Beijing Tai Tai

by Tania McCartney

  You are then poured more tea, and each time you drain it you smell the cup and notice the intensity and fragrance of the tea as it plumps and takes in more water at each soaking. Notice how it deepens and intensifies, how the flavour begins to alter.

  After the very grassy, asparagus-y new tea, you might try florally teas like rosehip, jasmine or chrysanthemum flower. You can place entire chrysanthemum buds in your teacup and watch them open into a magnificent bloom. Afterwards, you might like to get adventurous and try the patchouli smokiness of barley tea or the fat-stripping pu-erh.

  Then, lastly, comes the oolong. The most expensive tea in the world is in the oolong family. It has a distinctive taste and its myriad varieties have spawned an entire world of tea connoisseurs who sample and rate their brews like the finest wines.

  Alas, my tongue isn’t sophisticated enough to tell the difference between a moderately priced and outrageously expensive oolong, so we went for the cheapest available and bought a small amount on leaving—along with jasmine, rose, barley and a few cases of delicious, traditional tea snacks.

  It may be the caffeine talking, but I’m totally hooked.

  The Ayi Love Triangle

  Parenting is a relative concept

  The gods are smiling on you, little one. Who is she, this dark-haired angel on earth who will acquiesce to your every mortal and spiritual need before the demand has even arisen? Part psychic, part adoring fawner, this woman has been sent from above to provide all that your mum and dad will not. Yes ... even in a pink fit and during a blue moon.

  Of course, you are naturally oblivious to the tension and frustration this total compliance causes your mum, but what does it matter? At least two of you in this parental triangle are happy. You have the need for adoration and Ayi has the need to give it ... a pure and harmonious union that Mum will never understand. Instead, Dragon Woman watches from the sidelines, trying not to sweat the small stuff; hoping, in her heart of hearts, this will not turn you into a discipline-deprived despot before the year is out.

  No, this is not a description of my son and his ayi. This is a description of someone else’s son/daughter/dog and their ayi.

  My ayi doesn’t seem to be developing this kind of relationship with my kids. She’s not overly warm nor affectionate, and, frankly, she’s much more interested in just getting her work done and getting out the door. This suits me okay. I don’t want a mummy replacement in my house and I don’t think I’d want the deep emotional attachment I’m watching develop between other ayis and their charges.

  Each to their own, but I wouldn’t want the drama. Nor do I want to be squabbling with another adult over the best way to discipline or raise my own kids. This is bad enough in the West, and Lord knows the Chinese do things very differently here—the whizzing and the pooping is only the tip of the iceberg.

  Yes, I’m glad my ayi is just getting on with her business and skirting around my kids. Maybe it’s a good thing. Or maybe I’m just telling myself this because I see those other ayis smooching their charges and fawning over their every move ... and perhaps I’m jealous.

  Just maybe.

  Our First Tea Ceremony

  Oh joy!

  In a nutshell, life is made up of these things: mental, physical and emotional challenges; wondrously huge life-changing experiences; plenty of mundanity; and those little ‘moments’. Those moments that make life beautiful. They can be short moments like when your child encircles their arms around your neck and lands their sweet lips on your cheek, or when you catch them chatting to imaginary friends. Or they can be longer moments like hikes between the Jinshanling and Simitai sections of the Great Wall ... or Chinese tea ceremonies.

  Ah, the ceremony of tea. Such a lovely thing to do—and a bonus if you like tea, particularly green tea. I could bathe in green tea nightly, so quaffing the stuff, in an extensive range of styles, is quite all right by me.

  Today we went with the kids to the network of streets just south of Qianmen Dajie, to a little teahouse with beautiful girls in green silk standing outside, lulling you in with the waft of oolong. We walked to the back of the store, past the glass containers housing grassy tea, to a nest of tables topped with beautiful serving trays and teapots in glass and clay.

  The girl who took the tea ceremony spoke a little English, but even if she hadn’t, the beauty and understanding that comes with this ancient ritual really defies language barriers.

  This is what they do...

