Remember that part in Forrest Gump where Forrest took off on a run and just ran and ran and ran? And then after inspiring thousands and growing a very bad beard, one day he just… stopped?

Of course you do.

Okay, so let’s just imagine way back in 2005 I sat down at my desk in my house on Bathurst Street in Toronto and started writing. And I decided to keep on writing at a pretty reasonable pace, with occasional gaps here and there, through my various moves around China and travels around Asia, until March 2011. When I decided to just… stop.

You see where I’m going here, right?

Just as Forrest’s followers were dumbfounded and confused, so were you. And by “you” I refer to the two or three readers who still randomly stop in to see if I’ve actually followed through on threats to “update soon. I swear.” And you’re probably also family.

This is the point where my argument gets hazy, as Forrest didn’t actually start running across America again. But here I am, writing again! cue big band, clowns, unfurled banners, frolicking puppy dogs, etc.

Happy 2012!

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March 9th – Update below!

Before coming to China, I never thought about cheese being an issue. It’s just always been part of my life, bouts of lactose intolerance not withstanding. As a kid in Colorado I lived close to a dairy, where my mom would buy something called “squeaky” cheese. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve never eaten, seen or heard of it since. In Kuwait I discovered the joys of labneh (more of a thick yogurt, but still cheese-like), halloumi (cheese you can fry in the frying pan!) and Kraft spreadable cheese in a jar. (Those of you who know what I’m talking about know exactly how addictive that stuff is; pretty remarkable for a substance that probably isn’t even really cheese. After more than ten years since leaving Kuwait, I nearly cried when I found a jar of it in an Iranian import shop in North Toronto.) In Toronto, we lived within walking distance of two cheese shops. More emporiums than shops, these were the kind of places where’d you go in and you couldn’t even see the guy working behind the counter because of all the stacks of cheese. These were also the kind of places where you could just throw out a random cheese name and the clerk would produce about five different slices to try, balanced on a cheese slicer that would suddenly appear between cheese stacks. There wasn’t a cheese on earth these guys hadn’t heard of.

Then there was China. A place where cheese just isn’t part of the culinary culture. A place where people actually think cheese is kind of gross. If you’ve seen the cheese selection in a Chinese supermarket, you’d probably understand why everyone thinks it’s bloody awful. You can occasionally find a block of Land O’Lakes cheddar cheese, but mostly you find Kraft American Singles knock-offs. It’s either that or Laughing Cow soft cheese wannabes. Plastic, in other words. High dollar plastic! Cheese is not cheap.

In Beijing there are a whole range of import supermarkets which feature cheese sections overflowing with imported cheddars and camembert and Emmental, etc. But it’s all just meh. Overpriced and meh. Again, plastic.

Le Fromager de Pekin to the rescue. The “cheese guy” is Liu Yang and he is single-handedly introducing cheese culture to Beijing with his artisanal cheeses, handmade in his workshop. Although most of his clients are expats, he is slowly winning over Beijing locals, even if they’re only buying it for their kids. (Shortly after our arrival a Chinese mom and her two kids came into the shop to buy a few different kinds of cheese. Yay!)

Liu Yang appeared in the above video made by Mercedes-Benz, from an ad campaign featuring Chinese who have made their dreams come true.

Liu Yang went to France to study management. Somewhere along the way he fell in love with cheese and became a cheese maker. Last week I was lucky enough to visit his shop with a group of friends. We were barely through the door when Liu Yang opened a bottle of wine, served us a spectacular cheese tray and invited us to enjoy his hard work. His cheeses are wonderful – from the light blue cheese to the ricotta to the soft pyramid to the tangy garden herb to the special Beijing “grey” to my favorite, a very nice tomme cheese. After tasting all the different cheeses (more like devouring them!) we toured the workshop as Liu Yang explained the production process. Liu Yang imported some of the cheese making equipment, such as the plastic molds, from France, while some of it was custom-made under his direction. He uses Wondermilk, as you’ll see in the video above.

