Santa is in China right now!

You may not even have eaten lunch back in America as of now, but all is still in the middle of the night here in Shanghai. Santa has been spotted multiple times around the city and now that it's 1 am, we had better get to bed ourselves so that Santa doesn't pass our house by.

Amazingly we here in China will have opened our Christmas presents and had breakfast before many folks back in the States even have dinner and go to Christmas Eve services.

And with that... Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Mall Rats and Spyders

When we moved here we had no friends and couldn't speak Chinese. But we soon found a place where we were always welcome... the Shanghai Science & Tech underground market where everybody was our best friend and at least our Chinese was better than their English! I wish I could describe the place. It is in fact entirely underground and the place just doesn't end. There have to be at least 1,000 small shops all pushing their merchandise. It's definitely a must-see place in Shanghai.

We went there several times in the first couple of weeks because it was entertaining to see how the bargaining process worked and it was a good chance to practice our Chinese with the sellers. We really had no interest in buying things, but stopped into the shops and chatted.

They always are trying to sell you something... Rolex watch, Louis Vuitton bag, DVDs, iPods... you name it, it can be found here. We had no interest in buying anything since we had just moved there and were still trying to get our bearing of where we were and what we needed. But they would push items on us and as we insisted that we didn't want things, they continued to drop prices. The result is that we we got to see how low they would go on items so that when it was time to buy, we had a "local" perspective on prices.

Eventually our Chinese graduated out of the underground market scene and we gave up the Mall Rat life, but when we need something, we usually go back there.

Fast forward to last Saturday and Christmas shopping. It's a year and half later, and we still can't speak Chinese and we still don't have any friends, but we do have the Science & Tech Market! We were there until the place closed at 8:30 pm and it was pretty slow. I had Adayla and Ryann while Morgan had Tally so that we could shop for each other. I was done and was waiting for Morgan and Tally to finish up. Several of the shop ladies came out into one of the halls to see the girls and Adayla immediately started chatting with them in Chinese. Needless to say this drew a crowd and eventually about 20 ladies came around to watch the foreign girl speaking Chinese.

Adayla said some funny things. At first one of the ladies asked Adayla if she would come home with her for the evening. Adayla declined. She then asked if she could take Ryann home for the evening and Adayla responded, "Ni bu keyi yinwei ni bu keyi gei Ryann he nai" which started an eruption of laughter. Adayla told the lady that she couldn't take Ryann home because she didn't have any milk to feed Ryann with! She kept the ladies entertained for a half hour or so, entirely in Chinese. One gal actually asked me if my wife was Chinese because Adayla's Chinese is so good... does Adayla look half-Chinese? Eventually Morgan came with Tally and the the ladies all complemented Morgan for raising three daughters.

Morgan and I went back to the Science & Tech Market today without the girls to finish our Christmas shopping and we walked past a shop selling ski jackets. We weren't looking for a ski jacket, but the two gals were nice enough and we chatted for a bit. I noticed a cute little pink ski jacket that we thought would be fun for Tally. When they pulled it out for us to get a better look at, the brand name "SPYDER" jumped out at us. How perfect... Tally's favorite toy right now is a black plastic spider that she still has from Halloween. They started us at RMB 680, or about $100, but we eventually got them down to RMB 110, or about $16. Morgan and I really wanted to get it down to RMB 80 or so, so we took their card and continued our shopping. As we came upon other shops with the same jacket we bargained with them on the jacket. The result? One shop only came down to 200, two shops came down to 150, two shops came down to 120, and several shops also came down to RMB 110. So being faithful to the first shop, we went back at the end of the day to buy the jacket from them.

They asked us if we were going "home" for Christmas and we told them that we were "home" and didn't need to go anywhere to be "home." We told them that our youngest was born here in Shanghai and that the girls speak Chinese. They then both looked at us and asked if we had been there on Saturday evening. We said yes and asked them if they were in the "crowd" that evening. They weren't there, but they had heard other people talking about the foreign-family with the three Chinese-speaking girls. Funny how news travels around.

