A trip to Chengdu - 成都

As Pauli keeps having more and more trips around China mainland, we felt we could combine his next mission to Chengdu with a nice family side trip. His colleague You Yi (pronounced Yo-Jee) joined us for a portion of the trip and was an invaluable source of information, and a great "travel agent" making sure to avoid us all sorts of trouble.

Chendu is the capital of Sichuan province. This province was hit by a terrible earthquake in May 2008, killing more than 80,000 people. Some of Paul's projects in this region are related to the rebuilding of the devastated villages in the Shichuan province.

The city is quite important historically, and for various regions. It was the birth place of the first widely used paper money in the world, as early as 960 A.D. During the Chinese Civil War, it was also the last stronghold of the Kuomintang General Chiang Kai-Shek against the Communist Mao Tse-Tung. Today the city is one of the most important economic centers, transportation and communication hubs in Southwestern China, with a broad industrial base of manufacturing, aluminum smelting and chemicals. Maybe that explains partially the fact that the city has one of the lowest sunshine rate of China, even less per year than London. Here is a view from atop our hotel...

With 11 million people, the density of the city is 888 inhabitants per square kilometers (as opposed to 11,050 in Beijing and 13,400 in Shanghai) should not feel so dense, however it ranks in third row for his traffic jams. Chendu-ren (the inhabitants of Chengdu) are known for their lifestyle of leisure, Chengdu counting more bars and tea houses than Shanghai, even though is has not even half its inhabitants.

We spent time walking around some beautiful parks, all lined up with tea houses. With its warm and humid weather, Chengdu is really green with bamboo in every park, creating a beautiful atmosphere. The tatch cottage house of the poet Da fo is surrounded by a beautiful garden.



Also very enjoyable, a walk in a restored area of the city called JinLi, where narrow streets and wooden constructions recreate what was probably the best of a medieval Chengdu.

Chengdu's food is also famous; hot pots, noodles and other dishes are all known for their very spicy taste. Here is a picture of a Make-Your-Own-Soup street restaurant, where you choose your vegetables from the plastic bins. Here specially requested "non spicy soups" were still a bit too much for Noam's taste buds. The following picture is an image of the oils and spices from a hot pot (some original version of what in Quebec we call Chinese Fondue). Can you see how many peppers are floating around?!


Another important attraction in Chengdu is the Panda Breeding Centre. We found there a bunch of lazy and happy giant panda, feeding or sleeping leisurely in front of us. Noam preferred the red pandas, more like a breed of furry red raccoons.

我是有名！Or How My Yoga Life Became Public!

For those knowing me well, you know that yoga is a important part of my life, a practice that I have pursued everywhere and anywhere, by myself or with others.
Upon moving here, I have been fortunate enough to be at the right place at the right time, and was offered to teach some "Baby and Me" yoga. I am now teaching for a second semester at Yoga Yard, a really nice studio in SanLiTun area. I have three classes per week, and really enjoy to see the moms and babies engaging together while doing yoga. You can see my bio here.
A few weeks ago, a woman from Beijing Kids magazine approached me to do a photo shoot for the April issue. I accepted without really thinking about this too much. One of my student kindly allowed me to take the pose with her son Taylor, a really cute and fun baby. We had a good time doing the shoot.
Well, now the thing is that I am on 3 pages of the magazine!!! Most of my friends have come up to me, waving the magazine with a funny air of reproach, saying: "How could you have hidden this from us!"

Here it what the result looks like!

Harbin and the YouTaiRen

As you all know, Pauli is from Israel, raised in the Jewish culture.
Here in China, he often gets comments that, at times, could be perceived as racists, if only be of the innocent look in the face of those giving them away. "Jews are good, they make lots of money". "Jews are smart, they are good in business". And various variations on the same theme. 犹太人 "YouTaiRen", the Jewish People.
Pauli often jokes that I am more Jewish than him, taking him to the holiday dinners and making sure we have all the required Judaic paraphernalia around the house. In any cases, this last week, we joined a few friends for two(!) Passover dinners (Seders), and I have to admit humbly that my enthusiasm got watered down by the length of the readings, and by the delays incurred in the food service. I mean we did not really have anything to eat until 21:15 on the first evening!!! Anyhow, that aside, the Jewish community here is very well organized, with several groups of people meeting in various places. There are also numerous Israelis in town, as we were able to witness at our first Seder dinner.
But the Jewish community in China has been here for numerous years. In fact since the beginning of the century, numerous Jews, mostly from Russia, and later from Germany, came in Northern-China. They settled mostly in Harbin, several hundreds of kilometers North-East of Beijing. The city today still has a few buildings which withstood the passage of time and testifying of the Jewish passage.
Interestingly a few weeks ago, while strolling in PanJiaYuan Market with my parents and Pauli, we found a couple of old books talking about the life of the Jewish community in Harbin. Numerous photos showed buildings, people and other elements of importance to the community then.


More interestingly, last Sunday, after our Easter brunch, Pauli's old university teacher, Zvi came over for the afternoon. He taught Pauli several years ago, in Israel. He had landed that day in Beijing from Tel Aviv, to do some studies in the area of Chongqing, with Pauli's team. Both of them flew off there the same evening. The interesting part to this story is that while answering my question about if this trip was a first in China, he told us that he was born in here, in China! He had spent the first ten years of his life in Harbin! Me and Pauli were both astounded. He glanced at our book, commented on a few people, pointing at a famous rabbi that used to come to visit his parents, remembering a building or a name. His dad was an immigrant from Russia, while his mom, daughter of a Russian immigrant, was born in China. Zvi lived there for the first few years of his life, and then moved with his family in Israel. I am still amazed that he did not appeared emotional about this first return to China. I probably would have been. I wish he had stayed longer with us so to tell us more about his childhood and life in China.
Zvi came over with a wonderful present: a Hanukia - the candle holder for Hanukah, from the Museum of Jerusalem. A wonderful present, more meaningful than he could have imagined, as last Hanukah I have gone to the four corners of Beijing trying to find one, unsuccessfully.