Wine and cheese in the afternoon sun

Simply fabulous – pop a mini-tomme into a 180C oven for 10 minutes. So much better than fondue.

In the workshop – Liu Yang and his assistant prepare tomme cheese

Weights are used to compress the cheese and help with removing the liquid

Here the cheese matures

This room is also known as “heaven”

Le Fromager de Pekin on a nondescript street in north Beijing

The cheese was delicious and I really had to restrain myself from purchasing a large amount since I figured, in the DH’s absence, I was much too likely to have cheese for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But more than making delicious cheese, what I appreciate about Le Fromager de Pekin is that he is doing something authentically, something he truly loves, in a place where it’s not exactly the easiest thing to do. As he says in his Mercedes spot, “It is difficult for me to imagine working for others, because then I would be working for somebody else’s dream.” I admire anyone who has the courage to work for their own dream and to produce something distinctive and well-crafted to boot.

Le Fromager de Pekin is located by the Xindi Market on Longteng Street in Huilongguan, in north Beijing. You can arrive by subway line 13 (and a short walk north – map on their website). However, there’s no need to visit the shop in person to buy cheese. Liu Yang and his team will deliver cheese to your door every Wednesday and Friday. (Visit the website to fill in an order form.) Or you can find their cheese in central Beijing at Sanyuan Li Market stalls 29-31 and at the Boucherie Française at #40 Jianchang Hutong in Dongcheng District.

As we were leaving, a photographer showed up to take press photos of the shop and Liu Yang. Le Fromager de Pekin’s reputation is growing by the day. Liu Yang was also featured on the lovely blog Nicely Made in China.

Update: Today, 9th March, I received a newsletter from Le Fromager de Pekin (via a Yahoo Group I belong to), which gives an update on Beijing locations to buy cheese:

• Xin Yuan Li Market, stall 29-31 (Gris de pekin, Gris aux herbes, fromage blanc, pyramid, buchette, Tomme)
• April Gourmet Chunxiu Lu (Tomme, Pyramide)
• French Butchery near the Confucious Temple (Gris de Pekin, Pyramide, Gris aux herbes) [I think this is Boucherie Française]
• Colours de Vie near the China World (Tomme, Crottin, Pyramid, Buchette)
• Embassy House Mondays and Thursdays from 4-6 p.m (Tomme, Fromage Blanc Pyramid, Gris de Pekin)

He’ll also be selling at the Expat Show, March 25, 26, 27 at Guo Mao Exhibition Hall. He also says he sold out of his new Beijing Bleu (it is really good!) and will be offering St. Nectaire in coming weeks. Lots to look forward to in the world of cheese!!

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1. Check Out That Cheese!
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Oh, I am tired. This is what happens when you turn 35. (As I did a few days ago.) And you have a cold. Today I attended four! events at the Bookworm Festival. There were originally only two on my schedule, but what can I say, everything piqued my interest. But I am tired this evening and so I will not regale you with tales of Icelandic folklore or the innocence and naïveté of living under the Hungarian dictatorship or Argentinean fiction or the state of war conflict reporting. I will simply tell you it was all wonderful and informative and come back to it later.

I didn’t mention yesterday that my attending the festival is part of my birthday present or the fact that it coincides quite serendipitously with the DH’s training trip to the US. Yes, you read that right. The US. After eleven long years it has finally come to pass. The DH is in Dallas for two weeks learning how to fly a beautiful and expensive jet. I almost thought it would never happen, but the immigration folks at Chicago O’Hare threw open the doors and let him in. I’m trying to convince him to guest post on what it’s like to be in the US again after so many years, but at the moment he claims he is too jet lagged.

Tomorrow it is back to work with just one event over my lunch break and one after work, en español.

