Hey Ackley . . .

[Tech stress update: Aaaarrrggghhh -- every time I insert a photo link, ALL the photo links change to that URL. I'm trying to work it out with Blogger, so far with zero success. If you have any clue how to help, PLEASE let me know. In the meantime, the usual photo links to Ofoto are missing. I've added a few photos to the page, and there are two video links to Youtube below. They work. Woo Hoo!]

Did you ever want to just leave it all behind, go off into the mountains to a monastery, and meditate with the monks?  I mean, not that you would actually do it, but did you ever get that feeling? Like Holden Caulfield, who asked his roommate Ackley, “What’s the deal on joining a monastery?” Yeah, I’ve thought about that too. This may shock you, but I sometimes experience a strange sensation known to people with paid employment as “stress”. I know I have it great, and I should be grateful, and I am, tremendously.  But maybe I need a reminder sometimes, when (it seems) I spend all day every day for months on end wiping up poop, apple sauce, milk, and snot while simultaneously reading Thomas the Train, singing Raffi’s Greatest Hits, putting size 6 shoes on size 7 feet, shopping for Mexican food in a Chinese wet market, tap-dancing, and getting sideswiped by Shanghai taxis. Allison has been encouraging me to take a few days off and have a little vacation, all to myself, for the first time since early 2008, before Kai was born. Actually it was more of an ultimatum, or maybe a double-dog-dare. I’ve always said about my wife that with her brains, and my ability to do exactly what she tells me, we are unstoppable -- so I realized she was on the right track.  Casting about for getaways, I came across an obscure Buddhist monastery just a few hours’ bus ride from Shanghai that allows Westerners to stay, eat tofu, meditate, chant a bit, and sleep in a tiny, freezing cell – sort of a Buddhist dude ranch. I exchanged several emails with the one and only English-speaking monk, and somehow I found myself at the end of November in Zhejiang province, on a bamboo-covered hilltop outside of Zaoxi, at Guang Jue Monastery.

There was a lot I liked about this little trip, even the bus ride, where I was wedged into the last seat in the back corner. I had time to do my audio Chinese lessons and eat the leftover turkey sandwich I packed from Thanksgiving the night before. We passed people burning fake money on the side of the road and praying to their dead relatives to mark the beginning of winter, as if saying, “I know you guys are cold; we haven’t forgotten you.” They weren’t just praying to generic “ancestors,” but to people they really knew and still remember and want to appease, as if they can influence daily events. The bus also stopped at what might be the tackiest truckstop this side of I-80 – for some reason they had a model of the Bocca della Verita, the “Mouth of Truth” in Rome, with a picture of Audrey Hepburn from the 1950’s movie “Roman Holiday” taped to the side of a machine into which you could stick your hand and, for 2 yuan, find out the truth about any question you cared to ask -- if you can read Chinese, that is. I’m pretty sure I was the only person who took any notice of Audrey, let alone recognized her.

The Guang Jue monastery was lovely -- small, a little run-down as a monastery should be, and with a tiny, outmanned crew of a few monks, a nun, and a cook striving in their non-striving way to make it all work. The reason this place can welcome Westerners is that they have in residence a transplanted Australian Buddhist, a wonderful character named Zhi Sheng, a.k.a. Malcolm Hunt, who speaks Chinese, has studied and practiced Mahayana Buddhism extensively, and is willing to hang out with tourists, newbies, wannabes, and lookieloos. He’s not exactly a monk himself, having deferred taking his final vows for the time being, which I took to be more a matter of spiritual honesty than fear (I came to learn that Malcolm isn’t completely sold on the whole celibacy-for-life part; he was pretty loquacious, for a demi-monk).  He has a background in psychology, and he’s one of those people who can integrate contemporary Western knowledge with traditional Eastern beliefs and somehow not look ridiculous in an uttarasanga. I liked him a lot, even if I wasn’t sure if five years from now he won’t be in a café in Sydney sipping a latte and remembering his monk phase. Hey, even Buddha passed through innumerable phases, identities, on the path to enlightenment.

So what did I do at the monastery? Nothing, of course! But what does “nothing” mean?  Oh, you Westerners, you’re all alike.  It’s all doing, isn’t it? But OK, I’ll tell you. We woke up at 5 or so to the sound of chanting, and stumbled to the temple to listen to a ceremony involving chanting, prayer, incense, and drums. Periodically, we sat in a small group and talked with Malcolm, meditated, and even, briefly, chanted, although I was never very good at that part. Three times a day we ate really tasty vegetarian food made by a deaf and extraordinarily voluble woman named Pou Pou, who spoke an obscure dialect that only ghosts understand. Aside from that, I wrote a little, studied Chinese a little, walked in the bamboo hills a little, and did, you know, nothing, for three or four days. [Here's a video with some raw footage of Pou Pou, plus a minute or two of a Buddhist ceremony.]

