The Heroic Sidekick
Today’s Beijing adventures will be posted around 9pm Canberra time at http://twittertales.wordpress.com . Our plans for today are just too cool to share here and spoil the surprise. I will say that (a) I’m wearing pants today – no dress. (b) There’s a chair involved. A very special chair.
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Not everyone should be a hero. Some people are made to be the heroic sidekick. A mum or dad is a hero of their family story, but a marriage often has an epic member and a supporting member (which tends to work better than two heroes). Or, outside of the home, the story of a mum or dad might be a sidekick story eg they’re the support staff for a politician running for office (we’re assuming here that the politician is worth following). Most of us are a mix of heroic sidekick and hero, with a weighting toward heroic sidekick.
I’m a rubbish sidekick, which is unfortunate. Sidekicks made the world go around, and they are necessary to every hero. Nothing actually gets done without sidekicks. Sidekicks are perceived to be less attractive (usually – although Legolas is a heroic sidekick), and they don’t wield as much influence as heroes do. (One reason I need to be a hero – if I’m going to inspire others, being a hero works much better than being a sidekick.) They’re also more adaptable than heroes (something I observed in psych class many years ago), MUCH happier, better company, and much funnier. They usually get the girl – certainly more often than the hero, because the hero is so wrapped up in their epic they rarely touch the earth. Plus I think the girl can see that the sidekick will treat them better than the hero ever will (he’s too busy saving the world).
Frodo is the main hero of “Lord of the Rings”. (Aragorn, too, but that’s literally another story. Aragorn is also Frodo’s sidekick. Everyone plays more than one part.) Samwise Gamgee is the ultimate heroic sidekick. He suffers a huge amount for a great cause (because he’s an epic sidekick), which happens to also be a personal cause – I would argue that his cause is NOT actually destroying the ring, but being Frodo’s friend. His story is more beautiful than Frodo’s for that reason.
He also fights really well, cooks well, and ultimately – when Frodo’s strength is utterly gone – literally carries the hero. He is stronger than Frodo, and is never corrupted by the ring. His fight scenes are also more interesting, because a sidekick isn’t quite so deadly serious all the time.
Heroes don’t make good friends. (Mother Theresa, incidentally, was often invited to address influential people, and never failed to offend every single person in the room. She’d also withhold painkillers from her patients, because pain builds character. Betcha didn’t know that.) Sidekicks make the best friends, the most memorable characters, and the most noble heroes.
Yep, still cold
Today I rested (except for going out and having lunch by myself – I didn’t speak a word of English the whole time, yay!), and tonight we’ll go back to Lush for dinner (mostly because my partner and I have about $1 left, and the bar owes Bil a huge pile of free food for all the work he does).
It’s still cold outside, and my face is still attempting to fall off around the nose, but I was perfectly comfortable outside in just my voluminious skirts and down jacket (and gloves, hat, scarf and boots).
I’m still thinking about the “hero” thing, and what I can do about it. It goes without saying that my story MUST be an epic one – I’ve always known that. I have the first half of an epic tale already, with my writing. Thirteen years of trying to get novels published, plus five years of mental illness (while still writing positive, hopeful books) is certainly epic. I’m just not so sure about the self-sacrifice part.
I guess arguably I’m sacrificing good pay to write good books, but I simply can’t stomach doing anything else (oddly, even my tutoring work isn’t satisfying enough to do full-time – but it IS satisfying enough to do for the rest of my life). But I suppose a hero is meant to not be able to stomach an ordinary life – that’s what makes them a hero.
The song “What About Me” (most recently sung by Shannon Noll) tells a story about a pretty girl at a corner shop writing a novel, who has a heart’s cry of, “What about me? It isn’t fair. I’ve had enough and I want my share. Can’t you see?” Even just her desire to break out of the constraints of her small-town existence makes her a hero (at least a little bit). And small towns really aren’t a bad place to live. So it’s her passion that makes her interesting. I have plenty of passion, courage, and determination, which gives me a great start on being a hero. All I need is a deeper sense of purpose. I need to make the world better. When I’m not making the world better, staying alive is a chore. (That has been abundantly clear to me for a long time.)