  First, boiling water is brought to your table and placed on the carved wooden serving tray, then the server will tip the steaming water onto dried green leaves in a glass teapot. She will swirl the leaves briefly, then tip the water out (to clean the leaves). Then she will add more water and replace the lid. Here she will pause.

  After a few moments, the server will pour the tea into very small, tube-like cups and top them with little handle-less teacups, like a jiggly lid. She will then hand this capped cup to each guest who will pick it up, flip it upside town and pull the tubed cup out. The tea will schplonk into the lid and then everyone drinks—three sips to drain the cup is best. When the tea is drained, you smell the cup and then bring the tube-like vessel close to your open eyeball, to glaze it with hydrating steam.

  You are then poured more tea, and each time you drain it you smell the cup and notice the intensity and fragrance of the tea as it plumps and takes in more water at each soaking. Notice how it deepens and intensifies, how the flavour begins to alter.

  After the very grassy, asparagus-y new tea, you might try florally teas like rosehip, jasmine or chrysanthemum flower. You can place entire chrysanthemum buds in your teacup and watch them open into a magnificent bloom. Afterwards, you might like to get adventurous and try the patchouli smokiness of barley tea or the fat-stripping pu-erh.

  Then, lastly, comes the oolong. The most expensive tea in the world is in the oolong family. It has a distinctive taste and its myriad varieties have spawned an entire world of tea connoisseurs who sample and rate their brews like the finest wines.

  Alas, my tongue isn’t sophisticated enough to tell the difference between a moderately priced and outrageously expensive oolong, so we went for the cheapest available and bought a small amount on leaving—along with jasmine, rose, barley and a few cases of delicious, traditional tea snacks.

  It may be the caffeine talking, but I’m totally hooked.

  The Board Game Trap

  It’s a mousetrap all right

  I was well prepared for indoor boredom issues before we left Australia, and firmly set down in my mind that this was a) temporary and b) we knew what we were in for and would just have to find ways to cope with it. If an incalculable percentage of the world’s kids can spend their lives in apartments, we can surely spend four years doing the same.

  And so when we left Australia, along with our eight million books, I packed the entire Parker Brothers and Hasbro range of board games, every card game ever shuffled, and a massive supply of arts and crafts, educational products and anything that even vaguely resembled a capacity for indoor sports (like tennis balls on elastic bands, whereupon they cannot smash things too easily).

  According to chapter nine, subclause 38 of Murphy’s Parental Law, when a parent spends either a lot of money or a lot of time acquiring something, kids develop a violent aversion to it. Even more so if you cart it to the other side of the world and have limited storage in your apartment. Consequently, neither of my kids will bat an eyelid at the fabulous, pro-endorsed automatic golfball putting returner we lugged over to Beijing. And other than Twister, the board games still pretty much remain untouched, ditto the ridiculously expensive set of educational products from the Early Learning Centre.

  Curses.

  Interesting that our kids won’t hesitate to smash twelve eggs in order to obtain urgent use of a crappy old egg carton to make Noah an ark, or whine for eight hours straight until I burn a thumb and ruin a pot making homemade playdough.

  Incidentally, said homemade p
laydough is now a weekly occurrence and is met with squeals of delight when the last of the blue food colouring has been agonisingly kneaded through with my playdough-kneading- RSI-stricken- Smurf-blue hands. It is then liberally rolled, cut and moulded for about 28.7 seconds before being left to dry into a cement-like cowpat, never to be used again.

  Sigh. The parenting perils continue no matter where you are in the world.

  The Wall

  Surreal moments in time

  We’ve actually not been in a hurry to see the Great Wall of China. I mean, 2000 years have already passed; it’s probably not going anywhere in a hurry. And we figure we’ll be sick of seeing the thing by the time we take all our potential visitors for a gander.

  But when ANZA (the Australia/New Zealand network in Beijing) provided the chance to attend a black-tie dinner on the Wall recently, we absolutely couldn’t resist. The Wall might be the Wall, but the Wall with a frock, tux, champagne flute and dancing for 80? Come on. It had to be done.

  So we did it.

