I Want Dou Dou

We are in the middle of a transition - post-daytime diaper but not beyond the accident stage. Several months ago at least one, sometimes both of the girls would pee their pants every Monday at school. The troubling part was Ollie regarded peeing her pants as funny.

The girls are motivated by food and we decided to change their pants-peeing behavior by bribing them with a treat if they made it through school without an accident.

The first day Ollie and Zoe came home dry. After we returned from work we rewarded them with one jellybean each. They were very excited and proud to have earned a dou dou, Mandarin for “little bean”.

The second day Ollie peed her pants. We steeled ourselves for the conversation and gave Zoe her jellybean. For the better part of an hour Ollie went bezerk - crying, screaming, rolling around on the ground - inconsolable. When Anne and I went to bed we said to each other there was no way Ollie would pee her pants the next day.

The next day I worked from our den, which is located at the front of the house. As soon as Ollie rounded the corner and caught sight of me she started screaming over and over again “No pee-pee pants, No pee-pee pants.” By the time I got to the front door, Ollie had jumped out of the stroller, pulled her dress up to under her arms and was running in circles in the front yard still screaming “No pee-pee pants, No pee-pee pants.”

When I finally convinced her to stop running around and put her dress down she walked up to me and with a deadly serious look said “Give me dou dou NOW!” There wasn’t going to be any wait until mom gets home. Diversionary tactics were futile. It was produce a dou dou or get ready for another hour of bezerkness. And so, we had jellybeans before lunch.

For the most part, dou dous reigned in the accidents at school, but now we are faced with weaning them off the bribe and, most likely, more bezerkness.

[Ed. note. I wrote this blog just as China blocked access to blogger. Thankfully, we weaned them off of dou dous with very little bezerkness.]

Surfacing

We are in California for a several week visit with family and friends. Now that I am out of China, I also have access to Blogger.

Since mid-April, China blocked access to Blogger in the run up to the one-year anniversary of the crackdown in Tibet in early May and the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4. One of these events would have made the Boys of Beijing nervous, but both anniversaries occurring within 30 days of each other kicked their heavy-handed responses into overdrive.

I've tried to use proxy services in China to access Blogger, but most fail, proving China's Internet filtering capabilities are becoming more sophisticated. For a good article on how China's executes their net censorship, read James Fallow's piece here.

I've thrown in the towel on free proxy services and will now pay for a personal VPN service. The service will give me access to Blogger, Hotmail, Flickr and all those other sites China deems to be "harmful to the people".

It's nice to be back. And to those net censors that toil away in China I'll sign off by saying, you can block it, but you can't block me!

NASCAR at 30 Kilometers per hour

It is said that each day in Beijing more than 1,000 new cars hit the road. Not wanting to miss out on the action, I took the plunge last year, got my Chinese driver’s license and bought a car.

So far I have survived Beijing’s roads without incident. It is a white knuckled ride most days - thankfully at 30 Km/hr. I’ve come to learn and appreciate the rules of the road here. Here are some of my discoveries.

Right of way: Every driver is right and every driver knows the way, therefore there is a right of way and it’s my way. Stopping on a road or highway is understandable because you might be lost and why not take a minute or two to figure out where you are. Backing up into oncoming traffic is the best way to get back to that intersection or off ramp that you overshot. There’s not telling how long or what roads you might have to drive to get back to the place you wanted to be.

Value of a Sunroof: Many intersections in China are equipped with video surveillance. Blowing through a red light or making an illegal turn will result in points being deducted from your license. The sunroof comes into play when you are at an intersection and crane your neck to look up through the sunroof to check for cameras. No cameras, just blow on through. Re-read the Right of Way bit above to understand why this is OK.

No look lane change: Since everyone here is hustling to get ahead, everyone changes lanes when they see the slightest of openings. I’ve learned to nudge my way between buses, out jockey taxis and make military license-plated vehicles stand down for my dual car seat family mobile. When I make my move, I no longer look in my blind spot, I just go – another move defensible by the Right of Way bit.

