Beijing Tai Tai

by Tania McCartney

  But nonetheless, they’re made and they are worn and enjoyed and it really is overwhelming because when I wear these clothes, I feel like a woman again. How can clothing make someone feel so great? One of the mysterious mysteries of the human condition, no doubt. A mystery only paralleled by the whereabouts of the infamous Muxiyuan.

  UN Day

  Uniting the Nations

  Being a bit of a philanthropic world-hugger, I love the idea of United Nations Day so much that when the kids’ school announced its annual celebration, I jumped up in the air a little. Yet another opportunity for my kids to immerse themselves in other cultures? Perfect, but also problematic.

  You see, the kids were asked to dress in their national dress. Hmm. Australian national dress? What is that? A pair of shorts, a singlet and some zinc cream on the schnoz? A safari suit and a crocodile? A bikini and a surfboard? Cliché, cliché, cliché.

  So I thought outside the Steve Irwin square and I channelled fluffy. Koala, kangaroo, wombat, kookaburra—that sort of thing. I consulted Xiao Fei who took sheets of faux fur from my jaunt to Muxiyuan fabric market and created some animal magic.

  The kids were oh-so-cute—Ella resplendent as a blonde kangaroo complete with a little pouch and joey, Riley a mini koala with a fluffy tail and white-fluff-stuffed ears. Adorable.

  But best of all was the spectacle they enjoyed while wearing these outfits. They got to see African drumming and do Chinese dancing and sample Japanese food and paint Aboriginal dot paintings and lasso tins in an American grocery rodeo and all those other things one can experience when the whole world descends upon a classroom in Beijing.

  I just wish I had been small enough to smuggle myself into a costume to join in the fun. Maybe as a wombat? Instead I manned the Australia table, plugging lamingtons and ANZAC biscuits to voracious Korean princesses, African Zulu warriors, little French soldiers and Mexican dancers.

  Wombat suit or no wombat suit, I loved every minute of it.

  Eye on the Sky

  Our skyline is a-changing

  Wow! I mean, I know the Chinese work hard, but this is ridiculous. We’ve been here six months and already the skyline view from our apartment has turned into Shanghai. It’s really quite bizarre. All around us, a jumble of buildings is being stacked by invisible kids with giant Lego blocks. Seemingly overnight, things pop up or fall down. Including hutong courtyard houses.

  On our first ever bike ride in Beijing, we zipped through the hutongalleyways destined for destruction near Sanlitun Lu. At first we didn’t know what the large, white Chinese characters were, painted slap-happily on the brick walls of dusty courtyard houses. Then we realised: these were marked houses, poised to be crumbled and shovelled into a wheelbarrow to make way for a high rise with shiny floors, indoor plumbing and Ikea furniture.

  Naturally, we were horrified at the fate of the hutong houses at first, but in reality, they are totally impractical. Freezing in winter, stinking in summer, overcrowded and with no indoor plumbing (residents share public bathrooms like we do at a caravan park on the beach), they don’t make the most savoury of residences.

  Nonetheless, it’s a little heartbreaking watching them fall because they are beautiful and are so deeply steeped in Beijing’s past. A few of the more historic houses will be kept but, for the most part, Beijing is kissing an achingly historical moment goodbye. How fortunate our family is to have experienced and immersed ourselves in these alleyways and seen the people living their daily lives in a courtyard setting, because very soon this will be a far distant thing of the past.

  One of our favourite movies of all time is a Chinese film called Shower starring Chinese actor Pu Quanxin (whom I happen to have a little crush on). Shower is a must-see for anyone who has lived in Beijing and also for those who have not. Set in the midst of this modern day hutong-levelling, it traces the fate of a family who own a traditional Chinese bathhouse. I challenge you not to weep into your noodles.

  One thing is for sure: we are witnessing history in motion. As our skyline changes and the hutong houses crumble, I can already envisage the day I sit in my rocking chair with my hand-knitted knee rug, regaling the great-grandchildren with tales and legends of the great Beijing courtyard houses. What were they really like? Did they really exist? Where did they go?

