Life in Beijing

First Snow!

2009-11-01T07:58:00.003+08:00

This must be some sort of record--the first snow of 2009/10 in Beijing has fallen already, and it's only November 1! What's up with that? And yesterday, though it started off fairly cool, actually became pretty comfortable during the day, with crisp (looking) air to boot, although by the evening it was quite chilly and windy. I hope that it's true that the earlier the snow, the milder the winter.

Other than the snow, there are not that many things worth noting here. Tried out a great restaurant the other night with some friends called Meat & Wine. It's a South African chain, and they opened a Beijing branch some time ago in the Ch'ien Men 23 complex that is also home to Maison Boulud. The food was excellent, I thought, and the wine list was extensive though a bit pricey. The steaks were about as good as any I've had in Beijing, though they did not hold a candle to Peter Luger's in New York.

And speaking of Peter Luger's in New York, we'll be going there before too long. We have to take our home leave trip before the end of the year or risk losing the benefit, so we're taking a quick trip to the US on November 6, taking in the NYC metro area and DC to see our families and friends and do a quick catch-up. Will be very nice to see everyone that we can fit in, and apologies to those whom we don't manage to see!

Miscellany

2009-10-17T17:55:00.002+08:00

There's really nothing terribly interesting to report here, but since it's been a little while since I have written anything about Life in Beijing, I thought now would be a good time to do just that. Since we got back from South Africa we have been blessed with pleasantly cool temperatures, and though the skies were initially rather grey and unattractive, they have since turned blue and gorgeous, almost as blue and gorgeous as they were in South Africa. This has meant that we have been able to trot out our leather jackets that we had a leather tailor make for us in April or so, just as it was getting too warm to wear them, and I have to say, they look great! I even got a compliment on the one I had made for myself from some stranger on the street last week!

The dogs are doing very well, and after our return they have been even more lovable and attention-seeking than ever. In fact Ivan, our new Sheltie puppy, has turned a big corner during absence, it seems: whereas prior to our trip he was prone to having accidents in the house, since we're back he has not had a single one, and he makes sure we know when he needs to go out. What a good boy! Now he's not just cute, he's smart, too!

Just before we left on our trip I decided to trade in my old indoor rowing machine for the Rolls Royce of the rowing world, a Concept 2. I managed to sell the old one on line through one of the expat bulletin boards, and place an order for the new one through the distributor in Shanghai. Sending a bank transfer from Beijing to Shanghai was a real test of my patience (though it was nothing compared to the difficulty I had sending a hotel payment to the place where we stayed in South Africa--sheesh, that was hard!!), but it worked, and sure enough they delivered it the Friday after we returned. It's a beaut, too! Not only is it nice and smooth, but you can connect it to your computer and upload your results to a website to track your progress, compete with other users, and play games. I love it!

We have also resumed our "Alphacise", of course. A number of new clients have signed up with the gym, and Alpha is now going to Chengdu twice a month to train some personal trainers out there in how to use his system. This means we have to adjust our schedules somewhat, since he tends to leave Saturday night and return Monday morning, but it's not that disruptive and he seems to enjoy it a lot.

In really exciting news, I have spent part of today going through my pantry to take stock of all the stuff that I have in there, since I am tired of finding that I rebuy the same things over and over again, resulting in my having loads of couscous and dried chickpeas. I'm also trying to use up the older things, which explains the proliferation of bean dishes that we enjoyed this week with our grilled chicken breasts and flank steak.

We have been enjoying several new shows of the fall TV schedule back in the US. In particular we really like Glee, Community, Modern Family and Cougar Town, and since it has the word "vampire" in it, J2 also likes The Vampire Chronicles. I'm still on the fence on FlashForward, but it might have potential. And of course I'm watching the new Amazing Race, which is hands-down my favorite reality show.

This past week we had our company midyear review meeting, which was just about the best one we have had in my memory. It's been a good half so far this year, and things look very promising for the rest of the year. I also attended my first HR conference, which I found very interesting, and which even vindicated having a non-HR guy running a company's HR function (as I'm doing). So, very useful!

I think that brings you up to date on our exciting lives. Keep those comments coming so I know what you're interested in hearing about!

Photos from South Africa

2009-10-17T17:54:00.002+08:00

Oh, no, I completely forgot to post the link to my photos from South Africa! Here they are.

The new galleries are the ones of Porcupine Hills, Elgin, and Cape Town Area. Enjoy!

Return to the Cape, Day 8, Cape Town to Dubai

2009-10-07T14:27:00.001+08:00

The Vineyard Hotel’s breakfast made up for the dinner experience the previous night; their buffet was extensive and the eggs benedict were very good, though what they call
a bagel is but a sad shadow of the actual thing (another business opportunity for me!).

The weather had turned a bit grey and gloomy overnight, which put a bit of a damper on any plans to do something fun while we waited for our flight at 6pm. We started off by visiting the Cavendish Square mall to check out the wedding magazines to get a sense of what sort of places are advertising as wedding venues, since Rockhaven and the other Elgin area B&Bs make a huge portion of their money hosting weddings and we’d like a chunk of that action. In fact Mike and Liz of Rockhaven had said they would direct people whom they cannot accommodate (chiefly smaller weddings of around 50 people) to us, as would the people at Gabriëlskloof, so we have even got a ready supply of referrals. Unfortunately, the only bridal magazine we saw was in Afrikaans, so we gave that a miss.

We now found ourselves with nothing much to do, but suddenly hit on the idea of going back to the Constantia Valley wineries, which we visited on our first trip in May but that was before we had any understanding of South African wines. We started off at Constantia Uitsig, which is one of the bigger wineries in the area. Until we got there we had not realized that we had been there before, but in contrast with our visit in May this time we had a much better sense of what wines to try (whites rather than reds) and we enjoyed them much, much more. And their Muscat d’Alexandrie dessert wine was a particular favorite, though at R395 per 500ml bottle it was a bit rich for our blood.

From Constantia Uitsig we continued to Steenberg Winery, at the end of the valley road. This is a beautiful estate, and turns out to be the first farm established in South Africa (way back in 1685 or so), and by a woman at that! She was rather star-crossed, though, having moved to SA from Germany as a 22-year old widow, only to get married to a guy who got stabbed on their wedding night, only to survive to be killed by a lion a few days later (the wife supposedly then went out on horseback later that day and killed the lion). She then remarried, but that husband was killed by local tribesmen, and then she remarried again to a guy who got stomped by an elephant. Only her fifth husband managed to survive her. Anyway, they had some very interesting wines, including a very nice red blend (named after that original female owner of the farm, Catharina) that we bought to fill our last remaining slot in our wine shipping box.

For lunch we decided to eat at the Steenberg winery’s restaurant, also called Catharina. This is a beautiful restaurant, overlooking the farms and the mountains, with a very interesting menu. All the dishes we ordered were outstanding, though once again, J2’s main course of Chalmar beef with gnocchi was the best dish, though I also very much enjoyed my springbok, though I was not really hungry enough to eat the whole thing.

Lunch was over by around 1:30, which still left us a lot of time before our 6pm departure time, so we decided to head back down to Simon’s Town for a visit with the African penguin colony down there at Boulders Beach. In contrast with our visit there in May, this time there were far fewer penguins, no babies, and those that were there were mostly just hanging around doing very little. It turns out that the reason for this is that it’s molting season, and during this time the penguins’ feathers are not waterproof, so they cannot swim for food and thus do what they can to conserve energy. Still, they are very cute, and they’re just right there next to the boardwalk, making for very good photos.

We were done with the penguins by 2:30, so we figured we’d head to the airport, and a good thing, too, since there’s no good route (that we could find) from Simon’s Town to the airport, and it was nearly 4pm by the time we got there. However, as it turns out, the flight was delayed several hours, so there was no real need to be there so early.

