Going to miss (updated)

Yesterday one of our local friends asked us what we are going to miss most about Beijing.
And we weren't allowed to pick our friends - which was going to be numbers 1-4 on the list.
Here are some of my items.

Interesting and tasty foods!
Bicyclists having as much (or as little) right of way as the cars
Cheap groceries
Tight knit communities with lots of people willing to lend a helping hand
An entire society who loves babies
Almost an absence of road rage (though it does seem to be growing)
Our Ayi!!!
People exercising, dancing, working out in local parks

I'm sure there is more, but that is what I've got for the moment

and here is more
Massages!!! (how on earth could I forget this)
Having everyone smile at you encouragingly when your daughter makes laps around the restaurant, tries to go through stranger's bags, and then offers her half-eaten dumpling to them.
Having the wait staff take our daughter during the meal to go play

A Day at the Great Wall

As may have been mentioned in previous posts, sometimes driving in China is an adventure. On this particular day, the driving adventure was assisted by the fact that not only were the directions incomplete, the road signs would randomly stop providing English subtitles and only give the options at critical turns in Chinese. Normally, when the navigator does not read Chinese, this is a problem. But not today! That's right, in the scant time spent reading and re-reading the woefully inadequate directions, Laura not only managed to memorize 3 of the characters you see in big red paint on the left, she was also able to pick them out on signs rushing past us as we circled the roundabout... again. (Look kids, Big Ben).

But safely and speedily did we indeed get to Mutianyu, our chosen section of the Great Wall. And it was a beautiful day! We were also there early enough that we had the wall almost to ourselves, as you can see by the lack of random strangers in the background.

We even had enough space to enjoy a bit of a snack while relaxing in the shade up there. We enjoyed some lychees, oranges, and a spicy popcorn/nut mix that was created for last Saturday's dinner (and about which we have not yet blogged). The lychees (or litchi) are the green things in Cara's right hand. Apparently their lighter color indicates that they are from the Mauritius family.

The last thing we checked out before leaving the wall was some sign that said "Stalactite Cave". Expecting nothing of the sort, we checked out a small opening at the bottom of the hill and found this!

How much warning do you need?

When driving around Beijing, one of the things we have noticed with some concern is that warning signs are just not considered all that important. For instance, we might be driving down the street and there appears before us an orange cone. Just as we notice the cone and wonder why it might be there, we see a head pop up about 3 feet behind the cone from the open man hole.

We thought that was about as unsettling as it could get, but driving home the other night, as Cara was turning into the access road to our parking garage, she noticed a man standing in the middle of the one-way road. (In dark clothes of course.) From the 5 feet distance at which he was visible, she slowed down a little and beeped - which is the normal way of dealing with pedestrians standing in the middle of the road. (Actually, slowing down is a little excessive. Beeping is all that is really required.) But instead of stepping back onto the sidewalk and away from the car that slowly closing in on him, the gentleman held up his hand and then pointed down next to his feet... where there was an open man hole at which point some guy stuck his head out.

Those crazy American's just take caution way too far.

Riding to work: Part 2

When we last left off, our bicycling adventure had just taken us past a bus that was pulling away from the curb. Here you can see another use for the bike lanes - cab hailing areas.

This brings the popular use of bike lanes options up to 4.
1) Riding some form of a bicycle
2) Getting on and off buses
3) Getting into and out of cabs
4) Parking

But getting back to the subject at hand...
While cabbies sometimes use their turn signals, watching the faces of their passengers is a very useful prediction tool. When the passenger in the cab driving next to you starts looking frantic and apparently pointing directly at you, it is a good bet that the vehicle will probably be lurching towards the curb relatively soon.
One nice thing is that most backseat doors in a cab are not able to open on the driver side, so bicycle riders only need to worry about the cabbie jumping out and not the passengers themselves.
This is only true if you are passing on the left side of the cab of course.

Late Breaking News

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Kashgar update to bring you this late breaking news.

CARA STARTED WORK!

Cara was hired to help build the new US Embassy going up in Beijing. So far work has mostly involved meeting new people and walking around the construction sight. There are lots of Americans welding - you can tell they are not Beijingers because they wear eye protection when arc welding. Cara is currently in negotiations to be allowed to drive either the front end loader or the big red crane.

Getting Around

Finding a specific place in Beijing is not the same as trying to find it in the States.

For example, let's say you are in New York and you are going to a store you have never been to before but you have the address.
You could
a) Look up the address on some online map program and not only check the directions, but also look at images of the actual streets you need to take. Admittedly, there could be mistakes, but sometimes you can find these by checking different sites.
b) Look on a printed map that you bought somewhere
c) Get in a cab and give the drive the directions and he will figure it out.

Occasionally this will not work and you'll get lost and annoyed, but that is the exception rather than the rule. And if it does happen, you can call the place up and generally they can talk you in.

Now lets look at Beijing.
To start with, there are no maps online or offline for that matter that show all the roads. In addition, many roads are not even named, so there is almost no way to reference them. To make things more interesting, there is construction and destruction going on constantly so there is absolutely no guarantee that landmarks will stay in the same place. (Did I say the 3rd left? Oops. Its now the 2nd left.)

