Total study time this week: 27 hours
Written characters memorized: 33
This week’s big verbal test: hiring a nanny in Mandarin

If you are unable to see the video, click here.

On Friday, we were told that we had to move out of our apartment over the weekend.

This was me: “AAaaarg! But we JUST got settled in! I THOUGHT THIS PART WAS OVER!” while rolling around on the bed, in the most pathetic whining session ever.

I might have stomped my feet around the apartment saying, “but. I. don’t. want. to. move. out. for. two. days.”

Even my two-year-old was embarrassed for me.

So why the move? It’s a long, confusing tale of scheduling and communication mishaps, but ultimately, despite help from my tutor to translate and mediate, we packed up our freshly laid out apartment and moved into the the MetroPark Hotel down the road.

On reflection, two days of take-out food and movie watching didn’t seem too bad, except we had just hired a nanny and our tutor was scheduled to come every day at 11 am, so we were looking at several days of paying for services that we couldn’t use. It could be worse.

Hold that thought for a moment.

Right there.

Saturday, my tutor texts me. He’s resigning. His father-in-law has passed away. I’m somewhat convinced that this is just a nice way of saying, “I really hate being your tutor,” because usually people don’t abruptly quit their job without even picking up their weekly pay unless you are truly the worse student ever. In fact all week I was expecting this text, so I wanted to respond, “Wow, what took you so long?”.

He was a really good tutor. He would let me say the tone wrong 25 times in a row if needed until I got it right. I think I literally drove him mad, and he’s currently recuperating for “exhaustion” in a mental health facility.

Still, we have a nanny.

Wait.

Sunday night we text our nanny to tell her that we’re not in our apartment yet and she shouldn’t come on Monday. A little background: our nanny speaks no English. Which was the idea, the whole point of getting a nanny was to make sure we had a constant trickle of Mandarin being spoken in the house, especially for Cole’s sake. So in order to tell her not to come, I have to text her in Chinese characters. I’m up to the task. (I think). I write, “Hello! No come tomorrow. Come Tuesday. Okay?” (Here’s the text so that my Chinese readers can get a good laugh: 您好。没有明天再来。来星期二。好吗？).

No response.

On Monday morning, I send Drew to the apartment lobby at 9 AM in case she shows up. She doesn’t. Okay she must have gotten the text. All is good. Maybe responding with a 好 is just a waste of China Mobile minutes. She’s probably very excited to start work on Tuesday. Right?

Wrong.

Tuesday morning comes and by 9:15 am, we decide we should call her. Of course with my Mandarin being the kind that is limited to a set of phrases that I memorized for her interview plus my nearly complete inability to decipher her response over the phone without the helpful clues of body language, we decide to find a translator.

The woman who works the desk in reception seemed friendly. “Drew, go ask her!” I say from my comfy couch, wearing my pjs and brand new pink fuzzy slippers. I should mention I also have bed-head and a fleece blanket wrapped around me. The new apartment is colder than the last one, and I’m slowly turning into an old lady who drinks too much tea and swears a lot.

So Drew takes the elevator down, dials the number, hands the phone to the woman at reception, she has a lengthy conversation with our to-be nanny. Afterwards, she hands the phone back to Drew and says, “She’s not coming.”

“Why?”

Well apparently our friendly receptionist doesn’t speak much English either, which is the point as well, believe me I get it, I’m not freezing-my-ass-off in Beijing for the fresh air. We’re here specifically for the fact that everyone speaks Mandarin. The only problem is: we don’t yet.

So Drew asks her to call back, and they talk some more and the most we find out is “She’s in the village four hours away.”

No idea what happened. Moving on.

So I email a tutor agency about getting a replacement. For roughly twice the price of my previous tutor I can have someone come this week. Sold. I’m out of options and I don’t have time to deal with placing an ad again.

I dig up the nanny referrals we paid for and find a second option. I send Drew out again. (See how this works yet? I either have the best husband ever or he’s secretly enjoying these child-free breaks from the house. Probably both.) This time, I give him the new nanny’s phone number and he sets off to convince the receptionist to do one more ad hoc translation for us. She calls, talks for a bit and hands back the phone. “She has your number, she will call you when she comes.”

“When is that?” I ask Drew when he comes back.

He shrugs.

“Okay, well it’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

Within 72 hours we swapped apartments, nannies, and language tutors. Is this China or just me? Like so many things, I’ll probably never know.

By the way, before any of my traveler friends feel too sorry for my fish-out-of-water expat lifestyle, let me just point out exhibit A of why staying long term is better than short term:

Yeah, that’s right. Not just one meat cleaver but two. Try to fit that in your backpack, you blithely traveling and not dealing with setting up an apartment happy-go-lucky travelers! I can chop things, what can you do? I don’t want to brag, but I also now own a bamboo cutting board that’s bigger than my carry on bag. We’re expat-licious. My son hugged the floor the first time he saw carpet because he’s been traveling so long, he didn’t know it existed and thought the whole world was now covered in bedding. And now I have knives. What is this madness?

