Wishing everyone a very prosperous Year of the Dragon!

(h/t Nicki and Erik or the “Live 龙 and prosper” idea!)

In contemplating what having lived in China for three-quarters of the last decade means to me, I find it interesting that in a lot of ways I feel less sure or informed about this country now than I did in the past. It is, in the truest sense of the term, more or less “home”.

It is less home in all the ways you might expect it to be. Seven years on and I’m still consistently astounded and confounded by the way things are done here. Survival has forced a tempering of tantrums over every petty irritant and ignorance experienced here, but many things have also lost their “that’s so weird and cool” luster. Dirty and dangerous just aren’t as charming as they used to be.

What’s more, my Chinese language skills are still in need of a lot of work. I’ve spent next to no time in recent years improving my language abilities, and it shows. Like many an expat I’ve met, I hit the point where I could get by, and motivation was superseded by necessity. It has, in part inadvertently but in part intentionally, created a wall around my life here that prevents me from any hope of true integration with my adoptive land.

But as much as I still fumble with my tones and vocab, the toughest barrier to really feeling like China is home is that no matter how I feel about the place, I’ll always be a “laowai”. Granted, running a site called “Lost Laowai” illustrates my embracing of the term, but on a personal level, never fully being accepted by the community in which you live is tough.

Added to this is the constant pull of other “home”, the one which I now visit for a holiday, and where all my friends and family have been busily going about their lives for so many years without me. I can’t say I miss them in the ways I did when I first left Canada, I barely know their lives now, but I do miss being a part of it all. I miss things that I didn’t even really know or understand before I left. The value of holiday dinners, having family a short drive away in an emergency, people who have known you longer than your time in any one place.

But then, China is more home than any place I have ever lived.

It has become part of who I “am”. “Hi, I’m Ryan, I live in China.” It is the anecdote of my life. Whether I like it or not, my “foreignerness” has entrenched itself into my character. It is how so many of the people I know, know me. This blog isn’t about a Canadian, about a dad or about a writer cum designer. It is all those things, just as I am, but it is about a non-Chinese dude in China. I’m certain should I ever leave China, the disconnection with that identity will be a challenge.

It is also the homeland of my wife, and I cannot look at it or its people without seeing the reflection of someone I love so deeply. Through her, China has given me more patience and acceptance, as well as a much wider sense of the world and my place in it. Both her and her country have challenged me to grow and develop in ways I never knew I would.

Perhaps most relevantly though, it is the birth place and cultural identity of my son. The very fabric of me has quite literally been interwoven with China through him. Any chance that China wouldn’t forever be some sort of “home” disappeared the moment he cried his first half-Chinese cry. I love my wife, and I love my family, but I didn’t know love before my son — nothing in the world compares to that feeling. Apologies for the cliche, but creative literary devices are too complex to express how simple and true that is. And China, however indirectly, gave that to me.

And whereas Canada gets the distinction of being the place I grew up, the place I went to school, the place where I’m “from”; China will always be the place I became a husband, and a father — where I became an adult really. And for that China is definitely more home.

I’m not sure what the next seven years will bring. I barely expected to spend seven months in China, let alone the past seven years. But, for now at least, China is home, and I couldn’t be happier with that.

The first casualty of Nesat was our papaya tree, which had fallen before dawn yesterday. I say “our” papaya tree, as it’s right outside our kitchen window, but really it’s the community’s — a fact made ever evident by the endless stream of people who walk up and grab some unripe fruit while I’m washing dishes or preparing dinner.

The wind continued to pick up for most of yesterday until it hit hard mid-afternoon. Our water was shut off with little explanation, and while our power flickered the whole duration, friends of ours had their power completely cut off.

Here’s a little video shortly after the typhoon made landfall on the island, it got steadily worse for a couple hours after this:

Business Week: Typhoon Nesat, the strongest to hit China this year, forced the evacuation of 300,000 people, grounded flights and closed markets as it swept past Hong Kong, slammed into the Chinese island of Hainan and headed to Vietnam.