Once I walked past a little cluster of houses and a met an old woman who was bundling sticks together on the side of the road. She implored me to join her, which I did. From somewhere she produced two chairs for us to sit on. She talked at length, about what I have little or no idea. I told her my Chinese was bad and I couldn’t understand her, but I told her in Chinese, which she took as ample evidence that I understood everything she said. I eventually figured out that she wanted me to come to her house, just across the road, and eat something, most likely the gourds she was drying on the lawn, and then pay her, like I would at a restaurant. She appeared to think I was desperately searching for food, whereas the Buddhists were actually stuffing me with delicious meals -- Pou Pou may have been a madwoman, but she was a really good cook. But giant foreigners don’t just wander past this woman's house every day, and she wasn’t going to let one go by without at least taking a shot at making some profit out of it, for cryin’ out loud. I eventually thanked her and disappeared back to the monastery without ever sampling her gourds, but I wish her well, in a Buddhist way.

The hardest thing about the monastery was being away from Allison and Kai and Keegan; even though this was supposed to be my big chance to be by myself for a little while, I missed them terribly, talked with them a couple of times each day, even skyped with them briefly when the electrons aligned.  I felt viscerally what it must be like for Allison to be on the road, and I was sad not to be able to wipe up all the poop, apple sauce, milk, and snot I was missing out on.

The best thing about the monastery was that, when the monks and I weren’t chanting, it was extremely quiet, very unlike Shanghai. Also, the sky was clear and blue in the daytime, and the night sky was filled with so many stars that I could actually recognize a good number of constellations I’d forgotten existed. On my last night there I went alone to the isolated upper temple at roughly 9:30, which at Guang Jue qualifies as the middle of the night, and I sat still in the silence and the pitch dark, and I could hear the universe breathing, and I finally understood why I had come there -- simply to remember to be grateful, grateful for my breath, and for being able to listen to Kai and Keegan breathing as we put them to sleep each night, grateful for being in love with my best friend, grateful for my place in the universe, grateful to be alive in this strange and wonderful world. This isn’t some special knowledge one can only receive in a remote monastery, of course; it’s wisdom that is available in every moment, with every breath, in the everyday course of our lives. The tricky part is just remembering. I headed home rested and happy to see my family, knowing that being with them is exactly where I need and want to be.

Of course, since I am not the Buddha, I got right back to all that doing. The next weekend I ran the half-marathon here in Shanghai, feeling slightly inadequate for just doing the half and not the full. Still polishing my self-acceptance skillz, I guess. Not to be all petty and worry about a little thing like my race time, BUT I CRUSHED TWO HOURS!! (Which for me is good!), and ran the half in 1:54:30, coming within a mere hour or so of the Kenyans who took first, second, and third. Allison brought Kai and Keegan to see my at the finish line [here's 38 seconds' worth of my cheering section], and they ended up watching the full marathon winners finish, and get their medals. I told the boys I won the race because, in a race like this, everyone who can finish is a winner, but Kai knew better. He told me, “No Daddy, you weren’t the winner. The OTHER guys were the winners!” You’ve got a good point there, son. But so do I.

We’re now gearing up for the holidays, and for a three-week school vacation – and, we are freezing, in a city that doesn’t know the meaning of the word “weather-stripping.” But it’s still not quite as cold as the monastery, and at least we’ve got each other. We’re ready for our second winter in Shanghai; I hope you’re keeping warm out there too. I'll be back right after Christmas. Or New Year's?  Happy holidays . . .

Cormorants and Karsts, Bamboo Boats and Bubba -- You Know, the Usual...

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TECH STRESS UPDATE: All the photo links in this post take you to the same set of photos. Every time I change one link, they ALL chage. I have to work it out with blogger, but in the meantime, I've set the links to one good bunch of photos. The video links to Youtube still work; I've ID'ed those. Sorry, and thanks for reading...


A few students at Kai’s school recently came down with Hand Foot and Mouth Disease, which in China means that the government steps in and closes the school for two weeks - no messing around. Everything on my Things To Do List, including blogging, landed on the back burner, as Kai and I became even more constant companions than usual. He went back to school yesterday, and today I’m digging through layers of midden on my desk to tell the story of our journey to Guilin and Yangshuo.

China has 8,033 cities with populations bigger than Houston, and you’ve only heard of two of them. OK, I’m exaggerating, but not by much. Ever heard of Shantou? 11 million. Ningbo? 3 million. Dongguan? 8 million. Houston, the fourth-largest city in the U.S.? 2 million. All of which doesn’t prove much, except that China is really, really good at getting large groups of Chinese people together, and that geography isn’t a big strength for most of us. So anyway, Allison and I had started hearing about a place called Guilin that we’d never heard of before we came to China. People who’d been there said it was beautiful, a great escape from Shanghai, an easy two-hour flight away; we decided to check it out. What we discovered, in Guilin and in nearby Yangshuo, were some of the most beautiful landscapes we’ve ever seen in Asia.