Location: Beijing, China watching 喜羊羊与灰太狼 on youku.com

The nanny starts on Tuesday, a Hebei-transplant who doesn’t speak any English but who is sweet and can at least pretend to understand my slightly mispronounced and wrong-toned Mandarin.  I consider her hire a big milestone for me, not only did I conduct the interview in Mandarin (with prepared notes) but managed such niceties as “would you like something to drink?” (no, she did not) and “please have a seat” (she did).  When I’m watching chinese cartoons with Cole, I recognize the individual words now, even if I can’t tell you what they mean.  Little things.  Maybe Cole is learning too.  He seems riveted to his shows whether it’s in English or Mandarin.  He has noticed that we’ve been swapping out the language on some of his favorite movies (the first time we played Toy Story in Mandarin he kept looking at us, like “uh, guys, did you slip something in my drink because I’m freaking losing my mind here.”).  Sorry bubs!  Didn’t think you’d notice.  That is totally messed up though, swapping out all his favorite movies for Mandarin versions.  That’s the kind of thing that your child will bring up when they’re 30 and having kids of their own.  ”Mom, did you replace all my cartoons when I was 2? I have some weird memory about Woody sounding just like Jackie Chan.”  Hmm, nope, not that I can recall dear.

Oh crap.  Right.  We do have the equivilant of a traveling film studio because of our work on the documentary.  So here goes. Cole and I are learning Mandarin together.  I’m studying with a tutor, he’s watching a lot of Chinese cartoons (how is this fair?).  I might have a really bad case of the potty mouth, a raging cold and inadvertently offend/mischaracterize Italians and/or Italy.

If you are having trouble viewing the video, go directly to it here.

Okay, does this do it for you?

That’s not an overexposed shot, that’s the view from my desk. According to BeijingAir right now it’s “unhealthy” levels. Last night it was perfectly clear and rated “good”. It comes, it goes, and after a month of living here, it’s as much a part of our life as the weather. Is it sunny out? How’s the air?

I thought about leaving, came close to doing it, until I researched other cities in China (like Harbin in the north) and Beijing isn’t even the worst.  It’s not even in the top 10 for worst air quality.  I could go south, but then I’d be in areas where Cantonese is spoken on the street, not Mandarin.  It’s only six months.  It might cause me to have a cold longer or aggravate my allergies, but from everything I’ve read, spending six months here won’t do any permanent damage, even for small children.

So we decided to stay.

Why? I think I’m slowly becoming charmed by Beijing.  I like the idea of going somewhere unpopular but culturally important.  I feel like I’m on an adventure.  If nothing else, I’ll learn a lot.  Plus, we finally found an apartment.

I had no idea how unprepared I was to live with an almost 2-year old in a hotel room for a month.  He needs space!  Or at least warm weather.  If he doesn’t have either, he’s kind of a mess… bursting into tears when we put on his clothes, clinging to me, refusing to walk anywhere, just wanting to be at home, with mom, in bed.  So I did that.  It’s not his fault that I wanted to go to China, so I made myself as flexible and malleable to his desires as possible.  We snuggled.  I stayed in.  I sent Drew out for food and read books while Cole used my body as a jungle gym.  Slowly he’s been adjusting, but the biggest breakthrough came when we stepped into our new 2-bedroom apartment.  He can be naked.  He can run!  He can climb things!  He can have his cut-up bananas on the sofa and watch cartoons.  He can shove his toy cars under the couch and then throw my books off my desk.  There’s drawers for hiding mom’s shoes and full bathtub for mini-swims.  We’re back in business.

Granted, our apartment hunt took a long time, even if you let me play the “But I’ve got a toddler!” card (you are letting me play that, right?). I had a lot of people giving me advice, but the first thing you should know: I’m cheap.

I really don’t like the idea of paying an agent a month’s rent (or $1000) to find me an apartment I’ll be in for six months. Plus, landlords in China want a few months rent in advance for a year rental. For short term rentals, they often want the entire rent (all six months in our case), plus a month’s rent deposit.

Apartments are kind of expensive here. For us that means at least $1000 but realistically more like $1500. So that’s $9000 for rent, $1500 for the agent, and $1500 for the deposit. Oh and they want that in cash — in this case, all $12000 of it. Which means doing a wire transfer to a bank in China and withdrawing it here (not even sure how that would work) or trying to take out that money via ATM which at $300 withdrawal per day, it would take me 40 days just to get the money on hand (assuming I spent nothing else). I’m sure I could have worked it out if I had to but I wanted to avoid that. Second thing you should know: I’m stubborn.

Finally, Beijing is big. It’s about an hour cab ride from one end of the city to the other, and that’s not even all the way out to the suburbs like Shunyi.  I really hate the idea of being stuck somewhere lame, so I wanted to find the perfect place that’s close to everywhere, cheap and has flexible short term living arrangements.

To modify a popular expression in graphic design (cheap, good or fast): There are three things you can have in Beijing:

1. Cheap
2. Good location
3. Clean, nice apartment

Now, pick two.

Third thing about me: I can be obsessive.

So we started in Wangfujing (near the Forbidden City) and moved hotels every couple of days, checking out different areas, coming close to staying in Haidian (near the universities), then perhaps Xidan St. (nice apartment, but located in the middle of a mall), then near Sanlitun (too expensive) and finally Wangjing (Koreatown, a hike from downtown but cheap).

