AYI chihuahua!

It's, like, 8:35 in the morning and I am pacing the apartment, waiting the immanent arrival of Ayi. My feet squeak across the floor. Squeak, Squeak, Squeak. Is it because my floors are so damn clean or is it the fake wood laminate that makes that sound? My floors at home don't squeak. They are real wood. They are usually covered in dirt tracked in by curious and tactile boys.

My phone screams at me; I have an urgent message. It's Robert, our former driver, the one who thinks I speak with sharp tongue and who thinks I'm a nut job. "Ayi will be late, she is on her way. Traffic is bad. This will not happen again. I told her she must ride her bike in and be there on time! My apologies."

I relax and listen to the steady drip of my upstairs neighbors shower. Thump, thump, thump it goes on the concrete. It seems my neighbors are always showering. The drip never stops. One time the drip turned into a steady stream that came through the cement and dry wall and leaked coldness into our bathtub. I envision our neighbor's tub crashing through our ceiling and squashing the kids. Blood and cement and steel and porcelain everywhere.

I call Lucy. Whenever I have a problem with the apartment, I call Lucy. Our dishwasher does not work, so in comes Lucy her high heels clicking. Click Click Click. I remember thinking: "Uh, you gonna fix my dishwasher in THOSE shoes?" Turns out that Lucy's only job is to announce her colleague is coming to fix my dishwasher. Two minutes later, the colleague enters and chain smokes his way into my kitchen. Lucy leaves. Colleague doesn't know jack about dishwashers. He comes back 4 more times and finally calls Colleague Number 2 for assistance. Colleagues 1 and 2 chain smoke and discuss the price of leeks and Feraris. They peek under the lid of my fry pan and see a whole chicken--feet and toenails and beak and comb and gobbler and melting eyeballs and all--and wonder aloud if this is what Meiguo rens (Americans) eat, but they do not fix my dishwasher. I want to tell them that it probably has something to do with fact that the water hoses have been affixed to the appliance with stuffed newspaper and that perhaps a better suited connection might allow water to flow through, but I can't say "Why don't you use a water pipe that actually fits this dishwasher" in Mandarin.

Two days later the dishwasher was gone, leaving a gaping hole in my cupboards. Then magically it reappeared. It was the same dishwasher and it sucked up water just fine, but then it sprayed all the dirty water into my cabinets and onto the floor. I gave up on trying to fix the dishwasher. I can wash our dishes by hand, but I know full well that we will probably lose our deposit for "breaking the dishwasher." It might be worth it just to not have to listen to the chain-smoking colleagues in my apartment everyday.

A loud explosion rattles me back to the present where I can still hear the dripping. I muffle the sound by cranking up the Lupe Fiasco. This is war. You drip, I hip hop. The bathroom ceiling access hatch is still open, revealing the source of the leak: aluminum foil covering the drain pipes. Seriously, I could not make up this shit if I tried. It can't possibly cost much to cap them with PVC caps. There are a million shops that sell nothing but PVC pipes and caps in the hutong behind the Park Avenue complex. But this is China.

I am glad Ayi is late. I don't want an Ayi. Austin insisted. It sounds romantic and all, to have someone clean your house and cook your food, but it's really just fucking awkward. I can put my own groceries away, thank you very much, and wash my own clothes, and sweep my own floors. Or not. Besides, Ayi Ge Yu Rong does not speak a lick of English.

I resume pacing and then I sit, trying to look natural, on the world's most ornate and overstuffed couch. It's froof times 10. It's like Snufalupagus crashing into a Victorian claw-footed tub. Snuffy's long eyelashes the fringe on the umpteen pillows. I had to remove half the pillows to even be able to sit. If only I could stuff half this plush into the rock-hard mattresses. The Chinese will sleep on anything. I once saw a guy use a brick for a pillow. He was taking his siesta on a concrete curb, his head propped on a brick. I on the other hand wake up constantly with my hips, elbows and joints tingling and throbbing from prolonged pressure on the hard mattress. Austin does not have a problem, he flips and flops and kicks and punches all night long. He never sleeps in one place long enough to make his limbs fall asleep.

The doorbell rings. I startle. I summon all Mandarin skills (I can say hi) and smooth my frizzle-dry hair and open the door. "Ni Hao! I say, trying to sound cheerful and confident like I have done this before. "Ni Hao," Ge says with a smile. We stand looking at each other. Great, now that's over. I've exhausted my Mandarin. Now what?