Guilin is on the picturesque Li River, and for many generations it’s been world-famous, all over China. A popular saying here has it that “Guilin’s scenery is the best among all under heaven.” We walked along the riverfront to get a feeling for the city, and made a trip to the Palace of the Ming Prince, where we climbed the 700-meter Solitary Beauty Peak to have a look around; this is not an easy feat with a cranky toddler who’s missed his nap strapped to your belly in an Ergo, but that’s what I did with Keegan, and Allison did with Kai. We figured what the heck, maybe it would improve their moods -- and it worked, at least for a while. From the top, we could see countless karsts, the rocky, jutting mountain formations that stretch in rows for miles in and around Guilin. They look cool enough in the photos, but in person they’re absolutely otherworldly.  The boys were impressed enough to briefly forget they were sleep-deprived; we hurried back to the hotel before they could remember, cutting through a college campus on the way, where they’re apparently still singing Bob Dylan songs on the lawn.

I think it was at dinner that night when I drank this:

I got to the table post-diaper-change with Keegan; Allison had already ordered for us, and it seemed to me she’d gotten a large bottled water and poured me some. That’s what it looked like from above, anyway. Due to some quirk of the light or hallucination, I failed to notice that the restaurant table’s decorative centerpiece was an aquatic habitat for sea-monkeys. I picked up the glass and gulped heartily, quenching my mountain-climber’s thirst; Allison watched me with a brief flicker of horror that immediately gave way to hysterical laughter, as if I were Eddie Murphy, John Belushi, the Marx Brothers, and all three Stooges rolled into one. The boys thought it was funny that Mommy was laughing so hard, and even I got swept up in the ensuing hilarity. Yeah, I get it, it’s funny to watch your husband or your dad knock back an Aquarium-flavored Big Gulp. I just have one question: who the hell puts an Atlantis diorama disguised as a beverage in the middle of every table in a restaurant??? The Guilin Sheraton, that’s who. Be forewarned.

But back to our story.

The highlight of any trip to this region is a boat trip on the Li River from Guilin to Yangshuo, about four hours, 60 kilometers, and a thousand photo ops away. The karst formations are spectacular; many of them have names that sound like yo-yo tricks (or positions from the Kama Sutra) -- Elephant’s Trunk, Moon Water Hill, Hidden Dragon. Along the banks, a fascinating window into Chinese culture opens up, with women washing clothes on the rocks and farmers leading water buffalo through fields, while boats cruise past filled with a few westerners like us, and swarms of domestic Chinese tourists, snapping photos like mad. Riverside markets have cropped up to lure boats to the shores, merchants like syrens calling to the boats (you’re never far from a “silk factory tour” in China). Always the collision of ancient and modern here, with a healthy dose of voyeurism thrown in. We are as much or more the observed as the observers; people can never get enough pictures of Kai and Keegan, and they won’t hesitate to scoop the boys up for a pinch, a cuddle, a photo shoot. Sometimes the boys decide to befriend a particular fan, as they did on this trip with a guide they christened “Panda Man” because he gave everyone panda stickers. But Keegan will often say “Bu yao, bu yao!” (“Don’t want, don’t want!”) And Kai will run away from “the pinchy ladies” at times -- it depends on their moods, and there are moments when they enjoy the attention. (I wish they could compare notes with surviving Beatles Paul and Ringo, but the logistics of that are a nightmare).   It’s amazing to see whole boatloads of people light up, wave, and shout “Hello” (an English word!) at the mere sight of the boys. I mean, I know they’re cute, but wow.

Waiting for us at the end of the river cruise was the town of Yangshuo, and we were lucky enough to have booked a room at the idyllic Yangshuo Mountain Retreat, with a stunning view of the river and surrounding, karst-studded countryside. The night we arrived, we checked out the big cultural attraction in town, a light and water show called Liu Sanjie, [VIDEO] or “Impression.” It’s designed by the same guy who did the opening and closing ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics, and it was amazing -- a cast of 600 plus, none of them with Equity cards, help to create incredible visual effects that make the water show at the Bellagio in Vegas look like, well, the centerpiece on my table at the Guilin Sheraton. It does not translate adequately on video, but in person, it was a knockout show.

Most of our time here, though, was spent out in nature. We took the boys on a bike ride through some small villages to a mountain formation called Moon Hill, which we hiked, rather slowly, to see more sweeping views from the top. We walked out onto the islands in the river across from our hotel, literally stepping across the flatboats in our path as they moored on rocks before dropping down to the next section of river. (Here's a pretty representative 5-minute video.) We came across wedding photo shoots and grazing cows. We took a motorized “bamboo” boat (actually made from PVC piping) up and down the Li for a duck’s-eye view, and had our pictures taken while impersonating cormorant fishermen.  (One of the cormorants took such a liking to Kai that he tried to clip a lock of his hair!  Hey, get in line, cormorant, behind the pinchy ladies on the boat.) Cormorant fishing? [VIDEO]  Oh, that was another boat trip we took, by the way -- we followed along to watch some men on rafts who use birds -- cormorants -- to catch fish. The men tie the birds to their boats, close their throats partway, and let them do their thing, which is gobbling fish. But then they take the fish out of the cormorants’ mouths, letting them have every seventh fish so they’ll stay interested in working.  A bizarre practice, no doubt; does it sound a bit like the tax system?