I was determined to find a place that met all three. I’m cheap, stubborn and obsessive. I failed, but I did get a month-long tour of Beijing, and I’m sort of pleased to say I know my way around the different districts pretty well now. (I can also find the silver lining in just about anything).

In the end we went for the big, clean, nicely appointed apartment in Wangjing, in an area that fits us well (mostly locals living here, an art scene at 798 Art Zone and a great market next door) but we’re about a $10 cab ride from any of the tourist-related activities, a concession since I’d still like to visit the old Hutongs more and take some cooking classes, but one I felt the best about making.

It’s a serviced apartment, so we’re renting month to month. It’s still pricey ($1500/mo) but if you factor in agent fees and deposits, then it’s not bad compared to straight rentals for short term leases. (Sorry I won’t share the name of the place until after we leave, but you can find similar places online).

Resources:

Timeout Beijing has an excellent housing guide which is pretty damn accurate about the pros/cons of different areas. Their color-coded map of Beijing is practically a guide to everywhere we looked: here’s the map.  The Beijinger is a good resource, but chock-a-block full of scammy listings where the photo isn’t real or the agent does a swap (“Oh that place *just* got rented, but here’s a twice as expensive option”).  Craigslist, Homeaway and Roomarama weren’t helpful.  For agented rentals there are these sites: Beijing Relocation, Fangeasy, Homelink. Ctrip and Agoda are good for finding hotels, although check both, sometimes the price is cheaper on one or the other.  They also list serviced apartments or hotel rooms with kitchens or multiple bedrooms.  Student and Beijing resident Nate Nault recently wrote about his experience “Finding My First Apartment Abroad” and Timeout Beijing also has a round up this month called Apartment Horror Stories.  For any of the listing sites, using the map feature will help you pinpoint where you’re looking until you start getting a hang of neighborhood names (the same area might be called a few different names depending on the site).

And that, my friends is how I found my Beijing apartment.  I’m going to take a nap now.

Location: Some hotel, Beijing, China

Can you guess the number of parenting fails in this photo?  Let me get you started:

1. Despite my entirely misleading photo last week of Cole clothed, and outside, this is in fact a lie, and he has been nearly naked for almost a month now.

2.  My son is naked sitting on a hotel chair, where invariably, other people have sat.  Naked.  I try not to think about it.

3.  We are in a HOTEL.  Not an apartment, not in a flat, but in a hotel room because after approaching a month in Beijing we still haven’t figured out where to live.

4.  This is the 10th hotel we’ve been at as we’ve moved around the city.  And my child is still talking to me.  Well not talking, more like making screeching noises at me.  Hmmm.  Maybe he’s trying to tell me something.

5.  He’s watching a movie.  Puss in Boots.  Which despite all my child-free ideas about parenting, I have not actually given him a television-free childhood or succeeded in only showing him educational films, unless you consider  Antonio Banderas’ Spanish accent something of a cross-cultural immersion study (um, no? damn).

6.  Given that the words naked, hotel and puss are in this post, I’m probably going to want to stab myself in the face later when I see the search traffic landing on this page (although sometimes it works in my favor… I have a post How to Have Sex on the Road and Not Wake Your Child and it ranks well for “how to have sex without waking my parents“.  I can just imagine the horrified expressions on these teenagers’ faces as they realize that while they were trying to figure out how to get it on in the next room, so were their parents. Honestly, I consider it a public service).

And that’s just off the top of my head.

The restaurant is beautiful.

We ordered sweet potato salad for Cole and they brought out this (Cole loved it):

After bringing us the appetizer and drinks, the duck is brought out to a cutting table in the back of the restaurant.  I’m not sure why they set it up under such harsh lighting, but it’s pretty dramatic.

Slice by slice your duck is carefully dismantled.

Each person gets their own condiment tray with cucumber, radish, soy bean paste, garlic paste, sugar and what I’m calling “some other stuff”.

The duck is brought out.  You get two of these:

There’s also some paper thin pancakes for the table.

You create your own duck-condiment-pancake design…

Fold it up, and eat it.  Yum.  The duck is leaner than other places (a good thing) and the duck fat and skin is rendered into this crispy counterpart to the soft duck flesh.

You can make it savory or sweet…

Garlicky or salty…

Om.

Nom.

Nom.

Afterwards, they bring you oranges kept chilled over ice with… of course… dry ice for effect.  The effect being, ‘oh god these oranges taste good’ and your almost two-year-old trying to catch dry ice smoke with a chopstick.

By the time we left, the place was nearly cleared out, but the place is huge.

I love all the little details.

Lovely.  I’m not really doing it justice, but here it is (there’s also an entire bar area with a chic lounge).

So good.  If you make it to Beijing, it’s such a cliche, but you have to get Peking duck, and if you want something exceptional, then it’s Da Dong (they also have a huge ala carte menu that looks absolutely amazing and terrifying — I have to go back for the braised sea cucumber).  It’s a little pricy, running in the $30-$40 pp range (or more if you order drinks) but well worth it.

Da Dong Roast Duck 北京大董烤鸭店

5th floor, Jinbao Dasha, Jinbao Jie, Dongcheng District

东城区金宝街金宝大厦5层

Daily 11am-10pm

Pouring myself some tea now, preparing to venture outside for a brisk temple tour around Beijing.

