We can’t stay here, we got to bounce...

Singapore Harbor

Feeding the fish with Justin and the girls

Eating the fish with Daddy in Nanjing

Nanjing
Our family travel plans are often determined by waiting to see where Allison has a business meeting, then going there to hang with her for a few days. That’s the strategy that led us to Nanjing, and it worked brilliantly. Nanjing, formerly known in the West as Nanking, is a small town of about 8 million that used to be the capitol of China, as recently as 1949. It took a mere hour and 7 minutes to get there from Shanghai on the new bullet train, or about as long as it takes Kai and Keegan to eat three boxes of free cookies (their own, plus Daddy’s. Yeah, it seemed harmless at the time.) Ever since Japan, we’ve had a thing for bullet trains, and China now has one that goes from Shanghai to Beijing -- China’s version of New York to D.C. -- in 8 hours, and stops in Nanjing.

I guess in this imperfect analogy that Nanjing would be Philadelphia, but without the cheesesteaks or the whole throwing-snowballs-at-Santa-Claus thing. Nanjing’s been around a lot longer than Philly though, 2,500 years or so. It’s a much more historic city and a much more, well, Chinese city than Shanghai, which doesn’t even have dry paint yet. Nanjing has had plenty of time for a lot of famous people to be buried there, and they tend not to be the Janis Joplin, just-scatter-my-ashes-and-throw-a-big-party type. No, these guys like to leave a little something for people to remember them by, like the Ming Xiaoling, the tomb of a guy named Zhu Yuanzhang. Zhu who, you ask? Well, only just the founder of the Ming Dynasty, that’s all! Oh yeah, him, right?

Kai and Keegan loved this guy’s tomb, because he thoughtfully included a long road lined with giant stone animal statues -- lions, camels, elephants and such, that were each carved from a single block of stone, and are very climbable, especially if you can get your dad to give you a boost. As usual, the boys themselves became a major tourist attraction as well -- the Chinese public never seems to tire of taking pictures of our kids. All I can say is, you people had better thank God for digital. I know we do.

I think it would be easy to stay in terrific shape in Nanjing because you have to climb pretty much everything, usually up giant stone steps, often with a toddler or two strapped to you. Enormous things we climbed in Nanjing include (but are not limited to) Lingu Temple and Pagoda;

 the old city wall (70% of which is still in tact);

 the Zhonghuamen or Central Gate of the wall;

 and the biggest and baddest of them all, the Tomb of Sun Yat Sen.

 Yeah, like I said, they are big on tombs in this town. Big on big tombs. Strangely for a guy who kicked out the emperors and brought a modern democratic government of sorts to China for about 15 minutes, Dr. Sun had no apparent problem keeping up with the emperors in the monument-building department. [Note to future Ratner biographers -- this place would be swell as a model for my own tomb, but I want a decent restaurant at the top, or a Starbucks at the very least. The sausage-on-a-stick vendors were not working for us. But I would like to extend a thank you and shoutout to the lady who gave the boys the complimentary packets of gelatinous goo and the “powered milk tablets,” whatever they were.]

By accident (miscommunication with the taxi driver -- huh, that never happens!), we also visited the Presidential Palace (yeah, they’ve got one of those, too, although disused). This was so crowded it felt like there was a sale on fish paste at Walmart, so we skipped much of it, but they did have a lovely garden.

 We also took a fun boat trip on the Qinhuai River (a tributary of the Yangtze),

 nearby the lovely Confucius Temple.

 And we went on another boat trip on Xuanwu lake, where I strongly suspected some of the pilots were underaged workers.

But not all of them.

Nanjing was a great place for us to visit; it’s a big, modern city, but it thankfully lacks some of the maniacal hustle of Shanghai. It’s alive, but steeped in history. It’s got a lot of open green space, which we really crave. And we were shocked to realize that with the bullet train, it’s actually closer than the other side of Shanghai when the traffic is bad, which is most of the time.  Sign me up for the testimonial -- It’s hot, it’s happenin’, it’s Nanjing, baby!