Keegan and Kai asked us several times on the trip why we were there; we told them we just like to travel. They asked, as 2- and 3-year-olds are wont to do, “Why? Why do we like to travel?” We told them we want to have adventures, see new things, meet new people, try new foods, play, have fun. That sounded OK to them, as long as some of the new foods could be cookies. When we asked what their favorite part of the trip was, Kai said, “The plane!” Just tonight, in fact, Keegan told me he wanted to go back on “our airplane.” The boys love planes; they’re also fascinated by what they call “the big round moon.”  They’re not usually out at night, but on this trip there were a few times when we got home late and the boys noticed that the big round moon (which really was full) was “following us.” I remembered being in the car as a kid and thinking the very same thing; it’s somehow inexpressibly sweet for me to see my sons wandering into the same puzzles I walked through, am still walking through, as we all roll around on the Earth, spinning alongside the big round moon. If we figure out any of the answers, I’ll let you know; you be sure to do the same.

When you’re slip-sliding over the zillion and six photos, just remember that we cut more than 75% of them, and be grateful.

A brief note on Thanksgiving:

Halloween is an extremely exportable holiday, especially to a country that loves children, and marketing, as much as China does.

Thanksgiving, though, is a non-starter here -- it must seem from the outside like some bizarre, quasi-religious, hyper-nationalistic ritual, celebrating our cultural heroes the Puritans(!) pulling a fast one on those suckers the Wampanoag Indians. Of course, we know Thanksgiving is really the best of holidays, focusing as it does on getting together with family and friends, getting high on tryptophan, and being grateful for all the beauty that life has to offer (football and being able to open your trousers on the couch included).

We’re buying our turkey from a man named Bubba again this year, something I don’t recommend if you’re standing on a street corner in Little Rock or Philly, but here it’s actually safer than the alternatives. I’m not making my famous cranberry sauce, though -- I just couldn’t bring myself to spend 130 RMB, about 21 bucks, on a little bag of frozen berries. If you want to make a fortune, line your clothing with cranberries, fly to Shanghai, and open a stand.


Happy Thanksgiving! I truly wish I could sit down at the table with you, all of you. But we'd run out of turkey, and Bubba only has so much.

Phu Quoc Island, Viet Nam

My first plane ride, at the age of 13, was from Chicago to Daytona Beach for a trip I won as a big-time, hotshot paperboy.  Before that, all my major travelling had been done while wedged between my sisters in the back of the old brown station wagon on the way to Mama Rae’s in Savannah, complete with epic games of I Spy, one of us occasionally throwing up out the rear window, and yes, that all-time car-trip classic, peeing in a bottle; my dad did not like to stop. But that was all in another world when Clark Bars cost a dime and flying was for the birds. One of the main reasons that Allison and I wanted to come to China was the opportunity for international travel with the boys. It’s true that Kai and Keegan have passports that look like stamp collections, but we haven’t yet arrived at the stage where we can take them on cultural tours to the temples of Cambodia or the baseball stadiums of Japan. At this point their favorite vacations involve a lot of sand, whether it’s in New Jersey, Hawaii, Hong Kong or Phuket. So when we chose to take our National Day Holiday (A week off for the whole country of China! And so, a terrible time to travel in China!) on the island of Phu Quoc in Viet Nam, it had everything to do with nothing – there’s not much to do beyond goofing around in the room and going between the beach (photos), the pool (photos), the beach (video, and it only sounds like a hurricane), the pool (video, including a live performance of the days-of-the-week song), the restaurant, the beach, the night market, and the pool. OK, we did fit in a hike to a waterfall in a rainstorm. And since we were staying on the East side of the island, we made the epic journey to the West side, including some kayak action and some fishing. But this was not quite adventure travel. Instead, it was awesome family bonding time. The boys thrive on having all four of us together 24/7 for a week or more, and for that matter so do Allison and I. 

We were fortunate to have our friends from Shanghai, Patricia and Richard, and their kids Raphael and Isaac, also make the trip, so their boys and our boys could have regular playdates at the pool to mix it up a bit (you’ll see them in the photos, and here we are at the airport on our bleary-eyed way). We had plenty of companionable neighbors at our little resort too, but really, nobody in our family has any trouble being stuck together on an island for long periods of time, so we’re lucky that way.

