Saying "Zaijian" to Beijing

 

Báipùsì

Our final week in Beijing 北京 was at times a wet one. Precipitation had been heavy, especially in the city's mountainous regions, with at least 30 people being killed in the deluge. For those of us in the capital's central districts, the downpour was more of an inconvenience than a threat to life and property. Still it created an apropos backdrop for saying "再见" after three years here. 

The countdown to departure began with the arrival of our daughter from the U.S. back in late June. Amber landed at 05:30 in the godawful early morning following my return to the same terminal from Kansai International Airport 関西国際空港 the previous afternoon. Following the completion of a successful first year at college, she was overjoyed to be reunited with our cat. Timi didn't appear to share the same enthusiasm, at least not at first:

 

What follows are some highlights of the past few weeks. Like when the three of us had dinner at the Slow Boat Brewery 悠航鲜啤 in Maizidian 麦子店 following our seeing How to Train Your Dragon at the SOLANA Shopping Park. The burger I had there was called the "Truffle Trouble Double Lace Smash Burger" in English, but in Mandarin was dubbed the 压力太大了汉堡 or the "Too much pressure burger". Keen-eyed observers might note that I debuted for my adoring public the Ehime FC 愛媛FC jersey that I bought when I was in Matsuyama 松山:

Enjoying a coffee at Chamo, a small cafe close to the embassy: 

Trying out a couple of offerings from Beigel Tree, a newly-opened bagel shop in SOLANA that started in Shanghai (not New York). Red beans and butter on the left; blueberries and cream cheese on the right: 

Having an English-style brekkie on a Saturday morning at a South German bakery/restaurant in the Chinese capital. Globalization on a morning scale:

Back in May 2014, around the Memorial Day holiday weekend, the family and I traveled for the second time to Beijing to do some sightseeing (at that time we thought we would never be back in China, but history and the people who make assignments in the State Department would later think otherwise). One of the places we visited on that trip was the Summer Palace 颐和园. In the blog post I wrote about it I stated "the palace was pretty much razed to the ground by British and French troops during the Second Opium War in 1860". As it turns out my take on Chinese history was a bit off. The current Summer Palace was looted by the Western barbarians, but it was the Old Summer Palace 圆明园 that was burned to the ground. And it was the latter that Amber, Shu-E and I visited on the last Sunday in June. 

We and thousands of other visitors (many of them part of tour groups) entered the Palace Buildings Scenic Area, and I was immediately struck by how Roman the palace ruins looked. There once stood ten buildings in this area designed by a pair of Jesuits: 

What remains of the Reservoir of Haiyantang: 

A re-creation of the Old Summer Palace Bronze Heads. These Chinese zodiac animals were part of a water clock in front of the abovementioned Haiyantang, but were among the treasures looted by the British and French forces. Seven of the twelve heads are now back in China, but the locations of the other five remain unknown:

The re-created fountain stands outside a small museum containing artefacts dug up by archaeologists, but the lack of English captions made it difficult for those not proficient in Mandarin (such as your humble scribe) to appreciate their significance:

A stone washer from the Qing dynasty 清朝:

The Dashuifa Stonefish 大水法石鱼 were once located in front of a large fountain, where they symbolized abundance and good fortune:

Taking an ice cream break:

The pavilion below is located in the middle of a stone-wall maze. I remarked to my daughter that the low walls compared unfavorably to English hedge-row mazes, where you have a much harder time determining where you are and where you should be going. Amber replied that people were shorter back then, and promptly illustrated her assertion:

The emperor would sit in the pavilion and amuse himself watching members of his entourage try to figure out how to get out of the maze. These activities took place after dark, the knowledge of which led me to reconsider my initial negative impression of the maze:

The Great Fountain Ruins 大水法:

A vast model depicting the vast scale of the original Summer Palace and its vast surroundings:

A discussion of the Asian squat led to the girls demonstrating how to do it. There was a time when I could get down on my haunches like Johnny Bench but these days I can instead get into places like the Old Summer Palace free of charge thanks to my age:

Because the grounds of the Old Summer Palace are, um, vast my wife suggested we ride in a boat to the side opposite of where we entered (though even from there we still had to walk 800 meters to the exit):

This Tesla Cybertruck was one of several U.S.-made vehicles on display during the Embassy's Fourth of July celebration. It was the first time for me to see one in real life, and it came off as...sinister. Like something an evil South African neo-Nazi bent on destroying the U.S. government might use to get around:

Following our Independence Day holiday weekend trip to Inner Mongolia the girls joined me for lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant not far from the office:

A painting hanging in the ground floor gallery at the Grand Summit showing what appears to be animals being ejected from Mount Fuji 富士山. Japan's iconic dormant volcano may come to life in the not-too-distant future, but it's doubtful it'll be spewing animals from its cone: 

One afternoon while I was toiling away in the salt mines the girls went to the Mobius strip-shaped Phoenix International Media Center to see an exhibition called Touch the Deep Ocean, which combined art with specimens of ocean life. Amber enjoyed the oceanic side, whereas Shu-E was drawn by the complex itself:

Riding a fish carousel:

At one point my daughter colored in a drawing of a fish, which was then generated onto a screen. Amber's contribution comes in from the left around the 10-second mark:

My daughter met me for lunch one weekday afternoon. We went to a Japanese restaurant called Earth Man 地球人. What drew us there was the discovery that Samurai Curry, a favorite restaurant of ours that used to operate in Grand Summit until it closed, had somehow been merged into this establishment. Or at least some of its dishes live on - Amber had the "signature curry", while I opted for the Katsu Curry lunch set カツカレー定食: 

These colorful domes popped up one day in Chaoyang Park 朝阳公园 but time ran out before I could get closer to see what their purpose was: 

Lunch at the aforementioned bagel place. Frankly speaking, their dessert bagels were much better than the lunch offerings:

On one very warm Sunday morning we drove almost two hours into the mountains close to the city, first by expressway, then on the Beijing Great Wall National Scenic Route 北京长城国家风景道, and finally up a narrow, winding mountain road. The latter was wider than some of the roads I had driven on the previous month in Japan, but this was China, so we had to be extra vigilant of drivers coming in the opposite direction. 

Our destination was Baipu Temple 白瀑寺, a Buddhist temple that Shu-E had long been wanting to visit. Though it has a history dating back over 900 years to the Liao dynasty 辽朝, extensions and restorations undertaken during several dynastic reigns and leading up to the Republic of China era 中华民国 mean very few of the extant buildings are of any significant age (the temple also suffered from attacks by warlords and during the Cultural Revolution 文化大革命). Still, it made for an interesting outing and its relatively close proximity to the city meant we were back home in Beijing by the middle of the afternoon: 

This photo was taken from behind and under an artificial waterfall:

While at the temple Amber was drinking Duck Shit Oolong 鸭屎香 to cool off:

The temple's vegetarian restaurant specialized in dishes meant to look like meat. We had the ersatz "fried ribs" (L) and "three cup chicken" 三杯鸡 (R), with the latter being especially tasty:

One of the few structures we came across that looked like it had been around for a long time:

The main hall:

Photography inside was forbidden so I made do with this shot instead:

The temple complex sprawled up the sides of the adjacent hill. I'm sure the views were great but none of us wanted to battle the heat while walking up the stairs:

These figures apparently date from the Ming dynasty 明朝:

Baipu Temple is best visited with private transport. What it may lack in ancient relics it makes up for in Instagrammable photo ops:

Dinner with colleagues at Great Leap Brewing 大跃啤酒. There was a Thursday night happy hour special on hot dogs - two for the price of one. They turned out to be much bigger compared to how they looked in the menu photo:

A giant crab beckons at SOLANA: 

And soon it was that time again - the movers came a week before we departed to pack up our things. It gets tiring, but the next one in two-three years' time should be the last. And while it seems like a lot of boxes, the foreman in charge of the packers told us we had a lot less stuff than most of the Foreign Service families they've worked with. Even though we're always placed in furnished housing when posted overseas, there are those who insist of having their own furniture (in some cases including beds) shipped to be with them. All paid for from public coffers:

I was X years old when I found out that you could do this with convex mirrors:

Lunch at Gung Ho Pizza. The only reason we went there was because my wife learned that if you bring ten of their delivery bags back to the restaurant in person, you can order two pizzas for the price of one:

Relaxing with a drink at our now mostly-empty house - a tangerine peel white beer 陈皮阿白:

A Crayon Shin-chan クレヨンしんちゃん-themed sushi restaurant (an outlet of a Taiwanese chain, in fact) in SOLANA: 

On what would be our last outing in Beijing, the three of us visited what Shu-E had described as a "museum" dedicated to Dehua porcelain 德化陶瓷, a type of white Chinese porcelain supposedly better known in the West as "Blanc de Chine" (though being the philistine that I am I'd never heard of it): 

Although there were a handful of pieces on display dating from ancient times (like this five-color side-handled pot made when the Kangxi Emperor 康熙帝 had the Mandate of Heaven), most of the items were of recent vintage and came with price tags, indicating that we were in what amounted to more of a showroom than a museum:

For example there was this extremely broad-shouldered bust of Mao Zedong 毛泽东:

This porcelain statute of a goddess scattering flowers could've been ours for a mere RMB 3,000,000 ($420,000):

This was the last in a series of four showing a man climbing into a large pot to help himself to the alcohol within:

Shu-E checks out pottery shards recovered from a ship that wrecked and sank in 1822:

A map portraying the ancient sailing routes from China. Taiwan is shown but not named, though Penghu 澎湖 is identified on the left and the Ryūkyū Islands 琉球 (溜求 in Chinese) on the right. Korea is given its old moniker Gaoli 高丽, a name dating from the Goryeo dynasty (918-1392), while in Japan you can see the characters for Heian-kyō 平安京, the original name by which Kyōto 京都 was known: 

More Maos. I'd like to get a bust of my own (though preferably made of much cheaper materials and with shoddier production, and purchased at a seedy street market) before we leave China for good in 2028:

This is supposedly a depiction of a younger Mao, but to me he looks more like former Japanese prime minister Junichirō Koizumi 小泉純一郎, a comparison I would never audibly make while in China:

This was my wife's favorite, and the reason given for why she wanted to visit. Entitled "Myth" 神话, the asking price was RMB 1,080,000 ($150,000). To me the figure more resembled a ghost from a Chinese horror movie, an interpretation not shared by Shu-E:

My daughter carefully examined this piece showing two figures playing Go 围棋, and concluded black had made a poor opening move. At only RMB 15,800 ($2200) we should've have purchased it as a housewarming present for her new apartment near campus: 

As admirable as the craftsmanship behind these pieces was, I found many of them to be almost kitschy, like the kind of artworks you might see in the home of someone who suddenly came into a lot of money, and wanted to impress others with their newfound wealth. I preferred the ones that were almost defiantly modern in design, like this pair below (and which were only RMB 1920, or $270, each). Too bad most of our things had been packed up and taken away just a couple of days before: 

Afterward we went to a Hong Kong-style dim sum restaurant for lunch. We were provided with this interesting beverage, made from corn and sugar cane:

A photo of a sleeping cat taken by Amber at the 798 Art District 798艺术区, one of my daughter's favorite haunts in Beijing. 

As the evenings were counting down towards the end, we had dinner at the SOLANA branch of the Japanese conveyor belt sushi chain Hama Sushi はま寿司. My daughter made a brief video of the action, which reminded me of the opening to Star Trek:

The torrential downpour of Tuesday morning (see the introductory paragraph) gave way to the heat and relatively clear skies of Tuesday afternoon, resulting in this scene on Tuesday evening as we were returning home from Hama Sushi:

And just like that three years in Beijing are over. A lot has changed since we first arrived in August 2022, when China was still in the throes of COVID and severe restrictions on movement were in place (our first ten days in country were spent in a quarantine hotel in Guangzhou 广州). We've experienced days of severe pollution, winters of freezing temperatures,  brutally hot and humid heat waves, and most recently heavy downpours leading to severe flooding in places (but fortunately not where we lived). Being the privileged expats that we are, we had the fortunate pleasure to live in one of Beijing's nicer areas, but even so three years has been more than enough.

That isn't to stay our stay here was a negative one. Quite the contrary, in fact. We've been able to explore new (to us) parts of China, as well as travel to places like Australia, South Korea and of course Japan and Taiwan. The work has been challenging at times, and frankly speaking, I don't think I'm general services material. But with the exception of one supervisor whom I shall not name (but who I should've reported to HR on more than one occasion for inappropriate comments related to my health), my coworkers (both American and Chinese) have been great people to work with. 

Still, it's time to move on. Ironically, the place to be moved on to is also in the Middle Kingdom. It wasn't my intention to have half of my career in the Foreign Service devoted to China, but hopefully Guangzhou will be different enough in climate, cuisine and culture to make it feel like a fresh start for Shu-E and myself (Amber is charting her own course in life). Everyone I've met who has worked there (temporarily or otherwise) has assured me Guangzhou is a great place to live and work, and reminds me that Hong Kong is only an hour away by high-speed train. And even if Canton doesn't always live up to its advance billing, this will be the last tour before retirement, and Japan and Taiwan are only short flights away.

So join us starting in early September as we begin another chapter overseas. Until then we'll be spending time in the U.S. visiting my sister, helping our daughter get set up in her new place and generally experience life in the States again after a year away.

Though considering the current state of affairs, don't be surprised if we can't wait to return to this part of the world!

再见...for now