I hate “Twilight”. I really do. Stephanie Meyer isn’t a bad writer, but the story is worse than hollow, it’s twisted (a 107-year old man picking up a 17-year old girl? So NOT romantic). I’m proud to recognise that my books are, in some ways, the anti-Twilight. The characters have far more interesting goals that to be super-obsessed with one another. When they ARE super-obsessed, it’s always revealed to be a mistake. Relationships in my books fail if the characters don’t have anything in common (and being emo simply isn’t enough. Ever). My characters are heroes – and reading the books has the potential to make readers into heroes, too.
The bit in the Donald Miller book that really got to me was a story about his friend, who I’ll call Frank. Frank’s thirteen-year old daughter was in a dodgy relationship with an older guy, and she’d begun taking drugs. When Frank talked to Don, he realised his daughter was choosing the best story available to her – and exciting and risk-taking one, even if it wasn’t a good one. So he thought hard and then called a family conference where he said the family was going to raise $25,000 to build an orphanage in Mexico. Not surprisingly, this was NOT received well. But after a few days, the daughter came to her parents and asked if they could travel together to Mexico, so she could write about the whole process on her blog, and show pictures of the changes in the orphans’ lives. Some months later, the daughter dumped her boyfriend, because he’d told her she was fat. The book points out that NO girl who sees herself as a hero would date such a loser.
So why can’t I (through my books) show girls and boys between 6 and 16 what a hero looks like? One of the best things about the story structure is that the hero doesn’t always win. But they’re still a hero.
I’m also hyper-protective of children and young adults, especially girls. I really like the idea of them having books that are worth reading. If I can internalise what I have felt for years, then my books really are worth building my life around (books, and God, and my husband and future children – but, although I gain more happiness from my husband than my books, I have an innate need for a more unusual story).
And here, for those who are visiting to hear about China, rather than my internal monologue, is another photo (this is made of jade, in a shop full of jade and other cool stuff – but because it was in Badaling, it was all stupidly expensive):
January 6: Blow-Up Gum
I stumbled across this story just after writing “The Spy Who Shoved Me”. It’s horrible, tragic. . . and funny.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/981756/exploding-gum-kills-chemistry-student
January 5: Real Life Adventures
Today I walked on the Great Wall with my husband and Bil (my Brother In Law), who lives in Beijing.
I should probably mention about now that, on Saturday and (especially) on Sunday, Beijing had the heaviest snowfall it’s had in sixty years (you can read more at https://felicitybloomfield.wordpress.com ).
So we caught a train (10 points for awesomeness) through the countryside (10×10 points for awesomeness) after heavy snow (10x10x10 points for awesomeness). The day reached maximum awesomeness before we even reached the Wall.
Beijing is a beautiful urban landscape made even more beautiful by the snow. I woke up at 7:30, with the sun, and saw a perfect blue sky. By midday the sky above still looked good, but every horizon was hazy with pollution.
I realised today that the reason I keep coughing when I go outside is that the pollution outside is even worse than inside the house (because the outside pollution is refreshed daily, and the filthy stuff takes a little while to really get inside – which, of course, it does. It’s the same air). The air of Beijing is so bad it irritates my throat. Yet it still has blue sky.
As we rode the train to Badaling we passed several industrial places belching smoke into the bright blue sky. Over the course of the day, the pollution grew visibly worse. For the first time, I realised that pollution isn’t something that makes things worse over decades and generations – it makes things worse minute by minute. I saw it with my own (swollen and irritated) eyes.
But it was still a beautiful day.
My partner has never been overseas, so the sudden change from flat Beijing land to instant sharp mountain peaks blew him away. Me too 😉 We saw several small structures perched in unlikely places on the way.