As we were checking in to the flight, I got an SMS from our estate agent, asking me to call her urgently. We took our time doing so, though, so as not to seem too desperate. Sure enough, when we phoned we learned that she had called the sellers to ask if they really were happy to have us walk away from the property in the wake of their increasing the price. And sure enough, they were not. However, they asked if we would consider leaving them a small portion of land that they could use to put up their own weekend cottage, suggesting that they might do it in an area that now is home to some derelict workers’ cottages. This was something I was thinking of, too, so I think it could be a workable option. We told Nicole we’d consider it and get back to her (no need to rush, we figure). But this meant that we spent the flight from Cape Town to Dubai reading up on the care and feeding of olive trees and how to set up a successful tourist venue in the Western Cape.

Because of the departure delay we landed in Dubai two hours late, but since we had a five hour layover, this was not a problem. Best of all, when we finally went to check into the flight, we learned that we were being upgraded to business class! After the cramped seats on the first leg, this was very welcome news indeed!!

Return to the Cape, Day 7, Elgin Valley to Cape Town

2009-10-06T13:52:00.000+08:00

On our last morning at Rockhaven we had an early breakfast since we had an 8:30 meeting at a bank in Somerset West to learn about mortgage terms in SA. The drive from Elgin to Somerset West is not long, no more than 30 minutes, and while Somerset West would not be terribly appealing to tourists, for Elginites it is the shopping place, being home to a lot of useful stores, a large mall with some very good anchor stores, including a Pick n Pay grocery and a Woolworths (the latter being in South Africa a very upscale grocery store).

Interest rates in South Africa are very high, though we later learned that they have actually come down quite a bit. Still, with our being non-citizens, the prospect of taking a loan out is pretty unappealing, so we’ll have to find other ways of financing our property purchase.

After checking out Somerset West we headed into Cape Town itself, a further 20 minute or so drive, heading to The Vineyard Hotel and Spa for our overnight stay. This is one of Cape Town’s oldest hotels, located in the southern suburbs in the shadow of Table Mountain. As soon as we checked in we immediately headed out again to go in search of the local Chinese grocery, located not far away. We were happy to find that they have a lot of the things we would need/want, including Sichuan peppers, fresh tofu, and the like, though their supply of fresh vegetables is rather poor. We therefore started to plan to plant a Chinese garden with all the vegetables and herbs that we cannot reliably procure here, like asparagus lettuce (wosun), Chinese chives, and lotus root.

After a simple lunch at a local South African style pub, we returned to our hotel, used the surprisingly nice gym, and just relaxed until the evening. On Monday nights the hotel hosts a free wine tasting, so we sampled the wines of Meerlust winery (very nice) before having a proper drink to drown our misery over our apparently not getting our property sorted out during this visit, and waited for friends to arrive. The friends are people whom I met through Chowhound as I was preparing for our May visit to South Africa, a gay British couple who, like us, came to South Africa on a holiday, fell in love with the place, and returned a few weeks later. Ten years later they are still here, and seem to have a really great life here. We learned today that what they left behind in the UK was the stunning Rothes Glen castle-hotel in, of all places, Elgin, Scotland!

Our friends could not stay for dinner, so we wound up just eating at the hotel’s restaurant, which came highly recommended. My starter of crocodile with beet reduction and arugula salad was very good, as was J2’s of warm beef and gorgonzola salad, but my main course of grilled gemsbok with creamed spinach was so salty as to be inedible (J2’s gnocchi were also a bit salty, but nothing like my dish). Mine was so bad that I just had to say something to the waiter, much to J2’s consternation. The waiter brought it to the chef’s attention, and the chef came back to me to confirm that the dish was way too salty, owing to an error by a sous chef in preparing the spinach. In compensation, he took the dish off the bill (he offered to replace it, but I just wanted to get to bed at this point), and offered profuse apologies.

Return to the Cape, Day 6, Elgin Valley

2009-10-06T04:37:00.000+08:00

We woke up to another breakfast of farm fresh eggs with Liz and Mike before Nicole came to pick us up for a drive up to Porcupine Hills for another look at the property. When we got into her car, she gave us all sorts of materials that she had prepared for us, including information about the new developments in the area, facts about olive growing, etc., and then she dropped the bomb--the price had gone up 20%. This was unacceptable, of course, and we debated whether to bother looking at the property again, but in the end decided that this may just be a ploy and that it was worth the drive.

Sure enough, the property looked fantastic. Unlike the previous visit, this time the owners were not with us, so we could look around more freely. We also managed to look into all the various buildings around the property, including the rondavel (a round house that is near the entrance that is currently unused but that could serve as a nice guest house) and the other guest cottages. The place has amazing potential, much of which has gone unrealized under the current ownership.

When we were done looking at the property we drove down the other half of the access road toward the Bot River side, stopping along the way to look at the Luddite Farm (great name!) from the road, and for a wine tasting at Beaumont wines, where they had a really nice port and noble late harvest dessert wine (both of which are coming home with us). We also had a fantastic lunch at the South Hill wine estate, a relatively new estate with a phenomenal restaurant and wedding venue. The meal was exquisite, and the owners came by (they’re friends of Nicole) to chat with us.

We got back to the inn and had a bit of a rest before dinner, during which we discussed the new price with Mike and Liz, who were as shocked by it as we were. We spent the evening strategizing with them over a great frittata that Liz made, along with not a few glasses of wine. While we may not have solved our problem, at least the idea of having such great friends as these in our new place is really appealing.

Return to the Cape, Day 5, Elgin Valley

2009-10-04T12:18:00.000+08:00

After another great breakfast we headed out over the pass again toward Franschhoek, dropping off two of our inn’s colored workers (trust me, horrible as it sounds to an American ear, this is a perfectly acceptable and correct phrase) in town along the way. The drive was once again stunning, with the views of the mountain in full wildflower bloom coming one after the other in languid succession, and each more beautiful than the last. We were surprised to see dozens of people biking along this very mountainous road, which gave us the idea to try to attract mountain bikers to Porcupine Hill, perhaps driving them out to the Franschhoek side so they could then bike back to our place. Could be a good business.

Once in Franschhoek we headed to the Franschhoek Health Center to check out the fitness options here. This place is much nicer than the facility in Hermanus that we visited a few days ago, with nicer machines, towels provided, and a more pleasant atmosphere. When we arrived, the girl at the reception desk said that Mario (one of the two guys whom we saw last night) had been by earlier and told her we might be coming around, so she let us right in without a hitch.

After our workout we began to hit the wineries, starting out with Graham Beck toward the far end of town. Graham Beck’s sparkling wines are remarkable for the fact that they were served at Nelson Mandela’s inauguration in 1994, and also at Barack Obama’s this year (and it’s a rather sore point that Jacob Zuma did not serve it at his inauguration, preferring to serve French champagne, for which he earns much scorn from the Franschhoek vintners). We did not care for it enough to want to buy any, but we did like their syrah very much and their muscadel dessert wine, so three of those are in our box to go back to Beijing. We also stopped at L’Ormarins, a very old winery not far from Graham Beck where they are now trying to grow Italian grape varieties like Sangiovese and Pinot Grigio. The wines were OK, but nothing really special to our tastes, and the nuisance factor was significant--to get to the tasting area you first have to park your car at the main entrance and then take a little shuttle bus sort of like those that they use at Disney to take you from the parking to the gates. This means you have to wait for the shuttle to return to your car after your tasting, which seems to take forever.

By this point we were hungry (and a bit tipsy) so we headed to Grand Provence for lunch at their restaurant, as recommended by our host Michael over breakfast. Just as he told us, the meal was exceptional, with very creative dishes and an almost whimsical approach (their menu is not divided into starters, mains, desserts, etc, and they encourage to eat the three, four or five courses that you select in any order you like). My “starter” of seared scallop and roast quail was extremely tasty and beautifully presented, as was my “main” course of braised lamb neck with roast baby vegetables. And my “dessert” of a traditional cheese selection included several very nice and contrasting cheeses. J2 meanwhile had a terrine of game meats for a starter that was just delicious, and a dish of roast blesbok with springbok sauce that we both liked a lot. Unfortunately his coconut sorbet dessert was a let down.