500 is when the Canary Dies

The first morning in Beijing was glorious. From 28F we could see clear to through the CCTV tower, know colloquially as Big Underpants, straight to the Forbidden City. Looking West, the horizon was rimmed by Donkey Saddle Mountain Range. It was sunny and warm like a fine California day. It was not to last.

Three days in I opened the curtains and: brown. It was like Seattle gray, thick and pervasive, only brown. So brown I could not see the adjacent apartment tower. My lungs hurt. Finn was complaining that his nose hurt. Eli dug out a blackish booger we call smooggers (smog + booger = smoogers) and paraded it in front of my face. Holy dragon warrior, that hovering brown cloud that is clinging to my widows is mostly fog, right?

I logged on to the US Embassy to check the hourly AQI, the Air Quality Indicator. The AQI measures dangerous particulate contents, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and ground ozone. Most foreigners have an AQI ap on their phone. Checking the AQI can be dangerous, like owning a scale and checking your weight. It can become obsessive. I resolve to not obsess.

AQI measures air quality on a scale of 0-500. Zero would be a vacuum, 10 would be Austin's farts, 60 is Los Angeles on a decent day. 200 is unhealthy. 300 is hazardous. At 5:00 am on October 18th, the Beijing AQI was 447, constituting an emergency, though nobody was taking emergency measures.

Can the AQI surpass 500? Yes. Has it passed 500? Yes. What happens at 500: the canary dies. Even coal miners have masks. But what exactly do these numbers mean? I need context, so I asked everyone I know who speaks English: the boys' teachers, expats, Austin's co-workers, "What exactly does an AQI of 447 mean?" Is it equivilent to smoking cigarettes, equal to taking a pull off a tailpipe? Equal to sitting in front of a campfire and singing Kumbiyah? Do I REALLY have to keep my boys indoors? Lungs can regenerate after two years, you know.

Only Kyle could give me a satisfactory perspective. Kyle is a naval attache living in Beijing with his family. He actually hooked up one of his cigarettes to the AQI machine. It registered 67. Kyle figures he is actually cleaning the Beijing air by smoking it through his filter. Yikes! 447 is bad. It's scary bad. The boys are climbing the walls. Fortunately our Park Ave ceilings are nice and high.

So next time you see an EPA employee, give them a hug. For all my ultra-conservative friends, come, I invite you to experience life without the clean air act. It's *cough, wheeze* awesome. If you can't make it, don't worry this toxic cloud is coming your way soon enough.

Summing up The Sheppards First Week in Beijing

Dragon

"He calls you ribbon, but her name is dragon!!!!!!" Said Robert with a grin spanning his earlobes. He of course was referring to me as dragon. Robert was our driver before Mr. Wang. Robert drove us to the Great Wall on our trial trip in August. Robert is jovial and has an excellent command of English. Robert thinks I'm brash, perhaps crazy and that I am a terrible house-keeper.

He first admonished me on that Wall trip. Honestly, I said nothing during the first hour of our ride to The Wall other than a polite greeting. I was exhausted after a week of school and apartment hunting and preferred to stare out the Nissan Sentra's window at the passing countryside. I could spend all day looking out windows if the territory is unfamiliar. China qualifies as unfamiliar. I never even been anywhere in Asia until now.

The landscape between Beijing and Xianshui (pronounced Shee -on- shway) was rather boring: flat, pinkish caked earth, pocked by many thousands of poplar and eucalyptus trees planted in rows to bulwark the Northern Capital from the sandy winds that blast it every Spring spanned for miles. The scenery changed to more beautiful walnut groves and fruit orchards and quaint villages with wandering chickens, donkey-drawn carts and the tiniest of tiny Mao-era elderly as we approached the foothills of the Donkey Saddle Mountain Range. The road is shared by all manner of transport, foot, cart, car and truck alike.

The traffic getting out of Beijing was an awful mess. It took us more than an hour to get to the first toll road. At one point the cars started to move and Austin cheered our imminent progress. Within minutes, however, we were clumped together again and resumed idling. All I said was, "So much for the traffic clearing." It was an innocent comment, muttered without the faintest trace of sarcasm, but Robert wheeled his head around and delighted: "Ahhhhhhhhh, she speaks with sharp tongue!!!! She perhaps wears the pants, no? Hahahahahahah" Oh, Robert. Oh, China, you ain't seen or heard nothing from me yet.