***
We were hungry and cold by the time we reached Badaling, so we had lunch. I remembered having “thousand year old eggs” in China when I visited many years ago, and how it looked like boiled egg that was turning black with age, but tasted just fine – so I ordered something translated as, “Preserved eggs”. I thought it’d be the same thing (and maybe it was, just a regional variation).
It was a little like egg-flavoured jello, and I barely managed to finish a single bite (the yolk part left a green residue on my chopsticks, too). Fortunately the boys were fine with it.
And then we went to the Wall. Because of the bitter cold Winter, there weren’t many people. We walked to the highest nearby tower (leftward, for those who’ve been there) and it was very very cold and very very hard. My legs shook with exhaustion, and breathing hard just brought Siberian wind into my lungs. Being in the mountains meant it was much colder than Beijing. Being ON the mountain was much worse. Wind hits the mountain and flies up it, gathering friends along the way, then BAM it rushes straight over the wall and then (presumably) wanders off at a more sedate pace. Many snow scrapers were at work, and we saw several trucks taking away loads of snow (to dump in the next province over, I bet).
Bil’s drinking water was increasingly solid (he says that “usually happens at around -15 degrees”), my pen stopped working (not that I attempted to write anything until we were back down at Badaling), and although I’m usually comfortable in just my voluminious skirts in Beijing, I was very uncomfortable today in my thermals, tracksuit pants, AND voluminious skirts. Much urg. My super-powered down jacket didn’t stop the wind any more.
But it was utterly stunning, and worth every second.
***
Every day I’m in China, I try to eat as much interesting Chinese food as possible, and blog about the most delicious one. (So far, the preserved egg is the only thing I haven’t loved.)
Today’s taste of the day is actually Vietnamese. Although my partner and I are SOMEWHAT excited about the huge and delicious variety of Chinese food on offer (most Australian Chinese food is very Southern in style, which leaves out a lot of excellent stuff), Beijing is truly a world city, with spectacularly good food from. . . everywhere. (Bil’s Chinese housemate is becoming an Italian chef, for example.)
I ordered a dish I unfortunately can’t remember the name of. But it was a deliciously thin, crispy pancake (my absolute favourite kind) wrapped around mushroom, shrimp and shredded chicken and served with lettuce, crispy bean sprouts, and a sauce (which I also can’t remember the name of, but it was like honey and lemon with chilli pieces). The menu instructed me to cut up the crepe, wrap the pieces in lettuce, and dip them in the sauce. I did, and it was excellent.
A random man wandered by and asked about our food. We swooned a little, and said it was delicious. “Oh good,” he said, “because I own this restaurant.”
When we were on the wall, I kept an eye out for Jimmy Bind, but didn’t see him. I hope for his sake he was taped to the lee side of the wall. Wherever he was, he was freezing his shapely arse off. (But is just too darn heroic to whine about it like I am.)
The prince, the princess, and the dragon
PS: I’m just about to go and write up today’s adventures at http://twittertales.wordpress.com and YES we made it to the Great Wall at last.
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I’m reading, “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” by Donald Miller (the guy who wrote, “Blue Like Jazz”, and who is sort of like the biological biproduct of Anne Lamott, Annie Dillard, and Adrian Plass).
It’s about the structure of a story (an interesting character with a serious problem, who fights to overcome their problem) and how to make your life a more interesting story, based on the idea that we’re hard-wired to enjoy stories with the above structure, because God made us that way. (This theory also explains suffering in a way that works for me better than any other – suffering ultimately makes the story better.)
At one point, the author said that the next level up from basic story structure is an epic story – when the problem is VERY difficult, and involves selfless sacrifice.
When I began to feel I wasn’t meant/able to be a full-time aid worker in Indonesia, it broke my heart. I’d lost the epic story of my life, and I knew it. My substitute story for my life is my writing, but it just doesn’t seem as hard OR as worthwhile to me. Plus, being mentally ill, I suddenly can’t do a lot of things that I used to be able to do.