China: 30 Years of Reform

On December 18, 1978 the Chinese Communist Party decided to open the economy and country as they realized the first 30 years of the Communist reign had been a failure and the country was on the verge of collapse. It was this decision that set the path to China becoming the "world's toy factory" and an exporting powerhouse.

While yesterday may have been the formal celebration of the Reform and Opening initiative, I think its undeniable that the "real" celebration of this was back in August during the couple of weeks when Beijing hosted the Olympics.

Here are some excerpts from China's President Hu Jintao from the meeting as reported by the Shanghaidaily.com:

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PRESIDENT Hu Jintao said yesterday that China must continue to press ahead with its "reform and opening drive," which in the past 30 years has turned the poverty-stricken country into one of the world's largest economies.Hu said China's significant progress had proved that the path of reform was "completely correct."

His speech, at the Great Hall of the People in downtown Beijing, came during a ceremony commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Communist Party of China's decision to open up the country and reform its moribund economy.

The decision, which saved China from an economic breakdown after the chaotic "cultural revolution" (1966-1976), was masterminded by Deng Xiaoping together with "his comrades who were bold enough to change the old norms."

"At that time people didn't have enough food and clothing. Ordinary people suffered most."In the 30 years since that trip, the average annual disposable income of Chinese urban residents has grown 6.5 times, from 343 yuan (US$50.40) in 1978 to 13,786 yuan in 2007.

Over the past three decades, China has maintained average annual economic growth of 9.8 percent, more than three times the world average, Hu told the meeting.Gross domestic product rose from 360 billion yuan in 1978 to 24.95 trillion yuan in 2007, making China the world's fourth-largest economy. The country's population living in poverty was cut from 250 million in 1978 to 14.79 million in 2007.

Hu said China still faces many challenges, including a low level of industrial innovation, a weak agricultural foundation, less-developed rural areas and deficiencies within the Party and the government.
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Here are a couple of additional comments on the topic.

The article mentions that the average annual disposable income for urban residents has risen over the last 30 years from $50.40 to about $2,000.00. Obviously a significant increase. The chart below shows the average annual income in China's rural area... from virtually nothing in 1978 to just over RMB4,000 or about $580/year. And that's not disposable income, that's total income.

So there is a growing problem that the "rich are getting richer" and leaving the rural areas behind. This is why so many "migrant" workers come from the rural areas to work as housemaids, work the various retail stores, in the manufacturing factories and in construction.

Here's an example of the conflict between the classes, between the rich city workers and the poor migrant workers. Look at this picture...
In this picture above, one of the company's factories was recently closed, but the company did not pay out its required unemployment benefits. So the workers united and stormed the headquarters building, literally trashing the entire office and destroying tens of thousands of dollars in equipment.

Another problem that China needs to address is the level of safety standards. Food safety is an obvious example of the problems they have been having. One more area is in their construction. They are building at an incredible pace... new skyscrapers, airports, bridges, tunnels, subways, etc. While it is both incredible and beautiful, for example here is the new area of Shanghai that has entirely been built since 1990:
What happens when the buildings are not up to code? Just think of all the schools that collapsed during the Sichuan earthquake because they were not built to the proper earthquake codes that they were contracted to build them to.

What happens when the tunnels and subways built underneath are not built to proper specs? Unfortunately there was a recent example of this just last month in Hangzhou, a city close to Shanghai. A tunnel that was being built for their new subway collapsed causing injury and death in the following scene:

The Reform and Opening has led to a lot of progress... that is unquestionable. But there are lots of cracks in the system that need to be addressed to maintain the progress that has been made and I commend President Hu Jintao for bringing that up in his speech yesterday.

China Miracle or China Mirage? It's definitely a bit of both. I wish them the best going forward, for their sake... and for ours as well!

The Expressions of a Tally

Tally does her own thing, everyday, all day. You watch her and can't help but smile and laugh. Her faces are always expressive. And we can't forget to mention that she somehow manages to fall at least 50 times a day and you must wonder what she tripped over.

Just last week, we were church and they were passing around the water. As she put her little cup back into the tray, she somehow trips and the whole thing spills all over me and Ryann. Not even 5 minutes later she is eating her lunch (church is smack in the middle of lunchtime), she drops the whole container of noodles onto the ground and of course you CANNOT eat food off the ground anywhere in China. About two minutes after that, she is sitting on top of our jackets on the chairs and she completely falls to the ground with the coats and all. She is a crazy... and we love her for it!