The typhoon, which killed at least 39 people in the Philippines earlier this week, made landfall in Hainan province at 2:30 p.m. local time yesterday with winds as fast as 151 kilometers (94 miles) an hour, the China Meteorological Administration said. In Hong Kong, the storm felled trees, ripped bamboo scaffolding from buildings and forced the city’s stock exchange to halt trading after the highest storm warning in two years was issued. Trading will resume today.

Shortly before dinner the wind died down, the rain stopped and everyone went outside to stretch their legs. The community was a mess. Bits of trees and random building stuff from the construction going on down the road were all over the place. Our community is full of purchased-but-not-lived-in apartments, and it appears someone’s window was left open, which caused a pane of glass to blow out and shatter all over the road.

Mild, by comparison, wind and rain returned after dinner but by late evening it was quiet again. This morning I took Casey and Button out for a walk around the neighbourhood, as is our routine, and was surprised at how much damage the typhoon had caused to the trees both in and around our community.

Here are some photos — apologies for the graininess, I only had my iPod with me:

The road in the photos above is a road a block or so away from our place. The road right outside our community was completely blocked off by fallen debris. I am guessing that most of the trees that have fallen are trees that have been planted for aesthetics, and perhaps aren’t local, or just didn’t have enough time to properly lay down roots. Interestingly, all the recently planted palm trees out on the newly constructed coastal road north of our community were still standing.

The clean-up crews are out in full-force, our water is trickling out of the tap now (unfortunately not quite strong enough to get hot water running, so cold showers for us), dragonflies are filling the air en masse, and the sun is doing its best to reappear.

Only 96 hours until Nalgae arrives.

Undoubtedly some, if not most, of that feeling of age relates to being a parent now. Nothing forces you to look at the world in more “grown up” terms than when you have someone’s life depending on your ability to make the right decisions. Really impossible, I think, not to mentally age a bit due to the responsibilities being a parent endows you with.

But I don’t feel as old as I thought I would. I’m sure this is common, and I’m betting we’ve all awoken one birthday morn and said, “Huh, when I was 10 I thought 34-year-olds were really old… but I don’t feel like I thought that guy would feel.”

I guess what we don’t see when we’re 10 is that the 34-year-old still has that 10-year-old in them. They’re wearing adult clothes, have adult jobs, and talk about adult things, but they were 10 once and so know how to be a 10-year-old if and when the opportunity arises.

And so as much as being a parent has made me feel my age more than anything else ever has, having a kid also creates those opportunities. I get to sit and watch cartoons, play with blocks and snack on sugary cereal. Sure, I have to pay bills, stress about money and generally just speak adultese, but I’m damn sure that when I turned 25 I wasn’t walking around with “Dance your cares away (clap clap) worries for another day…” stuck in my head (thank you Jim Henson and bit torrent).

He’s just so much bigger now:

What the heck is Canada day?

While later today Canada will be celebrating its own anniversary with fireworks, BBQ and a whole lot of drinking; in China it’s all about the Communist Party of China’s 90th anniversary.

Not one to shy away from the spirit of things, I figured it was an excellent time to showcase one of Hainan’s most well known group of folk heroes — the Red Detachment of Women — best known for the series of ballets their story has inspired.

The Red Detachment of Women (simplified Chinese: 红色娘子军; pinyin: Hóngsè Niángzǐjūn) is a Chinese ballet which premiered in 1964. It is perhaps best known in the West as the ballet performed for U.S. President Richard Nixon on his visit to China in February 1972. Adapted from the earlier film of the same title under the personal direction of Zhou Enlai, which in turn adapted from the novel by Liang Xin, it depicts the liberation of a peasant girl in Hainan Island and her rise in the Chinese Communist Party.

