China Take 2 - Update #4

 December 21, 2022

Hi folks - Happy Winter Solstice :) a long overdue update from me here in China....again, it has been a challenging 6 months since getting back....but I only have six more to go....and if you have been paying attention to the news coming out of here, "the times....they are a changin'".....it has been a ridiculous six months here in China....i was online again for the last month and had been getting tested literally every day...yes....we were still being tested for covid...most folks have moved on...but for the past 8 weeks or so, things were out of hand concerning covid....and in the end, it has come to china anyway.... has people wondering what the past 2.5 years of strict regulations were for....especially since beijing did a complete about-face on how they are handling it....now it's every person for themselves.....just insane and extremely disappointing....

i have now tested positive and have made it through my covid fog....i had a super bad headache, a stuffed-up nose and lost my sense of smell, but not all of my sense of taste....which was uber weird....but i have come out on the other side.....the strain here in china is one of the omicron ones and is extremely "catchy", so it is flying through beijing.....it has been a ghost town for the past 2 weeks or so, but today things were coming back...our school has had more than 50% of our community test positive and luckily many had it before we went on winter break....including me....so for the first time in three years, i will be outside of beijing for xmas....i am heading to chengdu on a food tour and to see the pandas....we may even have quarantine dropped coming from international destinations in the near future....which is extremely hard to process...it has been a weird 2.5 years, filled with rules and regulations, and there was not a good end game here for this mess, but i am glad china may now be moving on like the rest of the world.....

this will be my last school year here in beijing....it has not really been a good placement for me...and a bunch of that is due to covid....so i am moving on....and next school year i will be in a new location....paris, france!!! at the american school of paris!!!! i am really excited about this turn of events and this next step....it is a good school, i will be teaching middle school science per normal and i will be able to get back home much more easily!!!! and i can travel all over europe and see friends living there...its a win-win-win!!! and i will be living in paris, france!!!!! 

so the following pictures are from my past six months here in china....from when i arrived and had to do another ten-day quarantine...which was actually harder than the 14 day one i did two years prior...mainly because i knew what the rest of the world was experiencing and how nothing at that point had changed for china....plus, some other experiences i have had here in beijing since arriving....i am soooo excited to leave the city and see somewhere else in china...and the promise of possibly being able to travel outside of china is fabulous....but i will believe it when i see it....i have around 6 months left here in china and do hope i get to see some of the last places on my list....because when i leave this time, i do not expect to ever return....you never know....but it is not in my plan....on with the pictures :)

this is me on my way back to china after being in the states for the summer...i was extremely cautious while there because if i tested positive in the states, it would have made getting back to china 10x more difficult than it already was...i learned a new trick for this trip...bring starbucks gift cards for flight attendants and people who check you in...it will make their day and might get you a perk or two ;)

and then i was back into quarantine in shanghai....10 days this time...no say in where you stay...i got lucky again...good sized room overlooking where the sun went down and no carpet....the quarantine hotels at this point are completely trashed inside....when you exit, they spray them down with bleach for the next person....its actually quite gross and i am glad i will not be doing it again here in china....knock on wood.

at least i had a nice view of the sunset...overlooking a school...where little kids would come out every day to play....so that kind of broke up the monotony....kind of....

this is not my picture....but sums up quarantine quite well....3 square meals, vegetarian in my case, every day...like clockwork....which you end up paying for....you also have to pay for the room....luckily my school helped with the room....but not the food...that was all mine ;)

this is me and my friend sandy getting out on our last quarantine day....we flew over to china from the states together and went through the craziness to get back and both of us have decided this will be our last year in china....she was at least down the road from her place in shanghai....i still had to get back to beijing....crazy times....

can you tell this was my first beer in beijing??? you better believe it....even though there is no one else in the picture...at this point, people were sometimes wearing masks, sometimes not....this got worse and worse as time moved forward...until the last 8 weeks when things here were extremely regulated and rather insane....

one of the things i love about china is the food...and i have found a vegan group here that has a chinese chef teach us how to make vegan/vegetarian food....this is the way into his house/cooking classroom....his location is down in the hutongs, which is one aspect of beijing i love to visit....they are mostly all chinee communities with shared bathroom facilities and cooking courtyards....a lot have been transformed, but if you are looking for old world beijing....this is where you go :)

this was one of the first days i was finally allowed back on campus...had to wait 7 days after arriving in beijing....after doing a ten-day quarantine in shanghai....just crazy....i have a picture of a friend's roasted almonds and cashews with the entrance gate to the middle school...these added a bit of taste to my quarantine and figured i would help with marketing too :)

my first day of school t-shirt this year....at this point i have 25 science t-shirts i rotate through for school....i can wear one every day....and the kids know that i am a total science geek....they can always tell from the t-shirts and my shoes and socks, which many times have science themes as well....go science!!!!

if you have not been to china in the past 7 years or so, you have missed the wave of the delivery person....these little carts are specific to my housing compound....and people get packages every day....you can also send a cup of flour to a friend using this....its wild...if you did not want to ever leave your house....in china, you could do that....my neighbors get at least 5 packages a day here....taobao has changed the face, delivery and shopping of china....

for the autumn festival here in china (october)....we have a golden week and the big food stuff during that time is mooncakes....i have to say i am not a huge fan of these, but this year decided to take a mooncake-making course with my friend sara.....these were sweet ones....and actually did not taste bad at all....

this is what they look like once cooked....and they are filled with chestnut paste or black sesame paste or hawthorn apple paste or citrus paste, etc....it was fun to learn the history associated with mooncakes and to learn to make my own....