  Xiansheng had the tuxedo handmade, including pin-tucked shirt and classic bow tie, by our new tailor Xiao Fei. He looked exquisite, might I just say. And I wore a black and pink silk creation with a pair of vintage heels (by vintage I mean old and skanky) and both the tux and the dress and all associated paraphernalia cost less than a pair of decent shoes would at home. Nice.

  Ayi babysat and 80 of us piled into a couple of buses, armed with sparkling wine and plastic cups, and I spent the last part of the journey with my nose glued to the window, anxiously anticipating that first Great glimpse.

  Tears sprang to my eyes when I first saw it through the dimming light and misty fog. It struck me how tall it was. I mean, it went up. I was expecting it to sort of undulate like a snake when in fact it scaled heights like a leaping tiger. One point was so high, scaling those steps would have taken six months off your heart muscle. Really. We avoided it. We were in silk frocks and heels, after all.

  Following the long bus ride and copious fluids by mouth, many of us were anxious to find a bathroom upon arrival. Call it what you will but it wasn’t really a bathroom. Yes, they were squat toilets, which I’m okay with mostly, but let’s just say these were the type that tested your mettle.

  I took a deep breath, ran in, hoisted up that dress, straddled those stilettos either side of the pan and went on full jet power. I then stood, kicked the flush button with my foot and watched in horror as the entire contents of that toilet rose up out of the bowl ... and all over my shoes.

  Oh yes, I screamed. Then I somehow got out, hobbled across the car park and tried to erase this horrendous experience for the rest of the evening—not an easy accomplishment with Eau de Sewer wafting up from one’s feet.

  But the setting on the Wall soon erased even the greatest pong. It was truly divine.

  A wide, curved part of the Wall had been transformed into a James Bond movie set. Waiters in white coats toted silver trays with old-fashioned champagne bowls, glinting in the red light of dozens of Chinese lanterns. Men in black tuxedos and smelling of cologne flirted with women in gorgeous gowns and baubles as the night descended. Music hummed gently while the red-hemmed buffet groaned under delicious delicacies and, above us all, the Great Wall loomed high, draped up the hillside silently.

  The evening was quite surreal, really. Eating dinner was surreal, laughing with guests was surreal, phoning home to brag to family and friends—‘Guesh where we are? Hic!’—was surreal. The sudden rain shower and brolly-popping was surreal and then the most surreal part of all was when the music pumped up after dinner, and the DJ spun some dance tracks and we got on that Wall in our stinky heels and boogied the night away.

  There is a Chinese saying that you are not a great man until you have walked on the Great Wall of China. We created another that night: you are not a great woman until you have danced on the Great Wall of China. And so we did. And as hits from the’70s,’80s and’90s spewed across the valley, I can imagine that wise, ancient structure sighing to itself, ‘Sheesh. And so it comes to this. In my day...’

  If only we could hear what it had to say.

  The Bai Jiu Thing

  Bingeing on rocket fuel fires up expat tai tais

  Have you heard about bai jiu? Let me tell you a little something about it, but fasten your seatbelt.

  Literally ‘white alcohol’, bai jiu is a rice-based cousin of methylated spirits, and is a nightmare for any tai tai who would actually like her Xiansheng to keep on living. It’s not the actual spirit that has the potential to kill you—it’s the quantities it’s imbibed in.

  I detest the stuff. Not only does it taste like liquid crapola, it comes with a certain unsaid machismo that I suppose can only be matched by Australian beer guzzlers on a heavy pub-razing binge. Its rash consumption is honestly quite ridiculous and I’ll never understand it so long as my goody-two-shoes sensibilities allow.

  I do enjoy alcohol, don’t get me wrong. Bubbles are my tipple of choice but I also enjoy wine and a cocktail or aperitif or two. Margaritas are my serious poison, but at least they taste great for goodness sake, and you can savour and enjoy them. Not so with bai jiu.

  Bai jiu is used for the sole purpose of proving how much ‘ocean capacity’ you have for drink. When you drink it, no matter how large the serving, it must be drained in one gulp— gan bei or ‘dry glass’. If it’s done in sips, you’re a girl.