Singapore

Our other trip this past month had nothing to do with Allison’s business travel. It had a lot to do with the fact that our friends Justin and Sharon, and their twin daughters Edie and Ilse, moved to Singapore last year. We wanted to visit them, and we wanted to check out Singapore with the boys because it has a lot of kid-friendly attractions (and I’m not just talking about the casino). Singapore is a tiny Island off the coast of Malaysia that’s halfway between India and China, and that’s why it became so historically significant. When Malaya ( now Malaysia) threw off the shackles of British colonialism (have I ever mentioned that I’m Irish?), Singapore decided to go its own way and became an independent country -- though as Kai says, “it’s only one city big.” (My 3-year-old son’s geography, by the way, is better that yours. It’s not bragging if you can back it up.) Singapore has spent the last half-century or more kicking the world’s butt economically, and it’s not slowing down. We hadn’t been there for 5 years, and the city has changed quite a bit. The harbor looks great, and Singapore feels very, very first-world.

We checked out Singapore’s famous Zoo and fed some elephants with Justin and the girls.

Look out below. I'm not kidding. Those are orangutangs you're walking under.

Kai chatting up a lemur. He got a number.

Thanks to Justin, who is a regular, we also discovered the zoo includes a water park that is toddler heaven -- wow, I’d love to have that place in my back yard.

 We also rode a ferris wheel that makes the one in Shanghai seem like the one I rode in the Jewel parking lot back in 1970something (come to think of it, maybe it actually is the same one!). But the Singapore Flyer, the highest in the world, was a sweet ride.

 If Nanjing was all about climbing, Singapore was all about shwooshing -- is that a real word? It is now. We shwooshed on ferris wheels, in water parks,

and on cable cars,

 We shwooshed into glamorous rooftop bars overlooking the city.

 We shwooshed to the beach on Sentosa Island where I met an octopus, and there were some sparks, but I’m a married man and I didn’t do anything I can’t tell my wife about.

He was cute though, I admit it.

That's a giant Mer-lion in the background.  That guy was so jealous.


Bounce with me, baby

We’re home in Shanghai now, enjoying some rare and wonderful good weather, and bracing for Allison’s one-week trip to Australia (nope, we’ll be staying right here this time). I’m also bracing for summer, and the DaddyFest that is life without school. How will we survive? With the help of our new miracle product, the trampoline.

Trampolines are very popular in Green Valley, but if you’re 2 years old like Keegan or 3 like Kai, you get bounced around a lot by the big kids on OPTs -- Other People’s Trampolines. So we decided to get the boys their own, and they’ve been on it at least five times a day ever since.

This thing came in three boxes, each weighing close to a hundred pounds. The instruction manual came in a crate, and had more steps than the Kama Sutra but with fewer visuals. There was an video to download before assembly -- it was like getting a welding certification online. They had the nerve to tell you the trampoline could be assembled in 90 minutes, to which I say, Shut the Front Door. I want to meet the guy who put this thing together in 90 minutes -- he’s the Hulk and Dr. Bruce Banner at the same time. And, it was not his first trampoline. Here’s the before-and-after:

See the little white bars? There are 80 of those things, and they’re haaard to put in. But you are not reading the blog of some quitter. No, you’re reading the blog of a man, a man who, with some help from his wife and a break for pizza, can assemble a trampoline, with basketball backboard, in five hours, give or take. Well, under six.

It was worth it. 


Get your hot links here . . .


Nanjing: The first minute of this link is a freaky military practice we stumbled upon in Nanjing, right next to the wall, with PRC soldiers apparently chanting the Chinese version of "That's the fact, Jack!" ala Bill Murray in Stripes. IF you can make it through that, you get 45 seconds of Kai and Keegan literally sliding down Sun Yat Sen's monument.

Singapore: A 5-minute grab-bag, with water park, ferris wheel action, fish-feeding, and swanky bar. Justin's explanation of the cycle of life and death is sure to make the DVD extras.

Trampoline and bubbles:  The link you've been waiting for -- the cute people take their first bounces, and chase bubbles. The stack of boxes in the background in the bubble part is the trampoline, before assembly.  If you're wondering, the words Kai and Keegan keep grunting are "chung gong le" which means "success," or "we did it!"

Gratuitous shots as the credits roll -- shopping for duck, bell-ringing, banana split with Mommy...