We had originally thought we’d continue our wine tasting after lunch, but we were both finding ourselves rather sleepy and on the verge of having too much alcohol, so we instead decided to return over to “our” side of the pass to check out the town of Villiersdorp, which is the next town to the north of Porcupine Hill, the town of Grabouw, which is the south-east of PH, and the surrounding areas. Villiersdorp is a basic little town with a main street of shops and a few dining establishments, most of which did not appeal to us. I stopped into the local outlet of the Spar grocery chain to see whether they would have things I would need on a regular basis (yes, for the most part) and into a Chinese-run “bodega” (at least that’s what I’d have called it if it were in NYC) to see if they had any Chinese groceries. Since none was initially visible, I decided to blow the owners’ minds by asking them in Chinese about the availability of Chinese produce. I tried first in English with one of the kids working in the back, but he clearly spoke no English, so I switched to Chinese, which took him a second to realize was a language he also understands. Unfortunately, he’s not very smart, so he told me to talk to the boss up front. There were two Chinese people up front, though, so I could not tell who was the boss, so I asked, in Chinese, “who’s the boss?” which again took them some time to process. Eventually the woman said it was she and I asked whether she has tofu, Sichuan peppers, etc for sale. Turns out that they buy all their Chinese goods in Cape Town’s Chinatown, which we plan to visit on Monday. But when I told her we might move to the area she got very excited, since she said I could help them learn English. Perhaps another business opportunity.

We also stopped in at the Theewaterskloof Golf Club, which is on the shores of the Theewaterskloof Dam (aka reservoir) which figures prominently in the local topography. The club is very nice, and includes an expensive-looking housing community, but the clubs’ services are only available to residents, other than golf, which is of no interest to us. Maybe our guests would be interested in it, though.

Grabouw is a much more promising town for our purposes than Villiersdorp. It’s got a SuperSpar to start with, with much more selection and nicer ambience than Villiersdorp’s Spar, and a little shopping mall with a cafe, pizza parlor, bike shop, etc, as well as Nicole’s real estate agency. There’s also a nice farm stand that we later learned is quite a destination in its own right, and a country store that has been a fixture on the Cape Town to Hermanus route for decades.

After our little excursion we returned to our inn to play with the dogs and have a rest before dinner. Around 6pm or so, Michael and Liz started to work on dinner, so we went into the main house to chat with them and enjoy a glass of wine or two. Michael is quite the amateur chef, with a collection of cookbooks that rivals my own. He also subscribes to the New Zealand cooking magazine Cuisine, of which several copies were lying around. It’s a very nice magazine, nicer than most of the US cooking magazines, and our dinner, a pork and spinach paella, was to come from a recent issue. Liz is also an amateur chef, and we learned that she often caters the weddings that take place at their inn. (She told us that the chef Jamie Oliver and Sir Richard Branson were recently guests at a wedding she catered.) I peppered her with questions about how you go from being a home chef to a caterer, and she happily offered her assistance to get me off the ground doing the same sort of thing, since she believes it’s all about organization and planning, the cooking needs no formal training, so I should be in good shape. Another business plan develops.

Nicole, Liz’s son Andrew and Andrew’s girlfriend joined us for dinner, which was a raucous affair. The food and wine were excellent, and the conversation was tremendous. Mike and Liz are wonderful people, and I imagine we’d see as much of them as we can when we become fixtures in the community. Nicole brought along a 1987 bottle of dessert wine that she was given in 1987, and while it had gone a bit flat and lost some of its edge, it was a lovely gesture, and went pretty well with the dessert Liz had made, a hazelnut meringue roll with apricot and cream filling. Truly exquisite.

Return to the Cape, Day 4, Elgin Valley

2009-10-03T22:48:00.000+08:00

Our hosts prepared a nice breakfast for us with eggs taken from their chickens moments before being cooked, and gave us some recommendations for places to stay in Cape Town on our last night in the area. Eventually Nicole showed up to take us around to see five more farms, with some other stops along the way. All the farms she showed us were smaller than Porcupine Hills, more expensive than Porcupine Hills, and not nearly as beautiful as Porcupine Hills, so everything just made us more and more sure that Porcupine Hills was the place for us. We also stopped at the Iona winery, the second highest in South Africa at 420m above sea level, where the wines were truly delicious, and where she gave us a bottle of their Noble Late Harvest dessert wine, since she knows we’re big fans of that sort of wine. We also made a stop at her own farm where we met her parents, who are visiting from Joburg, and had a piece of milk tart (a South African specialty) and some tea.

On the way back to our inn we stopped at two little shopping centers in Elgin, one of which has the local tourist office (where we picked up all the brochures we could) and the office of a local architect who had done the design work for Nicole’s house, and the other of which is a converted jailhouse where there was a space for rent that we could use to set up a gym if we decide to do such a business here. Along the way we met several people, all of whom were extremely nice and welcoming, and one of whom runs the local newspaper. I asked him if he needs any editors, thinking of a possible opportunity for myself, and sure enough he does....

We were originally going to have lunch with her at the South Hills wine estate, but we decided to put that off until Sunday, preferring to use our time to check out the driving time between town and the Porcupine Hills and from there to Franschhoek. Also, Nicole had a closing to get ready for, and we thought it would be better for her not to have to be stuck eating lunch with us. So after getting our car we returned to the shopping center with the information office for a bite at a little restaurant where we had very tasty burgers with monkey gland sauce and then headed on our way.

By our reckoning, it would be a 20 minute drive from the town to Porcupine Hills, and about 30 minutes from there to Franschhoek, all very reasonable distances, we think, especially if a guest were to stay with us to visit the wineries and other sites in both towns. Also the drive to Franschhoek, which goes over a mountain pass, is stunningly beautiful, with incredible views over the valley.

Once in Franschhoek we walked around a bit to check out the shops and the whole “vibe”. It’s a very nice little town, with loads of upscale shops and eateries, though apparently ten years ago it looked much like Elgin does now, a bit run down and in need of a little TLC, which Elgin is only now starting to receive. We also made a stop at the Boekenhoutskloof winery, which we visited last time we were here in May, to pick up two bottles of their Syrah, which they did not have in stock back then. By the time we were done there it was nearly time to meet some friends of friends for drinks and dinner.

The friends of friends are a gay German couple who have been living in South Africa for around 20 years, initially coming here for their jobs but eventually giving that up to open a restaurant and inn in the town of Robertson, in the Klein Karoo, which they ran for 11 years before moving to Franschhoek. Their house is stunning, with beautiful decor and fittings, and a wonderful back area that is open to the back garden where they have a plunge pool and a big fireplace. Like everyone else we have met they were very encouraging of the idea of moving here, sharing their experiences and thoughts on the whole plan. Coincidentally a friend of theirs had just recently been describing Porcupine Hills to them, saying that he considered it an undiscovered gem in the area, so they were particularly excited by the idea that we might buy it.

After having some wine with them we walked over the Le Bon Vivant restaurant for an exceptional dinner, prepared by a Dutch chef who has run it for around 10 years. My gruyere and chevre starter was wonderful, as was my main course of roast duck with duck confit, and the presentation was beautiful. We had two bottles of wine with our meal, and still the bill per couple was only around $75--very reasonable in my opinion.

The drive back along the mountain pass from Franschhoek to Elgin was a bit slower than the drive over, since some low clouds were obscuring the road and my unfamiliarity with the road made me take the trip a lot slower than I felt comfortable doing in the light. But it still only took a total of 50 minutes to get to our inn, and once we got back we immediately fell into a deep sleep.