Did you get what you needed? Here’s the full list:

Muhahahaha. Cozy blanket. Snuggly baby. Warm cup of tea. (Check.check.check.)

It was absolute bedlam outside tonight, and Drew came back half deaf in one ear. I think he caught on to my sudden excess of maternal instincts, eyeing me up when he walked in. “You know, if you want, I can watch the baby while you go out.”

“Nope! That’s okay, besides these photos are perfect.”

新年快乐!
恭喜发财!

Location: Dōngchéng district, Běijīng

We wandered through the ‘old man park’ where men sit outside in their parkas and jaunty cossack caps, playing a board game that looks to me like checkers, but might be Chinese Chess (Xiàngqí) if my googlese is any good.  We chatted with this little girl’s parents in the only language we shared — cooing at our child, taking photos and smiling.  Hmmm, maybe my letter worked.

Oops. Okay so my Top 100 Travel Blogs of 2011 idea was ambitious, and as it turns out, impossible. I decided to change tack.

I went through the list and pulled out what I considered to be the stand outs. The surprising, the quirky, the beautiful, the just plain good.

I’ve put those first, because I think it’s important to highlight new talent. And I’m hoping that they’ll take care of me when I’m old and in my travel blogging retirement years. Feed me pureed peaches and read to me from my Twitter stream, that kind of thing.

Then, since I’ve completely screwed the pooch on the original concept, I decided to curate an equal list of what I think are the best travel blogs overall. Same thing. Blatant attempt to curry favor with people who hopefully will invite me to their movie premiere or book signing or their first moon expedition (sponsored by G Adventures, naturally) or wherever their talent may take them.

So that’s it. 8 of the best new travel blogs in 2011. 8 of the best travel blogs overall. My reading list for 2012.

Real people. Really cool sites. Best list ever. (In my humble opinion, but please tell me if you agree.)

Best New Travel Blogs in 2011:

Fly Away Birdie

Sandstone and Amber

So Many Places

Captain and Clark

Homeless and Confused

Living If

Where My Toothbrush

Spanish Sabores

Best Overall for 2011:

None of these blogs were started in 2011, but they are consistently good blogs that I love.  If you don’t love at least one of these blogs, then you are not human.  In fact, have you taken the psychopath test?  See #7.  Unless you’re just #4.

TheEverywhereist

LegalNomads

JohnnyVagabond

Snaps & Blabs

Aviators and a Camera

Inside the Travel Lab

100 Miles Highway

Hungry Ghost Food and Travel

You are awesome. I just know it. And yes, we got off to a rocky start. And okay, yeah my in-laws are now emailing me, “I just read your blog, OMG I hope you can get out of this. It sounds like an awful place to be.” That’s entirely my fault. Some of my readers have been emailing me too. It might have been the picture of the smog-fog. Can I be honest? That didn’t look good.

So yes, it’s taken us longer to figure out where to live than I thought it would and yeah, I don’t love some of food here which can be very bland or super salty or dripping with grease (or all three, sadly). When I get a kitchen, I promise I will learn the names of all the dishes and stop playing Menu Roulette at every meal. And yes, I have to use a VPN to get online, but that’s half the adventure right? Like when I almost rented some guy’s flophouse for double the local rate, I didn’t get mad, I laughed about it. See! I can take a joke!

Today, my Kindle broke. I’ve been in China for two weeks, and believe me I’m not missing the irony of having a broken Kindle in the country that manufactures them AND the one place Amazon won’t send me a replacement. I told everyone on Twitter I was going to raid the factory in a covert op and people stopped their busy day to respond to me and tell that that was A Bad Idea. I’m now in the position of needing people to tell me to not break into buildings in foreign countries in order to replace my electronics through what can only be called theft.

I’m not doing well.

It might be the cold I got the moment I arrived, which my son has been feeding back to me every day with his germy kisses. When he gets excited he now sounds like a pug.

Or maybe it’s just me having a bad attitude about the freezing weather.

I’m not sure. Whatever it is, I know it’s not you. You, darling, are great. I don’t know you that well, but really all these complaints of mine are just the itchy discomfort of a woman trying to adapt too quickly.

So tonight, I’m calling a truce. Can I do that? Can we just start over?

I’ll stop pointing out your cultural differences like they are character flaws and you can stop breaking my stuff and help the swelling on my left eye go down (don’t ask). That would be fan-tastic. If you could also let my son know that when I try to put on his pants it’s not because I hate him, it’s so we can go ice skating, which he doesn’t know yet what that is, but it’s super fun.

Sort of like China.

XOXO- Christine

(PS Seriously, please don’t break my iPhone.)

(PPS Please note I do like getting emails where people are worried about me. Tonight’s post was almost called, “No seriously! And Then I Almost Died!” but I’m saving that for sweeps.)

If you’ve ever traveled to a country that censors the internet, then you know the very real effect that it has on free speech.

SOPA doesn’t just impact Americans, it impacts all internet users around the globe who rely on US-based IP addresses and VPNs to access the internet. This includes journalists, activists, volunteer groups, educators and travelers (that’s you).