Trading the Tourist Visa in for the Resident Visa.

The Sheppards are here in Beijing. Half of China seems to know this and every last one of them seems to be in our employ. We'll call them handlers. I heard that term today over coffee with a lovely, more seasoned expat. Handlers, I like that; it's fitting. First came the airport handler, you know the guy you always see in the navy suit behind the security checkpoint with the sign reading "Sheppard Austin." That dude.

Airport handler was tall, like many Beijingers (the Asians are short stereotype does not apply to the Northerners) and walked a million miles an hour. His sole purpose was to walk in front of us quickly. He said nothing and led us to baggage claim and straight to customs quarantine, both places we could have easily found ourselves. Well, I guess we can say that quarantine found us. Yap Master Ruby couldn't stop barking for five minutes and it cost her 30 days in the doggie slammer. Now we have to employ another village to feed and check in on Ruby.

Airport handler vanished into thin air and two more handlers came skipping into his place and stuffed our whole family, two cars seats, plus 14 giant duffle bags into a a brand-new Honda Odyssey minivan that isn't because it is way smaller than my Odyssey. It was a tight squeeze, so tight that Handlers 2 and 3 got to stay behind and continue the hard work of chain-smoking in a polluted city.


That left us with Mr. Wang our driver who ferried us to home sweet Park Avenue. We stayed up long enough to unpack all the Legos and find some clean pajamas and make the beds. Lisa, our, um, apartment broker (???) was kind enough to hire another handler--that makes 4-- to get us some sheets, pillows and duvets to cover the rock-hard mattresses. I think it was around 10 pm that we Sheppards were journeying through the land of nod.

The boys woke up at 2:30 a.m. This made us good and tired for the 9:00 am arrival of our broker Lisa and another dude whose purpose again was unclear to do an apartment walk through and sign the lease. It's worthy to mention that since the walk through, where we noted only minor damage, this whole damn apartment is falling apart: dishwasher's busted, drawer handles are falling off, the ceiling is leaking, the windows don't open, stay open or shut, the bathroom reeks like a port-a-potty and one of the posts of our four-poster bed toppled over. These are first-world problems, as my dear friend Jill says, and we are thrilled with our location, the space and our view and will continue to be so with the walls crumbling around us.

The following two days were lovely, clear days with mild weather and sunny skies that we got to spend in the car or inside sundry government offices. We first had to get a bank account and register with the police. All foreigners have to register with the local police within 24 hours of arrival. To this end, apparated handler Sean, who is an American with and enviable command of Mandarin. Sean used his Guanxi (pronounced Gwan She and meaning "pull") to get us VIP status within the ICBC Bank. VIP status let us bypass the line and fill out less paperwork--14 forms instead of 2,348,006!

VIP status or no, it still took half the business day to open an account. The paperwork is in Mandarin with a few poorly-translated English words for guidance. We kept having to fill out the same form over and over, the first time because I did not put my middle name in the space. The form did not ask for my middle name, only my first and last. But the VIP teller wanted my middle name so he tore up the form and made me start fresh. Then, I stupidly did not check the box marked with only a "U." I don't know what checking "U" meant: perhaps "U Suck" or "Undone" or "U go home" or "U give me all your money and U don't get back"? Instead of just letting me check the mysterious "U" box, he tore up the form and made me start all over. I was so careful, so totally fastidiously careful to write my middle name and check the "U" box, but then I wrote in my address where the form said address and this was totally, clearly, absolutely NOT the right thing to do, for the teller snatched it again in a huff and shredded it and called his manager who started gesticulating wildly and yelling and then handed me a new form. This continued with a few more shreddings until the teller, exasperated that a VIP could be so utterly retarded, circled the only two line items I need concern my sorry bourgiouse ass with.

So this is how you open a bank account in China

1) Go to bank
2) Use Guanxi to get VIP status
3) Fill out form as follows:

First Name: Lesley Duncan Sheppard Last Name:

Address:

U (Insert Check Mark)


After the pleasurable banking experience, we drove to the Police Station. Only the police station moved and there was no indication as to where, like, say a cheery sign: "Your Local Police Station has moved to XYZ street. We Execute to Bring You Inconvenience!" The people in the crowded street--and when I say crowded, I don't mean Seattle crowded, or even LA crowded, I mean China crowded--that was lined with scores of shops selling nothing but vinyl windows and PVC pipes had strong opinions regarding where the police station might have moved. I noticed everybody gave a long-winded response and all pointed in different directions. I asked Sean if any of the people actually knew the station's new location, and he said "of course not." "Well, then, why do they respond with an answer they know is false?" I asked. "To save face." More on that face business later.