Return to the Cape, Day 3, Elgin Valley

2009-10-02T14:59:00.002+08:00

We had breakfast at the farm (home made bread and jams, along with yogurt and fruit salad) and we played with their dogs, including an enormous 11-month old Brazilian mastiff named Balthazar, then Nicole arrived to show us around the property with Murray. The farm is absolutely ridiculously beautiful, with hills all over, criss crossed by little trails and paths and studded with fynbos (native wild plants) and cultivated areas where they grow olives, artichokes, fruits and vegetables, as well as flowers. They produce olive oil and artichokes for sale, while the rest is mostly for their own use. The property stretches over 220 hectares or so, has plenty of water from underground aquifers, and is part of a Cape nature preserve, which helps them to remove invasive non-native species in exchange for preserving the native habitats. They are home to countless types of birds (including a rare breeding pair of African Black hawk-eagles), mammals (including of course porcupines, but also leopards, antelopes, and other interesting animals) and are considering reintroducing zebra to help with keeping the weeds and grass down. In addition to the cottage where we were staying they also have four or more other rentable units, one of which is even suitable to rented out as someone’s home (or maybe used for my mother if she chooses to live with us). They are nearly all booked out through the summer, and have guests coming through the property for nature walks, bird watching, bike trips, etc. If we had the downpayment on us we’d probably have just handed it right over, the place is so amazingly beautiful and workable. As it is, Murray and Fiona would not let us pay for our night’s stay (which we fully expected to pay for), saying they wanted to encourage us to move to the area so that they’d have another fun and interesting couple to hang out with here. Very nice people.

But we have other places to see besides this place, so after our visit Nicole led us out of their toward the town of Elgin, where we’d stay for the next two nights, stopping along the way at the Gabriëlskloof winery and restaurant where Nicole dropped us off so we could have a tasting of their wines, a tour of their cellar and lunch at their brand-new yet fully booked up restaurant. Indeed, the wines were very good (they only have two thus far, a sauvignon blanc and a Bordeaux blend) and the olive oil was excellent. Their cellar is brand new, with gleaming stainless steel tanks that employ the gravity method for moving the juice from tank to tank, so they are suspended in three levels with the final process taking place at the lowest level.

Lunch at the restaurant was fantastic, starting with a very flavorful spanakopita and then followed by an aged sirloin steak for J2 and roasted duck with duck risotto for me. I had originally thought I’d have some cheese, too, but we were too full even to consider it.

From Gabriëlskloof we headed to our inn for the night, the Rockhaven Guest Farm, just outside of Elgin. When we arrived we could not find any evidence of the owners for quite some time, but eventually one of them turned up, showed us into our room, and told us we’d have dinner with them at 7:30pm, giving us plenty of time to head to Hermanus to visit one of the fitness centers in the area.

Hermanus turned out to be a 50 minute drive from our inn, and the gym was at the farther end of town. It was a pretty nice gym, with a good range of cardio machines, weights, and the like, and a very helpful, enormously muscular trainer who showed me how to use a few of the unfamiliar machines. I don’t think we’d ever want to make this gym our regular place to go to, since it’s a bit far from where we’re looking at farms, but it’s nice to know it’s there. Unfortunately, we realized only too late that they don’t provide any towels at all, and of course we had not brought any of our own...

We returned to Rockhaven after doing a few errands for SA friends back in Beijing who had given me a shopping list, arriving just about in time for dinner. Surprise! Nicole had brought some mussels to the owners here, too, who decided to serve them to us for dinner, rather than have them for their own lunch as she had intended, so we had the exact same meal as last night, though with the addition of a very nice broccoli risotto and a few bottles of Oak Valley Sauvignon Blanc wine. Rockhaven is owned by a very nice couple, Liz and Michael, who took a keen interest in our plan to move to the area, and, like everyone else we met in the Elgin region, expressed their willingness to help us in any way they can to get us settled in and involved in a social network when we arrive. Michael also turned out to be a dentist with a surgery on his property, and a practice that could accommodate J2 if he chooses to keep practicing after moving. In fact, he was telling us that he has a lot of overseas visitors coming to see him from Europe to take advantage of the higher quality of care and much lower prices. We also met Liz’s son, Andrew, who used to work as a game warden but who is now “between assignments”. The three of them thought our plan to have the farm and maybe also open a gym in the Elgin/Grabouw area would be a very reasonable thing to do, adding that the area desperately needs a gym, since there is none at the present. I see a business model shaping up in my mind...

Return to the Cape, Day 2, Dubai to Villiersdorp

2009-10-02T14:59:00.001+08:00

We had arranged a car to pick us up at 6am for the ride to the airport, so that we could be sure to be there on time for our 8:30am departure for Cape Town. The roads are empty at that time of day, and the airport check in desks were pretty uncrowded, so we were past security and on the airside of the airport by 6:45 or so, giving us plenty of time to do some duty free shopping and grab breakfast. The only duty free purchases we really planned to make was to buy some incense, which was easily accomplished, and then I decided to buy a spare pair of sunglasses, since they’re so expensive in Beijing (for good ones).

The flight from Dubai to Cape Town is a bit less than 10 hours, and it seemed that the seats were a bit less comfortable than on the previous flight (it might be my imagination, but I find that 777s are just not that comfortable in comparison with A340s). Unlike the previous flight, this one had on-demand movies and TV shows, so we had a lot of fun picking movies and shows to watch. Among those that I can recall seeing were “Winged Creatures” (which Liz told us specifically to watch so that we could discuss it with her when we see her on our return flight through Dubai), “Moon”, “The Proposal” and a few episodes of “Arrested Development”. What a civilized way to pass 10 hours!

We landed in Cape Town a bit ahead of schedule, and the bag retrieval process was pretty smooth. Everything was smooth, in fact, until it came time to get our rental car, since the Thrifty counter had no computers working so they could not search for our reservation and had to reinstate everything manually. While I took care of this I asked J2 to go to the mobile phone desk to find out why my SIM card that I bought on the previous trip was not working. Well, it turns out that the company we were using (MTN) had a 90 day use-it-or-lose-it period, and since more than that had transpired since we last used it the card was deactivated and my number given to someone else. So much for using MTN ever again! I instead bought a Vodaphone card that will last for two years.

Once in our car we headed straight for Porcupine Hills, one of the properties we are considering buying, located between Elgin and Villiersdorp. The drive from the airport to this area is incredibly easy--you just get on the N2 highway and keep going until you get to Elgin, then turn left a bit and before long you’re at the farm. The drive was stunningly beautiful--the clear blue skies with puffy white clouds contrasting beautifully with the green landscape and rugged grey-black mountains. The only downside was that we stopped at a gas station to get some drinks and when we arrived the car next to where we parked had just had its window smashed and a laptop computer stolen from inside.

We arrived at the farm before 7pm and were greeted by Murray, one of the owners. Our room for the night was in the “Cottage”, a lovely stand alone house with one large bedroom, a loft with two more single beds, and a nice bathroom and a little pantry area, done up with beautiful furniture and decorations. The owners had left us a gift bottle of locally produced strong apple cider (this is an apple growing area) and our real estate agent, Nicole, had left us a gift box with some preserves and a bottle of locally made wine. After a quick clean up we headed to the farm’s bar and had a drink with Murray while nibbling on some of his home-grown olives (delicious) while waiting for Nicole to arrive. When she did, around 8pm, we headed to Murray and his wife Fiona’s house for dinner. Fiona is American and met Murray while he was working in Botswana at the Okavango park (though he is a nice Jewish boy from near Johannesburg). They have had this farm for around 10 years, and have done a lot of work on it, though we would not see that until daylight. Nicole was a chef in Joburg who learned of the Elgin Valley while tasting the wines of the Oak Valley estate in Elgin at her restaurant; upon tasting the wines she decided to move down there herself, buy a farm and grow her own grapes (which she is doing; the real estate gig is a side business). Nicole made the dinner, consisting of freshly caught mussels in a delicious wine and cream sauce, while we provided the impromptu dessert--a box of Chinese moon cakes that we brought as a gift for Nicole, Murray and Fiona.

After a really lovely evening with the three of them we were just exhausted so we headed back to our cottage for a well deserved rest.

Return to the Cape, Day 1, Beijing to Dubai

2009-10-02T14:57:00.001+08:00

For our return trip to South Africa we decided to fly on Emirates via Dubai, rather than on Singapore or Cathay. Emirates offers really good deals from Beijing to Africa and Europe, and it would give us a chance to visit our friends Rich and Liz, who have been living in Dubai for around a year and whose daughter, Alexandra, we had not yet met.

