuts, semi-sweet chocolate chips and a large jar of pure vanilla extract) as they helpfully divided up the loot. I can’t help but wonder what happened to my treasured quinoa. Surely not wasted, it was probably made into 粥 (porridge). Someone is eating the most expensive porridge ever.

Wine comes to those who clean out our place
 
Now mid-February, Xialian arranged for an exit permit to leave her college campus where she lives and works. She and her husband, XP, had been on strict lockdown since January 2020 only leaving campus a handful of times. Unfortunately, one of their first outings since the Pandemic hit was not a dinner date at Great Leap Brewery for cheeseburgers and beer. (But they did inherit our humongous chili pot emblazoned with a Great Leap logo. See Pork and Beans.) Even so, Xialian and XP cheerily offered to help.

And oh boy, did Xialian, XP, Fanglan, and all the helpers rise to the occasion. Once I told Fanglan, “很可惜,我们决定我们不会回北京” (Sadly, we have decided not to return to Beijing), and I gave her the greenlight to give away stuff, there was a flurry of texts swifting from Beijing to California and back again: So-and-so or so-and-so’s relative needs a sofa, a crib, a room screen, etc, and would it be possible for so-and-so to take the wok and soup pot? And I said, Give it away!

The word spread and people came and requested what they wanted. Two days later, the good stuff (our furniture, oven, and birdMAN’s bike) had been snatched up. A week later, Xialian and XP had sorted through our stuff, and set aside things to be shipped 5,900 miles from Beijing to California. Soon thereafter on a Monday afternoon, Xialian and Fanglan neatly laid out the goods not yet spoken for or not yet taken.They put out the invitation: Open house everybody! On such and such afternoon, come one and come all. Please take what you want.

Come they did--at least that’s what I figured from Xialian’s instant messages. As I laid in bed (there’s a 15 hour time difference), fragments of our Beijing life were dispersed and divided amongst our friends. Even our set of IKEA matching dishes of six bowls, six plates, and six large shallow bowls were divided up one by one. I wonder if the same thing happened to the complete set of silverware. A single fork for this person and a single spoon for the next guy. Ahhh that’s China for you. Nobody cares if the bowls match the serving dishes. China kitchens brim over with a hodgepodge of dishes snagged from the mobile pottery cart or someone’s abandoned stuff.

Soon our apartment had been stripped bare, and then our friends scrubbed the place top to bottom. I might add a thorough cleaning was hardly necessary. The apartment was already cleaner than 99% of most rentals returned to a landlord. Nonetheless, our amazing friends cleaned the place spotless worried that the landlord would quibble and withhold our deposit.

Xialian and XP going to work

Scrubbed clean

After Fanglan reassured me that she had diligently cared for the apartment and arranged a walkthrough with the landlord, she sent me this message:

“谢谢您!刚才一边收拾,一边难过,满屋子都是关于您们美好的回忆!XX找我要关于您们的照片,我居然有从宝宝出生到现在的好多照片,和您们在一起的日子真美好!真是舍不得您们不在我们身边!”

(“Thank you! As we finished cleaning, I felt sad. This house is full of good memories! XX asked me to find pictures of you, and I have many pictures from your baby’s birth until now, and that time with you all was so wonderful! It’s unbearable that you are not here!”)

That really tugged at my heartstrings. Okay, I admit it! That made me weepy and nostalgic and regretful that I didn’t get to say a proper goodbye to all our Beijing friends. I do, however, take comfort that at the very least somebody is using our stuff.

Hopefully every time someone eats noodles from one of those white IKEA bowls, they think of birdMAN, Huixin, and Dumpling. Those crazy Americans that spoke crazy grammatically incorrect Chinese and cooked crazy food with a lot of cheese and cinnamon. Those crazy Americans who laughed a lot and welcomed them into their home for dessert and lively conversation. Those crazy Americans who broke all kinds of rules like drinking cold water and eating ice cream in the winter. Most of all though, I hope that every time they clink a chopstick on one of those white IKEA bowls, they remember how much those crazy Americans loved them. A white IKEA bowl sending a message of love--or at least a 你好 (hello).

Here is a huge 谢谢  (THANK YOU) to Xialian, XP, and Fanglan for taking the lead in giving away our stuff! Also to TF who helped us with complicated bank stuff. You and all our beautiful friends in China will always and forever have a special, special, special place in our hearts.

Chinese Word of the Blog: 给别人 (Gěi biérén
English Translation: to give something to someone

Example Sentence: 我把所有的东西都给别人。(Wǒ bǎ wǒ suǒyǒu de dōngxī dōu gěi biérén。)
English translation: I gave all my things away to people.

Our place goes up for rent! Apparently no one wanted the electric kettle.

The rocking chair and lamp chilling in a new home

There goes my coat and DIY art

Special delivery! Now we know it takes two months to get stuff delivered via snail mail from Beijing to California.