Brillig Beijing: The Forbidden City and beyond
They don’t make megalomaniacs like they used to.
Be advised (particularly if you’ve recently had a child) that the Forbidden City is called a city for a reason. It is ENORMOUS. Luckily Bonnie is a smart tour guide and encouraged us to take the most direct possible route through. She also carried our nappy bag (while CJ carried Louisette and the baby bag), which meant I carried nothing at all – a cunning (and successful) plan to deal with a physically draining day.
We started off by walking across Tiananmen Square.
The worst part of the Forbidden City was the ridiculous number of people (this week has three public holidays in a row). The best part of the Forbidden City was the beautiful Imperial Gardens section at the end.
After going a-l-l the way through the city, we climbed the fairly steep hill behind it. The hill is called “The Mound” and is artificial. Apparently there’s someone else’s palace underneath. It’s actually not all that high, but because Beijing is so very flat there are long views in all directions – including directly back over the Forbidden City.
Baby Days
As you can tell, Louisette is so brilliant she likes to read over her dad’s shoulder.
Louisette’s feeding is changing: she’ll only breastfeed for about ten minutes (as opposed to up to 40 minutes pre-travel) and she’s having a bit more than half her food from formula – which does make things easier for me.
I’m prepping a “travelling with baby” blog for after I get back, which will have everything I’ve learnt from all this travel. In the meantime, here are two pictures of her getting burped (in the first, she’s just caught sight of herself in the hotel mirror).
The best thing about travelling with a baby is you always have a great source of entertainment.
Two day ago Louisette really impressed us: She initiated a game of peek-a-boo with her Dad. Not only did she pick the parent who plays peek-a-boo with her most often, but she demonstrated the initiative and self-awareness to know that another person wouldn’t see her face if she turned her head to hide in the side of her baby bag. Wow.
And here’s another breastfeeding photo – perched on a dusty shelf just outside the Forbidden City, with passers-by walking up and taking photos.
And here’s a pretty sunset from our hotel window, just because.
Brillig Beijing: Venturing Outside
It’s Spring in Beijing at the moment (or “dust season” if you prefer – Beijing is has a variety of hideous weather to suit all seasons), but given that Winter (or “death season” if you prefer) often sees temperatures of around minus 20 degrees Celsius, warming up takes a while – it’s roughly the equivalent of a Canberra Winter.
Today (well, 31 March) was super exciting, as it turned out. Louisette began holding onto her toys for the first time. I’d seen her grasping for her hanging toys (she loves hitting them – involving a great deal of adorable and random flailing with the occasional hit) so I placed the toy in her hand and watched in delight as she gripped it and shook it, making it rattle. This expression is halfway between delight and concentration.
Oh yeah, and we did a bit of China stuff too. We visited the (outside) venue where the wedding will take place – a beautiful sheltered courtyard with a Chinese-style pavilion.
And here’s the mandatory “street scene” shot for a new city (that’s the CCTV tower spire in the background).
I’ve had a simply brilliant time constantly using (and, frankly, needing to use) my pathetic scraps of Mandarin to get around – since Bil and Bonnie are a teensy bit busy with their impending nuptials. As an Australian, any bilingualism is pretty much a super power.
Tomorrow (ish): Baby in a bar.
Brillig Beijing: Baby in a Bar
Yep, we took Louisette to her first bar today. Here she is (and that’s her grandma – Bil and CJs mum – in the background):
And here’s me, five seconds ago:
I’m writing this blog on Sunday night, which is open mike night at Lush bar in Wudaoko. It’s my favourite bar in the world, because Bil and Rich (one of the owners, who co-hosts open mike nights with Bil) sing and play guitar in order to encourage others to do the same (a huge treat for me), and somehow the level of talent seems abnormally high. I always get really emotional – the guitars, the hookahs, the green walls, the sense of community – it all makes me get teary-eyed. Or maybe it’s because I always have a chocolate martini (when I was pregnant, I promised myself I’d come to Lush and have another – and I keep my promises).
Here’s Bil and Rich doing their thing:
And Bil, who to us will always be the main event at Lush:
Twas brillig: Beijing’s Slithy Toves*
On Thursday we packed our bags and set off for Beijing.