The flight leaves very early from Beijing, so we were up and out of our apartment by 5am, our poor driver showing no outwards signs of fatigue or distress at having been rousted at such an early hour. Having checked in on line we were able to avoid a very lengthy queue of slackers who had not bothered to do so, and who thus were thronged at the check-in counter. In the end we were through to the airside of the terminal in no time at all. There is next to nothing to do in the Beijing airport, unfortunately, and the powers that be have decided that lighting the passenger seating areas near the gates is a bourgeois affectation that has no place in the workers’ paradise so we were unable to do much other than listen to our iPods while we waited to board.

The flight was pretty much full, but it was not too uncomfortable, and they offered a wide range of films and TV shows to watch during the 8 hour flight. The meals they served were also not too bad, even in coach, and the service was very friendly. Definitely would fly with them again, based on this flight. Not long after take-off two ladies sitting near us got into a huge fight over I know not what, with them cursing each other out in Chinese like fishwives. I brought this to the attention of the crew, and surprisingly when one of the Arabic flight attendants tried to calm the instigator down, it turned out that she also spoke Arabic. I never did figure out what had happened, but that was it for excitement on this flight. I’m not complaining.

As we approached Dubai, and as the land became more visible, we were both immediately struck by one thought--why would anyone in their right mind have ever decided to call this place home? Surely when ancient hominids found themselves in the area of the UAE on their treks from wherever they were coming from to wherever they were going to, they must have thought to themselves “this place has nothing but sand as far as the eye can see; let’s keep going, there’s got to be something better a bit further along”. And yet, someone at some point clearly decided that this was good enough and opted to settle down. What a dusty, unwelcoming sort of place you see from your Airbus as you approach the airport! And what a contrast with what you see as you exit the airport and drive in air conditioned splendor to wherever you’re staying for the night! It’s a city built out of nothing in the middle of nowhere, with gleaming skyscrapers, lush landscaping (which, legend has it, is replaced nightly by unseen hordes of Sri Lankan workers, since there just isn’t enough water to keep the plants alive for more than a day or two) and throngs of expatriate workers enjoying the good life. 90-93% of the population of Dubai is foreign, and the 7-10% that is Emirati doesn’t do much of anything, other than complain about all the foreigners, and drive their expensive cars at too high a rate of speed along the city’s roads.

Interestingly, while our flight was pretty much full, only about 8 passengers from that flight actually were making Dubai their final destination, the remaining people apparently using Dubai only as a transit point. Thus our bags took no time at all to get off the carousel and we were out of the airport in no time at all.

On our drive from the airport to our friends’ place we noticed a silver Nissan 380Z sports car being drive rather erratically; as we pulled along side it we saw that the driver was our friend Rich, rushing to get home in time for our arrival. What’s the chance of that!?

We got to their apartment complex, the 2-kilometer long Jumeirah Beach Residences, shortly after 1pm, and had a quick change into lighter clothes more suitable to the 107 degree heat before going out to lunch at a place near their house, a Lebanese fast food chain called Zaatar W Zeit, where we had really excellent Middle Eastern sandwiches before hopping in their car for a bit of a look around.

Among our stops was the over-the-top Atlantis resort, located on the over-the-top Palm complex, an artificial series of atolls built on reclaimed land off the coast of the city jutting into the Gulf and that, from the air, is in the form of a palm tree with an arc of protective atolls in a sort of halo formation that provides protection from waves. The trunk is lined with apartment complexes, while the fronds (romantically named Frond 1, Frond 2, etc) are private residences accessibly only to owners and invited guests, and the arc is home to hotels, with the Atlantis at the pinnacle. The Atlantis is owned by the same South African Jew who owns the Sun City resort in South Africa and the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas (which I visited often while working there). It is home to an enormous Dale Chihouly glass sculpture in the lobby and a huge fish tank that is now the controversial home of a recently captured whale shark that the hotel argues it rescued after it was injured in the wild while PETA and Greenpeace insist that the hotel injured it while capturing it. Whoever is right the shark is an amazingly beautiful creature that does frankly seem pretty content in its new surroundings.

Rich had a meeting to go to so we decamped to the Madinat Jumeirah hotel complex, a really beautiful series of buildings done up in local style with a modern souk (market) connecting the various hotel buildings. While he had his meeting J2, Liz and I sat down at a Costa coffee outlet (outside, in the 107F heat!) and admired the view of the Burj al-Arab 7-star hotel in the distance while chatting about Liz’s impressions of life in Dubai. She apparently moved there kicking and screaming a year ago but has come to really enjoy the lifestyle (what’s not to like about a place that is sunny 363 days a year and where domestic help is readily available and cheap?) while at the same coming to new appreciations of Gulf Arab culture that unfortunately have had the affect of causing her to dislike it intensely. Oh, well, you can’t have everything.

When Rich was done with his meeting we returned to their apartment (which, by the way, is on the top floor of their building, and has views down the beach and onto the Gulf), changed into bathing suits and headed to the marina to take their boat out for a little cruise. We had hoped to see the sunset but the sun sets very quickly here and by the time we actually got on the boat it had descended below the horizon, so instead we just watched the lights of the city come on while enjoying a bottle of wine before returning to town.

After returning to the city we did a quick trip to our new favorite Spanish clothing store, Desigual, to see if we could find some things to buy (we did), and then we had dinner at Sarai, a Syrian restaurant a short walk from the apartment along The Walk, a long shopping and dining strip that runs along the Jumeirah beach. Dinner was excellent, consisting of a selection of meze (hummus, mutabbal, stuffed grape leaves, etc) and some kebabs for main course, along with fruit cocktails to drink. We treated our hosts to the dinner (as well as to some wine that we brought in from the Dubai Duty Free shop on arrival, since they don’t have a liquor license and thus cannot buy their own wine), while they treated us to dessert at a newly opened gelato place along the same walk. Once we got back to their place we managed to stay awake until around 11pm before finally calling it a day and heading to bed.

First Birthday Cake of the Season

2009-09-21T19:11:00.002+08:00

Here is a small video shot with my new iPod Nano of my friends and colleagues in HR cutting and eating a birthday cake for the three birthdays we're celebrating in short succession, including mine!

Holiday Preparations

2009-09-06T20:25:00.002+08:00

October 1 will mark the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Naturally, there will be loads of celebrations, which is to be expected, but there are also loads of restrictions in place, very reminiscent of last year's Olympics. For one thing, last weekend they apparently started to close the Forbidden City and Tian'anmen Square to visitors, and this weekend they started to close the metro stations along Chang'an Jie from Tian'anmen to Guomao so anyone who needed to get to such popular stops as Tian'anmen, Wangfujing, Dongdan, etc, was SOL. Also, in the past few days they closed down access to the Workers' Stadium, so all the restaurants and businesses in there (including my newly discovered hot dog place) are shut down temporarily. A friend reported the reason for the closing--while at a friend's apartment overlooking the stadium she saw that the inside is filled with tanks (presumably here for a parade, rather than a repeat of June 4, 1989, though who knows, maybe they can do both??). The tanks are apparently covered with tarps for the moment, though you can still make them out.

Businesses along Chang'an Jie have also been told that they must vacate their premises by 8pm on Sept 28 or they will find themselves locked in without a way of getting out until October 4. The fact that the holiday only starts on Oct 1 does not seem to have any relevance to this instruction. All I can say is I'm glad we're leaving on the morning of the 29th, not to return until the evening of the 7th.

Franschhoek in Beijing

2009-08-30T08:56:00.002+08:00

Last night we had some of our good Beijing friends over for a dinner composed (mostly) of dishes from my newest cookbook, Reuben Riffel's "Reuben Cooks". Reuben Riffel is the chef-owner of Reuben's restaurant in Franschhoek, South Africa, where we ate once during our trip in May. The cookbook is beautifully designed, and includes several dishes that we enjoyed during our meal there, though if I have one complaint about the book it is that some recipes are written to serve 2 people, others for 15, and there are not that many that fall in between.