On January 24th it goes to vote in Congress. Take a moment to have your voice heard: http://americancensorship.org/

Update: If you’re a blogger and you want to add the STOP SOPA ribbon (see the right hand corner of my site) to your blog, the plugin is here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stop-sopa-ribbon (it links to the American Censorship site). Also there is a planned blackout on Jan 18th lead by Reddit. Plugin here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sopa-blackout/ (Thanks to A King’s Life for the link).

Unfamiliar with SOPA? Read this (click for larger view):

Maybe my dictionary is too concise.

We switched hotels. I wanted to be closer to the university area because I’m planning to take at least a part-time course load in Mandarin. We had a nice two bedroom apartment over by the 798 Art Zone, but it’s over an hour by bus to the university, so we packed up our stuff and moved across town.

It was a huge hassle. Packing up our stuff all morning, check out, wait an hour at reception while they do something, we’re not sure what because they relay this information in Mandarin (which they should, this being China and all, but still it doesn’t help us much). Cole wants to touch the bubbling water feature in the lobby, which I am inclined to let him, but the doorman has already come over to show me through a series of dramatic miming, how my son will burst into flames and die if he so much as makes eye contact with the thing. There’s a tangled knot of wires and extension cords powering the wet and sputtering installment. Jesus, maybe he’s right.

Paid. Receipt. Bundled. Outside. Hail. Taxi. Hour drive. Boom. We’re at the new place.

The new place is more expensive than the last and for that price, they include the smell of boiled cabbage. There’s empty beverage containers in the bathroom and before I can say, “what the hell?” I notice the evaporated residue of shaving cream and the tell-tale black stubble of some man’s shaving. Uh, okay, so they haven’t cleaned the room?

I go into the bedroom and there’s no sheets! No pillows, no blankets. I look in the kitchen and there’s a stove top but no pots or pans. No cutlery. There’s a hole in the cabinets where the microwave would go but it’s empty. On the counter there’s an imprint of the dust of what must have been an electric tea kettle, maybe a rice cooker. Why have a kitchen with only a single burner and no way to actually cook anything?

This is weird.

Drew goes to the front desk to inquire and I try to put Cole down for a nap. Drew’s a little confused-looking when he returns.

“So what did they say?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What did you say?”

“I didn’t. We typed to each other through Google Translate. But I don’t really understand the translation. I think they are sending someone up.”

Meanwhile the internet isn’t working so we try to get that fixed too.

Three men come to our apartment and talk to us in progressively louder and louder Chinese. By now, I have my English-Chinese dictionary open but it’s no use. Without knowing the question it’s hard to answer anything. They are fixing the internet? We show them the computers. They play around and shout things at us.

Uh…

The cleaning lady comes. She doesn’t bring sheets. We mime “sheets” by stroking the bed. See! Nice Bed. Better with sheets! “Sheeeeetsssssss,” we say as we stroke the bed. She takes her rag and starts wiping down the bed.

Dear Lord.

By the way, we know this is our responsibility to learn the language. I do not for a second expect anyone to speak English to me. That would be crazy.

On Drew’s last trip he notices a sign, in English, at reception with the listed prices. For about 100 RMB less per night than what they are charging us. He takes a picture of it and returns to the room.

“Look. Why. More. See.” Drew hands the guy his iPhone. The guy types on his phone and shows Drew. A translation.

“The owner sets the price of the dwelling when the accommodation is in full setting.”

What.

We switch tacts. I looked up the word for blanket and ask.

“No. This. No. Hotel.”

What.

They leave. The cleaning lady wants something. Money? I have no idea. She’s is increasingly emphatic. Drew’s gone back down to the lobby with our cash. I look up the word for husband. I try to say, “Go ask my husband, he’s in the lobby” but she just stands there looking at me and talking. Talking. Talking.

What is going on?

By this point, I am pretty sure I just stiffed the cleaning lady, pissed off the internet guy and rented a hotel room that is actually some guy’s apartment.

I go back to check on Cole and there’s something by his head. A little black hair. Gross.

That’s it. We’re out of here. We’re obviously not in a hotel-hotel. We’re in a random-guy-who-knows-how-to-set-up-a-fake-hotel-on-Ctrip hotel. I think. Honestly, this could all be our fault.

Maybe they were saying, “You know, if you want, we can bring you to a fully furnished and much nicer room. Just say the word!”

Us: Uh…..

Them: “Okay, if you insist on staying here, but really this is just the staff overnight room. But it’s up to you!”

Us: half-shrug and smile.

To each other: “Wow, Americans are so weird.”

Even at street level, the visibility was low this morning.

I woke up to an expanse of white outside my apartment window. Our 25th floor apartment has a wall dedicated to the view: tall windows that stretch up to the ceiling and cover half of the apartment length. Normally, I get up, look out my window and think, “I love my view”. Today I thought, “Oh god, I hope this isn’t a Stephen King fog, the kind cooked up in some off shore laboratory gone amuck and is full of man-eating monsters. That would totally suck.”  Then I made some tea.

Here’s the thing about living in China. First, I’m loathe to say anything bad because my husband is afraid that we’re going to get into trouble. I tweeted someone about the smog and Drew said, “Don’t say smog! Say fog!”

Second, I don’t really know enough about the situation to really give valuable advice. Is it smog? Is it fog? The Chinese government tested air quality this morning and said it was good. 150 flights were cancelled, but hey, that’s because of all this fog. You know FOG, looks just like SMOG but it doesn’t kill you and don’t worry because really if it was bad the government would definitely tell you, right?