Viet Nam, when not participating in a major war against an imperial power (France, say, or China, or, um, the United States), is a lovely country, well worth visiting, and Allison and I have had terrific trips in the past to Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta, and to Hanoi and Ha Long Bay. Phu Quoc, which is just off the Cambodian coast, closer to Phnom Penh and Angkor Wat than it is to Ho Chi Minh, is a potential Phuket in the making, with an International Airport due to open in 2014 and change everything. For now, it’s still pretty sleepy, the majority of its roads unpaved, though there have been sporadic, sometimes bizarre attempts to lure tourists, as my visit to 1000 Stars Resort bears out. I talked with one American guy, a hotelier who’s lived on Phu Quoc nearly 20 years and is married to a Vietnamese woman, who said that even ten years ago we couldn’t have brought our kids, given the sanitary conditions at the time. Phu Quoc now has Western style restaurants and resorts alongside the squid-on-a-stick roadside stands, and the mix is a fun one. Our favorite restaurant at the night market was a place called “Cat Food.” I don’t think they were being ironic, but I’m still not sure. The waitresses here loved Kai and Keegan so much that they brought them free sea urchin, and the boys actually tried it.  They didn’t swallow it, mind you, but points for trying, boys.

Pho Quoc also makes a great place to celebrate your 2^nd birthday, if you’re lookin’. Keegan’s party lasted a little over two weeks, stretching from Thomas the Train Cupcake Making on September 29^th, so he could share them at his kindy, to present-opening and a rollicking party in Viet Nam on the actual day, October 5^th, to a full-on birthday bash on October 15^th, once we (and the rest of our neighborhood) were back in Shanghai. I’ll say this about Keegan; he knows how to party. Kids love cupcakes. Kids love trains. To put them together is pure genius. It’s science.

A note on piñata-related violence, however: if your child has little or no conception of the difference between animate and inanimate objects, seeing his usually sweet and loving mother bash the tar out of a train can be disconcerting. This is especially true if the train is a popular anthropomorphized Tank Engine the child has been encouraged to think fondly of. In the SH party video you can see Keegan plaintively asking, “Why did you hit the train, Mommy?”

We’re back home in the ’Hai now, where our current big adventure is potty training. Kai is thrilled to be wearing big-boy pants, and has been making terrific progress with the numbers ranging from 1 to 2, but we still have many rivers to cross, as the legendary Jamaican potty-trainer Jimmy Cliff said.   I don’t think many of you have the stomach for more detail than that, so I will show mercy.  I will tell you that Keegan, who often tries to do whatever his big brother is doing, has also been sitting on the potty and giving it the ol’ preschool try. In little glimmers, we have started to dream a world beyond diapers (cue J. Lennon singing “Imagine”). But all great human accomplishments – air flight, indoor plumbing, peace with Viet Nam, Elmo underpants – were just dreams once, before we made them real.

This is your Shanghai correspondent, livin’ the dream, signing off.

One Year In -- Real Mommy vs. Computer Mommy

We just set the record for surviving the longest business trip in the history of humankind – OK, maybe it was just the history of our family, but it felt like a loooong time.  Allison was in Australia for 15 days; that’s 15 bedtimes, 45 meals, roughly 120 diapers, and 723 bumpies, more or less.

They’ve had entire wars that take only 6 days.

It’s probably harder on Allison than on any of us boys. She’s criss-crossing the continent from Perth to Hobart to Brisbane and all points in between, eating nothing but meat pies, wrestling crocodiles, dodging kangaroos and platypi and god knows what other exotic creatures that populate the Antipodes, while giving dozens of training sessions, keeping up with her everyday job as well, and somehow managing to squeeze in regular skype calls to us back in Shanghai. (I’m not sure if I mentioned that I married well. Did I mention it?) Allison has the long flights and the grinding workload, while I’m at home with the wipes, trying to explain to Kai and Keegan about time zones, the rotation of the earth, how long it is until next Sunday, and why we’re having dinner with Computer Mommy again.  Once Kai actually said, “I don’t want computer Mommy, I want real Mommy!”  Generally they like seeing her on skype, though, especially if she’s at an airport.  Then they get to see the “Big White Airplanes,” which became an obsession for them while Mommy was away.  Keegan would see them in the sky (when they were actually there and when they weren’t), reach up and reel them in, because Mommy was on them. Both boys talked about planes constantly, and we read and reread Richard Scarry’s “A Day at the Airport” until I had to retape the spine. Sometimes Allison would skype with us from a hotel room and the boys would choreograph her in short vignettes about jumping on the bed and being tickled. We had several meals with Mommy at the table on my laptop and the boys trying to get her to taste a bite of their yogurt or mac and cheese through the screen.

A word about skype, by the way – it is the single greatest invention since fire, and if you’re not using it, put down your stone tools, move out of your cave in Lascaux and give it a try. Seriously, if you ever watched the Jetsons and said, “yeah, right,” skype is for you – it’s like something from the Jetsons.  Free video conferencing worldwide, for no money, without paying.  Also, it is FREE.  (Yeah, you can pay for some stuff if you want to, but the video conferencing is free.) What are you waiting for?  You are sitting at a computer, right? Just relax, don’t fight it, click on this, and then send me your skype name. You’ll feel so peaceful . . .