Sunday Funny

After church today we were talking with another family. After a little while, their daughter, who is in the 10th grade, mentioned that she was learning Chinese in school and so Adayla started talking with her in Chinese. Adayla was in a very playful mood and so she really started speaking Chinese like she does at her Kindergarten. This gal's dad speaks Chinese so he ended up translating what Adayla was saying to his daughter. In between translating, he was just laughing in amusement to see a 4-year-old non-native girl speaking fluent Chinese.

After about 15 minutes or so another person who speaks Chinese walked by and this gal's dad said to him, "Do you want to get run around in Chinese by a 4-year-old?" to which this gentleman said "Sure!" So he started speaking Chinese to Adayla, but he was quite a large man and perhaps Adayla felt a bit embarrassed and shy so she stopped speaking. He then said to Adayla in Chinese that she should say something in Chinese to which Adayla immediately replied:

"Ni de duzi hen pang!" (Your belly is fat!)

Uh, what do you say to that? Fortunately everybody just laughed and he said that not only can Adayla speak Chinese, but she has become Chinese with her blunt honesty!

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Santa made it all the way from the North Pole last night to stop by for an early visit. I told Adayla earlier in the day that we might be seeing Santa. All by her very own self she prepared the following letter: (she gave it to Santa and we are trying to track it back down)

TO SANT

CLOS
I AM U GUD L

ISNR

A T

Here let me translate:

To Santa

Claus

I am a good

listener

A and T (for Adayla and Tally).

I couldn't believe she did this all by herself and even showing her very sweet side that she included Tally. Adayla was one of the most excited kids to hop on Santa's lap. Tally didn't follow Adayla, but waited about 10 kids to see what was happening to them. She then then decided she could sit on his lap and loved it. (It helped he was handing out bracelets.) And then Ryann....well, this is the first time she has gotten stranger anxiety and she let him have it.

Ryann side notes, she is getting a bit happier playing on the floor, especially when she spots a toothbrush, she will take off across the room for one. Good girl! Also, she sings whenever she eats, at least that is what helper lady calls it. She makes mmm and sounds of enjoyment while eating. She is a clean little eater, she just waits for you to feed it to her, she doesn't use her hands to help get it in there. This makes cleanup much, much easier....I mean if she got lots of food in that mullet, what a mess!

Christmas in China

We have been doing our best to make a few Christmas traditions here in China. We bought these kits from Ikea and some were broken, so we had to improvise. Poor Tally always getting the shaft. Don't worry, I am sure she got the same amount of candy, just most of it went into her belly.

Ryann even took part in the festivities. By the way, can someone do something with this child's hair? She has the most interesting mullet ever....

Adayla didn't have time to pose, but her and Liam (her best buddy and nieghbor) did have good times putting them together.

Ryann's Photog Session

Ryann finally had her pictures taken....don't you feel bad for this 3rd child. I actually blame it on being in China, there are few places to get pictures done. The weather was nice this past week and we put her outside, we have to say she is stinkin cute!
Note to families - Leave a comment if you would like me to mail you one, that may inspire me to get it done before she turns 2!

The 3 Wild Women

We occassionally take pics of the girls these days and I thought I would share.

Ryann is as sweet as ever as long as she is being carried or has a pacifier in her mouth. She is still toothless and has learned to crawl, but rarely does as she is carried most of the day!

Tally is in her growing phase and says all sorts of funny things, she is stubborn, but we finally talked her into not dribbling everytime she needs to go potty. Thankfully she loves GUM! Her faces are expressive as ever....

Adayla's little brain is a little bigger this week as she finished her reading book, funny story to follow about her first letter to Santa.

Crazy Hotel Lady

So in my attempts to "catch up" here I go:

My sweet husband let me escape for a girl's weekend a while back with just Ryann. My friend (we'll call her L) left her two girls at home and we headed to a random town called Ningbo, a 3 1/2 hour train ride south of her. We orginally planned for Huangshan, but the forecast called for rain all weekend....so we headed to Ningbo where it rained all weekend as well.