  Many bai jiu sessions are work-related. Participants eat dinner and begin an endless round of toasting, starting with the most senior person in the party, and continuing on down to the minions. Everyone must be toasted, and it’s even better if you toast someone several times, especially your host.

  Xiansheng accepts these sessions as an important building block in his work with the Chinese and he does it well and with gusto, but it terrifies me to see him bai jiu-pickled. Peeling a pickled husband off the floor has given me and plenty of other tai tai much cause for alarm. It’s not easy, but like many things in China, I don’t have to understand it—I just have to try to accept it. Hell, I’ve even participated. And I did Xiansheng proud.

  It was a party of around fifteen and I was toasted very deliberately on several occasions. Every eye lingered on my glass, awaiting an upside down slam onto the table (if a drop of liquid falls, your glass is not ‘dry’). Usually, women are not expected to gan bei, but I wanted to show support for Xiansheng and I knew the importance of making an effort. So I drained glass after glass. And when the bai jiu ran dry and the beer came out, I also drained every glass of amber ale.

  The Chinese were stunned. I almost literally had eyeballs on the bottom of every glass I touched, and when I was suitably blathered and had rightfully impressed Xiansheng’s colleagues, I was released from the bounds of alcohol poisoning, but only after much carousing on how, as a woman, I was able to perform such a feat.

  The Australians around the table simply smiled. I guess these bai jiu skolling pros had never taken on an Aussie sheila before.

  ’Nuff said.

  The Great Indoors

  It’s an inner battle

  When Ella started full-time school recently, I had the Herculean task of occupying the mind and body of a small boy who was used to spending the majority of his waking hours in a large, flat backyard with shady trees, purple flowers, a splash pool, all manner of outdoorsy toys (including sheets billowing on the clothesline), squeaky clean air and the soft pop of tennis balls.

  When we were entrapped in our Beijing apartment on Night One, my first order of business for Riley was to rule out the nojumping/climbing-on-furniture rule. I mean, how hellish would life be if a two-year-old had to actually stand on the floor, walking around chairs and sofas all night and day? Hellish. Riley has therefore been allowed to climb, scale, balance, jump, bound and leap to his heart’s content. Yes, even on the beds. And obstacle courses and cubby houses have been encouraged daily.

  My only exception is standing on the roomy windowsills, mainly because it invariably comes wi
th the hammering of little fists on plate glass windows. At 26 floors high and with questionable sealing holding these giant windows in place ... well, it is forbidden (and, of course, as a result, it’s where he wants to climb the most).

  I’ve tried to get Riley into the Great Beijing Outdoors when I can. It ain’t no Aussie backyard but I really put an effort into finding fun haunts for him. There is photographic proof of trips to Chaoyang Park, Ritan and Ditan parks, to the sandpit downstairs in our building (what was I thinking?), to the Worker’s Stadium, to the little strip of walking track behind our complex, to friends’ yards, to the Chinese workout station on the street ... I really made an effort. But this effort has gradually worn me down.

  Was it the hacking, hocking and spitting that did it? Was it the cloying pollution? The dog poop and cigarette butts poking out of the dusty grass? The jagged pieces of metal and rusting holes in the play equipment? The ‘don’t walk on the grass’ signs in every park when my son is aching to tread on soft green blades or even roll and press his ribs into them?

  After a few short months, the outings have all but stopped. Only on pristinely clear days is Riley allowed outside, and that’s never. The poor kid pulls at the front door like our apartment is a prison and he’s doing Life. He begs to go outside but mostly he begs to go to the beach. A lot.

  I’ve tried to do the playgroup thing and make friends with the kids of other mums—through my husband’s work, through Ella’s school, through neighbours, through the fellow laowai met on the streets ... but this is often difficult. Sometimes it’s language and cultural barriers. Sometimes it’s timing. Sometimes it’s the fact that we live too far away from each other or that nap times clash—different cultures, different nap times. And is Australia the only country in the world where kids wake early and go to bed early? Many is a time we are invited for play dates at seven in the evening, just when our kids are settling down for sleepy-byes.