But back to the boys . . . yes, they really missed their mommy, but we also had some very sweet, cozy bonding time, playing with our Thomas the Train set, turning into monkeys and stegosauruses together,  making banana bread, singing bedtime songs . . .  At one point Allison and I had seriously thought about my flying down to meet her for part of this Australia trip, and having Grammy or another family member be here with the boys.  I’m now sure we did the right thing in having me stay here, because the boys have needed some help adjusting to going to school. Kai goes to preschool in the mornings now, and even Keegan goes for three hours, three days a week.  They both seem to be taking to it quite well, but there are mornings when they don’t really see the wisdom of changing out of their pajamas.  Kai asked me every day for the first couple of weeks, “Is this a school day, Daddy?”, and one day when I said yes, he asked, “Why, Daddy? Why do we GO to school?  Why school all the days now?”  That was an interesting discussion.  The boys are used to variety. For as long as they remember, I’ve been mixing it up – museum day, zoo day, park day, shopping day, etc. Kai was bummed that I seemed to have run out of tricks.  So we’re still getting used to the idea.  One of our strategies is having them pick out their own clothes for the next day, so we can talk about what’s coming. And more and more, we’re trying to have them do things by themselves, like breaking their own eggs, putting on their shoes, dressing themselves.  We have varying degrees of success of course, and it's messier and slower, but it’s fascinating to watch them try to deal with these puzzles.  Let’s say you’re a bright, imaginative almost-2 year old, or a 3 year old, and you don’t have a lot of experience putting on clothes solo.  Somebody hands you a shirt.  Where do you start? Why not put the neck part straight onto your neck? Only an idiot would put the big belly part over their head first, right?  Naturally we break down the steps a bit more than this, but still, seeing them figure these things out, and realizing that we all somehow figured them out so long ago that we don’t even know we did it, is an interesting process.

Allison has been back a week now and the boys, and all of us, are in a good rhythm.  I don’t know if they’ve forgotten that she was away for two weeks, but they’re happy.  Me, I’m over the moon, and grateful to have my wife and my best friend back. Seriously, I do not have any idea how single parents do it, day in and day out, year in and year out. Wow, just wow.  If you know a single mom or a single dad, and you probably do, go over to her or his house, drop off a delicious, homemade lasagna, sheetpan-sized, and maybe a massage gift certificate or two. Then get the hell out of there before they hand you a diaper.

Just a couple of nights ago at dinner, Allison and I realized that it was one year to the day since we came to Shanghai. On a mid-September night last year, we arrived naive, bleary-eyed, and strung out on airline wonton noodles, in the lobby of the Somerset Xu Hui serviced apartments, with a mound of luggage and two carseats chock full of comatose babies. The smaller of the bundles couldn’t even walk or talk at the time; now he corrects his mother’s pronunciation of “stygimoloch”.  Keegan has now spent half his life in China, and Kai is well on his way.  We’ve come a long way together, and I am grateful every day for my family, and the great adventures life is taking us on.

Oh, I almost forgot to say “Zhong Qiu Jie Kuai Le” to everybody!  Yeah, it’s Mid-Autumn Festival once again; I’ve never understood how it could be mid-Autumn before Autumn officially starts, but I guess it’s different when you count by the moon.  Which reminds me, we have plenty of extra moon cakes around the house, so feel free to stop by, bean-paste lovers!  Come on, you know you want one . . .

Photo and Video Lovers’ Corner

Not too many links this post, so I’m lumping them together to make the pile seem bigger. But hey, quality over quantity: here’s a short youtube video of me and the boys going around town on the weekends – we were making snippets on the iphone to send to Allison on the road.  The giant blue guy in the park is Hai Bao, the ubiquitous symbol of Shanghai Expo 2010 (Gone but not forgotten -- and not even really gone! Still hanging around in every park and shopping mall in Shanghai! Long may he wave!); at Changfeng, he's dressed in various national costumes, so that's supposed to be an Indian dhoti on the one where Keegan is sitting on his arm, not a diaper. There are also a few pics of the boys getting slick new haircuts for school; Keegan sporting his new backpack with Mommy; Kai in his first class photo; Keegan lovin’ up on a penguin in Changfeng Park (no arrests were made); and some of Allison’s shots of Melbourne, included as evidence that Australia actually turns out to be highly civilized, despite what you may have heard from Crocodile Dundee.

Coming to America

Door to door, it was 32 hours from our house in Shanghai to Turk and Barbara’s place in Delaware: drive to Pudong, 12-hour flight to LA, 4 hours in LAX, red-eye to DC, rent a battleship (plenty of luggage and car seats), stop at Nordstrom’s (Hey, there was a sale! And we knew the boys would fall asleep as soon as we got in the car. Of course, we were wrong). Then the drive to Delaware, or as I call it, Delawhere? The boys love airplanes with a burning white-hot intensity, and they did a fantastic job on the trip, but maybe, say, 24 hours would be enough.