The third problem, and this is always weighing on my mind anywhere I go, is that as an American, I come from a culture were we’re total dicks to other countries. We go to France and we’re like, “Wow, you are so slow!” when our waiter takes more than 30 minutes to deliver our locally-grown hand-roasted, lovingly prepared entree. The irony is that we’re not at all upset when someone brings us a defrosted, mass-produced and microwaved dish, as long as it’s fast and there’s a lot of it. See? Total dicks.

In this case, it could be that China does have a pollution problem and that the UN is correct in saying that Beijing is one of the worst polluted cities in the world. But, that could be because China is the world’s factory and while I’m writing this post on a Mac Book Pro, and wearing Made in China clothing, I’m also the one indirectly responsible for the pollution. Complaining about it while simulantaneously enjoying cheap retail products is sort of like saying, I’ve love Foie Gras, I just wish they’d figure out how to save those poor ducks’ lives. If I’m serious about it, I really have to make some massive, probably impossible purchasing changes.

Best to say nothing.

Except this morning, there was something so thick floating in the air that I couldn’t help but wonder, “Hmmm, Christine, do you think this is the kind of day where you might want to stay inside? Like all day? Perhaps rest a little? No reason, just asking.”

So I did.

I checked the US reading of the air quality in Beijing and it showed me this:

If you’re unfamiliar with reading air quality reports, let me point out the basics. PM2.5 is the reading type. It’s a finer reading than China does, which is PM10. The reading is 502.  Anything over 300 is considered hazardous.  Over 500 is off the charts.  Today’s reading is 502.  To put that in further perspective, at the same time in LA the reading was 50.  So if you’re in LA right now, imagine the smog there and then multiple that by 10.

In other words, if you’re in LA, sucking on the exhaust pipe of your Prius is probably a better option than opening your window in Beijing.

I would be worried, except tonight, just like that the air quality improved drastically.  It’s clear.  The US reading says the air quality is “good” at 49.  I can see the entire cityscape from my window.  In fact, it’s even better than it’s been all week.

How does that work?  If it’s really pollution, would it just hang around for a day and then take off?  Did China push the big red button marked 沒有污染 then, boom, just like that, everything cleared out?  No earthly idea.

The real question is this: when was the last time I changed out of my pyjamas?

Beijing!  What are you doing to me!

Things I don't want to miss out on.

This post is not entirely travel related, but I figure that balancing priorities is something that everyone struggles with and it’s something that I’ve been thinking about quite a bit.

Since becoming a mother, I’ve had to work even more creatively to find time for everything I want to accomplish.  Previously, I used my willingness to work long hours as my go-to strategy for bailing myself out.  Once I had Cole, I couldn’t do that anymore.  I had to actually think about whether I “really” wanted to do a project because my time became even more finite, and over committing meant taking me away from my son.  For the first time, I realized what a spineless wimp I am!

I really hate it when people don’t think I’m totally amazing and awesome.  Total wimp-ville.

Over the last two years, I’ve gotten over that a bit and learned to really test my gut for the time-worthiness of any given idea.  Do I really want to do this or do I feel obligated?  Am I avoiding something?  Do I feel like I’m in service to my ideas (I must pursue them) or that they are in service to me (they help me refine my mission).

It’s better now, but even that wasn’t enough!

Now, I’m learning Mandarin, living in China, Cole is running around like crazy, I’m working on a plethora of essential writing, photography and video projects and — oh god — this is embarrassing — I’m spending way too much time on Facebook.

The truth is… I’m still pretty spineless!  I will stay Facebook-friends with people I only know vaguely and who insist on being negative, starting controversies or picking fights. I’m also following dozens of people that I honestly don’t know who they are, except they added me (on my personal account, not my almostfearless page), we have 100+ friends in common (mostly other writers) and I don’t want them to think I’m a snob!

It’s completely ridiculous.

There’s a lot of noise in my life.  At one point I allowed it in, invited it even.  It’s like adopting a Mogwai — cute and fun in the beginning but leave it unattended and bam! you’ve got a theater full of gremlins singing along with Snow White.  Your whole life is over-run.

My list of sins: travel blogging communities that I read, blogs about the business of travel blogging, personalities who say brazen things that infuriate me, others who speak on behalf of all travel bloggers in sophomoric open letters to the travel industry (look how important and successful we are!) which make me cringe and a slew of drama from a few people I’ve called my colleagues for almost four years.  And I read it all!

Since this fall, I’ve been slowly eliminating high-noise, low-signal sources.  I trimmed back all of my twitter followers.  I dropped out of every group that was catty.  I started unsubscribing (but not unfriending) people who I don’t know in real life.  I blocked anyone who pissed me off.  Say something insanely stupid: blocked.  I blocked people who insisted on posting links to people that piss me off.  That open letter?  I unsubscribed or blocked everyone who shared the link (thankfully due to my prior culling, it was only two people).

If I know you in real life, then I’ll tolerate your crap.  But anonymous strangers who happen to have the same profession as me?  You’re out!