We were ten people at the table altogether, including a new colleague from work, three old colleagues from work, and some non-work friends, so it was a nice varied group, and the conversation flowed very well. But most of the people who I know read this blog don't care about the conversation, they care about the menu. Here it is:

During the "cocktail hour" we served our famous Edamame with Spicy Sichuan Peppercorn Salt and my Palestinian Hummus. After that, the Reuben's dishes started to come:

Caramelized Onion and Blue Cheese Tarts with Tomato Chutney

We then moved to the table for the main meal:

Braised Squid with Green Olives in Pernod-Orange Sauce
Braised Pork Belly with Ginger-Caramel Sauce
Chinese "Springbok" Tataki with Colcannon
Steamed Chinese Vegetable with Aged Balsamic Vinegar

and for Dessert:

Homemade Plum Ice Cream with Muscat Crème Brûlée

The Chinese "Springbok" Tataki was the only dish that required a major substitution: springbok loin just is not available here, so I replaced it with beef tenderloin, which I cooked in a salt dough crust that I learned about from Alton Brown's "Good Eats" show. In this dish the beef tenderloin is baked in a salt-heavy dough "sarcophagus" that infuses the meat with the salt and herbs that are mixed into the dough, resulting in a truly succulent piece of meat. I think that it nicely mimicked the strong flavor that springbok (or other game meat) should have.

And for the dessert, which in his book Reuben shows served on a flat plate with a ball of ice cream next to a ramekin of creme brulee, we instead found some great plates at a local pottery store called "Spin" that had a sort of folded-over corner with a deep indentation that could hold the ice cream, and a nice flat space (with a lip) to hold the ramekin and our garnish. I got a picture of the dish, but not as it looked with the desserts on it. Next time...

And speaking of photos, here they are.

Black Sesame Kitchen Dinner Photos

2009-08-29T13:10:00.001+08:00

I have posted the photos on my photo page. Click here to see them.

Black Sesame Kitchen Evening

2009-08-27T11:51:00.003+08:00

One of my colleagues and his wife invited me to join them last night at a private dinner at the Black Sesame Kitchen, a small cooking school/foodie haven in the Nanluoguxiang area of Beijing that was founded by Jen Lin-Liu, a writer for numerous US publications, who also wrote a memoir, "Serve the People", about her experience apprenticing with several local chefs around China as she tried to master the art of Chinese cuisine. The venue is a nicely restored courtyard home with a demonstration kitchen and a few small rooms for diners to sit and watch the action. The event was less of a cooking demo, though, than an occasion to meet Sandra Huang, a US-born Beijing resident who maintains a very useful website, SavourAsia, through which I have made several great restaurant discoveries.

As it turns out, the only guests for the evening were my colleague, his wife, a friend of theirs and a friend of the speaker, so there were just six of us eating. The meal, prepared by Chef Zhang, a Shaanxi noodle specialist who figures prominently in Jen's book, prepared a home-style menu of 7 courses (they promised ten, though, a fact that I ribbed the manager of the venue about mercilessly, prompting her to add one more course to shut me up), including fried stuffed lotus root, red cooked braised eggplant, Gong Bao chicken with cashews, a dry-cooked mushroom dish, smoked tofu with pork belly, and caramelized fried apples with homemade ice cream. The food was pretty good (though not really my favorite style, and the cashews were added to the Gong Bao chicken raw, rather than fried or roasted, so they were not crunchy at all), but the conversation was great, and we had a lot of fun.

Sandra was going to talk about Chinese food blogs, but a) there aren't all that many of them worth talking about and b) we kept digressing and veering off on tangents that turned out to be at least as interesting as her intended topic, so we just let the conversation take us where it would. Before we knew it it was past 10pm and time for us to head home and get ready for another day at work. But there was one topic that is worth mentioning, if only because of the hilarity that ensued. My colleagues and their friend are all Jewish, though only one of them makes a nod in the direction of keeping kosher by avoiding pork (except in cases where he chooses to ignore pork's presence), and one told us about a trip to the US to visit family who do keep kosher. They were in lobster country, though, and after a few days her kids begged her to sneak them out to grab a lobster meal. This they finally did, and she was rhapsodizing about how great the lobster was, and only $3.99 a pound. I pointed out that, according to the Talmud, lobster is kosher if it's on sale for less than $5/lb, leading to great hilarity around the table, followed by recriminations for the tinge of anti-Semitism that the joke entailed.

Photos to follow.

A Disappointing Chaîne Dinner

2009-08-23T08:41:00.003+08:00

Last night was the latest get together of the Chaîne des Rotisseurs here in Beijing, held at Vascos restaurant in the Wangfujing Hilton. The menu sounded very promising, featuring dishes from places around the world associated with Portuguese exploration or colonies. Thus the menu began with a dish from the Canary Islands (aren't they Spanish??), then on to Cape Verde, proceeding from there to Mozambique, then Kenya and Calcutta (uh, isn't that British; why not Goa??), and finally back to Lisbon. The dishes sounded like they should be good, too, with things like fried oysters, quail b'stilla, and roasted lobster, but in fact the best dish of all was the palate cleansing sorbet between the lobster and beef course. Problem was that the flavors were insipid for the most part, and several of the dishes were served in such a way that we were not sure how to eat them (with fingers, or utensils?). Some of our dining companions blamed the Portuguese head chef for the problem, arguing that the Portuguese just don't know how to cook, since their cuisine is so simple (mind you, he was German, so not exactly arguing from a position of strength...).

Not only was the food disappointing, but the restaurant itself seems to be the space that the hotel uses for its breakfast buffet or something, since the room was pretty lacking in charm, and the tables were long rectangles that were not conducive to conversation at all, so we ended up chatting only with the people seated immediately next to us. At least they were interesting, so that made for a bit of a diversion, but overall the meal was a real downer, and we even left feeling a bit hungry!

Infection Control Theatre

2009-08-18T06:21:00.002+08:00

Much has been made in the news about what people call "security theatre", those things that are done at airports and in subways etc to make people *feel* safer but that don't really have much of an impact on their actual safety. The Chinese government has not done quite as much in the realm of security theatre, but they have a corner on the "infection control theatre" genre. WIth the global fears over the H1N1(a) virus, the Chinese government, which has memories of the SARS crisis, avian flu, and other health scares frontmost in its mind, has decided to leap into action and do everything in its power to prevent the spread of this disease.

Among the things that the government has done is to festoon the streets with posters instructing people how to avoid the virus (interestingly, most of the posters show H1N1 sufferers as being red headed foreigners), enforce body temperature controls at the entrances to hotels, hospitals and schools, and require visitors arriving from overseas to go through several temperature checks at the airport, sometimes even on the arriving aircraft itself. As part of this last control, all passengers must fill out a quarantine form that includes all the usual demographic information (name, country of citizenship, passport number, contact info) but also flight number, seat number, and city where you were coming from. All that is fine, up to a point. But what really is bizarre is that someone actually phones each and every person who lands at Beijing airport (from certain places, at least) the day after they land to check on how they're feeling. When we had visitors last week, I got a phone call from the Changping district hospital asking about the visitors' well being. At first I could not understand why the Changping hospital was calling, since we live nowhere near there, so when they called for the second time that day (90 minutes after the first call) I asked them, and learned that they had mistakenly believed that our address was in that district. The mistake corrected, I then got a call from our district hospital asking the same questions about our guests' temperatures.

But that's not the best part. When J2 returned from the US on Sunday, he also filled out the forms, giving his own mobile phone number as his means of contact. Sure enough, yesterday morning on the way to work his phone rang, and someone on the other end started yammering away at him in Chinese. He kept responding "hello, hello, do you speak English, I'm American, etc" but the person on the other end could not speak anything but Chinese. The number calling him was the same number that called me last week to check on our guests' health, so we knew it was the hospital, and I offered to speak to them, but J2 insisted that, if they're going to try to pursue this ridiculous policy with foreign visitors, they had better learn to get some foreign language speakers on the job. The person hung up, but then phoned back a few minutes later! J2 did the exact same routine, not even trying to speak Chinese with the person, who eventually hung up again. But then he phoned back EIGHT MORE TIMES, at no point actually using an English speaker, even though they knew that he is American. How useful can this process possibly be?

