Talking about the past... part 1

Yep, we're still here and occasionally thinking about writing posts to share with all of you... It's amazing how easy it is to get away from this, and then how hard it is to get back into posting.

Alright, so let's take some time to go back and talk about the trip that we made over the Thanksgiving holiday in the States. We took advantage of the two days off and bundled it with a week of holiday for a 12 day trip to Asia. And we do mean Asia, as we managed to visit 4 countries during that short trip....

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving we took a night flight from Chicago to Beijing, landing on Wednesday pretty close to midnight, a quick trip to a hotel for 5 hours of sleep and then we are back at the airport and heading down to Xiamen.

Xiamen was almost the same as we remember it from a year ago, some shops had closed and other had opened, but overall it was still that same small town of 4 million that we love. We spent 4 nights there and had a great chance to catch up with a lot of our expat friends that are still living there and the locals that we had gotten to know. We dined twice at our favorite local restaurant, we call it "The Sisters" for the two sister who run the place, and the second time they were kind enough to treat us to the meal. More of a meal then we would have eaten, as we ordered a small amount and they decided that wasn't enough and also brought us a plate of shrimp and a whole fish - the food was excellent, as always, but it was tough to finish it all.

Shelly at the new coffee shop she runs

The Sisters

Lao Joe at CoyoteOn Gulang YuLao Joe, Jasmine, Ulf, and Tina at Me&You2Howard and his brand new fiancee at The Oriental

It was a quick trip, but a lot of fun, and while we were there talking to friends we agreed that we would come back the first weekend in 2012 and run in the Xiamen International Marathon. We think that the 13 months we have should be enough time for training...

...And we're off.

Well it's been a fun two and a half years living in Xiamen, and although our last few weeks have been extremely hectic and busy we managed to get to the airport this morning for our flight down to Hong Kong. We will spend a week in Vietnam - with Christmas and New Year's Eve in Hanoi, and the middle of that time spent taking an overnight train up to Sapa and then doing a home stay.

Our last two nights here were also filled with going away parties - Tuesday night going out with a good group of the people that I've worked with, and who have kept me sane with being able to understand what I'm saying and to then translate it. They were incredibly sweet and we came home with three boxes of Chinese teas that we had to figure out how to pack.

For our final night we met up with friends Howard and Dan at Me & You 2 (of course) to see the sunset one last time (supposedly good but we were late). From there we wandered over to the Sister's for a final meal, meeting up with Yih, Shelly, and Lugas. Shelly presented us with an outstanding tissue holder, and the Sister's presented Tina with a nice shawl. From there it was a quick stroll to Temptations to enjoy a Goh family gift - a sister prepared (Hong) and family delivered (Min and the rest) goodbye Christmas cake - which was outstanding.We tried to finish the night up over at a bar we didn't quite get to often enough during our time here - My Way - so that we could say goodbye to Gino. But Gino wasn't there and Ulf, from Me&You2, had told us that we needed to come back for a goodbye gift. We returned to find Ulf with a bouquet of flowers for Tina along with a bottle of champagne. Problem was, all we really wanted was bed - we muscled through a few glasses, along with a special drink concoction mixed by the bartender, and then wished them luck before we headed home....


So that's it, our China stories are done. Once we get back to Chicago in January we will do some quick updates to talk about Vietnam if we don't get a chance to post while we are there. We will probably also follow up with some China stories that we never quite got around to posting, along with any strange things that we notice as we transition back into life Stateside, before we let our posting on this blog dwindle down to few and far between, if at all.

It's been a great time, thanks to all of you who followed along, we have met some great people, seen some good friends leave, and are now leaving some good friends behind...

2-1/2 years of China in 2-1/2 minutes...

...with a lower quality version for the two of you with dial-up.

Our list ..

As many people leave China, bloggers will often have a list of things that they will miss, and what the won't. Well we're no exception...

Things we will miss:

1. The people - very warm and friendly
2. Ba Shi - 8th market and Alleys
3. Gu Lang Yu, with all of its historical charm
4. The sunsets at Me and You 2, okay so the sangria's weren't bad either
5. Massages, cupping, pedicures, for next to nothing
6. Getting clothes tailor made
7. Very inexpensive
8. Travelling in China
9. Practicing my Chinese
10.Taiji, learning about Chinese culture, people, and history... will miss you Yang
11.Sitting out on our balcony and enjoying the views
12.Great photo opportunities
13.The abundance of fresh fruit here, love the pomelos, oranges, and longans
14.The food- especially the fresh seafood
15.Baozi - steamed bun
16.Ulf's parties at Me and You 2 - usually free beer for 3 hours
17.Bartering, everything is up for negotiations
18.That three winning beer caps gets you a free bottle - usually retrieved and drunk while wandering the alleys.

