Right after the holidays, and right before the holidays . . .

The holidays are in the rearview, but one advantage of living in China is that there’s another set right around the corner.  Chinese New Year is advancing at light speed – Rabbit Year is disappearing down the bunny hole, and Dragon Year is roaring in.  CNY, as it’s generally called, is the loudest event in the history of planet Earth, 42% louder than the meteor impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, according to the Bureau of Invented Statistics, and much louder than even the worst toddler tantrum in the quietest Michelin three-star restaurant you could imagine. It’s been claimed that the Great Wall of China is the only manmade object visible from space; despite the tenacity of this myth, it’s completely false. However, if there are any Moon-men, or Martians, or Venutians, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they called the cops and asked China to turn it down a bit on CNY.

Our kids like this holiday so much that we are fleeing the country, to Thailand, to get away from the noise.  That’s only part of the reason, though. We are also freezing, and desperate to get closer to the equator, so we said Phuket, let’s just go (ouch – I am really sorry, but puns warm me up).  Years ago, the government of China supposedly decreed that all buildings north of the Yangtze River must have heating and insulation, while those south of the Yangtze didn’t need it. That’s just fine if you live in Guangzhou or Hainan, or in Hong Kong, which is on the same latitude as Havana. But Shanghai is right on the banks of the Yangtze (part of it is actually in the river itself), and at its northernmost point, where it enters the Pacific – so it doesn’t really work for us. (Just ask anyone who’s ever been in an ice storm in, say, Northern Virginia, if they need heaters down there in the deep South.) This doesn’t mean we don’t have heaters – we do, it’s just that they’re an afterthought, and they work as well as our vacuum cleaner, which is to say, they suck. Actually, technically, they blow, but you get the idea. This is the real reason we’re going to Thailand – that, and the Thais celebrate their Songkran, or New Year’s, in April, God bless ‘em.

So what were we talking about?  Oh yeah, the holidays. They were wonderful – Santa Claus been bery bery good to us, really.  The Shanghainese get into Christmas about the way that people in Dallas get into CNY, which is to say that they’ve heard of it, and they know that it’s sometime around now, isn’t it? And the malls and hotels love to decorate, even if they’re a little unclear on the concept, i.e., you might see Santa Claus riding on a reindeer, or wearing a green beard. A large number of the expats celebrate the holidays by leaving for France or Norway or Australia, so Green Valley became a lightly populated little enclave of holiday revelers.  Christmas Day was mostly about the four of us playing with Kai and Keegan’s new toys, and the boxes they came in. This was actually terrific; Kai and Keegan are completely in the age of wonder, and they really do hear the reindeer on the roof.  They love everything about Christmas, maybe the music more than anything else – oh my dear Lord, it’s now late January and we are still singing “Drummer Boy” and “Hark the Herald Angels” on request as bedtime songs. Keegan corrects me if I mess up the lyrics to “You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch,” and that song is hard! Still, we did miss our families, and we thanked God for the umpteenth time for Skype – it’s not perfect, but it’s still really, really good.

We had a little party for stragglers, friends and neighbors on Boxing Day, December 26^th, largely as an excuse to make a lot of cookies, and for Kai and Keegan to show off their flashy new Ikea play kitchen. But Allison and I have also decided that next year, we too will travel for at least part of the holiday (the boys have three weeks off of school). We’ve now signed up for Homeexchange.com to cast about for possibilities; please let us know if you are interested, or have brilliant ideas, or own a branch of Club Med, or if you just never use your extra house. The Big List of Maybes currently includes the Philippines, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, and your place. Better hurry, only 342 shopping days until Christmas . . .

Post-scriptum: 
A word about photos and tech stress – now with photos! 

We here at Shanghai Daddy continue to have unresolved tech issues with Blogger, making it extra-challenging to post photo links for the time being. However, if I were to go to press without photos of the boys, there would to a revolution among the masses -- Google and Wikipedia would go dark, Congress would tremble, and SOPA would be lost! Oh, did that already happen? Never mind. Anyway, my temporary solution is to pepper this post with a few photos to keep the wolves at bay (and here's a single link to a present-opening jamboree on Youtube, which is working, for the diehards). After Thailand, I hope to defeat the techno-demons -- those windmills are going down, baby!  


Did I mention the boys had a three-week school vacation? What an awesome opportunity for Daddy time with the boys! Yeah, that's how I tried to frame it. It actually worked, too.  So once we finished boogeying at the school Christmas party,

we had a Shanghai staycation, lots of visits to museums, holiday displays, the zoo (here's Keegan in the cage with his pal Alexandria, and with his spirit animal the gorilla) :

I'm also gratuitously including this shot of a bear and a fluffy little kitty cat hanging out together, just because it says so much about the Shanghai Zoo:

One day we went with Mommy to the tallest building in Shanghai, the World Financial Tower, and had lunch in the highest (and maybe the highest-priced?) hotel snack shop on Earth so we could admire the view. We forgot the camera, so I just have some cell phone silhouettes, but you can get the idea of the background, anyway:

Sometimes, we just kicked it at the ranch, inventing recipes in our new play kitchen, conveniently located in an actual kitchen,

or building the world's most collapsable gingerbread house (yes, those are giant lego blocks inside, DO NOT ask),

or healing the sick with our new doctor kit:

 Both boys are now practicing medicine, by the way; there are a few licensing hurdles, but it's just a matter of time.


Hope this finds you all well, and happy. Let me know how you're doing. Happy Year of the Dragon to everyone!