In fairness to Delawhere?, it wasn’t really the point.  The point was to be with family, and on the beach, and in this regard Lewes Delaware and environs served brilliantly. Turk and Barbara have a beautiful new place, designed and handsomely appointed by Peter Guida, big enough to absorb scads of cousins -- and they were gracious hosts. The beaches at Cape Henlopen and Rehoboth have fewer rocks and more tickly crabs than New Jersey -- I even wrote some advertising copy for Delaware, on spec, which they can use if they like -- “Delaware! It’s not as bad as New Jersey.”  (Come on New Jersey, you know we love you . . . how could we not? There is no other state I’d rather drive through.) Kai and Keegan just live to play in the sand, and they adore their cousins, so the combination is unbeatable. We tried to get some organized photos at Cape Henlopen, some family shots, group shots, etc. Here’s a bootleg behind-the-music video of the shoot.)  I’m not sure if the stronger Christmas card candidates for Grammy and Poppy come from the whole-family-massed-on-the-shore series above, or the pile-on-Poppy’s Jeep collection. Tough call; feel free to cast your vote. (Yes, you can drive on the beach in Delaware, as long as you pretend you’re shore fishing.)  My favorite shots are probably just the boys running around, climbing on castles, splashing, hunting for crabs, dolphin-spotting, and generally goofing off at the beach.

One crazy day, we decided to take the ferry from Lewes to Cape May to see Betsy, Joe and JP.  The four of us, plus Liz, Lindsey, and Natalie, drove on early in the morning, and off in the afternoon, poorer in rest but richer in experience -- 8 hours door-to-door for 32 minutes on the beach. We brought a little gift, a race car ramp in a gift bag, for JP, who is a year or so older than Kai. Betsy nudged him to thank us when we gave it to him, and JP said, “Thank you, but I already have it, and you should have wrapped it.” (Sorry Betsy, I know you were mortified, but believe me, we understand! We’ll try to do better next time, JP.) Well, at least we got to say hello . . . next year, we’ll stay overnight. Brace yourself, Aunt Margot.

Another highlight was driving to Philadelphia on the night of July 28th to see the Reigning World Champion San Francisco Giants take on the Philadelphia Phillies, who are also a professional baseball team, although I am not sure what a Philly is. Turk and I had gotten great seats months ahead, and we got to watch Big-Time TimmyJim Lincecum beat the Phils 4-1. Boyd and Meghan and their four wonderful kids, Mack, Bridget, Jeb and Hill, big Phillies fan all, were on the deck above us, and we visited back and forth. I wore my Giants cap, taking my life into my hands among the fan-base that famously threw snowballs at Santa Claus one Christmas during an Eagles game (Turk is proud to say he was actually there). In the top of the second, Pablo Sandoval belted an opposite-field homer inside the left-field pole, and I stood and cheered in naive excitement. Two or three thousand people turned to glower at me, and I quietly sat down and re-corked my champagne. But they did let me live. Thank you, Philadelphia! These people take their sports seriously.  On the way home, Hill, who is five, said earnestly, “I bet the Philly Phanatic is crying right now.” Sorry, Hill. But ever since that night, the Phillies are crushing all comers, and the Giants are struggling. The roller coaster of the baseball season still has a ways to go, and these two teams may meet again. If they do, I’ll be watching from the safety of Shanghai.

After a week or so of this summer idyll, Allison and I did something we haven’t done for well over three years -- we went away together, without the boys, leaving them with Grammy and Poppy, Aunt Liz and Uncle Peter, Lindsey and Natalie, while we went gallivanting around New York City (well, we did park in New Jersey). New York City, if you haven’t heard of it, is the best city in the world, and the worst city in the world, in the same place, at the same time, and the trick is to stay on its good side, which has nothing to do with east and west. We pretty much managed to pull off the trick, which involved wandering through SoHo and the Village, running in the park, hitting some museums and Broadway shows, and visiting with New York friends like Patrick, Rob, and Martha, Joe and Loretta (forgot to take pics, dammit!).  Starved for English-language culture in Shanghai, we splurged on shows. Here are the capsule reviews:

The Winter’s Tale (by the Royal Shakespeare Company, popping over from London), at the Park Ave. Armory, b/c Lincoln Center is being vacuumed): Smokin’. Dynamite.  See anything they do.  Goofy at times, big and bold, worth it. (Spoiler alert -- I get it now! Paulina had Hermione stashed in the back room for 16 years!  The statue bit was just a gag!) Or as Patrick said, “late-career romance crap.”  Loved this.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying: Very strong revival, although I suspect Daniel Radcliffe’s film career may have influenced his hiring. (He can act, he can dance, he can’t really sing. But hey, the crowd adored him.) John Larroquette was hysterical. Big bonus: old friend and B.U. classmate Ellen Harvey was in the show, and she is terrific in it. If you know Ellen, or even if you don’t, check her out on ellenharvey.net.   We had a little visit with her afterwards -- great to see Ellen strutting her stuff on Broadway!

Billy Elliot: A wonderful movie, an OK musical. It has some strong moments (i.e. “Individuality”), but the show of the year in 2009 looks a bit tired in 2011.