We won't miss:

1. The spitting
2. Trying to get Chinese to queue up - the saying "Pai dui" came in very handy
3. People throwing out their trash on the streets
4. Expensive wines
5. Western food that tastes like Chinese
6. Rats
7. Mold
8. No heat in the winter
9. Clothes that take forever to dry, and even then they're damp
10.Chinese drivers- who stops in the middle of the road to answer a phone?
11.Great Firewall of China


...and some things we'll never understand:

1.Chinese never want to give you bad news, so they just say.."ok, ok"
2.Women who wear shoes two sizes too big, with two inch heels..
3.No screens on their windows, they have flying cockroaches here.
4.The ability to sleep anywhere at anytime..in some very crazy locations and positions
5. Winter time, the restaurants will leave the windows open, everyone wears their jackets..ah, close the door.
6. Men using two coin yuan to pluck their chin hairs..thanks, can you do that at home, please?

Final Random Wanderings...

The last two days have been some easy relaxing. The temperature in Xiamen is at record lows - about 6C - but since we are pretty much packed we are able to slow down and get in a few last strolls through the markets and alleys, along with a few other places that we felt we needed to get to again.

First stop was to take the bus that Tina used to take every day whilst she was studying at University, there has been a lot of changes to that part of the island with a lot of the older buildings being torn down.
On the bus ride there a car decided to park in front of the bus since the bus had blocked a side road when letting people off. The driver determined that this was a good time to go out for a smoke - you can almost see him in the reflection of the car blocking the bus. Once done he got into a heated argument with the driver who was refusing to move his car - this ended with a passenger getting out and stopping traffic so that the bus could back up and go around the parked car....
Then down to the university area where we wandered the newer buildings and the older cafe's that Tina had visited long ago with classmates, before starting the walk back towards our section of the island. We made sure to take lots of little detours and get some good photos.
There was one whole section when we were walking back that was slated for destruction, actually most of the block had been torn down and only a few building were remaining. Some of them still had people living in them, we ignored the "No Entry" signs (It'd be easy for us to argue we didn't understand them) and went in for some photos.
A good day of wandering, today took us over to Gulang Yu where we wandered some new side streets and made sure to stop at all of our favorite shops - hoping to get some discounts be telling them that we were leaving. That only worked with the tea shop, and the discount wasn't really worth it.

Meeting with our landlord...

Since we are leaving Xiamen on Thursday morning our landlord came down from Sanming to check out our freshly emptied and cleaned apartment. They came in on the train last night, a 6.5 hour ride, and they are taking the overnight train back tonight after they verified that we hadn't totally destroyed the place.

The place all nice and clean.

We have heard, or read, all sorts of horror stories about landlords in China. Stories about them not helping to get things corrected, or most importantly deciding that the security deposit doesn't need to be returned for some small little item. We have friends that we told to move out because the complained about a few items in their apartment. The few times that we called our landlord, for a non-working toilet and a typhoon damaged drying rack, he called up a local maintenance guy and had it corrected. No problems, and the fact that he continued to invite us up to visit them in Sanming we figured that they were different.

They showed up, husband and wife along with Rocky whom I work with and has worked as our impromptu interpreter when we need him. Another guy in a suit followed him so that he could take some photos of the place to try and help them rent it our later, he took a photo of each room and then took off quickly.

July 2007 - when we signed the lease.

The wife just walked around looking and stating "干净" (ganjing for those of you who can't read that, and clean for those of you who don't understand ganjing). They were constantly telling us how clean it looked and how nice it was for us to have cleaned the place up. We had a visit from one of the girls from the main office complex who showed them that we had paid up all of our management fees, but where it looked for a minute like she was telling them we hadn't paid December yet, and a visit from what apparently were some people looking to rent the place next. It was a busy morning, but after about an hour of them wasting time he pulled out a nice thick wad a cash and counted out the full amount of our security deposit.

Rocky posing for a photo as I watch cash being counted for us.