I'll get to where we went later. We checked into our hotel, did some wondering, grabbed some delicious street food, and got back to the hotel around 9 so I could put Ryann down to bed. She would have quickly fallen asleep if it weren't so dang hot in the room. (She is 8 months old and still sleeps wrapped like a mummy, not such a good thing when it is HOT!) She was a sweaty betty and just couldn't get comfy. She would try to doze and then fuss. So we turned on the air conditioner and it didn't seem to work. So L politely gave the front desk a call and they had switched the air conditioner to heat and so we had no way of cooling off. They said they would send housekeeping. We waited and I was getting a bit grumpy, I had exhausted baby, and not looking forward to a night of tossing and turning I don't do well in the heat!

At 10:30 and a still crying Ryann, I call the front desk and let them have it in my broken Chinese. They must have understood because a few minutes housekeeping showed up. She brought the fan in and I had to restrain myself from kissing her! She had to restrain herself from kissing my baby. She was a cute little gal, not over 20 and works the night shift at this hotel. I forgot to mention, Ningbo doesn't get alot of Western tourists and very few Westerners live there. So there was this little blue eyed baby just a few feet from her and she couldn't resist. Her little face lit up. She busted out her cell phone for a few pics. But with no flash couldn't get a good picture, she motioned for me to move closer to the lamp. It was still not bright enough, she helped me turn on the lamp much brighter, and finally (1o minutes later) she was satisfied with her pic.

We turned the lights down, wrapped Ryann up, got the fan blowing on her, and she was out!

I was able to relax and was looking forward to a good night's rest.

Knock, Knock, Knock....it is 11pm, who is knocking on the door, little housekeeping lady. I think she wanted another peek at the baby and was scheming how she could do it. Well, how about the English version of a Chinese paper and like 10 candy bars (Chinese Nestle's version of a kit kat with less sugar and more wax). So we opened the door and in she came to deliver the goods. L and I could only laugh and laugh...the experiences we are having!

The Marine Corps Ball, updated

The Marine Corps Ball is held every year to celebrate the "birthday" of the Marine Corps... 233 years this year.

This event is THE event for Marines every year. There are Marines posted here in Shanghai for guard duty at the Consulate and every year they organize a HUGE event to celebrate. It is quite popular with American businessmen as a way to show their patriotism and probably as a way to network with various people at the Consulate.

It's also a chance for us to dress up and relive our high school prom days.

So here's our "official" picture from the Ball...



A picture with fellow Scholar, Enrique, who is studying out in Hangzhou. This is our best attempt at a Chinese-style picture with the fingers...

A couple of other pictures....

The girls were really funny while Mommy and her friend wer getting all dressed up for the Ball. They thought Mommy and Enrique's wife, Olga, looked like princesses and so they put their princess gear on as well...

Japan - General Impressions and Random Pictures

Finally some random pictures from my Japan trip that I don't know where to put. So I'll just lump them all here together.

If you haven't been able to tell, I loved this trip. Japan is a beautiful country, and often times I thought I was in Germany. It is so clean and orderly here, the trains are punctual and efficient, the air is clean and the mountains have beautiful trees. Heck, the world's best cars even come from these two countries.

The trains, the beautiful trains. These are the world's fastest bullet trains (the Magnetic train here in Shanghai doesn't count). So fast, so smooth, so nice.

and so long! You can get 2,000 people on these trains, and the are going through every 10 minutes on routes connecting the Kansai region (Kobe/Osaka/Kyoto) with the Tokyo area. Amazing how these people get around.

There are three types of toilets on board the trains. The "traditional style" which is a squatter, then the gentlemen's "pisser" for a stand-up option... however for whatever reason the door has a window that blocks out the persons face but not the body, and that is not a shade that moves up and down. What you see is what you get!

And finally the "Western Style" bathroom. I had to wait in line behind two Japanese ladies to use this. If I had spoke Japanese I would have told them that they needed to use the Japanese style toilet and let the Western guy use the Western toilet.

Even the regional trains are nice. How's this for engineering... the seat push over from side-to-side so that if you want two sets of seats facing each other you just push a latch and push it into place... ingenious.