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1. Literary Thrills: Beijing Bookworm Literary Festival Day One
2. Spring Festival Planning & Trips to Beijing
3. Starting From Scratch

Maybe I should consider taking down the Christmas themed photo at right? Is it true what they say that if your Christmas tree is up after a certain date you have to leave it up all year-long?

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My head is spinning and it is not because it has been a month and a half since I updated this blog. It’s also not the head cold I am in the process of developing, although I suspect all the NyQuil I am about to take will definitely produce that effect. No, my head is spinning with ideas. Thoughts. Philosophies. Words. Today was the first day of the Beijing Bookworm International Literary Festival. Those of you who know me know I love to read. And those of you who don’t know me, well, you must have guessed I like to write. I can’t tell you how excited I am about this festival. I can tell you that I have been preparing for it since December, when I signed up to become a festival volunteer. As I wrote earlier today on Facebook, I’m terribly happy to be involved in a cultural event. In English. Especially since for the last five years my only cultural event has been people watching at the Linyi McDonald’s. (Hanging out with pilots 24/7 for that year at the Shijiazhuang Airport was a cultural experience all its own, one that perhaps deserves its own blog. Or book.)

Maybe it’s the caffeine. Maybe it’s the crowded café/bookstore I’ve just come from, but my ears are buzzing and my thoughts are bouncing around in my brain. I spent the morning listening to two authors, one a mathematician and one a physicist, discussing the effects of science on their work. I spent the early afternoon listening to a crime fiction writer discuss the craft. I spent the evening listening to a BBC reporter discuss the savage battle of Kohima in WWII. Tomorrow there’s more.

Each of these events has sent my mind off in completely different directions, as each dealt with such different topics. I’ve been scribbling notes in my moleskine (yes, I am that clichéd – wanna be writer with her writer’s notebook) all day. Anyway, here’s an effort to make some sense about how I spent my day.

First up was a discussion between Paolo Giordano and Guillermo Martinez, an Italian physicist and Argentinean mathematician respectively, about the influence of their scientific backgrounds on their fiction writing. They both started off pretty much immediately stating that they didn’t think it was a major factor, but through the course of the conversation it became apparent that in some ways, it most certainly was. Whether that meant writing characters with their same background, or featuring some aspect of their discipline in the plot, or even just the method and style of writing. Martinez said (and this is probably a terrible paraphrase) that a mathematician takes numbers, orders them, and writes them down on the lines of a paper, just as a writer takes ideas, orders them, and writes them down on the lines of a paper. The take-away was not necessarily the age-old advice to “write what you know,” but that who we are or how we are trained is inescapably part of us, and will come through in our writing. I’ve been trained in nursing, library science, Spanish language and aviation. How’s that coming through, I wonder? As schizophrenia?

Next, the same Guillermo Martinez as above examined the genre of classical crime fiction and how it works. And because I adore crime fiction, and all kinds of intrigue, mystery and thriller, I was fascinated by what he had to say. He referenced Jorge Luis Borges, who outlined six laws for crime narratives in an article he wrote. He discussed how these laws could be applied, and also transgressed. Then he asked each of us to write the first few lines of our “would be” crime novel, meeting these three criteria: give some hint that this is a crime novel, set the tone of the novel and be gripping. He then critiqued each opening. He said that my beginning was clever, but that he didn’t think it would turn out to be the kind of classic crime novel we were discussing. (And he was right; I’m afraid I wasn’t channeling Agatha Christie today. But he thought it was clever! A real, live WRITER! I owe it all to Jessica Fletcher!) While I don’t know that I’m going to be busting out my own crime novel anytime soon, I will certainly be a more critical reader of the genre. I’m attending two more of Martinez’s events and I am eager to read his work in Spanish. (I’ve read The Book of Murder and The Oxford Murders, in English only.) I feel like I’ve discovered a new world – Latin American crime fiction.