i think this was my best one :)

this is the main skyline of beijing....this city is enormous...and extends outward for hours....there are big buildings, but none of them, except in this specific area, are skyscrapers like in shanghai....i have said that shanghai is tall in buildings, while beijing is wide....but the main building you see in front of you that is bent, is nicknamed the "pants" building...and is the CCTV tower here....the tall one behind is the financial tower...and both are located in the CBD (central business district)

this statue is on my school's campus...it is of confucius....and one of the kids made sure to help him mask up....this was and currently still is a daily existence here in china....i still have not taught a class in person without a mask, since march 2020....crazy.....

this is most of my science team....we were out celebrating my birthday...at the local pizza place next to school....i never really had detroit pizza before this place...but it sure is tasty :)

i also had a great brunch with friends for my birthday....did a night stay-cation at a swanky hotel in the city as well...it was a great weekend :)

one of the things i have been doing quite a lot of is stay-cations....and the great wall is actually still in the borders of beijing....so we could rent swanky villas for holidays/weekends and go with a bunch of friends out by the wall...this is a view of the wall from one of those stay-cations....

this was the courtyard with the wading pool of one of those places we did for a weekend...

one aspect of beijing that i really do love is the art complex known as 798....this area reminds me so much of gasworks in seattle or the stax in bethlehem...but dwarfs them both in size...this is one of the places where manufacturing used to happen in beijing....before it was moved outside of the city....so they have taken this area and made it all art - galleries and sculptures and murals...you never can be sure what you will find...like this igloo with some penguins....too funny....

i also love moon gates....no matter when i am out, when i see one, i always take this shot....sometimes my hands can actually touch both sides....they remind me of hobbit houses and in chinese architecture, they signify birth and renewal

these are some of the pipes and manufacturing aspects of buildings left behind that you can find in the 798 art zone....just a fun place to wander around....

fall is a beautiful time of year in beijing....we have a huge change of the color of the leaves and 798 has some great walls with ivy on them that change with the seasons....

at school we have a lovely chinese garden that i walk through every day....i call these statues the three wise men...which is probably not who they are...maybe old scholars....but i love this pathway i take every day to my classroom....

this year for halloween, the math and science departments dressed up as men in black...here we are in the peace park....my science team is a terrific bunch of folks and i have really enjoyed working with them these past 2.5 years....

this was another stay-cation home....this one had an amazing fireplace and overlooked a different section of the wall....

the house was called the sleeping buddha...and if you look at the mountain above, where the wall is, you should be able to see the sleeping buddha's forehead, eyes, nose, mouth and slight chin...we had amazing weather, but at this point, due to the covid situation, the wall was closed to visitors....

here is me and the sleeping buddha enjoying some of the sunshine...it was a "bluebird Beijing Day"!! we actually have a lot of these days...pollution is usually bad for about 20-40 days a year in beijing...much different the past....we also get sand storms from the gobi desert and those can be nasty...but i had them in ghana as well...from the sahara....

this was another vegan cooking day...sichuan food (what i am actually having for my xmas food tour this break!) it was an amazing array of food...and i love how mushrooms are used in most dishes as a meat substitue...and there are sooooooooo many kinds here in china....

as things got crazier and crazier here with covid and they started telling people to stay home from work and school....and then as folks all started becoming positive....some businesses took matters into their own hands... the store is in the second floor apartment....there is a buzzer on top of the white poster and the basket is hanging down to take your money and give you your product...it had a QR code on it as well...as no one here uses cash these days....you pay for everything with your phone...it is going to be hard to remember for carry a wallet again ;P  we thinnk they were selling lottery tickets and small household items....

someone previously asked me to share a picture of the building i live in....this is two of the four buildings in my complex from our front courtyard...my apartment is on the other side and looks out over the street and towards the downtown section of beijing....i really do like my apartment....which is good because i have spent a lot of time there myself over the past 8 weeks....

this is how i enter school every day....we'll see what happens when we return from break....but i had to walk through a shipping container, where my temperature was measured everyday...i also had to scan a code to show i had been tested the day before and was negative.....i have no idea what will happen with all of this equipment now that caution has been thrown to the wind....

this is my walk to where my classroom is...i took this shot while we were online and i was still allowed to go to school to teach online...it helped me keep a routine and some other folks were there most days, so i had some social interaction, which was good for my mental state :)

this is the view across the peace park, towards the middle school building...it was super weird once again, to not have folks on campus...most folks could not get here because at this point they were still locking down compounds....crazy to think all of these restrictions have flown out the window...i guess it now makes a good story???? maybe when i am more removed from it....

the seven days of testing positive for covid....we now have access to the home tests....something that was not available in china for the past few years....this is how most people test now....just like the rest of the world...no more testing for the health kit or checking the green arrow....its a whole new world....

my last shot is a celebration for my new post in paris....at the american school of paris....this was after i siugned my intent letter and really had made my decision....i am soooooooo excited for this move :)

so there you have it....pics and stories from my past six months in china....i am so hopeful that my last six months are much different and i actually might get to leave the country for a trip to another place in southeast asia and get to see the few remaining sites here in china i want to see....we'll see...i don't really trust the changes until they happen and have been around for a month or so....but my fingers are crossed....

i hope each of you has a wonderful solstice - its winter here in beijing...and cold (-10C this morning)....and a very happy holiday season with family and friends wherever you might be....i am hopeful that 2023 will be an amazing year of change and freedom....and my international life will return to a more similar way of life i used to have pre-covid....drop a line and say hello and let me know how you are doing!!!!

peace out.....dani