  Well, they went to Progress. And Great-Granny McCartney, with tissues clutched in hand, will be there to tell them all about it. First hand.

  Boo!

  A haunting Halloween

  Our family does Christmas big. We also do an impressive Easter but Christmas is really it for us—the whole shebang. It’s full-on from the 1 December Christmas tree to the soaked fruit for the Christmas cake and the mulled wine aromas drifting from a pot on the stove, curling around furniture and into every tinselled corner of the house.

  So when our first Halloween came along, I was completely unprepared for this strident holiday to almost supersede Santa’s reign. Simply put, we had an absolute and very unexpected blast.

  It all began with our first pumpkin carving. The kids loved this. We bought the tools and we got digging, and that fresh pumpkin smell and piles of slippery seeds were so tactile that we got totally caught up in things. Very soon we had our first Jack-O-Lantern.

  Then we decorated the house in sheaths of black organza from Liangma flower market and we strung up garlands of snowy paper bones and burnt orange pumpkin lanterns and faux cabbages and onions and other harvest goodies. We dotted red-eyed, cackling witches around the house, put black cats across our path, and strung snatches of cobwebs from crooked twig branches.

  Ayi freaked out a little but we just loved it. We got so caught up in the hoo-ha, a neighbour and I organised a trick or treat for 78 kids in our building, starting with nibbles (meringue bones, witch finger cookies and fizzing blood-red sodas) in our apartment. Little pirates, wizards, princesses and ghosts haunted our building with their treating shenanigans, tearing from apartment to apartment with bellies full of sugar and mouths full of yelling.

  It was some of the most fun we’ve ever had and the kids are totally hooked. We love the games, the spooking, the way adults become possessed with the eerie fun of it, donning capes, blacking out teeth and bamboozling children, or making them scream with that delicious blend of excitement and terror they so adore.

  Yes, we’ll be taking this festival home to Australia with us and single-handedly starting up a Halloween party tradition to knock the socks off unsuspecting ghouls everywhere.

  Beware, Australia, beware! Mwa ha ha!

  Constant Niggles

  Does anything work in this place?

  We may be living a luxe expat life but we’re often reminded it’s being lived smack-bang in the middle of an Eastern country. It seems we are consistently slapped with little dramas and an unending need for repairs and upgrades. It really doesn’t stop. Every day something breaks or works in a substandard fashion and it’s very frustrating, especially given the explanations on offer.

  Take the air-conditioning, for example.

  Every few months, our apartment’s air-conditioners start blowing warm, leaving us suffocating in an airless tank, unable to open the windows because of the pollution outside, and unable to get that breath of faux fresh air the air-cons so generously provide. Even during winter, we are using the air-conditioners at night because the Chinese overheat their buildings and by the time the heat rises to our high-storey apartment, we’re baking like scones.

  In fact, the air in our apartment is a delicate balancing act. We need the air-conditioners on to cool the air, then we use purifiers to clean this recycled, air-conditioned air. Then we have the humidifiers on to re-humidify this cooled, recycled and cleaned air. It’s like a carefully balanced symphony of softly humming appliances, just to make our air space liveable.

  So. I called the engineers to tell them our air-cons are blowing warm. When they arrived, they failed to just get on with the job and clean the filters (as was the need) but instead fussed around and t
old me that when the temperature is colder outside than inside the building, the air-conditioners will not work.

  What the...?

  Try telling an engineer they are wrong. Of course, after wasting half an hour of my life arguing with them, I eventually won. They cleaned the filters and left, and the air-cons blew cold again.

  But air-cons are not the only issue. We were also recently told, by said engineers, that our refrigerator was not cooling effectively because we had a large bag of Japanese candy on top of it. Riiiight. I wonder if it’s because the candy was Japanese.

  Another one: your dishwasher is not working because you are using X brand of dishwasher powder. Honest to God. So it wouldn’t be because the dishwasher is a crappy old claptrap that needs replacing immediately then?