This is the view from our hotel
The hotel is very cool. It’s one of those ones with six different overpriced restaurants, about twelve staff in the foyer at all times, and so on. We had some classic Chinese-culture difficulties immediately upon our arrival. We ordered a cot months ago, and when we arrived (exhausted from a moderately epic journey featuring about two hours of postpartum/lack of sleep psychosis from yours truly) they informed us that they had no cot, had never had a cot, and would give us a free bed (yeah, thanks).
CJ and I realised that having the mattress on the floor would make it safer (and of course removing every scrap of extraneous bedding to lower the risk of SIDS) but poor CJ had to try to explain our logic to five different people who were obviously very disturbed by our peculiar parenting methods, and would we like more pillows?
In order to help the poor staff cope (SIDS-safe beds look incredibly barren if you don’t know about the decades of life-saving research) we decorated Louisette’s bed with a variety of pink items, and all the toys we brought with us. They did eventually take away the frame, and it’s a good thing too – last night she fell out of bed (no real problem, since she fell about three inches onto carpet, feet first). (And today one of Bonnie and Bil’s friends has brought us a portacot, so that’s good. Someone else we’ve never met has lent us a stroller.)
Another staff member is determined to practise his Australian colloquialisms on us – G’day mate, hooroo, etc. It adds that surreal element you’d miss if it wasn’t there during a trip to China.
And then we rested.
Poor Louisette gets sleepy, but she’s just too excited to stop looking around. Then she gets much, much more tired. Observe her expression as we tried to settle her into the room:
I was still having large-scale hallucinations, so I didn’t leave the hotel that whole first day. CJ was rather impressed by the local Wal-Mart (an exotic place, to Australians) and their pet section:
My hallucinations have now stopped (CJ and his parents took Louisette away for six hours during the day today so I could sleep), but I’m still having dizzy spells so I’m being careful.
Right now I’m using public internet at a bar, which sadly I won’t be visiting every day. I’ll be as consistent as I can with blogging, but this *IS* China, so no promises. If you’re dying to know I’m not dead, you can check Project 365 (under Louise Curtis) for one new photo a day.
*No, I don’t know what that means. Welcome to Beijing.
Kong Fu: The final day
We had classy family happenings today, so we all dressed up. Louisette had a brilliant time watching everyone come in and make a fuss over her.
We had lunch at The Peak (THE The Peak, not just the suburb – where CJ and Louisette and I have been gleefully staying all this time), at the Lookout Café, which had reasonably priced food that was simply delicious. I had Penne al Salmone – penne with salmon, pistachios and a creamy vodka sauce – and CJ had Hoisin Chicken (as you can tell, the menu was somewhat international). Also, I liked the fountain (sidebar: How good does my dress look?? Regular readers will notice I removed the removeable panel at the front to highlight the lacing against the white shirt beneath).
And then we went inside the Peak mall, which has fabulous views. We paid our extra $30HK (about $4 Australian) to go up to the official viewing platform. I wrote more about The Peak at Weekend Notes.
Don’t we look nice in our respectable-outing clothes? And baby vomit free, so far! (I’m not actually saluting you, by the way.)
It was very windy, and the pollution causes an intense and constant glare. Which is how this photo happened – CJ with Bonnie’s grandma (Bonnie is the name I’ve picked for the bride – making the engaged couple Bil and Bonnie). Don’t you just love his facial expression?
Later we went to a Melbourne-esque restaurant district (Hong Kong style, of course) for dinner.
Hong Kong is like a gorgeous woman, beautifully dressed and made up, who has then stood under a sewage pipe for half an hour. It’s impossible not to notice how beautiful it is – but it’s also impossible to look past the filth. I wish I could see Hong Kong without the pollution. Nothing makes me want to become a hard core greenie like coming to this part of the world.
Coming in. . . . oh, about half an hour (assuming the connection doesn’t drop out again). . . Beijing!
Comparison: The Dancing Dress
China has a firewall preventing access to wordpress (ah, China you wacky thing you *eyeroll*), so my blog entries will have to wait a little while. I’m not dead, I promise. I will update when I can (there are ways around the firewall, but my access to those will be sporadic at best). In the meantime, here’s something I prepared earlier, posted along with this message via one of my Australian minions:
Here’s Louisette on 19 January this year, at four days of age (and a little jaundiced):
And here she is on 19 March this year, exactly two months later:
I think the photos speak for themselves! Yes, it’s the same dress. Where did those long legs come from?