You all know how the fairy tale goes – the dragon has the princess and the prince rescues her. I used to be the prince (rescuing others), I HATED being the princess (dependent on others; the least interesting and least active character of the three), and I felt that with my mental illness I was slowly turning into the dragon – someone who caused harm to the world instead of good.
I’ve always thought of myself in terms of story. Always. It’s wonderful to hear it set out by Donald Miller, because it gives me permission to look at the way my story is now, and see what I can do to be a hero I really admire.
Maybe 🙂
Five minutes until we head off for attempt #2 at the Great Wall. Should probably brush my teeth 🙂
Chillin’
It’s only 2pm. (Photos now uploaded, and another paragraph at the end.)
Today Beijing has smiled upon us once again, putting on a beautiful blue sky that (except for the snow) makes the city look like spring (and no sign of pollution). It’s colder than yesterday, though – the forecast was -9 to -16. Now THAT’S refreshing. But my feet didn’t get wet, so I was fine. This photo is from yesterday, when it was still snowing:
We planned to go and see the Great Wall, but the train to Badaling (the section we planned to go to) was “a little delayed”. We chose to wait an hour, then give up (we gained no information of any kind in that time – for all we know, the entire stock of Wall-oriented trains had been eaten by yeti).
I just did a super basic google search and discovered this article http://www.globaltimes.cn/www/english/metro-beijing/update/society/2010-01/495913.html saying that, on Sunday, the buses to Badaling were stuck on the expressway for twelve hours because of heavy snow. To me, that indicates that the snow is heavier to the North (which is where rain and snow always come from), and it stands to reason that the high levels of snow also stopped the trains (but will be melted enough to get through by tomorrow).
A pretty building:
At a certain point last night, my initial manic joy suddenly vanished and my mental illness popped back up. It’s always a surprise when I’m having fun and then suddenly want to throw myself out a window. My body isn’t 100% happy with me walking around in the snow, so I decided to look after body and soul and go home. Best of all, I sent the boys off to see the art galleries (I can live without seeing that) and went home – by myself.
Photos my partner took at the galleries:
That was excellent. The boys dropped me at a train station on line 2 (the line that goes to dongsishitian, which is the closest to Bil’s house) and my partner hugged me goodbye in an especially endearing manner (evidently not sure we’d ever meet again). I walked up to the station and was immediately refused entry. The man spoke no English, so it was MY language skills – MINE, I tell you! – that gained me the information that it was closed, but the next station entrance along was fine. I spoke to a Chinese lady (all in Chinese, because I rock) along the way, and double-checked she was heading to the station. She was.
And then I went home, as easily as if I was travelling in Sydney (easier actually, because the trains are better here).
Before that, I came perilously close to successfully ordering a delicious and very cheap and healthy (ish) lunch for the three of us. I established that we wanted chicken, understood the server’s explanation that it was served in bread, and that it was spicy. I was able to say, “We don’t like spicy food” but not strongly enough (I needed to say, “We don’t have spicy food” – a word that I already knew). Bil took over for me, and the meal was very nice.
I now communicate as well in Chinese as I did in Indonesian after five years of studying (at which point I went to live with Indonesians for six months, and became properly fluent). Fundamentally, with the friends I already have here, I could move to Beijing to live, and would be able to get around on my own. Except of course that only REALLY stoic people can survive here.
All the same, I’m sure that once I’m home I’ll miss the gentle Siberian breezes. If only because. . . well, okay, I can’t thing of ANY possible reason to miss Beijing’s wind.
—–a bit later in the day—
We went to the same local Chinese restaurant (as Friday) for dinner, and ate much deliciousness. The taste for today is pumpkin chips (the same size and shape as fish and chip shop ships), battered in egg yolks and fried in something delicious – again, perfectly crisp and buttery. I’m definitely going to attempt to make them when we get home.