They brought us a gift for being such good tenants, complimented Tina on her outstanding Chinese, told us again how clean it was, and mentioned how they don't want to rent to Chinese people because they are messy tenants. They would be like if Rene (the Mexican) told us he wouldn't hire Mexicans because they are lazy - it's a weird racist statement that's hard to wrap your head around.

Tina, Rocky, Me, Landlords

We gave them keys and showed them paperwork for all of the bills showing them that the two accounts we had for gas and water were all paid up. He tried to give us 110 kuai to cover the cash left in the account, but we refused it saying it would cover the power we were using up now.

Finally a friend of theirs showed up that lives nearby, she will come over Thursday morning to collect our keys when we finally say goodbye, and all she said when she walked in was "干净". She walked into our kitchen and said "Ah, the laowais never cooked." Apparently if you cook you're supposed to leave your kitchen a mess - had we known we could do that and still get our deposit back it would have saved us a few extra minutes of cleaning...

Thinking we are good and thanking them as they thanked us we were invited out to lunch. They took to this as standard Chinese do and ordered more food then can reasonably be eaten. We were full and surprised when they brought out one more dish - turns out they were only halfway through bringing what was ordered. Although we said no a bottle of wine was ordered and we muscled through a lunch that was filled with cheers and "ganbei" (drink it all).

A nice lunch, and continued invites from them for us to visit Sanming when we come back to China. The guy even suggested that we form an import/export partnership once we are settled back in the States. Who knew that a little cleaning would make you such good tenants?

Packing up.

Yesterday morning at 09:00 a two man packing crew arrived and started boxing up our belongings. They worked pretty quickly to move through our main room and bedroom, but then seemed to slow down once they hit the back room and attacked packing up the bikes.
They stopped for lunch and then returned to finish up with packing all of our kitchen supplies. All together it probably took them 4 hours to get everything wrapped, packed, properly documented, and loaded onto a truck.
The guards at the gate didn't want to let them leave, even though we had a letter from our landlord stating that he knew we were moving out. They wanted the letter to be stamped from the complex office, and when I went down there they gave me some grief because we hadn't paid them the management fees for December yet, and they thought that we were leaving that day. Once they knew we would be around for another week it was no problem and off our stuff went to the warehouse to get crated.

When we talked to the move coordinator today we found out that Xiamen changed it's export policy and when they got to the warehouse with all 32 boxes customs asked them how many items were in each box. They spent 4 hours last night opening all of our items to count each item, write it down, and then repack them.

Today we had the fun of going down to customs so that they could spot check through our stuff. At least that's what we thought was going to happen, instead Tina and I spent a few hours watching people fill out paperwork. Tina finally left when we were told that they only needed my passport and signature, and that it would probably be a few more hours before everything was done. Ten minutes after she leaves they gather up all the paperwork and head upstairs where a customs official looks at my passport and then proceeds to stamp their paperwork. "That's it, we are done now." So much for a few hours and looking at items, just a quick glance and everything is all set.

It sounded good but once I got back and started working the phone rang with "We need you to come back so we can look at your passports, we need to verify things..." So about 2 hours later I'm back in another customs building waiting for some guy in a suit to stamp some paperwork.

All set now, our stuff is supposedly waiting to be shipped without any more issues, and we get to relax for our final week in a sadly empty house...

Farewell Party!

One of our friends had asked earlier whether Mark and I would be throwing a farewell party before leaving Xiamen. Actually, we never thought of it. Then our friend Laura, told us about JJ Bar and Grill's 1st anniversary party, and the problem was solved.

Why bother stressing ourselves out, when a bar pretty much did the work for us. Timing really is everything.....

Friends, Kim and Pam

Mark and friends

Enjoying a nice cold beer

Our friend Laura

Our friend and rock star, AmyEwa and Tone

It was a great night with friends with lots of dancing, singing and drinking. We will miss you guys. Enjoy Xiamen!

Pilates and Taijiquan

It's hard to believe that less than a month we will be leaving our adopted home to move back to the U.S. Though first we decided to get one more trip in before heading back.

During the past couple of months, knowing that we are returning I wanted to continue with some sort of a routine, basically to help with the insanity that will ensue.

I've been taking Stott Pilates for the past month, and love it. Katz, my trainer is wonderful, not only does she like to see you in pain, she loses count quite often. As much as I give her grief, she knows her stuff, she's patient, speaks three languages, and is very creative with your workouts. She is very good explaining what moves will they do to help your body.

If you are ever in the area, would love a good workout while improving your balance and posture, drop her an email. I'm sure she will be more than happy to help you.