I am of two minds about this: first, this is awesome!  My online life is so clutter free that I can actually read people who matter to me, and second, oh god, I’m such a jerk, people are going to think I’m a cold-ass b*tch!

By the way, I am a total b*tch.  A b*tch who gets sh*t done!

Being nice, helpful and generous with your time — at least in my case — was just me over-compensating.  By taking back my time and ruthlessly and savagely weed-wacking through my distractions, I’m actually making more time for my close friends, colleagues and family.

There’s a small quiet space opening up in my world.  It feels nice to have time to concentrate.  I feel calm.  I’m no longer beset by the negativity of others.  I’m seeking out inspiring people!  I have more time to read!

Drew was standing over my shoulder while I checked Twitter and since I just have 77 people I’m following, he was amazed saying, “Wow your stream is so high quality, every tweet is something interesting.”

Isn’t that the point?

I’ve been hearing a lot about this — mostly other writers and bloggers — and it feels like a theme we’re all running into… the big rush to connect, be online, have the “conversation” has now turned into a mass exodus of smart and talented people who are dropping out online (at least from the non-productive areas) in order to get stuff done.

The biggest benefit: I’ve actually had time to respond to reader emails.  (I’m still catching up, so bear with me!)

Is your online life cluttered?  What could you accomplish if it all dropped away?

Update: Just found out that Pico Iyer wrote a piece two weeks ago for the New York Times about this same subject: The Joy of Quiet. Worth a read.

Update 2: A-list blogger Chris Brogan also wrote this week about noise-signal ratio of the web and what you can do to improve it.

The view from our 25th floor short-term apartment is decidedly mixed. Everyone warned us about the smog in Beijing. Everyone. People came out of the wood work — long-lost cousins added me on Facebook just to question the decision, readers who have never commented before wrote pleading emails, chain-smoking, semi-alcoholic acquaintances lectured me about my health — even other writers were tweeting me to tell me the news: There is a lot of smog in Beijing.

I get it! We’re going to die or at least permanently disfigure our son for life.

Then we saw the smog. Holy sh*t.

Flying into Beijing we watched out the window as we began to descend. Above the cloud cover, it’s bright and clear. As you descend through the clouds, it turns into a yellow-brown fog that looks like something they’d use in WWII as poison gas. The worst of it passes and it slowly gets more clear. When you’re on the ground, it doesn’t seem so bad. It’s hazy on some days, sunny on others, but if you don’t think about the pea soup atmosphere hovering above the entire city, then really, you’d never known. (gulp).

Thankfully, we’ve watched the air reports (twitter.com/beijingair) and you can predict if it’s a smoggy day or a clear day.

The initial verdict: bad yes, but not that bad, at least not something that will make us flee the city at this moment. Besides that…

We really like it here. It’s cold, yes, but really just New England winter cold. It’s about freezing temps on most days, dropping below that at night but there is little wind, no snow (disappointing!) and with my $6 LL Bean Thai-morning-market special (Thais obviously don’t know how much coats cost in the states), I am feeling quite comfortable.

Cole on the other hand is quite surprised by this sudden change in temperature, and by surprised I mean bursting into tears.

This is about the most amount of clothing we’re able to get him to wear. Since Cole was born, we’ve been chasing summer around the globe and have gotten into the habit of being barefoot and in Cole’s case, mostly, if not entirely naked.

Imagine his surprise when we take a short flight from balmy Thailand to frigid northern China. My father-in-law predicted the result on my Facebook wall:

“Yer gonna freeze yer arsses off. Cole will hate you for doing this to him. Maybe he’ll keep his clothes on, huh?”

Yes. Yes. No.

The first few days in Beijing were trying. Cole desperately wanted two things: to leave the hotel room and to be naked while he did so. I managed to get his shoes on at one point, and he stood at the door, butt naked (he had ripped his diaper off in a symbol of protest), in his sneakers and cried for us to let him out.

I would almost do it, just so he could better understand, but here in China, the women tsk-tsk my already laid back parenting and will STOP ME ON THE STREET to adjust Cole’s clothing if so much as a sliver of ankle is exposed. Actually I don’t mind that part, I find it incredibly endearing the way people treat children in China. If Cole ever starts to cry invariably the people around me will stop to see what’s wrong. If I’m unable to fix it quickly, they’ll jump in — people on the street! — and try to distract him or coo at him. It’s so sweet.

So instead of hitting the ground running as I imagined — the kind of fantasy that mothers of young children tend to have dashed quite often — I’ve spent most of this week being a warm, comfy pillow for Cole and reading books and drinking tea. I decided that while in China, I would switch entirely to tea and so far it’s been a weird experience. Both times Drew has purchased tea it’s been a strange barley-infused style and the latest one tastes exactly like rice cakes.

I did make one small step towards learning Mandarin. I had my first lesson and immediately didn’t sign up for a second. They spent 15 minutes explaining how to say “My name is Christine” and by the end of it I wanted to stab myself in the face. There has to be a faster way. So I bought some books at the Beijing Language and Culture University bookstore, and I’ll be looking for a better tutor. In the interim, I can at least work on some of the basics without paying $25/hour for it. The glorious part of being here is that absolutely no one will speak English to you. If you’ve ever tried to learn a language abroad, then you’ll know one of the most frustrating aspects of being a native English speaker is that it can be hard to get locals to speak to you in their language. Here? No problem. People assume that you speak Mandarin. They don’t hesitate, they walk right up to you and say “嗨，你知道什么时候火车来了” And you’re all like, OH CRAP I DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO SAY I DON’T SPEAK YOUR LANGUAGE IN YOUR LANGUAGE.