My last event featured BBC reporter Fergal Keane discussing his historical nonfiction book Road of Bones, about the battle between British and Indian troops and the Japanese at Kohima, an Indian village near the border with Burma, during WWII. While I like crime fiction, I love military history. I just finished reading Keane’s astonishing and chilling story of entering Rwanda just after the genocide, Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey. Sobering doesn’t even begin to describe that book. Let’s just say I read it before bed and had trouble sleeping. I haven’t yet read Road of Bones, but I picked up a copy this evening and Keane was gracious enough to dedicate it to the memory of my grandfather, who served in India during WWII. A few years ago, I came across a picture of my Grandpa Jim as a young man, sitting on an elephant. I had no idea he had been in India, and I still don’t really know what he did there. Since finding the picture, I’ve become fascinated by the China-Burma-India Theater, in part because of my overactive imagination, but also because it is a lesser known front, overshadowed by the big events of Europe and the Pacific. Before the photo piqued my interest, I only had The Bridge on the River Kwai as a reference. Beyond that, however, my experiences with aviation in China have also informed my interest. One can’t really work in aviation in China without considering the Flying Tigers, and I’ll read anything I can get my hands on about them, too.

Keane’s talk was riveting, and like his Rwanda book, at times sobering. As part of his research, he interviewed veterans of the Kohima battle, both in Japan and the UK, and when he said that in one interview, a kind, old Japanese man, incredibly polite, described beheading his enemies, one after another, I just really didn’t know what to think. War is not nice. And Kohima was not nice. I’m not terribly good at writing book reviews, but I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts on this subject as I read through his book. I’ll try to share some here.

So now I’m at home, sipping chicken soup and drinking hot tea, hoping that this cold will blow over fast. I’m going to need all my strength to get through another twelve days of literary thrills. I might not run marathons or scuba dive or climb mountains, but I am literate and loving it. And on that completely cheesy and geeky note, see you tomorrow!

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1. I’m Already Tired: Beijing Bookworm Lit Festival Day Two
2. What I’m Reading

A blog update is certainly long overdue, what’s the deal?

Hmm… well, I got a job. No more lazy days around the house for me. I’m working 9:30 am to 7:30 pm everyday (monday to friday) writing, writing, writing all day long and that leaves me with very little time for doing much more than eating dinner and chilling out on the couch. And when you write and edit all day long, do you really want to write and edit a blog post? Hmm, actually I do kind of. Writing a lot will do that to you – you get a real writing bug.

Anyway, my job is not top-secret but I don’t want to say too much just yet. It’s temporary work, editing online content for a travel website. Fun, fun, fun!

More soon!

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1. Evidently I am Expected to Work
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King’s Cake

Happy King’s Day! Or Epiphany! Or start of Mardi Gras season! Or my parents’ anniversary! Whatever you want to call it!

The three kings, Melchior, Gaspar and Baltasar arrived to Spain today to unload a bunch of gifts for all the Spanish kids. They didn’t make it to Beijing, however, not even with a lump of coal.

We had to make do with a King’s cake from a French bakery, not at all the Roscón de Reyes that the DH longed for. And to be completely honest, we ate this cake on January 2nd, not today. We just couldn’t wait. In addition to the cake, we also made this:

Roast Lamb and Potatoes

Whew! The holiday season is exhausting with all this cooking and eating… Are we done now?

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Well, that was weird. What happened to me last night. For the first time in as long as I can remember I broke out in hives and had a full on allergic reaction to something I ate. The culprit may or may not have been a slice of cheese melted on bread. Cheese? Bread? All of which I have eaten a zillion times before. I suspect there might have been some mold. Could I have eaten Penicillin? I’m allergic to that, or at least that is what my mother tells me. I have been dutifully writing it on every medical form I have ever filled in.