And here, for convenience, is the same two photos side by side:
Temeraire
Temeraire: Black Powder War
Temeraire (who is a dragon and a major part of the British Aerial Corps during the Napoleonic Wars) has made an extremely dangerous enemy; another dragon, who no longer has anything to lose. When Temeraire and his captain, Laurence, are recalled to Britain via Instanbul – where several precious eggs are in need of collection.
Due to transport difficulties, the party much travel overland with a guide who is half Nepalese and all too secretive. The land itself creates enormous difficulties, as do the locals – including a band of wild dragons.
When the group finally reaches Istanbul things just get worse. The eggs are there, but there has been some kind of major miscommunication and it is unclear if the eggs were ever truly intended for Britain or simply used as a lure. They are imprisoned within the palace complex, and their fate – and the fate of the eggs Britain so desperately needs – is unclear. Temeraire’s enemy has travelled ahead of them, sowing poison every step of the way.
This is a brilliant book – they all are. At this point it is sometimes hard to be sympathetic to Laurence’s superiors who are constantly screwing him around (and are, let’s face it, somewhat Imperialistic). The frustration of the characters transfers a little too well to the reader. A lot of the action and danger is indirect or physically distant, which does weaken it. But the relationship between Temeraire and Laurence continues to grow and develop (rather dangerously, because Temeraire’s ideas about society are quite sensible, but revolutionary), and it never stops being fascinating.
Rating: PG for battle violence
Free sample (as a captain, Laurence is responsible for the education of his younger crewmen):
Granby sat Roland and Dyer down to practice their penmanship by the firelight while Laurence attempted to make out their attempts at trigonometry. These, having been carried out in mid-air and with the slates subject to all the force3 of the wind, posed quite a serious challenge, but he was glad to see at least their calculations no longer produced hypotenuses shorter than the other sides of their triangles.
Kong Fu: Cheung Chau Island
Cheung Chau Island has no cars, which SOUNDS like a haven of peace and gentle living. Not so. There are bicycle hoons everywhere, and the select few with licenses to drive a “cart” (a kind of quad bike with the volume of a Harley and a similar effect on conversation in the immediate vicinity) seem to be everywhere.
We ate lunch by the harbour, and they were passing constantly.
It is, however, packed with gorgeous narrow alleyways.
And islands are just always cool.
Narrow alleyway #2
Bonus door in wall (below), followed by paper dim sum (burning paper items gives them to ancestors in the afterlife – you can buy paper houses, massage chairs, iphones, etc).
The below ferry took us from the middle of the island to the pirate cave end (saving us a walk, which was handy since the walk over that end of the island was quite steep for ladies who’ve recently had babies).
Graffiti is always cooler in Chinese, and cooler still on bamboo.
Lonely Planet described the pirate cave as “a hole in the rock” so when we saw some Chinese graffiti indicating an EXTREMELY narrow cleft between two hunks of rock, we thought we’d found the alleged cave. I call this picture “Me and my pirate hoard”. We’ve trying to make it look like it goes back further, but we’re in as deep as we could get.
hh
This photo with Bil (having some formatting problems, sorry) was the real cave. If one was a spelunker (which one is not), one could go quite far inside. So. . . that was our pirate cave.
But the whole end of the island was gorgeous, and well worth the trip.
PS
All day today I’ve been so tired that I honestly am at the point where I lie down and feel like I need to hold on. The whole world is swaying gently from side to side. I can see it and feel it, and closing my eyes doesn’t help. Oh well. It doesn’t feel too bad, but I am officially Not Safe to Look After The Child Unsupervised, and have made sure CJ knows it.
I just had a nap of 1.5 hours, and was then sick.
A small defiant part of me wants to breastfeed on the Great Wall of China. I shall almost certainly have my chance next week, and I intend to take it.
I also had a genius idea for an original new children’s picture book. Hush hush, of course, since it’s all in the concept.
Look! A random picture from tomorrow’s entry!
