MOMVISIT, PART II: THE PRETTIEST DAY OF THE YEAR AND THE ONSLAUGHT OF SUMMER

Spring in Beijing lasted exactly one day this year and it was one of the finest I can imagine. I took the mom to Jingshan Park behind the Palace Museum (aka Forbidden City) and we climbed the artificial hill built from the soil removed to create the massive moat around the complex in the 14th century. Both the Palace and the park remain, auspiciously, at the very heart of the city and on a clear day the views are spectacular and the combined weight of history and concentrated political and economic might make the place almost stupefying.

Looking south over the Forbidden City.

Close up showing "The Egg" (the National Performing Arts Center) just south of the Palace and west of the Great Hall of the People.

Looking west at Beihai Park, Xizhimen, and the hills of the Summer Palace in the distance.

Looking North towards the Bell and Drum towers and the Olympic Village (I was gazing particularly fondly at my part of the city, 东城区, on the far right just beyond that big clump of trees).

Of course we had to go for the dorky costumes again, this time with me as emperor:

Later, a Chinese guy in line behind us butted in on my mother's solo photo session then insisted I join in as well. A small crowd gathered to gawk and snap photos and there was much laughter at my designation as 第二个皇帝 (2nd emperor).

One of the five pavilions on the hill:

The ceilings and beams were all painted vividly (restored of course) with renderings of flowers, clouds, and cranes with wings outstretched.

Looking up the hill from one of the lower pagodas:

Lilacs were in bloom all over the park and smelled delicious.

As usual, the crowd was evenly mixed: half tourists (the vast majority Chinese) and half locals socializing, playing games, or exercising. I had explained to my mother that in the traditional Chinese view of physical health and wellness it is vital to promote circulation through both movement and external pressure. It is not uncommon to see elderly folks walking through parks slapping their torsos and legs or to end a yoga class with a hearty round of self-abuse. Mom was delighted to find visual proof in this two-for-one: a woman stretching while slapping herself!

Close-up action shot:

Folks playing card games in the shade of a crabapple tree.

Such pretty blossoms.

The next day it got up to 87 degrees but not until late afternoon. We walked around some pedestrianized shopping streets like Wangfujing (pictured below) and Qianmen.

On the way home I had to stop at a shoe repair shop to have the Indian camel-skin jootis I had been wearing stitched back together where they were coming apart at the seams. Mom took this picture of me sitting barefoot on a stool outside while the cobbler practiced the ancient skill of superglueing. 75 cents later we were back on the road.

I am under strict instruction to post only those photos of my mom that she herself has approved but I can't see how she could possibly reject this lovely shot of her sitting at a terrace cafe in front of the drum tower. Ain't she gorgeous folks?

I believe I have previously mentioned in this forum the fondness of some of my Chinese friends for banqueting me; having my mother in town made everyone even more excited to take us out. This was fun, but exhausting. I had to translate everything and felt sorry for my mother being force-fed everything from chicken claws and cow stomach and unable to communicate with anyone else at the table without my assistance.

The most enjoyable dinners were the two with my dear old teacher Chang laoshi and her husband Wang Junjie, who knew my mother from the Christmas they spent snowed in with us in Seattle. Chang laoshi is due to have a baby any day now and both of her parents have come from their home in Inner Mongolia to make preparations and take care of the expectant mom. In an effort to eliminate sex-selective abortions Chinese doctors are not allowed to reveal the sex of the baby while it is in utero, but I have been told that regardless of whether it is a boy or a girl I get to choose an English name for it. I can't wait.

On Saturday and Sunday, with summer temperatures and May Day (International Labor Day) crowds making outdoor sightseeing unpleasant, mom and I visited some more museums: Capital Museum for Chinese and Beijing history, artifacts, and religious/decorative objects (like these fantastic animal-headed marble figurines - why don't these guys have their own comic book or action movie yet?)

and the Beijing Planning Museum for nerding out on things like water conservation and transportation and for admiring the massive scale model of the city.

While most of the city within the 3rd ring road was included in the model (and meticulously so; the model of the 27 story building where my office is even included a recent penthouse add-on), about 75 percent of the metropolitan area was represented by satellite photographs. I was dismayed to see that my home was included in the latter; it is dead center in the picture below.

Tiny CBD!

It reached 91 on mom's last day in town but given the vagaries of Beijing weather I'm not packing my sweaters away completely just yet.

I asked my mom to take this picture of me in front of a Cialis display at a drugstore. My friend Stephanie's company developed the drug and I'm sure it will put her mind at ease to know that people here have been stocking up.