So as I sat scratching (I figured my skin was just dry from the Beijing air, but when I looked down every part of me was bright red), I thought about the top-notch private medical clinic just a 5 minute drive up the road from my apartment. And I thought of the fully equipped private hospital 20 minutes away. And I thought of the fast evacuation jet parked at the airport 40 minutes away. And then I stopped freaking out and popped two expired Benadryl tabs. After spending nearly five years in places with fully okay medical facilities, but slightly scary and with little to no English and little to no understanding of pesky American privacy norms, it is such a comfort to know that I have options close at hand. Especially should a run-of-the-mill allergic reaction turn bad. (And now that I’m fully insured!)

This morning I am fine again. I would never normally recommend taking expired medications, but let’s be real, we all do. And in this case, successfully. Thank you, Benadryl!

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Happy New Year! Feliz Año Nuevo!

I can breathe a sigh of relief. 2010 – the year of confusion, waiting and constant changing of plans – is finally over. Onward to the best year yet, I say.

I guess 2011 will be the year I finally stop hating on US Immigration, too, since the DH was recently granted a ten-year visitor visa to the US. What a happy shock it was to open his passport and find an expiration date in 2020! We were very nervous while flipping through the pages because once before the Beijing Consulate returned his passport with no visa, no warning and no explanation. But alas, this time they like him. They really like him. And so the hating will stop. I might continue with a mild dislike, however. (They are still, by any definition, the man.)

I hope your New Year’s Eve was full of fun and frolic. Our New Year’s Eve celebration was very introverted. We stayed in and watched movies. Until 1AM when we realized we had forgotten the grape ritual. In Spain, at each strike of the midnight bells you eat one grape. Luckily we were able to find a YouTube video of the countdown in Madrid’s Puerta de Sol (from 2009, but who cares!) The DH bought a bag of ginormous grapes, however, so I was only able to get ten into my mouth. I’ll have to work on this skill throughout the year. Or buy really small grapes.

Speaking of buying, you should have seen our neighborhood import shop in the late afternoon on New Year’s Eve. Damned if every person in the store didn’t have a cart full of wine and liquor. When I arrived I could only find one bottle of Spanish wine! I ended up buying that one and a Chilean Shiraz. I know absolutely nil about wine. Which is why I like to buy Spanish wine since at least I recognize the names of the regions. I’m such a nerd I’ll buy a wine just because I once had lunch in the town it came from. I’m kind of still in shock that we have a neighborhood import shop, with at least four others within walking distance. Beijing is certainly no longer a hardship posting,not when you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a store selling decent wine.

The Requisite Resolutions

If you read a lot of blogs, as I do, you might have noticed a new trend among New Year’s Resolutions. That trend being the lack of New Year’s Resolutions. Seems instead of making a list of goals, the thing to do is to choose a word for the New Year, something to represent what you want your new year to be, a kind of focus if you will. I am intrigued by the idea. Not because I don’t like to make New Year’s Resolutions – I started my list back in August – but because I can always use more focus. I’ve decided my word is Now. I am what they call a procrastinateur. (I made that up, just Now.) Procrastinating has wreaked a lot of havoc in my life and I am done with it. I’m embracing the here and Now, and pledging to not procrastinate. (Fascinating fact – there isn’t even a word in Spanish for procrastinate.)

My other big focus this year is going to be on homemade creativity. I’m learning to knit and will soon be re-embracing sewing. Between all the knitting, sewing and cooking, I’ll soon be wearing ankle-length prairie dresses and asking for a sister-wife. I really should have paid more attention in Home Economics class. (Did I ever tell you I was secretary in the Goliad High School chapter of the Future Homemakers of America? We had really nifty class-crafted t-shirts… puff paint, twisted ribbon… you can imagine. I was in the Future Farmers of America club, too, but that’s another story for another time…) Anyway, in these days of consumption madness I feel like getting back to basics and opting out of a disposable/mass-produced lifestyle. I’d like my footprint to be just a little bit smaller, even if it is made by a foot wearing a really heinous self-knitted sock. I can try.

Oh, and I promise to blog more this year, too.

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1. Beijing – New Year’s Eve Out
2. You Know Today Is Chinese New Year
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