The novel was based on the true stories of 100+ member strong all-female Special Company of the 2nd Independent Division of Chinese Red Army, first formed in May, 1931. As the communist base in Hainan was destroyed by the nationalists, most of members of the female detachment survived, partially because they were women and easier to hide among the local populace who were sympathetic to their cause. After the communist victory in China, the representatives of the surviving members were taken to Beijing and personally inspected and praised by Mao Zedong. Most of these surviving members currently reside in the city of Qionghai (84 survivors in 1994, 23 in 2001, 14 in 2008).

That Hainan’s most well-known and loved revolutionary heroes are a group of women is not at all surprising to me. The simple truth is that by China-wide comparison, Hainan men have to be the laziest bunch of y-chromosome carriers in the country. The women here are work horses, and are more often the ones you see doing the most physical of labour while their husbands and brothers sit in the shade of a nearby palm.

A case in point — a road was recently just built along the northern edge of the island district I live on. Now nearly finished, it provides a great view of the Qiongzhou Strait that runs between Hainan and the mainland. For three months I’ve watched the transformation of the road from a dirty construction site to a palm- and flower-lined street that’s great to wander down. And in that time I’ve seen women do virtually all the heavy manual labour while the male positions seemed limited to operating the large crane for hoisting up the palm trees (the women did all the tree positioning, hole digging and planting) and standing and staring supervising.

Interestingly enough, along this same stretch of road is a monument to the Communists resistance/defeat of the Nationalists here (there’s no actual mention on the monument of “who” was fighting — but it’s obvious from its absence that it relates to the Chinese civil war).

So happy anniversary CPC — may the next 90 be much better than the last.

You can watch the whole ballet/film for the Red Detachment of Women here.

(h/t Study More Chinese)

We ended up dividing Casey’s first birthday celebrations into two. For his actual birthday we hit the local park and took him on the Ferris Wheel. It was funny to see Maggie tense up as we neared the top — I truly hope we get the opportunity to visit a real amusement park at some point and I can get her on a proper roller coaster. The park, only a few blocks from our apartment, is a frequent dog walk for me; however, this was the first time I really explored the different rides and stuff they have there. It’s pretty much a fully functional fairground, complete with games and everything.

On the way back from the park we stopped at a local bakery and ordered a birthday cake for his birthday party a few days later. We also grabbed a little cake for that evening, as a Wednesday or not, I didn’t think it was right for the kid to not have cake on the day of his first birthday. Quite unsurprisingly, his first experience with birthday cake was a huge hit.

A couple days after his birthday we did a small party with some friends, grabbing lunch and retiring to our place for cake and some mid-afternoon drinking. The downside to having a kid is that it severily truncates the lateness that you can stay up drinking socializing with friends. The upside is that it completely opens up the door to drinking in the afternoon.

I really wish all our friends and family could have been with us to celebrate this special day, but all-in-all it was good times. And as Casey’s not going to remember any of it but the pictures, we got lots of those too!

I can hardly believe that we’ve hit his first birthday already. Oddly, at the same time, it feels like a century ago I was in that hospital room marveling at his wrinkly hands and unpracticed cries. Most amazingly of all, we’ve made it through 365 days of parenting and still have a healthy little boy to show for it.

The last year has done more to grow me up than any of the 32 years before it. To say having a child is life changing is as much an understatement as it is a cliche, but it’s an absolute truism. There just really is nothing that compares to it, and no matter what else I’ve left to accomplish with my life, that day a year ago was most definitely the high-water mark.

These 12 months haven’t been without their ups and downs though — from a frantic trip to the hospital to diagnose a mild case of mosquitobiteosis; to a long stretch of time where my boy was producing movements at the rate of a stalled composer (about one a week); and, of course, the ever-gnawing fear that you’re doing it all wrong and he’s going to end up a delinquent by age 2.

I’m sure the next year (and every year hence) will bring with it a cornucopia of new things that will awe and confound me, but I thought I would take this milestone moment to share some of the things that being “on the job” for a year has taught me.