Amateur Night at the Apollo: Yes, as seen on TV. This show is silly, sweet, and so much fun -- by all means, go see it! Every Wednesday night. Harlem looks better than I’ve ever seen it, too. Thanks to Bill?

Harlem Gospel Choir, the Gospel Brunch at B.B. King’s club on Times Square: These guys are high energy, tight, and sounded great. The sausage and grits were plentiful. A highlight: Allison and Patrick pushed me up on the stage to LIE and pretend it was my birthday, so I (along with 8 other “birthday boys and girls” and a tableful of tourists from Osaka), could rock out to “Celebrate” by Kool and the Gang. Both acutely embarrassing and extremely fun. Burn the negatives, people.

New York being New York, the hits just kept on comin’. We went the Met, and MOMA too. We rode the Staten Island Ferry across the harbor with Raja, who came down from Boston for a day, especially to see Allison. We strolled through Central Park and dined at the Boat House, where Carrie and Mr. Big fell in. (The Bolivar pics are especially for you, Marija!) We ate bagels, pizza, street dogs at The Umbrella Room, and some more upscale cuisine, too -- though I think our favorite meal was grilled steak on Martha and Rob’s patio overlooking the city, with the whole family. Why I love Martha: we’d brought a box of pastries form Little Italy, and Martha said, “I hate Italian pastries! I’ll get more wine.”  This of course obligated me to eat more pastries. You get no BS with Martha.  Thank your lucky stars, Mr. Keefe. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Delaware, the boys were busy with Grammy in the kitchen, Farmer Poppy in the garden, and Aunt Liz, Uncle Peter, Lindsey and Natalie on the beach. We were able to enjoy NYC only because they were in good hands -- we still missed the boys tremendously, and we called and skyped with them often, but we knew they would be OK, and we owe a great debt to our family for making our New York adventure possible.

After a few more days on the beach, we left our shampoo in the shower, our shoes under the bed, said so long to Delaware, and headed off to Chicago. New York to me is a glamorous star; Chicago is an old friend I’m happy to see. Allison also lived there for more than a decade, so it’s an important family-and-friends stop for us. We stayed next to the John Hancock building, and I love seeing the boys look up at it in wonder.  It was a treat seeing BJ, our dear friend (and the woman who married us!) at the Children’s Museum on Navy Pier -- Keegan gets her name confused with DJ Lance of Yo Gabba Gabba fame and calls her BJ Lance, but he loves them both. Along with my brother Jonathan, my sister Lisa, brother-in-law Charlie, and their kids Noah and Sam, we took the boys to the Field Museum. It’s Chicago’s dinosaur heaven, but we also appreciated their special exhibitions on whales and horses. (By the way, Allison and the boys are inside the heart of a whale in a few of the pictures -- we’ve had some other, more troubling theories put forth as to what body part that might be.) An epic walk from the Field to Buckingham Fountain, the Millennium Park Bean, the Daley Center, and the underside of Marilyn Monroe, turned most of us into the zombies you see lying on the ground at the concert in Grant Park later.  The next morning, our appetite for classical music revived, we were treated to a sidewalk show by my nephew Noah, the noted violinist. We cruised the Chicago River with the Kai and Keegan, whose passions in life include boats and free cookies, so they loved it; Allison and I appreciated the spectacular architecture -- OK, and the free cookies. We wanted to take them on the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier, but Kai and Keegan at this point in their lives are, um, risk-averse (which is an awesome trait, to a parent), so we rode the merry-go-round instead, and that was enough to thrill and exhaust them.  Allison and I traded off going out in the evenings a couple of times, so she was able to get in some girlfriend bonding-time (at least that’s what she says she did, and she does have these photos). We also got to see our friends Nora and Matthew and their kids Sophie, Eli, and Theo, while we ran around the Lincoln Park Zoo (we need to take more pics of grown-ups now and then, but I do love the hatching-from-eggs series). And we stopped off at the Rainforest Cafe for a final US supper with my dear friend (since third grade!) Lisa, complete with animatronic alligators and a giftshop bigger than most entire restaurants. I love this country!

As Allison so aptly said, the trip was great, but it wasn’t restful. We need a vacation to recover, especially form the jet-lag.  Here we are on the way home, trying to lull the boys into a trance with some videos of Dinosaur Train. It didn’t work. This time it was Chicago-Shanghai nonstop, only 24 hours door-to-door, but somehow it felt longer. The boys didn’t want to sleep for the first 15 hours or so; it made me miss red-eyes. But now we’ve been back in China for almost a week, we’re settling into a good rhythm, and the boys are each starting a little dollop of preschool, something I’ll blog about next time (this blog is already as long as the trip! If anyone actually makes it through all the links, you’ll trigger a golden-ticket coded message and win a prize Willie Wonka would be proud of).  Thanks to everyone we saw on our visit to the US, and to those we didn’t get to meet up with, I’m terribly sorry, and I hope we can do better next time, because we will be back. That’s a fine country you have there.