One mroe gallery photo, just for fun:
That’s not a Christmas card, THIS is a Christmas card
Yay! Photo o’clock:
It snowed again last night, and it kept snowing all day. The snow is more than a foot deep all over Beijing, and transport has ground largely to a halt (a huge number of taxis simply refused to take any passengers). But it’s not reverse global warming causing the wacky weather – it’s the government’s cloud seeding program (one girl told me there’s a “Winter Wonderland” set up in the olympic stadium, and that’s why snow was considered a good thing). All the snow is covered with tiny sparkles, like glitter scattered throughout. The whole city is hushed under a white blanket.
People are describing it as “fake” snow, which is perfectly accurate – it just happens to be fake snow that falls from the sky and is made of frozen particles of water. Other than the telltale glitter, it was also too powdery – not matter how much fell, it didn’t hang together like snow does. Even in Canberra (where it snows about once a decade), if you can gather a handful you can make a snowball. That was pretty much impossible today.
Nonetheless. . . snow! Great soft drifts of it! Interestingly, none of the roads were snow-ploughed. The thick snow was salted, turning it to a thinner brown sludge, and that was all. The footpaths were tended by sweepers with brush brooms and pieces of cardboard attached to sticks.
My feet got wet around midday when we went to meet some other Australians for lunch, and my boots, socks and feet stayed wet until we came home – just now, at 4am. (Which is why I shan’t be posting photos until tomorrow. Or later.) The temperature varied between -6 and -9 degrees, and I was cold. As we came home, I was shivering the whole way. But I’m fine now, and I hope the new day will bring (a) no more snow (b) a new shot of excitement.
I is dead.
Our main activity today was the relatively gentle one of socialising, most importantly at the Lush bar in the Wudaokou area. The bar has a lot of students (American, Korean, Chinese, South American, British, Australian, Danish and Swiss – at least, those were the ones I met while sitting at my table), and an artsy atmosphere. It is a genuinely warm and welcoming community.
Seeing Bil (Brother In Law) play was incredible. It always is, because he’s an excellent musician – the kind that not only plays well, but has a joyful psychic connection with other members of his band. I think genuine masculinity is about the most wonderful thing in the world (I LIKE men. A lot), and a band with that kind of connection is one of precious few examples of a healthy expression of masculinity. (“Healthy” sounds so unexciting. A better phrase – and I mean this as an observer of truly fine art – is “an utterly attractive expression of masculinity”). My husband also played bass – and sang “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”. Watching Bil, I felt that he was destined to make his musical home in Lush. He’d already told us it was the highlight of his week. Despite his low (and totally unreliable) income, I am insanely jealous.
Mine is the one on the left:
At around 2am (people from the crowd were still getting up and singing, and every single one could sing), a big guy brought in a guitar, sat down, and began to play – with the quiet smile of someone who has been playing for twenty-five years. He was Korean, and didn’t speak much English OR Chinese – but he made everyone else look like kids with plastic toys. When everyone else stopped playing and begged him to continue alone, he did. When he finished, one of the other performers (an American) said (haltingly) in Korean, “I want to have your babies.”
Everyone in the room did too.
Today’s taste sensation is a toss-up between a cocktail I had there – a mix of vanilla vodka, creme de cacao and chocolate shavings – and a lolly called “Piratos” which was like licorice, but condensed and made salty. (Luckily I was able to get rid of the taste with a margarita. Then I found myself wanting another. Such, perhaps, is the lure of Chinese candy.)
January 4: Chinese Phrases (contains swearing)
January 3: Bind Your Mind
Welcome to your new theme and new story, “The Spy Who Shoved Me”. (The actual tweets will appear late tonight, since my parents are posting them – China doesn’t allow twitter at this time.)
Our hero is Jimmy Bind, the lovechild of James Bond and someone even prettier.
He speaks thirty-two languages fluently (and none of them are Klingon), can shoot a thread through a needle at three hundred paces, and is so handsome 33% of women who observe him on the street faint instantly.