Kat'z email - kat.azanza@gmail.com



On another note, I have finally finished my taichi routine (Chen style), that only took two years, and though I'm continuing to improve on this, Yang, my teacher has decided that I should learn the sword before moving back. We're half way through learning this and hoping that I will be able to finish the routine before heading back.

Like Katz, if you are in Xiamen and would love to learn taichi, I would definitely recommend Yang as he has been studying taijiquan for over 20 years, and knows Chen, Yang, and Sword style routines.

What I love about learning taijiquan is the theory as well as the routines, and he knows his stuff. I also get a history and cultural lesson on China and the people of China.

Yang's email- yangaimin26@hotmail.com

Back to the Londoner

Last week whilst Tina was running errands she ran into her friend Amy who made sure to let us know that Saturday night The Londoner pub was putting together a barbecue. That's good to know, as it would have been awful if we hadn't any plans for a weekend night. We spent our Saturday sleeping in late and then running around getting some small things completed before finding ourselves seated over at the Coyote with some nice margarita's in front of us.

At the Coyote our friends Anthony and Sarah wandered in and we let them know we were heading out for the burgers just round the corner at The Londoner. They showed up over there about 20 minutes after we did.
It's been a long time since we've been to this pub, and we've forgotten what fun it can be. Good pints of Guinness, wine, and a fairly large group of other laowais that we don't know since we seem to run in separate pub circles. Seriously, we met another couple that has been living in Xiamen for 8 years and this is the first time we ever met them.
The grilled burgers were outstanding, and our group managed to drink the pub out of its stock of white wine. No problem we figure and place a quick call into Temptations asking them to deliver us 2 bottles of the standard white that Tina normally buys.

Sounds easy, but this being China it never works out perfectly and the girl shows up with two warm bottles of slightly more expensive wine. Tina quickly jumps in a cab with her back to Temptations to verify that she gets cold bottles of what she is looking for and then returns to the impromptu pool games that we've started.
Yeah, good fun - and a reminder that we need to get out to some of the other bars and pubs that Xiamen has to offer in the short time that we still have here...

Weekend in Paradise....

A while ago Tina was presented with two coupons for us to enjoy the poolside BBQ at the Seaview hotel (or you can check out their English website), which is one of the top hotel resorts in all of China.

We only sat by the pool, but that itself was impressive...
Nice infinity pool, notice how they included half a moon for our photographing pleasure.
You could look out and see the ocean and over to the mainland, and we were only on the ground floor. The view from any of the upper level hotel rooms must just be amazing.

The poolside BBQ that we showed up for turned out to be the buffet (normally priced at 198 RMB) and we were amazed. It featured great sushi, sashimi, spring rolls, pepper steak, squid... all the good stuff and including breads and cheeses. The shocker for us was the selection of lobsters, oysters, mussels, crab, scallops, and king crab legs. We engorged ourselves on the crabs legs, as they were delicious.

We had also head that Xiamen was opening a jazz bar at the Seaview, but those kind of rumors run around like crazy over here and we felt that we need to find out. Our waitress confirmed that downstairs was a jazz bar opened by two Englishmen, so immediately after dinner, must have been around 21:00, we went downstairs to find out...

Turns out that an amazing jazz bar has indeed opened in Xiamen, we stayed and talked with the owners, enjoyed some outstanding wine and beer while they talked about the extensive French menu they have. We wandered out of there after a perfect night around 01:30. We will return to try the food at Antoine's and enjoy the jazz, and just from the atmosphere of the place we have even talked about maybe booking a room for one day some weekend just to get away from it all...

Last weekend...

So in returning to talking about our regular life here in Xiamen, we will share with you the things that we have been doing. First, as we mentioned before we left for Xinjiang, our friend the Crazy Mexican - Rene, is back in Xiamen for a few months with work. Although it's not the same as when we would head over to the villa that his family was staying in last year, it's still good to catch up with him for a few beers or whatnot.

We took the Mexican over to the barber that I use so that he would look presentable when he was going to work.
Then last weekend over at Havana's they had a party to celebrate the Mexican independence day, September 16th. There was quite a crowd and too much tequila was drunk.
Yep, we were a little slow moving on Sunday and our plans for going to the local massage parlor for cupping were put on hold for a week. We are heading over to Me&You 2 now to meet up with the Mexican again and this week we will make it to cupping, and with a lot less toxins then the would have found if we had gone last weekend....