The birth really is just the beginning

Before my baby was born, the absolute most important moment that I could ever possibly imagine was the day he was to be born. After, however, every day was that much more amazing than the one prior.

I had put a lot of pressure on myself (and in hindsight, Maggie as well) trying to assure the apex of the pregnancy was this “perfect event”. We had a birth plan, had confirmed with the hospital that I could be present for the delivery (not all that common in Chinese hospitals), had read books and generally just stressed about the whole thing far too much. Before the little guy arrived I couldn’t imaging anything more important than the moment of his birth, but the minute after he arrived, everything was more important. I just couldn’t conceive of those things prior, and so I guess like a lot of dads-to-be, focused on that one thing.

Of course it’s important, and a day that will never be forgotten (if not for the cake-eating, toy-buying, kids screaming yearly reminder for the next 2 decades). But if you’re a soon-to-be-father that is overly stressed about the birth being the biggest, most-perfect event ever; my advice is to take a step back and realize that it really is just the beginning.

When it comes to kids, everyone is an expert

“You should eat ______,” “You shouldn’t eat _______,” “You need to establish boundaries right away,” “You should let things flow naturally,” “You should breast feed right away,” “You might not have enough milk to breastfeed and should use formula or you may starve your child,” “You should pump so dad can feed too,” “You should teach the baby to sleep alone and foster independence,” “You should co-sleep with your baby to establish trust and a bond,” “You should start feeding your baby solids by 4 months,” “You shouldn’t feed your baby solids until after 6 months,” “You should have pets,” “You should get rid of pets,” “You should get lots of bed rest,” “You should get more exercise,” “You should stay indoors for ____ amount of time,” “You should get out and get fresh air right away,” “You should use these types of toys/clothes/shoes,” “You shouldn’t use these types of toys/clothes/shoes,”

Whether it’s well-meaning doctors and nurses, friends and relatives, or the aisles and aisles of parenting books; everyone, and I mean everyone, has an opinion that they’re eager to give about being a good parent. I think the reason for this is because unlike if I were to, say, want to design a Web site, most people have some amount of experience with kids — if even just peripherally — and a good-hearted desire to share that knowledge. Plus, most can’t help but want to be a part of this incredible life-affirming moment.

For a new parent this deluge of good-intentioned advice can be overwhelming. What I’ve realized after a year of swimming through this glut of counsel is that none of it really matters all that much. I believe the reason there are so many conflicting opinions about how to properly care for a baby is simply due to the fact that babies are pretty flexible little creatures. Unless you go out of your way to neglect them; they’re going to get bigger, stronger and smarter with a relatively minimal amount of complicated effort on our part.

What this means, at least to me, is we’re free to pursue the method of child rearing that suits us best. This leads me to my next point:

Ideas over ideologies

One of the things that has really annoyed me in my immersion into the parenting literature is that there seems to be a terrible problem of ideologies infesting what should otherwise just be ideas.

Ideas are just that, small granules of knowledge that can be woven together into a flexible fabric of intelligence and understanding. Ideologies, on the other hand, carry with them a near religious fervor of adherence and the shunning of anything that conflicts with the ideologies core principles.

No matter whether I agreed with the content of the various parenting books that passed my eyes (and ears) or not, virtually every single one of them promoted their ideas as a “system” that was both better than and contrary to all other “systems.” Breastfeeding moms tend to look down on formula-feeding moms, and likewise, formula-feeding moms don’t understand how breastfeeding moms can handle the inconvenience; cry-it-outters feel no-cry methods are too passive and are doing the baby a disservice, while no-cry practitioners feel you’re emotionally scaring your baby; and so on…

Unfortunately it’s a function of the way these types of books are written. After all, you sell more books if you enlist advocates for your “method” that will not only promote your book but also try to discredit the books of others.