New Food Finds

2009-08-16T17:15:00.003+08:00

A few weeks ago, probably around July 4, I suddenly found myself suffering from an insurmountable craving for a hot dog. It's not like I eat a lot of hot dogs; even living in NYC, where good hot dogs are available on many street corners, I did not eat very many of them. But perhaps with the onset of Independence Day, which is so closely associated with hot dogs, the cravings would not go away so I decided to do something about it. But nowhere could I find a restaurant serving hot dogs and I would not stoop so low as to eat a Chinese "hot dog", which have a color and aroma that I do not associate with things edible by humans. In the end, I went to Schindler's German butcher and bought myself some raw frankfurters that I then cooked at home on my indoor grill. Indeed, they were excellent, and my craving was satisfied.

But in recent weeks, several of the expat-oriented magazines have published listings of where to get Beijing's best hot dogs, and my cravings returned. As it turns out, my whole premise of looking for the hot dogs at "restaurants" was a mistake, since the places that were listed fell into two categories--bars and kiosks. The bars were categorically places I would never go to, since they tended to be the sort of bars where young Chinese women pounce on the foreign guys in hopes of landing a ticket out of China. But the kiosks sounded promising, and two of them were within a short walk or bike ride from our apartment.

The first of these places is called "No More Bunz", and is on Xindong Lu just south of the Canadian Embassy (on the south side of Dongzhimenwai Dajie). It's literally a hole in the wall, with a grill in front. They have several kinds of dogs on offer, including 100% beef, German, and Italian, and they offer a huge range of toppings, including all the old favorites. Prices are also very good, with the small sizes costing around RMB 15-20. I stopped at this place on Thursday on my way home from work during lunch to let the dogs out, and they were delicious. I had the German and the 100% beef, and had them with all the fixin's. Would definitely go back.

The other place I have been to so far is called Stadium Dogs and is located near Gate 10 of the Workers' Stadium. This place is a bit larger than No More Bunz, and even has some seating. They also offer a few varieties (100% beef, American, Italian and German), which also come with a large range of toppings, including beef chili, sauerkraut, tomatoes, etc. The dogs cost RMB 20, but the big menu on the wall says they cost RMB 25 (they have lowered prices recently). I had the Italian and it was also very good, though perhaps not as good as No More Bunz. The one advantage of this place is that you get to put your own toppings on and they have a huge selection of mustards and ketchups (and also it's closer to our apartment). They also have a nice selection of beers.

The other food find that I want to share with you is the dish called Ma La Xiang Guo (麻辣香锅). This is a dish that is sweeping the city, it seems, since more and more places that serve it are proliferating. What it is is a kind of dry hot pot, where the diner chooses what items will go into the dish from a long list of possibilities (meats, vegetables, mushrooms, rice cake, tofu etc) and the level of heat (at our local place, from 1 to 7). The kitchen then mixes your ingredients with the appropriate number of chilies, cilantro, garlic, ginger, Sichuan pepper, etc., and stir fries it. It then comes to your table in a big stainless steel bowl and you pick through it. Unlike hot pot there is no broth, so it's a bit easier to find the bits you want. The first time I went to our nearby mala xiangguo place I tried to order a level 6, but they wouldn't serve it to me, saying it was too hot. So I reluctantly had a level 5, and then spent the evening alternately taking a mouthful of the dish and mopping my brow with a soaking wet towel and trying to douse the flames with a beer. Since then we have ordered level 4, which is certainly hot enough. (We also went out with Alpha and Diana, our trainer and his wife, and had level 2, since they're wimps; we found it to be utterly un-hot.) The dish has wonderful flavors, and is now one of our favorite things to have for a bit of a splurge-y meal (the dish is relatively expensive, and with all the oil it's not exactly dietetic).

I'll try to bring more dining finds as we find them!

Beijing One Year Later

2009-08-07T06:40:00.002+08:00

It's hard to imagine that it's just a year ago that the Olympics opened in Beijing. So much has happened in the intervening 12 months, what with the emergence of the international economic crisis, the American election, and the death of Michael Jackson (to name the single most important events of the period...). But this blog is not about all those weighty things. Instead, I want to write about what is left of the Olympic spirit in Beijing 365 days after the opening ceremonies.

Much was made of the pollution problem in Beijing in the lead up to the Games, and indeed for a while the pollution problem seemed to have been somewhat resolved. Many people thought that the traffic restrictions put into place during the Olympic period may have had a role to play, so it was decided that the restrictions would continue afterwards. Of course, limiting people to be able to drive their cars only 1/2 of the time would have been very inconvenient, so instead the rule is that each plate has one day a week when it cannot be driven. Unfortunately, this does not really have that much of an impact on the pollution (or the traffic), and there are stories of people buying second cars to get around this. So chalk that up as a failure.

There were also a lot of campaigns in the pre-Olympic period to stamp out or reduce spitting, improve queuing etiquette, and reduce smoking in public places. Although J2 disagrees with me on this, I don't see any reduction in spitting, and as far as queuing and smoking are concerned, those programs seem to have been completely forgotten.

Also, what about those massive and impressive buildings that were the highlight of the Olympics, the Bird's Nest, Water Cube and the rest of the Olympic Green? Well, the Bird's Nest is hardly used for anything other than as a tourist attraction (RMB 50 for a ticket to see the inside), and the Water Cube has been turned into a shopping center and public swimming pool (at least that last part makes sense). The Olympic Green is popular with Chinese tourists, but otherwise it's got no reason for being any longer, and the Government's fear of groups gathering means that they won't set it up as some sort of venue for activities like they might do in London or somewhere else.

And finally, there were hopes that the Olympics taking place on Chinese soil would encourage more Chinese to get into sports and become more fitness oriented. It was in this spirit that Alpha and we opened up our little fitness studio, but nothing we've seen leads us to conclude that attitudes toward sports have changed, or that more Chinese are becoming concerned with their fitness. What sporting facilities there are for the public to use are generally derelict with no one but old people using the "gymnastics" equipment that have been installed (even since before the Olympics were awarded to Beijing) around the city.

So, I think it's safe to say that the Olympics came and went without leaving much of an impression, other than making the Chinese proud of being the hosts for such a major event.

A Brush with Greatness

2009-07-25T11:53:00.002+08:00

This morning I went to the Westin for my Pilates class, getting there a bit early so I could stretch and warm up a bit beforehand. Usually the gym is empty but today there were three people in there: a muscular African-American man, a very small but muscular African-American woman, and a little African-American kid. They all appeared to be guests of the hotel, rather than residents of Beijing, and the man seemed to be giving advice to the woman on how to do her exercises. He also was speaking at the top of his lungs, which seemed unnecessary, given the emptiness of the room and the absence of any ambient noise. I was tempted to ask him to keep it down, but figured there was no graceful way to do that, so I just decided to stretch in peace and try to ignore them. However, as I did that I could not help but overhear the conversation, which appeared to center on the ins and outs of making a film in Beijing, and it was then that I realized that the woman was none other than Jada Pinkett Smith, the wife of Will Smith, who I knew was staying at the Westin for the summer while their son films a remake of the Karate Kid. I decided to keep my cool and not say anything, though I did finish my stretching and move over to warm up over in the side of the gym where they were, acting as nonchalant as possible. It would have been cooler to have seen Will, who one of my Pilates classmates once saw in the elevator (also without realizing who it was until after they had got off the elevator), but I still have another month before they leave town, so maybe I'll get lucky.

One More Thing

2009-07-25T07:54:00.003+08:00

I discovered an amazing coffee drink that has instantly become a new favorite of mine. It's called a "shakerato" and apparently it's a big hit in Italy where (naturally) it was invented. You take a freshly pulled shot of espresso, pour it into a metal cocktail shaker over a few ice cubes and add some sugar syrup or fine sugar crystals, and shake until the ice is melted. Then you pour it into a glass and enjoy. The coffee develops a great 'crema' from the shaking and the whole concoction is very refreshing. Try it, you'll like it!

(photo borrowed from http://coffeecollective.blogspot.com/2008/05/shakerato-time.html)

Long Overdue Update

2009-07-25T07:25:00.004+08:00

It's been some time since my last update, so let me bring you all back up to date with the latest exciting developments here in Beijing.