Easter Bunny

There are traditions that we don't want to loose. And then there are places where holding these traditions does not come easy. Easter in Beijing is not particularly difficult, the weather is good, the trees are blossoming, we can find chocolate eggs if we know where to look for them. But for me Easter always has been a family matter, not even really a religious one. Yes at times, I attended the Saturday evening mass or the Sunday morning one, but the real meaning of it for me, always has been to gather the family around a good meal. So I decided to set a large table and organize my own Easter event.
In Quebec, at Easter we usually serve a ham, cooked in beer, maple sirup and pineapple. After getting a special ham from the German butcher (who sells the best meat in town in my opinion), I invited enough people to make sure the piece of meat would get eaten before the end of the day.
A great group of friends came over. Polish, British, Québécois, Americans (and two from Ilinois!), what a great mix. Noam was in even with a crowd of 5 friends into his play area. We cheered champagne to our friendship while the kids were getting high on chocolate! Not that I want to brag about it, but the ham was so good it was gone before I could take a picture of it! You can ask my dad for the recipe!

Happy Easter everyone!

Spring is here!

Over the last couple weeks, the weather as turned from fresh (around 2-3 degrees in the night, 8 in the days) to warm (25 degrees yesterday!). What a nice change! I have been a little doubtful, as the last warm spell we had did not last. Indeed, mid-March brought us a long weekend of spring-like weather, only to turn again to cold wind and automnal weather. But now, it feels real. The trees have blossomed, flowers are budding, the wind is warm, it feels good.
So Saturday, we set out to catch the spring. Beijing, with its concrete and greyness, does not always feel as the best place to witness the delicate action of nature. We headed to XiangShang, Frangrant Hills.
With only 20 km out of Beijing, we expected a few Beijingers to be there, as it is tradition for them to go enjoy the nature. A traffic jam at the highway exit got us worried that the crowd would outdo the landscape, but once there, we were free to enjoy the park.
The entrances of the park are lined with small shops, restaurants, teahouses and eateries, complete with loud music blasting for every stall (off course each of them listening to their own selection!). Families are slowly strolling to the park, arriving by buses that are well deserving the area.

The park itself is a pleasantly arranged at the bottom of the hill, with a few lakes, various species of trees, picnic areas and pleasant paths. Of course, a few temples and a museum are also part of the scenery. A cable car can help the crowds reach the top of the hill. We chose to stroll around the bottom of the hill and to lay and smell the fresh grass while Noam was napping in his stroller.


Xiangshang dates from the Jin dynasty, with the original temple built in 1186. In the Yuan and Ming dynasty the hills were used are Imperial hunting grounds. In the Qing dynasty (1711-1799) the emperor initiated a large scale construction, leading to 28 scenic spots and a wall to keep the deers he imported from Manchuria, as most game was hunted by previous emperors. Today, after been ransacked by the French and the English at the beginning of century, the park is a mix of replicas, restorations, and foundations of the structures that have grace the park over the last 800 years.

Today, no longer privilege of the emperor and its suite, Beijingers come in numbers to enjoy the natural beauty of the park.

The highlight of our visit was the Biyunsi, the Azure Cloud temple, a beautiful set of constructions, part temple, part shrine, part exhibit to the history of Sun-Yet-sen.








And of course, a surprise that is not one: we are being watched the whole time!

A Big Day for a Big Boy

After much deliberation we decided to register Noam to Eaton's School, a kindergarten next to our place, in Central Park. 

As we were trying to decide where to send him, the language was an issue for us.  We felt that Noam had enough of 3 languages in his little brain, as he is raised by a French Canadian mom (oui oui, c'est moi!) and an Israeli dad (speaking Hebrew), with the support of our beloved Lili Ayi (who obviously speaks Chinese). We also figured that English can be learned much more easily, and it is available (almost) everywhere, while Chinese, French or Hebrew are languages requiring much more efforts to master, while also being geographically bound. 

We explored the idea of sending him to public Chinese kindergarten, but were deterred by the rigidity of their approach. Private Chinese schools seemed to focus a great deal on the English language to the detriment of Chinese, as the affluent Beijingers want their kids to be bilingual. The French School could only take him at 3 years old. The Canadian School is too far. The Hebrew/Jewish school is way way too far in the suburb, and integrating a bit too much religious aspects to its program for our taste.  

So we had accept the fact that English would be part of Noam's early education, while still preferring schools with Chinese-English bilingual programs. And in the end, not only the convenience of Eaton's became a great factor in our selection, but also the number of Noam's friends registered there too. 

So today was the big day: Noam's first day in school. We filled the little back pack with change clothes, diapers, slippers and a bottle of water, and off we went. Arrived in the class, Noam met Felicia and her team of teachers (15 kids for 3 teachers). As we already went to a Montessori class before, Noam felt at ease and navigated pretty quickly among the tables and children, exploring the various developmental toys and meeting his new friends, and some of his playmates. Of course the good byes were hard for both of us, but Felicia later reassured me that he did not cry for too long after my departure. 

When I came back to pick him up, he was so busy playing with the others that he did not notice me at first, and when he did, he continued playing for little more before running to me. It made me feel good, knowing that he is feeling safe and comfortable there. And the best comment was when one of the teacher told me: "He is a cool kid"! What a nice compliment! 

Cool, Noam!!! ;-)