This means that nobody really knows where everything is and that a simple street address is not adequate.
What does 'not adequate' mean? I hear you ask. It means that unless you are going to a very large and well-known landmark (i.e. Tiananmen Square), you need to say, "I am going to store X, it is near the Lidu hotel, off of NuRen street. There should be elephants out front". The address itself is sort of an afterthought for final verification - if the building has a number that is. And in this example, while almost everyone seems to know Lidu, there is still about a 10% chance that your particular driver will not and further instructions will be required.

Maybe you think this is not so unusual, after all, cabbies get lost in other big cities. So here is another example. We're going to restaurant that is outside of our cabbie's knowledge base. But he seems feel he can get there so into his cab we go. (Cabbies do not have to accept any fares they don't want to.) We get to generally the right area of town and now our guy lowers his window, drives slow, and flags down a cab coming towards us. The other driver slows as he pulls along side us and by shouting back and forth we are informed that we are heading the right way. Farther down the road we are beginning to worry we missed our turn, so the cabbie flags down a bicycle rider this time and asks for directions. And so on, and so on. What makes this particularly fun is that it is not unusual to get conflicting answers, especially if we are walking or driving ourselves around instead of being taken by a Beijing native. Finding someplace new is always an adventure.

Once you've been here a while, this doesn't even seem odd, but as a newcomer, it can be very disconcerting. We know of one visitor who was ready to panic when the driver starting asking for directions every few blocks while his American host was confused as what exactly was disturbing her guest. Ahhh, how quickly we forget.

Honk if you love me

Michael is slowly acclimating to Beijing traffic. On the way to class this morning, his co-pilot (Mark, a fellow Chinese student and FSO) calmly noted that they were about to pass their highway exit. Undeterred, Michael glanced over his shoulder to check the tide of buses, and trucks, and taxis (oh, my!), then promptly drove across four lanes of traffic at an angle unseen on those pansy highways back in America. Nary a horn beeped, as this is the way most Beijingers exit the highway. In fact, the only mistake Michael made here is that *he* didn't honk his horn. It's considered polite to use the horn to let everyone else know you're pulling a Crazy Ivan on the freeway en route to a side street. Let it not be said that Beijing traffic is utterly without manners.

The sign at the right is illustrative of the chutzpah of Chinese taxi drivers. The sign is located at the entrance to a city park that does not have roads cutting through it - only footpaths. That's right, taxis are forbidden from driving along the footpaths, which the park management suspects they might do to get around the logjams out on the paved mazeways of the city during rush hour.

Got license, Got car, Got dip-plates - Be Scared

We picked up our car yesterday! And it has those cool diplomatic license plates on it so people know not to mess with us. Michael has his license (Cara's is still being processed) and we are now able to drive on the roads of Beijing.

Just to give you an example, these are the scariest roads I have seen in my entire life and that includes Boston, Jerusalem, and all of Florida. Street lights really are just a suggestion here.

Last night we drove to Shabbat services. This is normally a 45 min brisk walk. It was 30 min by car.

And then there was one

Sheila (the youngest sister from the Sullivan side) came to Virginia to reclaim her car from Cara.

If you were counting, that means up until a few days ago Cara was in
possession of 3 cars. And while she likes to think that she exceeds at many
things, Cara can only drive a single car at a time.

Sheila and Cara explored DC, enjoyed some wonderful company, and imbibed a few drinks. They also managed to discovered a neat little Irish pub just a few miles from Cara's place. Between the two of them, they even managed to know all the words to the Irish drinking songs.
Well, they weren't really Irish songs
And maybe we recognized the choruses more so than the rest of the lyrics
But still, it was a fine time. And they had a decent Guinness pour, so it was all good.

Tags? Who needs tags?

So Michael and Cara bought a car to take to China to be used in some of their out of city exploring.

There was a bunch of things here about what nice but useless people work at the dealership. But it was just too darn negative, so it has been erased. Please pardon our momentary frustration
- The management)

The car is nice. Unfortunately it took about 2 months to get the title (that was going to mailed that week) from the dealership, so the car was still not shipped by the time the temporary tags had expired. Well, it wasn't being driven, so what's the harm?

It turns out that there was plenty of harm according to the nice police officer who left the ticket and the notice saying that if something wasn't done in the next 4 days, the whole thing was being towed.

uh... that's not cool

Kind of funny though considering the car is being picked up in 8 days. Now that is poor timing.

After some low key panicking, it was decided to drive the car to Cara's townhouse and park it in the garage where the townhouse owners park their vehicle.

Now, how should this troublesome little car be moved?

Should it be taken under the cover of darkness, late at night?
You mean when the cops are out cruising for drunks?
Maybe some plates from Sheila's California car could temporarily be moved to the CRV so it would seem okay.
Which means that if you happen to get pulled over, instead of a ticket you would get thrown in jail
Maybe it could be towed
Only costs $200
The options were endless and not particularly useful.

Finally it was decided upon. Nicola agreed to follow Cara to Cara's place, carefully driving behind her to block any view of the rear expired tag. In addition, they would make this mad attempt at 8pm on a Sunday, when no sane police man would be looking for anything out of the ordinary. Then the getaway car would be stashed in the garage - assuming the people who normally used it were able to find other parking.

The good news, it all went just fine. The car is moved, it is not being towed, it is being picked up Friday, and peace is restored.

If you are wondering about possible legal actions as a result of this posting, I just want to say that of course, this is just a work of fiction, and that no actual cars were harmed in the writing of this tale.