My feeling is that my child is much better served if I stay flexible, unbiased and give myself that much more opportunity to cherry-pick the best ideas from all the ideologies. As examples:

1. For several months Casey slept in his crib, but when this became overly disruptive to Maggie and I getting enough sleep to function, he started co-sleeping with us and it has been great since. However, we recognize that he’ll need to migrate back to his own bed soon, and so will likely be attempting some sleep training that will undoubtedly result in a whole lot of tears before it’s all done.
2. Likewise, Maggie has always (and continues to) breastfed Casey. When we started solids we avoided rice powder mixes and pre-processed bottled food and instead made all our own baby food (it’s surprisingly easy to do). When we didn’t have time to make the food or if we were travelling, we simply used bottled food and rice powder. Now he eats mostly all solids (pretty much just whatever we’re eating, unless it’s a Vindaloo curry or something) but we still occasionally supplement the “饭” part of his meal with iron-enriched rice powder instead of plain white rice.

Basically we’ve taken ideas from two different “camps” and applied them to our situation, and I think Casey, Maggie and I are all the better for it. The only two things that I’m strict about maintaining are (1) that he receives proper nutrition, and (2) that he receive an endless supply of love and affection. I think everything else is mostly cosmetic.

Some parenting books I’ve enjoyed

I’ve depended heavily on the recommendations of others for what books were worth reading. To pass this information on, here are a few of the books I feel contain decent or helpful information. Read my point above about cherry-picking ideas though, as I don’t feel any one of these books offers a “complete” parenting solution, but rather only give access to ideas and practical examples that helped me learn about this complicated gig I’d signed on for.

Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood: This book was recommended by my step-sister-in-law (and mother of twins!). I recently finished this book, and it offers up some good advice mostly related to effective discipline. It is a bit overrun with self-selling wording and definitely falls into the “ideology” category that I mentioned above. However, I think its principles of teaching children to understand consequence through action rather than words is worth navigating the books downsides for.

Geek Dad: I got this book as a gift from our friends Ric and Gin and it’s awesome. It’s a collection of (geeky) activities a parent (though, obviously, marketed towards fathers) can do with their child, based on the Wired blog of the same name. Casey’s still too young for me to put the book to use, but I can’t wait! Some examples: “Windup Toy Finger Painting,” “Pirate Cartography,” “Light-up Duct Tape Wallet,” and “Exploding Drink Practical Joke.”

Sleeping Through the Night: Another recommended by my step-sister-in-law, this book is a fantastic source of information on how babies sleep and how you can help get them doing it for longer stretches of time. As mentioned, my wife and I are currently co-sleeping with Casey. However, now that he’s starting to flail and turn in his sleep and ends up taking over about 50% of our bed, coupled with his new habit of waking up around 6am and chatting to himself for an hour or so, we’ll be turning to this book soon to help the transition to his own bed.

The Breastfeeding Answer Book: Put out by the La Leche League, this book is called the “Breast Feeding Bible” for a reason. Maggie relied on it more than me, but it gave her loads of insight and answers to virtually everything to do with breastfeeding. We were quite fortunate to have a local chapter of La Leche League in Suzhou, especially considering how much formula feeding is pushed on new mothers here (and how unsafe that can be in China).

The Baby Book: I’m not sure how this one ended up in our hands, but it’s a great (and massive) resource on raising a baby. Written by two of the Dr. Sears dynasty, everything is slanted towards “Attachment Parenting“, but again please refer to my note above about ideas over ideologies.

The Expectant Father: This book was a loaner from Ric (mentioned above) when Maggie was still preggers and it did a fantastic job of putting my mind at ease and preparing me for the insanity to come. It runs the gambit of information from being prepared for the dash to the hospital to handling the spectrum of emotions that you encounter as an expectant dad. The author, Armin A. Brott, has more books that tackle other periods of parenting and I’m hoping to get my hands on them eventually.