The best part of Mission Police Station was that Mr. Wang our driver had to back all the way down the street because it was physically impossible to turn around. Mr. Wang is bad ass, he managed to squeeze through a tangle of buses, cars, carts, bicycles, three-wheelers, rolling toasters, adults and children without scratching the Odyssey or sending anyone to the hospital. I think I might call him Mr. Mario Andretti Wang henceforth.

We did register, several hours and several police stations later. The residents in Park Avenue had to go to a specific police station, we were informed. We also got cell phones after going to 4 stores. Apparently you cannot possibly purchase a phone, a sim card and a plan in one place.


These first few days lived and learned a very important rule of life in China: You can only accomplish 2 things in any given day. Everything takes 5 times as long as it does in the States. You can go to a market and cook dinner; you can go to work and go home, you can volunteer and your kids' school and pay the water bill. Go to Mandarin class, pick up kids from the bus. The 2 task rule is why everyone lives with grandparents and great grandparents and divides up the labor. If you don't have a village, you buy one, and the Sheppards already have a village on retainer.

Carrefour
I deserved a Western shopping experience. We just spent 18 hours on an Air China plane with Chinese-only movie options and two kids, one of whom refused to sleep. I deserved a Western shopping experience. We just spent 3 days trying to make ourselves legal and reachable that included 3 trips to police stations--foreigners have to register with the police within 24 hours of arrival--and 4 failed attempts to get phones.

I deserved a Western shopping experience. I had already elbowed my way through enough crowds and crossed the 20-lane ring roads with my kids. I don't yet speak a lick of Mandarin and I had groceries and small appliances to buy: humidifiers because everyone has, like, 4 of them, and it's so dry here the Tom's toothpaste turns rock hard when the cap is left off, and it's always left off; an iron, because Austin does not believe in the wrinkle-free convenience of lycra and polyester additives or the rumpled look; and a hairdryer because I cannot go out in below-freezing temperatures with wet hair.

I decided to go to Carrefour. Carrefour is French-owned company. The French can make fire hydrants look like works of art. Carrefour will be pleasant, I concluded.

Mr. Wang drove us to Carrefour in our rented Honday Odyssey-That-Isn't. Amazon pays for Mr. Wang. Mr. Wang sighs a lot and does not speak English. I don't think Mr. Wang likes us. Mr. Wang drives and waits, drives and waits, drives and waits. That's his job.

Carrefour looked promising until we rounded the high-walled entrance. There it was. There was that wiggling, vectoring mass that is China again. Hundreds of people all going different directions. The shopping carts stood parked in an inclined lot made of a dirt rock slurry. How do you drag a cart up and out of a rocky beach when it's part of a rusted, sticky serpentine of 500 other carts? I reluctantly let go of the kids' hands to separate one cart from the train of conjoined carts. I clutched and pulled and kicked and sweated and swore and pulled and kicked some more until finally I spot a lone cart left by and shopper some hundred paces away and I make a run for it because half of China wants that same damn cart. My legs are longer so the cart is mine and I secure it by hugging it while steam is pouring from my nostrils to let other shoppers know to step off. I scream at Eli and Finn to keep up and hold on tight to the cart because, dear God, what on earth will I do if I lose them in this Carrefour crowd?

The entrance to Carrefour is at the end of a long, steep ramp. I'm trying to push the cart up this slippery ramp with one hand while I hold fast to Finn, my perpetually curious wanderer, keep an eye on Eli and control the blown-out wheels that are all pivoting in different directions. I am sliding backward and my cart bangs into the wall. I am sweating and I don't usually sweat. I pick up a protesting Finn and throw him into the cart and regain tenuous control using two hands. Along the ramp are product reps shouting at me and trying to stuff items into my cart. The Tide lady tosses a three-pack of detergent into my cart and I hand it back. She pushes it back towards me, insisting. I want to tell her I hate Tide. I want to tell her Tide smells like fast-food workers. I want to tell her that I'm not racist or classist, but it smells like my days working at Ricos and that the perfume doesn't come out until I wash it 5 times with my own detergent. But I can't speak a word and just press on until I can get to a place to jettison the Tide without her seeing.