His tools include:
Sleeping gas pen.
Blow-up gum.
Two matchbox cars (including matches and gunpowder)
Piercing blue eyes.
A whole lot of high-quality duct tape (or gaffa, as we call it in Australia).
Oh Nose!
Beijing is not the greatest place to live. It’s bitterly cold in Winter (but almost never snows), and boiling in Summer (apparently it officially never gets up to forty degrees, but sometimes it stays at 39 degrees from early morning to late afternoon. Suspicious? Nah, who on earth would lie about the weather?!) The whole city is filled with dust storms in Spring, and it has the world’s shortest autumns (which are apparently rather nice – almost always). But it’s a really excellent place to visit. A million times nicer than, for example, Jakarta or Port Moresby. And last night – sometime before 6am – it snowed.
We were going to visit a gallery but because the city was being so pretty we went to the Temple of Heaven instead. Beijing still has all its Christmas decorations, so just walking along was like being in a Christmas card. (An incredibly slippery Christmas card, where the wind burns your face until it’s red and painful to touch – despite the fact I STILL didn’t feel uncomfortably cold, and I wore less layers than yesterday.) Beijing is filled with trees (and birds, and incredible ramshackle nests wherever you look), including a lot of silver birches which do look barren, but in a beautiful way.
It’s also worth noting that the public transport is truly excellent (except for the ten minutes we spent on an intensely crowded bus – too crowded to remove our jackets – when the heat and closeness made me feel like throwing up), with an efficient, clean and organised train system. I also love walking around in Beijing, because there are so many unique skyscrapers wherever you look. One of them is called “the underpants building” because it’s roughly in the shape of a person’s legs if they were sitting in a chair with their knees as wide apart as possible (since only the “feet” touch the ground, no-one seems very confident it’ll stay up).
And now to our feature presentation: The Temple of Heaven.
We’re staying in a flat on the sixteenth floor (or at least, roughly the fifteenth, since there’s no 4th or 14th floor – the word “4” sounds like the word for “death” so is often left out). A million people live within a mile of where I’m sitting.
Which made it even more startling when we walked through the West Gate of the Temple of Heaven area and discovered a park-like area of 273 hectares. We spent a lot of time today strolling along stunning avenues (like the one above) lined with snow-covered conifers, birches, and ancient cyprus (some apparently 900 years old, and all of the old ones heritage listed).
The Chinese are really serious about their architecture. It boggles the mind to see such huge structures made with such intricacy. You probably have a fair idea of what a Chinese roof looks like – sweeping tiles with an elegant upward swing on the lowest part. You’d also be able to imagine such a roof dusted with snow as fresh and fine as castor sugar, highlighting each tile with its own layer of white icing. It’s probably not too hard to imagine dragons carved on the corners, or the bold red, gold, blue and green paintings filling the eaves (and often the inside ceiling). But it’s impossible to put it all together unless you walk around and see it for yourself.
We walked South (past the palace of imperial fasting – the emperor didn’t do ANYTHING, including any work, for three days before peforming the annual sacrifice), to the circular altar mound (three massive circular tiers of carved marble, with stairs up – marble stairs, especially after snow, have slightly less traction than the smoothest ice you’ve ever seen) and looked at the beautiful green stone of the nearby altar.
After that we looked at the Imperial Vault of Heaven (effectively, a fancy-pants storeroom; round in shape, and carved and painted absolutely everywhere), which is surrounded by a wall with the fun acoustic property that a whisper from one side can be clearly heard on the other (this of course means that everyone somehow ends up shouting at a wall, which is even more fun to observe). The wall is also covered in ancient graffiti – Chinese characters carved into the stone. That graffiti is also now of historical value.
After that we walked on to the most famous structure, which is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest. The Hall is set on three circular tiers of stairs (marble, again), and is a round building three storeys high (each with its own rim of roof) that is held together by the carvers’ skill (rather than nails, glue, or anything else).