Brain Rules for Baby: I just started this book (the audio book actually, via Audible.com) and so far am really liking it. Essentially it talks about how our brains form and work and what as parents we can do to assure we foster our child’s mind. The author, John Medina, is a scientist and that comes through in the book in all the right ways. He doesn’t present vague theories or possibilities, he only presents things that are backed by tested scientific evidence. Despite being written by a scientist, the book is light-hearted and jovial and not at all weighed down by the somewhat heavy material being shared.

I’m sure there were other books along the way that I’m now forgetting, but those were the biggies that helped us along. Really though the best advice came from asking other parents lots and lots of questions, as well as a huge healthy dose of common sense.

Year Number Two, here we come

I really can’t wait for all the things to come over the next year — first solo steps, first real words, and just a bunch of other great stuff that we can expect in year two.

Something no one really told me, but I’d bet I’m not the only dad that felt this way, is that for the first few months or so Casey was a total bore! I love the little guy, truly more than I’ve ever loved anything, but he had the action and excitement of a spud on a hot day. He just basically laid around, barely interacted with the world and was generally just content to have us take care of everything. Of course I understood is was completely normal, but I was also a new dad — I had been anticipating this moment for a long long time and I was eager to get out and start playing catch or building Lego castles with the little guy.

After reminding myself of a need for patience and to soak in all these early moments as best I could, I started to see changes in Casey as he began to interact with the things around him. Now, at 1 year, he’s this charismatic and engaging little dude that’s just adorable to be around. He shoots a smile at you when you wink at him, he laughs at the ladies in the park and he squeals with joyful fear when you jump out and startle him in his walker. He’s a riot!

I know that this next year is likely to see just as many, if not more, stressful events as the year previous. However, the joy I get from being a dad seems almost exponential in its increment. So, Happy Birthday son. Oh, and May the 4th be with you!

After a hectic few days of packing, we said farewell to our gear Friday morning as it left on a truck destined to eventually (hopefully) meet up with us in Haikou. Judging what the costs would be for shipping our stuff was one part guess work and one part use of a bathroom scale — neither proved to be worth a damn.

We estimated our stuff to weigh in at, the high end, about 1000kg; which at 2.8RMB/kg worked out to just south of 3,000RMB. It caught us by surprise when using the moving company’s scale (the only scale that matters) our stuff hit a mark much closer to 2,000kg, or 5,300 RMB.

I’m only going to say this once and then I’m going to let it, finally, go — the moving company almost certainly ripped us off. I don’t know how they did it, as they let Maggie get on the scale to test its accuracy, and it was accurate with her. However, my amateur weighing abilities aside, there’s just no way that the majority of our flimsy cardboard boxes were comfortably supporting twice Maggie’s weight in our carefully curated possessions.

When all your stuff is on the truck and ready to go, they’ve pretty much got you by the bits. We, with very little reluctance, bent over and paid.

The rest of the day we spent getting our luggage sorted and doing last minute tidying up of our apartment to assure we didn’t arbitrarily cause complications and risk losing our renter’s deposit. Apartment “checkout” went smoothly, and we were able to spend our last night in Suzhou at our good friends’ apartment saying some tough goodbyes with massive burgers and plenty of Wild Turkey.

First thing Saturday morning we were out the door to meet the transportation arranged by the company we hired to ship our dog Button. As a bonus they agreed to take us along with Button to our awaiting flights in Shanghai. The first stop was to the shipping company’s hole-in-the-wall HQ where they weighed Button (which, suspiciously, was bang-on my estimate using the same scale that was nearly 50% wrong with our other stuff — seriously, last time, I’m letting it go).

We said our goodbyes to our pup and the driver took us over to Hong Qiao’s still shiny new Terminal 2. I had never been to the new terminal, and was sufficiently impressed having been through the grimy and cracked Terminal 1 a few years ago (incidentally, also for a Hainan trip).