Finally, I reach the top of the ramp and cough and blink as the two-million watts of flourescent lamps and the familiar, toxic smell of pvc-coated China overwhelmes my senses. Carrefour is huge and unabashedly cluttered like a Super Walmart after a 6 magnitude earthquake, however the aisles are Trader Joe's narrow. To make navigation still more challenging is the constant restocking taking place. In America, grocery stores are re-stocked between 1-3 in the morning. You get the best free moving boxes at 3:00 a.m. In China, restocking happens during business hours, in front of you, and the employees don't give a rat's ass if they are in the way. You run into a restock pile, you have to back down the 400-meter aisle (no room to turn) with your shrapnel-pile-of-a-cart squeaking, jerking and seizing up and you don't complain because this is du jour in China.

This ain't no Western shopping experience, I can tell you that. Oh, holy dragon dung, my eyes and nose and throat are burning but at least I see the puffs of mist issuing forth from the humidifier section. I feel like my husband in the bread aisle: so many options and a huge range of prices and I just want a machine, any machine, so long as it moistens the air so my hands don't crack and Finn's nose doesn't bleed and my toothpaste does not petrify. And then here comes the humidifier reps, two of them, sounding like pirates with their heavy "arrrrh" Beijing accent. I am very happy for their help, though I can't understand a word and I end up with a cracked-egg shaped machine that makes me happy just looking at it and a flourescent-green frog whose steam streams from the slits in its eyes.

I grab a blow-drier and an iron and I don't even look at the prices because I have to make my way down to the grocery store on Level 1 and the kids are getting restless and I'm now starting to worry that they won't take my ICBC China debit card because most places in China accept cash only. We have to slip and slide down to Level 1; we need cereal badly. Eli's nirvana is a world made of cereal; he's the kid who cries sometimes when I make pancakes and bacon because he wants cereal. He will not entertain noodles with vegetables or pumpkin soup or rice or buckwheat congee for breakfast. The healthier cereals at Park Avenue's fancy April Gourmet cost between $6 and $9 for a box holding 2-3 bowls worth. I don't care if I live on Park Avenue, I will not pay $6 for a morning's worth of cereal. Not in China. Not anywhere.

We travel up and down and up and down aisle after endless aisle and I'm starting to feel sick to my stomach and we are parched and we can't find the cereal because there is no cereal outside the foreign food section that offers the same $9 boxes of Cheerios, so we head towards the checkout line, ten million carts long, and I am even more worried I can't pay and people are staring at my tottering cart, jammed with appliances and brooms and buckets and mops and more Halloween shit, and that bourgeois guilt starts creeping in my gut as I notice that everyone else has two or three-items in their cart and I think Great Holy Dragon dung, you people have endured all this for two potatoes and a sponge?

Then I remember that it's mostly Chinese who live at posh Park Avenue and it's only Chinese who live in the pent houses two floors above. I'm am still feeling painfully privileged but slightly vindicated when the checker barks out something in Mandarin that I can only assume means I can't have the cracked-egg humidifier that makes me giggle. A manager is called over to bark the same message, only louder, and crisply walks away with my egg and I don't understand why I can't have it and I feel instantly sad as I timidly hand over my ICBC debit card that required filling out 1 form about 7 times and, fortunately, the reader accepts it. I have to navigate through the machine's Mandarin prompts and I can only hope that they are asking me to okay the amount and for my password.

I pay and wheel the cart back down the death ramp where a barely five-foot tall woman accosts me with a fist full of crumpled receipts in hand. She's talking to me but it sounds like she's yelling. Does she want my receipt? If so, why? Is this some scam? She is not wearing a Carrefour uniform, this must be a scam. Or a diversion to steal my frog humidifier. Don't touch my frog! The yang in me says she's like the Costco door checkers, looking to see that the contents of your basket match the receipt. I decide to ignore the security checkpoint/possible thief, to take my chances and keep skidding to the rocky beach hill that I now understand must be a runaway cart ramp. Suddenly I feel everyone is eyeing my cart a little too eagerly. I start to get nervous, but there is Mr. Wang. Thank God.