The best part of driving is more of Beijing is now accessible to me. I pile the girls into the car every Sunday morning for our adventures of discovery and, as a family, we get outside of Beijing to the see the Great Wall and get a fresh air break.

For those of you visiting us in Beijing, I will pick you up at the airport. Just put on your seatbelt and get ready to experience the Chinese right of way.

To Zoe, From Zain

And so it beings. Zoe received a Valentine's Day card from a boy in her class and now there is new dynamic in our house. 

Zoe proudly shows us Zain's card - a card she won't let Ollie hold.  Zoe tells us Zain is her friend, but is quick to say Zain is not Ollie's friend. On the way to school Zoe tells me she is going to see Zain. When I get home from work, Zoe tells me she that she saw Zain.  

Through these conversations I see my future unrolling in front of me. "XX (insert name of boy here) is my friend/boyfriend.""I can't wait to see XX at school/the game/the mall/the party." "I want to play with/talk on the phone with/meet up with XX."

Ollie is not phased by Zoe's infatuation with Zain or his card.  I assume it's only a matter of time before Ollie starts talking about YY.

As for me, I'm taking a deep breath because I know this is going to be a recurring topic for a long, long time.  

What Happened

“What happened” is one of the girls’ favorite phrases. They learned it from Anne who apparently uses it a lot around the girls. It’s used to answer the daily questions of why are they crying, how did that get broken and how did they write on the wall.  

The phrase also helps me understand how I got from December 1st to mid-January. It’s been a blur. Too much work, a wonderful, but quick Christmas holiday with my family in Maui, the girls starting school again, and work picking right back up where I left it when I scrambled out the door for our Christmas holiday.  

Maui with my family was great. We spent many hours in the pool swimming and playing on the slides. Travis and my dad became masters of the big kid enclosed water slide. Anne and I each had our fair share of trips down the smaller slide with Ollie and Zoe.  

It was great to watch my family play with the girls and to see the cousins laugh and play together. Anne and I enjoyed eating freshly caught seafood and not worrying about food quality issues. Since it’s below freezing in Beijing, it was also nice to be warm again.  

Our next family trip to the US will be in July. Something tells me with the way 2008 ended and 2009 began, between now and July, it will be a blur best explained by “What Happened”.

A Great Piece of Ass

One reason I enjoy living overseas is that I get to do things that I don't have the opportunity to do back home. Recently I had one of those opportunities - I had a great piece of ass.  

It was truly great ass. The buns were perfect and they fit nicely in the palm of my hand.  Best of all, it came with a tasty bowl of soup and cost just under $2.  

Donkey meat is a wintertime favorite in northern China. My friends explained a donkey's blood circulation slows in winter permitting the meat to soak up more nutrients, thus making it better for  you.  I have no idea if there is any truth to this widely held belief. 

The lean meat was served in a slightly crispy, hot bun. If I was told I was eating lean corned beef, I would have believed it. At times the meat had a strong flavor, but not overpowering.

Asia is a wonderful place for adventurous eating and I love having the opportunity to do so.

Flying to Granny

The girls are all fired up about flying to Maui to meet my family for Christmas.  

Every night after work the girls pack bags for the trip - Anne's overnight roll-aboard and my briefcase. They they pull those bags and us into the kitchen, shut the door and we play airplane. Ollie gives us our instructions, makes us buckle our seat belts and makes us sit properly on the floor.  

We hold hands on take off and landing as they pretend they are scared. Sometimes the girls will even give us a magazine to read. This week they brought couch cushions into the kitchen to make our hour of sitting on the tile floor more comfortable.  

When we ask the girls where we are going, they respond "to see Granny". Now every time Anne returns from an business trip, which they know means a plane trip, they ask Anne if she saw Granny.

We're hoping with all the airplane play the girls be more prepared for air travel. Then again, who is really ready for a full day of flying and three plane changes to get to Maui. At least they know Granny will be there.