Long view of the Hall of Good Harvest (note the pillar things on the stair rail on the left; they’re everywhere):
The pillar things on the stairs look similar to this one:
Close view of the Hall of Good Harvest:
We couldn’t go inside these beautiful buildings, but we joined everyone else in looking through the open doorways. Even some of the (many) sets of stairs were blocked off. On one of the sets of stairs the snow lay perfectly still and even – except on the left and right hand side, where cat pawprints were clearly visible ascending and descending. Perhaps one of heaven’s creatures had been inside, after all.
The whole area was full of people, but (except in the most culturally important places) it felt perfectly spacious because it’s so much like a giant park. Ordinary Beijing citizens visit just to hang out – we saw many of them singing, dancing, and playing in a saxophone band. There were far more Chinese tourists than Westerners.
Right now both I and my partner are reading “Faith of our Fathers” by Chan Kei Thong, which is all about the Temple of Heaven. The author has an interesting theory about the ancient religion of the Chinese people. It’s impossible to know anything for certain when the buildings were made in the 14 and 15oos, and the religion itself is far older (and already getting mixed up with dragon-emperor-god stuff when the Temple was build). But it’s certainly interesting.
This is some of the Sacrifice song (you’ll see exactly what the author is getting at, along with far greater scholars, particularly in the 13th to 15th century) used in the temple:
Of old in the beginning, there was the great chaos, without form and dark.
The five planets had not begun to revolve, nor the two lights to shine. In the midst of it there existed neither form nor sound. You, O spiritual Sovereign, came forth in Your sovereignty, and did separate the impure from the pure. You made heaven, You made earth; You made man. All things became alive with reproducing power.
You did produce, O Spirit, the seven elements [the sun and the moon and the five planets]. Their beautiful and brilliant lights lit up the circular sky and square earth.
You have promised, oh Lord, to hear us, for You are our Father. . . With reverence we spread out these gems and silks, and, as swallows rejoicing in the spring, praise Your abundant love.
I don’t know much about the historian’s theory, but I know enough to be intrigued. Unlike the core of many other ancient religions, this God is seen as an invisible creator – not an object.
We obviously spent a lot of time outside today – my nose has been running all day, and hates me now – but I don’t feel particularly cold. I noticed when I looked at some photos my husband took today that my down jacket (which is blue and completely encases me almost to my ankles) makes me look rather like a caterpillar.
My Chinese (and my ability to recognise specific things instead of just being overwhelmed) are coming along so well that Chris and I went grocery shopping by ourselves. We bought milk, orange juice, Chinese lollies, some kind of frozen yum cha-ish meal (for me for my breakfasts), and tissues. None of them were labelled in English – or even pinyin (the form of Chinese that uses Arabic letters and lovely phonetic spelling). Hail the mighty adventurers!
My most frightening moment was when I went to the loo at home and almost forget myself and put the toilet paper in the toilet. That’s NEVER a good idea in Asia – there’s always a bin near the toilet (or no toilet paper usage at all). The plumbing just canna take it, captain. But I remembered myself and did the right thing.
Crisis averted.
We haven’t had dinner yet, but my taste sensation of the day was a red bean smoothie (which also contained honey, vanilla ice cream, and coconut milk). I’m sure red beans are related to lentils (sort of nutty and naturally sweet). The staff (the people in this flat almost never cook, because eating out is so cheap and delicious) served it in SERIOUSLY tall glasses – containing about 750mL – and it was very thick. I still finished it, and gladly. It cost about $3. (Just remembered I’m lactose intolerant. Smeg.)
Plus I had some cool Chinese candy while we walked the temple grounds -they were a little like round prawn crackers sprinkled with icing sugar (with a hint of salt making them even better).
Brushing snow from the dragon’s nose:
PS a couple more details and several more photos are located at http://twittertales.wordpress.com