  Yes, things keep breaking and obscure reasons keeping piling up high. The floor drain in our bathroom frequently pongs to high heaven, and the excuse for this one is that we don’t pour enough water down it on a regular basis. Oh, right. As you do. And it has nothing to do with the fact that the plumbing in this building has no S-bends. If they did, the stink would be eliminated and tenants wouldn’t have to waste their precious hours flooding their bathroom floors with water to keep down the stink.

  Before we left Australia, we were coached on how differently the Chinese think compared to the West. We are forthright, they are meandering. We are open, they are guarded. We are focused on the individual, they—the collective. We tell it like it is, they will send you around a labyrinth rather than admit they don’t know the right direction.

  Neither way is right or wrong, but that doesn’t mean it can’t bend my Western brain like a pretzel sometimes.

  I think it’s time for a holiday.

  Christmas Factory Fantasy

  Tai tai feeding frenzy outside Beijing

  O Holy Night and oh my stars. And baubles and sparkles and shimmering glitter. This was a rare human experience. A magical experience, a festive experience—could it be—could it be? Yes it could. Christmas. In a dusty factory one hour outside Beijing.

  But before I continue, I have to say that if you, for a single moment, think China cannot deliver on the Christmas thing, being an atheist state and all, then you are very, very wrong. The Chinese know how to celebrate indeed, and it’s with much delight (and relief) that I’m watching this magical time of the Western year unfold in parts of Beijing, mainly expat areas, compounds, hotels and, of course, the markets (anything for a quick kuai).

  We’ve already seen Halloween come and go, now make way for Santa and his team; and yes, even baby Jesus in a manger can be found. It’s a Christmas lover’s paradise and no one could be happier than me and my two Christmas-junkie kids, both of whom were not happy when I told them about my adventure to the magical Christmas land near Badaling Great Wall.

  I suppose it should come as no surprise to find such a factory in China—everything is made here, after all. This particular treasure trove is owned and run by Americans but employs local staff who create and craft dreamlike Christmas baubles of such beauty it’s hard not to gawp and clasp your hands under your chin like a small child.

  Our tour of the factory began with a visit to the glass-blowing room where men, silhouetted by orange flames, blew and teased runny globules of clear glass that were stamped between metal clamps, and when released— hey presto! A gingerbread house. A toy car. A Nordic Santa Claus.

  These shapes were then lowered into vats of mercury, emerging shiny like mirrors, then airbrushed with iridescent colour—vibrant reds, peacock blues, royal yellows, garland greens. Once dry, they were taken to an enormous, sunlit room where women sat in silence, hand-painting row after beautiful row, some of them painting entire scenes on the inside of glass baubles via a teensy hole at the top. Remarkable.

  Yes, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it was one delicious room after another. And when we finally arrived in the Yes You Can Now Purchase These room, well, we had to contain ourselves lest we bull-in-a- china-shopped our way to glassy smithereens.

  There they were, laid out before us: wrens with feathered tails, stars with glittery trails, telephone boxes, and gifts with bows. There were teardrops filled with powdery glitter and lanterns dusted with snow and even clear glass icicles you can drip from every branch of your tree.

  Gently, carefully, agonisingly, we tried to contain ourselves as we politely scrabbled for the goodies. There were plenty of ‘no, no, you take that one’—a credit to our lovely group of tai tai who were clearly gagging to rugby tackle each other and descend into a major fracas to get to the icicles first.

  Call me a Christmas ornament addict, but one of my most memorable Beijing hours was unpacking that Santa sack of sparkle when we got home. I gathered the kids and sat them on the floor (Xiansheng really didn’t need to be there—his financial blood pressure was high enough), then I quietly informed the kids that what I was about to reveal would just about knock their little cotton socks off.

  They loved it. They wanted to touch, of course. And all credit to them: they held those pieces like baby bunny rabbits, gently, tenderly, carefully cradling, petting and admiring and cooing. It was a wonderful hour we shared together. And now those sparklers have been nestled back in their tissue and are patiently awaiting the Tree. Yes, we’ll need a new one to contain all this. Our straggly green muppet from Australia just won’t make the grade after the arrival of this impressive stash.