Another German-Japanese similarity... the Japanese love German wood toys. I saw several shops throughout my trip. You can see Christmas Nutcrackers and Smokers (Raucher Mannchen) in the store window among other things.

Another German-Japanese similarity... it is not uncommon in Germany to see people bring their dogs into restaurants when they eat or to see them lined up outside of a store while they go shopping. Yup, the same thing goes here in Japan, too. They love their dogs!
One difference between the two countries, look at the map legend below...

Ya, I don't think you'll see that symbol used in Germany for a temple for for anything... Yikes! The first time I saw that symbol outside of a Nazi-Germany context was on my trip to Taiwan last year when I saw it on a Buddha and didn't know that it had a religious meaning. The word "Swastika" means good luck or fortune in Greek. The symbol has significance in Hindu and Buddhist religions. In Buddhism it symbolizes eternal life or eternity. But once Hitler adopted this symbol and tilted it 45 degrees did it take on the meaning that most of us in the West place on it when we see it. It still catches my eye and makes me jump when I see it.


It is not uncommon to see ladies walking around in their Kimonos. They are even coming back into fashion here from what I've been told...

and not just ladies wear Kimonos, but I saw several girls wearing them as well. I just think this girl is cute in her traditional Kimono playing with Winnie the Pooh!

Speaking of fashion... Kobe is a very rich city and most people are dressed to impress. Everybody is making a fashion statement here. As for this lady's fashion statement, let's just say not so traditional?

Back in China we constantly have to watch and tell men to keep their cigarettes away from the kids when they're close to our girls. Smokers just don't realize how dangerous their cigarettes are. That's why I liked these signs on the trash cans here...

This one says "I carry a 700 degree Celsius fire in my hand with people walking all around me."

This one is a bit more clear, it says "A lit cigarette is carried at the height of a child's face." I appreciate it... "Ordnung muss sein" (Order must be!)
Took a bus from Yokota Air Base to the airport and we drove through downtown Tokyo on the way. I was impressed how pretty the downtown is...

And finally I was at the airport awaiting my flight. Check out this engineering marvel: wondering where to put your child while you need to use the toilet? Just flip down the seat and you can sit in peace!

Remember that big thing at the Seattle airport last year or the year before where they took down their Christmas tree in the airport, then finally put it back up after the big public backlash? Well just so you know, Narita Airport in Tokyo says "Merry Christmas!"

I had an hour to burn while I was there, and amazingly the airport has an "old school" observation deck!
I don't know how many pictures I have from when I was younger of airplanes at the airport. Here's a pic of a JAL 747 landing.

And a Northwest 747 taxiing in. No wonder why I wanted to be a pilot, I still think airplanes are the coolest things ever...
And with that, my amazing trip to Japan was over. If I could have only shared it with Morgan... I'll make it up to her when we move here next summer!

Tokyo - Yokota Air Force Base

The business side of this trip to Japan was for me to go to Yokota Air Base which is on the west side of Tokyo. As I've already shared, they have a most excellent commissary with a great selection of turkeys!

The base itself was just beautiful. This was outside of the window of my on-base hotel room.

Walking around base...


I had been through Yokota several times in my previous pilot days, but I guess I was too busy to stop and smell the roses, or rather to to stop and take a picture of Mt. Fuji. Here's a shot of Fuji taken across the runway at Yokota.

Fuji close-up. Unfortunately there was some junk on my lens...

Another great thing about Yokota... TACO BELL!!
You don't know what you've got, until it's gone... right? Well Morgan and I KNEW that the one thing we would miss about America while in China was Taco Bell. College Football? I've actually come to enjoy watching the games in the morning while eating cereal. But there is not substitute for Taco Bell. This picture was taken on my first evening at Yokota, about 15 minutes before they closed... good thing I made it! What did I get? A beef grilled stuffed burrito, a double decker taco and a baja beef chalupa. Sooo good!

And I bumped into Santa while I was there. Santa in Japan is nicer than Santa in the States... he's free here!

If there were a way for us to move here to Tokyo next summer, we are there! Japan ROCKS!