Our flight wasn’t until the afternoon, but the time passed quickly. The flight went relatively smoothly, with a bit of fussiness (that’s loving parent speak for “full on meltdown”) from Casey just prior to take-off and landing.

After landing it took a bit of wandering and a few phone calls to figure out that while Button was on the same flight as us, because she was shipped as cargo she had been brought to the cargo facility about 2km away from the airport. Fortunately our Haikou airport pickup was awesome and he didn’t mind driving us over and picking Button up.

It was a long few minutes as we nervously waited for the cargo warehouse worker to locate Button. Shipping an animal via plane in China isn’t a very complicated process, but as with all things in this country, I can’t help but think there was a decent amount of gamble in the thing. Fortunately, and perhaps obviously, she was fine — if not a bit shaken.

Post-slobbery hellos we all jumped in the SUV and headed to our pre-arranged accommodations. As best I know (and please correct me if you know otherwise) China has a nation-wide policy of not allowing dogs in any hotels. As such, finding a place that would welcome Button was a challenge.

As with the dog shipper and airport pickup (and virtually everything else we purchase), Maggie had found a seller on Taobao that rented out apartments in Haikou for dirt cheap (80RMB or about $12/night) and they didn’t mind our furry one. What we had no way of knowing at the time was the shape of the place.

Slumdog Laowai

I’ve lived in some dives in my time in China, and am not unfamiliar with the country’s rougher raw-sewage smelling side. Where we’re staying, and where I’m currently writing this from, has been a new experience though. At the ass-end of an alley I can very nearly touch both sides of, the one-bedroom apartment is jammed into a clusterfuck of buildings whose planning can kindly be described as entirely slapdash.

Taking Button out this a.m. for her morning business led me on a jaunt through the neighbourhood — a collection of ironclad compounds, heaps of garbage and more stray dogs than downtown Athens — I had to walk for 15 minutes just to find a green patch for her to pee (she’s picky like that).

The location is a cultural tourist’s paradise, but I’m sort of over this side of China and even more so after days of packing and travel. That said, what it has done very well is reset my “bar”. Living in Suzhou’s rather ritzy SIP for the last 4 years has softened more than just my waist, and I have been trying to adjust my expectations for living in Haikou since we made the decision to move here. I’ve been, somewhat justifiably, worried that trying to find an apartment in Haikou would leave me comparing it all to the relatively sparkly sheen of things left behind.

The good news is that compared to where we’re staying at the moment, pretty much anything above a tent in a garbage dump would be an improvement. It really is the first place I’ve stayed that I could quite accurately call a slum.

Down by the Sea

Before anyone starts thinking we made a terrible, terrible mistake moving to this “paradise” (and shortly after Maggie started thinking just that); today we headed up to the part of town we are hoping to live in, and began to feel much much better about the move.

The area is called Haidian Island (海甸岛), and is where the only other people we “know” in the city live. It is an island in the northern area of the city, and right on the water (as islands tend to be).

There are a few things we’re looking for in a new neighbourhood — decent access to restaurants, markets and a good park to take Button and Casey to. I’m not sure about the markets, but from first glance it looks like Haidian Island is a good match.

We were warmed to the area by first visiting Baishamen (Ecological?) Park（白沙门生态园). The massive park comes complete with wide open grassy areas, some nice forested areas, a slightly rickety looking amusement park (does China have any other kind?) and a long sandy beach. I’ve been told the sea there isn’t great for swimming (and it’s far too chilly at the moment to attempt it), but for walking down the beach with a dog, it’s perfect.

So, tomorrow we officially begin our apartment hunt. We’ve been up and down Soufun.com and have several agents digging up keys and making appointments with landlords for us. It should be a busy few days, but we’re sort of growing accustomed to that.

And with this, a new chapter begins.

We’re not actually wearing matching hoodies — someone didn’t dress appropriately, and someone else ended up going in their t-shirt most of the afternoon.