I’m working on it.

I can’t even deal with saying good bye to everyone. It’s really sad to leave, maybe even more so because I know that if I return in six months or a year, it won’t be the same. Most of my friends will be gone. The place will be the same, but feel different. I’ll be chasing a ghost.

This morning Drew took a last walk around the city and snapped some pics with his iPhone. There’s a line in the sand. I feel like our life is starting over again. A friend was writing on Facebook a few months ago about their conflicting emotions around change, taking the leap, starting over. I wrote something to the effect of, “Enjoy it! This is the best part. In a year from now you’ll look back on this moment fondly. You’re alive!”

It’s funny that I’m now in the position to take my own advice. “Enjoy it!” I said. Okay, I’m on it. Next up, Beijing…

Drew’s photos from this morning:

Why do you want to learn Mandarin?

It’s not a simple question to answer, not because I don’t have an answer, but because with any other language I’ve studied I’ve never had to answer it. French is sexy, cool. Spanish is easy, practical. On the other hand, Mandarin is hard, unintuitive.

Or at least these are the stereotypes. So instead of delving into the whys, and inadvertently get pulled into dismantling stereotypes of a language that I haven’t even started learning yet, I just duck for cover:

I want to do it because it’s hard. I want to see if I can do it. And I want to know more about China.  That’s it.

Why Beijing?

We picked Beijing because they speak Mandarin everywhere. It’s not commonly known outside of China, but while Mandarin is the official language, there are many different dialects, local languages and region variances that mean that someone coming from Northern China might speak Mandarin, but someone in the South might speak Cantonese. This isn’t like the difference between Italian and Spanish where a person might be able to apply one language to the other — instead one language is indecipherable to a native speaker of other languages in China.

So we didn’t want to go to Shanghai to learn Mandarin, because the shop owners and taxi drivers and people on the street would all be speaking Shanghainese, which is of course, nothing like Mandarin, although they speak that too.

In fact, Beijing isn’t even the best place to learn Mandarin necessarily because they have a heavy accent that adds an ‘r’ sound to the end of words. We’d be better off further north, in a place like Harbin, where they speak a very clear version of Mandarin. And of course, it’s near Russia and drops to -30 F in the winter. Suddenly the 20-30 F smoggy weather in Beijing doesn’t look so bad.

Will you learn to read and write too?

Yes, that’s the goal.  It’s estimated that in order to be fluent in written Chinese, you need to know 3,000 characters.  The interesting thing is that it’s not a straight line to fluency.  The first 100 characters you learn have the biggest bang in terms of overall fluency and the closer you get to 3,000 then more your improvement drops off.  There are lists of characters by their frequency of use, so if you study the most common ones first, your first 100 represents an overall 42% understanding (for example if you picked up a newspaper and tried to read it).  By 1,000 characters you’re at a whopping 89% understanding.  At 2,000 you’re at 97%.

Since I’m spending 6 months in Beijing or about 180 days, if I learn just one character per day, I’d be at about 50% understanding.  In order to be fluent, I need to aim for about 17 new characters per day.  Even if I fail and only learn half of what I try to memorize each day, I’ll be at 94% understanding when I pick up the paper.

I don’t know if makes a difference knowing these numbers, but somehow they are reassuring to me.  It helps to know that any effort I make will have a big return on fluency from the beginning.

How will I do all of this?

I’m still a writer and photographer.  I’m still a mom.  These are all choices I’ve made over time, but it also means that I have to work a little harder than most people to fit in all the things I want to do.

My Mon – Fri schedule:

5 AM Wake, coffee, shower, breakfast

6 AM Exercise (or staring into space)

7 AM Writing, checking email and answer student questions for my online workshop

8 AM Writing/research

9 AM Writing/research

10 AM Private Mandarin lessons

11 AM Private Mandarin lessons

12 PM Lunch, shopping at the market

1 PM Private Mandarin lessons

2 PM Private Mandarin lessons

3 PM Reading

4 PM Study Mandarin

5 PM Cook

6 PM Watch Mandarin movies + family time

So that’s about four hours of writing a day and five hours of Mandarin.  I’m giving myself the weekends off to explore, take photos, spend time with Drew and Cole.  It’s actually not too bad, because I’ve become quite efficient as a writer (an unintended gift of motherhood) and even when I’m not writing, I’m mentally preparing to write — which is almost 50% of my process as a writer.

In order to give myself this time, I’ve been spending many hours over the past year to automate the technical side of my blog, to kill off projects that were time sucks and to figure out a way to write with a sticky toddler crawling over my head (the key is to stop writing, play with the poor neglected child and once he’s bored with you, run back to your computer like a starving man to bread).

Will I fail?

Yes!  Maybe!  I don’t know!  But really, who cares?  I think it’s going to be awesome.  Well really, I have no idea what to expect, and that’s awesome.

What’s your big goal for 2012?

photos from inyucho & IvanWalsh.com