  Bring on 1 December!

  The Silk Market

  We will never speak of that experience again

  You may have noticed I love the markets in Beijing. Shopping is exhausting but it’s also great fun and the thrill of the buy still outweighs every single bargain-induced migraine for me.

  For the most part, the Chinese marketeers are great sports. Occasionally you’ll come across a shyster, but you do have the option to just walk away. What you don’t expect is to be physically attacked.

  A recent horror trip to the Silk Market on Jianguomenwai Dajie in the eastern inner’burbs made it clear to me these particular marketeers are totally spoiled by hyper-inflated tourist prices. I’m talking ten to twenty times what a local will pay and an even greater discrepancy when talking actual face value.

  We were nice, we were calm, we had eight months’ bartering experience, we knew how to charm the socks off sellers and make them feel good about their sale—but we also knew what price to pay. It didn’t dawn on me that recommending these reasonable (i.e. nontourist) prices to marketeers at the Silk Market would result in mass hysteria.

  After being pushed, pulled, pinched, patronised, harried, blocked, shoved, screamed at and seriously insulted (in both Mandarin and English) by more than one salesperson at this market, I now swear to you I will never set foot inside it again. I’d much rather frequent the local and lesser-known spots like Yue Show clothing market on Chaoyangmenwai Dajie. There, you can build a relationship with marketeers that becomes genuine and warm, as well as mutually beneficial. And that guanxi (social and business connection) is what living in China is all about.

  Me? I’ll be leaving the Silk Market for the tourists. God help them.

  The Tree

  The towering wonder of Christmas

  Everything is expensive in Australia, but most especially Christmas trees. In fact, in retrospect, how on earth did we ever afford to live in Australia any time of the year?

  We bought a fuzzy mop of a faux Christmas tree some years ago and the kids have celebrated four years under this chest-high bush. It’s okay, it has done the job and there are happy memories attached to its lopsided branches. But it’s time for retirement—for the King of Trees has arrived.

  At first we wanted a real tree but the chronically dry Beijing air kills them in a week, and I didn’t want a sucked-dry stump and a pile of yellow pine needles holding up the baubles. We opted for a faux tree instead, and what a beauty she is. She stands 8 feet tall and is the girth of ten men. She looks like a real spruce pine: that musky mid-gree
n with the merest hint of silver sparkle on the tips of her fluffy branches. She is breathtaking and I sat in wonder, cross-legged on the floor, with myriad ornament boxes around me, just staring at her beauty. Then I began to unpack our decorating bounty.

  In our house, our tree decorating always begins with the lights. For our first Beijing tree, we strung 10-metre strands of white dots through the branches from head to toe until the tree was bathed in blinking, blinding white. Then we put on the icicles—slim, spangling droplets of glass. Then it was the silvery and white snowflakes followed by the illustrious glass ornaments from the Christmas factory—Santas, gingerbread houses, baubles and droplets—all in shades of white, red, pale green, silver and clear. It took hours. And that’s only the tree.

  Then it was the rest of the house—garlands, wreaths, statues, nutcracker soldiers, the whole shebang. We put on Christmas music and we heated up the mulled wine and nibbled slices of my mum’s Christmas cake (which Ella helped me make). The kids drove us bananas with repeat playings of ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’. Then we watched Rudolph in the 1964 TV classic of the same name. Then, we sat and stared at our handiwork and felt that warm, fuzzy glow in our chests that Christmas brings.

  No wonder China is jumping on the bandwagon and getting into the Christmas spirit.

  Walking on Iceblocks

  Winter has arrived!

  I’ve seen a little bit of snow in my time.

  I’ve stood in chest-high snow drifts in the Dolomites in Italy and I’ve thrown snowballs at my ex-boyfriend near Stonehenge and I’ve tasted the flavour of London snow on my tongue and seen the wash of pink light on the snow-glazed streets of Paris. My husband is from Belfast, so he has snow in his blood.