Mom also took one last picture of me standing at the entrance to my building, really much nicer than it looks here.

I saw her off to the airport on Monday morning and now she is safely back home in Seattle and I'm still here, my home for now, and in a certain sense, forever.

MOMVISIT, PART I: THE LAST DAYS OF WINTER

Spring Festival was way back in mid-February but Spring itself never bothered to show up. By mid-April I was obsessively checking the weather forecasts, which would promise a warming up in the coming week only to retract that promise as the new week approached. Aside from a pair of anomalous days back in March, it was in the 40s and low 50s every day. This didn't bother me enormously, as I enjoy cold weather (so long as I have a warm house to return to) but I worried that it would ruin the upcoming visit of my mother, who hates and fears the cold even more than Auntie Zhang and her cohort, lao taitais (old wives) who cluck disapprovingly over my under-clad calves. I know it is boring to talk about the weather but sometimes it really matters.

There was blustery wind and heavy pollution the day my mother arrived but two days later it was in the 60s. Fearing it wouldn't get any better than this I dragged mom out to the Summer Palace where we made our serious, beneficent-ruler faces while wearing imperial garb...

took a pedal boat out on Kunming Lake...

and climbed up the hill to admire the restored palace pagodas.

The itinerary for the next few days was similarly weather-determined. When it was cold and/or rainy we hit up museums (below, a giant oil painting of Chairman Hu visiting the scene of the 2007 Sichuan earthquake at the National Art Gallery) and markets;

when it warmed up marginally we explored temples and wandered the alleys of old Beijing

Turtle-pose at Yonghegong Lama Temple.

Running into Sophie and Wu Jie at Xiangzi's shop near the temple.

Tricycle bearing a massive burden.

We had originally planned to take an overnight train to the scenic (and comparatively southern) city of Hangzhou and stay a few days but that proved unfeasible. So to the weather I said: "you're not the boss of me!" and to the mother I said: "outskirts of Beijing here we come!"

Our first journey was to the mountains west of the city and on the way we stopped for detour at the Tian Yi Mu museum, both the mausoleum of a famous eunuch and a museum of all things eunuch-y, including some shudder-inducing photographs, tools, and clay models, a mummified eunuch, and some ancient stone dildos.

Oh, and also goats.

A two-hour bus ride took us to Cuandixia, a 400 year-old village preserved (from the outside at least) to look almost exactly like it did at its founding in the Ming Dynasty. More important than this however, was that it was SNOWING and windy when we arrived. After hiking the hill behind the village with a friendly Columbian-American fellow we met on the bus, and devouring a warming dinner, we cocooned ourselves in blankets in our spotless but unheated rooms (our "hotel" is visible in the center-left of the picture below, identifiable by its pale wood doors and two red lanterns). The wind howled all night but the morning was sunny and significantly warmer. We hiked up the hill facing the village, climbing higher and higher for increasingly dramatic views.

A typical alley in the center of the village.

On the bus ride back we passed a nuclear facility on the outskirts of the city next to a hilltop pagoda. Oh China.

It was sunny but still cold the next day; undaunted, we took another public bus three hours south of the city to see the karst towers and other curious glacial rock formations along the Juma river.

All along the hiking route there were signs calling attention to the names and shapes of the mighty rocks. Above, the five grandfathers; below, Sea Turtle Mound.

After scratching our heads a few times over which lump of stone was a crow and which was a pigeon, we were finally able to identify a new rock formation of our very own. Below, behold "T-Rex talks to Stegosaurus":

One of the more impressive features of this area was the "crack in the sky", a walkable chasm less than a meter wide and about 40 feet long. My crappy camera wasn't really up for capturing pictures of the place but this gives a feeling of its majesty:

Looking up:

Monkeying around:

The path was a little treacherous but mom and I are both part mountain goat so we made it through ok.

Back in Beijing things were looking up. According to the weather forecast it was going to be 67 the next day, and after that single day of Spring, highs would remain in the 80s until my mother was due to return to dreary Seattle. We celebrated by walking around the old city taking pictures of courtyard doorways,

envying the elderly and their incredibly cool motor-vehicles,

And eating. A lot.

But not this:

My mother loved malatang, the street dish which involves choosing a selection of greens, tofu, fish products, and other (including quail eggs, duck blood, and seaweed), then having it all boiled together and covered in sesame sauce.

Like so:

Her culinary adventurousness led me to discover a few new things too. This taro bun with lotus paste filling was especially delicious.

Thankfully, my mighty German hips had not measurably increased by the time we went back to the tailors for the fitting of my very first suit.