On the work front, all the admin staff that were in the building where I had been based, and where we just built a lovely suite of executive offices during the New Year break (though I was not actually in one of the renovated offices) were moved out of that building into a former state-run hotel located just behind us. The reason for this is that we are converting the old building into more clinical space, which is great, but it meant that whole departments had to pack up years of papers and other stuff, get them moved to the new space, and then put them all away again. This, as you can imagine, was a gargantuan task, but it somehow managed to work out OK. And whereas most of us were very apprehensive about the new offices, since when it was still a hotel it was the Platonic form of the grimy, dingy, dark and smelly Chinese state 1-star hotel, in fact now that it has been gussied up a bit it's actually quite nice. And my office is quite a bit better than my old one, with plenty of space and hidden storage for my teas, snacks, etc., and a pretty nice view of a lovely tree.

But life is not all about work! A few weeks ago, while visiting the Worldhealth Store (a very well-stocked health food store that our little gym cooperates with, doing joint marketing and promotion), the guys offered me a coupon for a free Pilates class at the Westin Hotel. The Westin is sort of right between home and work, so it is quite convenient, and the instructor was very highly recommended, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I contacted the instructor by email, asking when it would be possible to use my coupon, and from the headers on her response (not to mention her name) it was obvious that she was Russian. Her classes generally meet weekdays at 7pm, so I arranged to go one night after work. When I got there, I was pleased that I was a) not the only guy there, and b) by no means in the worst shape of the participants. Nevertheless, the positions were quite challenging, since they have you move yourself in ways that don't necessarily come naturally, and towards the end I was dripping with perspiration and feeling like I needed nothing so much as a nice, warm bath. But it was not over! One of the last things she has you do in the class is a push-up pose (where you get into a push-up stance and hold it for a minute, then for 45 seconds, and then for 30 seconds). To make the time pass by more quickly, she has various tricks, and one of them is that the newest member of the class has to sing a song! Well, that was me, and not being a singer I was racking (or is it "wracking") my brain trying to come up with a song to sing. Finally an idea hit me and when the time came I sang the Russian folk song, "Katyusha". Well, this surprised the hell out of the instructor, so during the second and third push-up pose she and the others in the class peppered me with questions ("why do you speak Russian?", "are you a spy?", "where do you work?", "can we get a discount?") so indeed the time did go by quickly, though it was still virtually impossible to keep myself off the floor for the duration of the pose. I ended up signing up for the class, buying 10 sessions, of which I have already used six, and sure enough it gets easier every time. So now in addition to three sessions a week of weight training with Alpha, I now have two sessions a week of Pilates with Alona. Goddammit, if I don't eventually become buff it won't be for lack of trying!

Ivan and Leo are both doing very well. The scare we had over Ivan's ingestion of several muscle relaxers has inculcated in us a culture of keeping all things that a puppy might like to chew but shouldn't far away from where he or Leo can reach them. Despite the vet's concern about his "high" BUN level (an indicator of poor kidney function), it turns out that "normal" is anything up to 25, and his reading was a whopping "26", so I think we'll be OK. He certainly seems none the worse for it, and he has even gotten much better (finally!) at letting us know he has to "evacuate" so we can let him outside to do his business.

The big news in China this past week was the eclipse. Beijing was not in the path of totality, unfortunately, but we were able to see a bit of the eclipse, despite heavy cloud cover. The day before the event I sent out a note to all our staff, advising them not to look straight at the eclipse, etc., and yet during the actual event I saw a bunch of people doing exactly that. So we got them some old x-rays and had them view through the film (the remaining silver on the film after processing acts as a sufficient shield against the UV). This rather poor photo was taken with my iPhone out of my new office window:

There's really not much else worth reporting at the moment, so you can see why there hasn't been an update in some time. That, and the fact that I rarely get any comments or other indicators that anyone actually reads this thing... (HINT)

Will provide another update when there's anything worth writing about!

Another Mystery of the Chinese Universe

2009-06-27T19:42:00.002+08:00

So today, like most Saturdays, I went to the Sanyuanli market to pick up some meat, veg and fruit, and then to the Jenny Lou market to buy some other groceries. I wound up with three largish bags, including my don't-go-to-the-market-without-it shopping bag from the Central Grocery in New Orleans that my friend/former colleague Alan gave me a few years ago. As I got out of the cab in front of my apartment building, lugging my three largish bags, it just so happened that my neighbor from across the hall was coming out of the building, saw me, said hello, and then let the front door slam shut, forcing me to put my bags down, fish for my keys, and then re-open the door. He clearly saw me, he clearly could tell that my hands were full, and yet he had no qualms about blithely keeping on his way without stopping to hold the door for me. Mind you, he was clearly not rushing anywhere; he walked at a very leisurely pace with no clear destination, so halting for the 5-10 seconds it would have delayed him would surely not have made any difference to him.

This is symptomatic of the general lack of consideration demonstrated by the Chinese people generally. It is of course very banal, but it makes me wonder why there has never been--to my knowledge--a campaign to promote the idea of holding the door, letting another guy's car enter your lane, slowing down your car so that you don't splash a pedestrian during a rain storm, etc., in this country that just LOVES public campaigns. You'd think, in a country of 1.3 billion people, that there would be a premium on getting people to be a bit more civil, and yet there doesn't seem to be. Just wondering here.

Another Night with the Chaîne

2009-06-21T08:18:00.002+08:00

Last night was the last Chaîne dinner before the summer break, and was held at the relatively new Hong Kong Jockey Club here in Beijing. The HKJC is a closed club that only members can usually visit, and it's the kind of place where you cannot spend any cash, since all charges just go straight to your membership account. It's a striking building from the outside, done up in old imperial style with architecture that seems right out of the nearby Forbidden City. Inside it's all modern and plush, with beautiful woods, thick golden carpets and interesting decorations all over.

We brought our friend Hui along this time, and managed to sit at a table that was hosted by a friend of ours from Germany; in addition to the three of us, he had his wife and three friends, one of whom brought his girlfriend who was visiting him in Shanghai (where he's based) from her base in London (though she's from Guadeloupe). She and I sat next to each other and had a wonderful conversation throughout the meal; it's too bad she lives in London, since it would have been fun to get together with them a bit more outside of the confines of a Chaîne event.

The meal was one of the best that we have had at one of these events, with outstanding wines and stellar service. Usually the service at these functions can seem a bit over-rehearsed and not very fluid, but here the staff, all of whom were dressed like they were about to out and do some dressage, really seemed to know what they were doing and were extremely unobtrusive as they whisked dishes on and off our table. Whatever they charge for memberships (and it must be a lot) seems to be worth it.

The menu was also a big winner. Before we left for the dinner, J2 asked me to tell him what we'd be having, and his reaction was one of resignation rather than excitement, since nothing really grabbed him out of the entire list. But when he was actually eating it, even he proclaimed that it was an outstanding dinner, with no duds at all (other than the sherbet, which was a bit weak). Here's what we had:

Club house marinated fresh salmon with poached pigeon egg and balsamic vinegar

Crispy pork belly with marinated jelly fish salad

Cold prawn and mango salsa

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Pan-fried goose liver with Port Taylor’s Special Ruby
Sauvignon Blanc, Petit Bourgeois, Loire Valley, France, 2007

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Grilled sole fillet filled with Japanese scallop and asparagus
served with Shanghai crab meat sauce
Sauvignon Blanc, Kim Crawford (Stelvin Seal), Marlborough, New Zealand, 2008

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Fresh lychee and mint leaves sherbet

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Pan seared braised Wagyu beef cheek with garden vegetables
in red wine sauce served with home-made purple rice noodles
Gigondas, E. Guigal, Cote du Rhone, France, 2005

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Earl grey tea chocolate mousse with ginger ice cream in raspberry sauce

Sweetened coconut pudding with osmanthus
Karcher Beerenauslese, Austria 2006

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Beijing Jockey Club Clubhouse Coffee and Tea

Pralinés

I'm glad that I changed my Alpha training appointment from Sunday to Saturday this weekend, so that I don't have to go to the gym early this morning after such an evening; of course, I'll probably end up having to do some additional cardio to work off the meal, but at least I can do that at home, after I've had my coffee...