I never wanted my personal life or my experience as a parent to be central to the ‘3 Years’ blog. I started it as a way to think about this huge change in our lives and to process it myself, maybe even as a document for the future. But now that I have sunk in here, have a routine and friends and a sense of belonging, those initial moments of pure wonder are rare.

Boarding a ferry this morning with Frances to go to Peng Chau, a fishing village 15 minutes from DB where I was hoping to get something framed, I had a flash of mindfulness about this place and time. Surrounded by the faces of Southeast Asians, I was aware that it is a lucky thing to be comfortable in a place that was once foreign, to know the rhythm and the ways of a place that seemed exotic at one time.  And watching Frances weave among the waiting passengers, making conversation with strangers underscored that; by extension, this child will grow up with the sights and smells of Southeast Asia in her consciousness.

I realized that I had forgotten that there are still moments of wonder and much to discover and I need to go farther to seek them out. The frame store was closed when we got there. The number on the sign was disconnected. I walked around the lanes of Peng Chau, all accessible only by bike, and tried to discourage Frances from petting stray cats and pulling the incense out of offering cans that sit outside most doors despite how cute it was that she tilted her head to the side and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to one of them.

When I wound back around to the frame shop, its shutters were still closed. A woman walked up to me and said I should just knock on the gate; she knew the owner and said she’d be home. Eventually, a woman in slippers answered and let me in, apologized and went into the back to change clothes. She called her husband, who was an artist with a long ponytail, the international sign of anti-establishment solidarity apparently. He liked my drawing and as we decided on the frame and came up with a price, we carried out a conversation in pigeon English that challenged me to refine and simplify my artist statement. Their little dog had a ponytail holder keeping the hair out of its eyes and Frances kept pointing at it and then at my ponytail and exclaiming, ‘SAME!’

A dear friend just returned to New York after a stint in DC and I told her I was envious of her ability to feel grateful for New York again, to notice all its amazing details through refreshed eyes. Because, after a while, you walk the same path every day. Routine sets in, the details of everyday life mute your surroundings and life takes hold.

There is so much of Hong Kong I don’t know at all. There are swaths of Kowloon and the New Territories I know nothing of. People here go camping (although the timing of my little reawakening is not ideal with another baby coming in 7 weeks…). We have never even been to the bird market or the walled city. The other day I heard about a nunnery in Diamond Hill that was recently reconstructed in authentic Tang dynasty style and is supposed to be amazing. These are places we will go and I will report back.

The challenge lies in keeping a fresh perspective and finding a new voice with which to document this place because one day we will look back and it will all feel very different again. It will no longer be familiar. This time will feel like a dream and I will want these words to take me back there.

Franner on the ferry to Peng Chau

Beijing from the hotel

Beijing could almost be anywhere, in any country. At first glance, there is little of the old Chinese-ness that exists in Shanghai or even Hong Kong. The city feels utterly ‘modern’ and new in an unremarkable, inexpensively constructed way. The heavy, authoritarian architecture is interspersed with the same anonymous glass and steel that signifies corporate power in every city and the occasional wonder – Rem Koolhaus’s unfinished CCTV Building, most notably. Driving down an elevated highway through the new business district where we stayed offered the advantage of perspective in this utterly flat city; big blocky buildings repeat endlessly, fading into the haze.

Because of the terrible pollution, Beijing seems to exist in a perpetual dusk light. There is no atmosphere – no clouds, no sky, no sun to chart the time of day.

My grandmothers – both here in the 80′s – remember having no access to anything, everything being officially sanctioned, guarded. That is definitely not the case now.  There is an ‘official’ presence – there were police in place of building security in large venues and throughout the airport – but we felt free to do whatever we wanted to do, go anywhere we wanted to go.

We planned our trip to coincide with the Chinese International Galleries Exposition, a huge [government sponsored] art fair that showcased primarily Asian and mid-level European galleries. There were also several big museum exhibitions opening.

A colleague from Asia Art Archive was in Beijing for the fair and a related conference and, the first day I was there, we planned to meet at the 798 Arts District. (http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/798/187853.htm)

798 was the number given in the Cultural Revolution to this former artillery factory complex (a huge sprawling compound of buildings that felt like the Brewery in LA). Apparently, it was abandoned and then re-inhabited in the 80’s by artists who lived and worked there. It then went through the Soho-effect and while it doesn’t yet have an actual commercial ‘mall’ feel, it is definitely a lifestyle destination where few artists could afford to rent a studio now. It has been beautified with trees and planters and there are outdoor cafes and coffee shops lining the boulevards. There were more galleries than I could count or begin to go into although we did see a lot. The standout was the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art – I think it is the first non-profit arts organization in China. (http://www.ucca.org.cn)

Started by the Ullens, Swiss collectors who lived in China for many years, the work was by far the most sophisticated that I have seen since moving to Asia. An exhibition by Qiu Zhijie (http://www.ucca.org.cn/portal/exhibition/view.798?id=15&menuId=20) called ‘Breaking through the Ice’ blew me away. He filled a football-field sized gallery with a series of related installations about China’s will to bigness (to steal a phrase from Michael Chabon).

It was overwhelming, incredible. There was also a show by Navin Rawanchaikul being installed called ‘Super China!’ which was excellent.

There was a familiar energy in the Beijing art world that I have come to associate with Asian art in general. Outside a few true innovators, the art world seems over-populated by people looking to the west and imitating what has already been done, almost as if art were a set of behaviors rather than an individual pursuit. Being at 798, I felt like I had stepped into a parallel dimension of Beijing. The hazy city faded away and we were in familiar reclaimed industrial territory, where art and commerce have struck a temporary balance.

While we waited for my friend to meet us, Frances and I had lunch at an outdoor cafe and people-watched. My friend showed up and the three of us took a taxi to the China International Gallery Exposition (http://www.cige-bj.com/main_en.html) (coincidentally in the conference center next door to hotel we chose for its proximity to M’s office. My friend got us in the VIP entrance – catalogue! – and F slept through most of the show. I missed about a third of it and went back the next day to check it out.

Most of the work was your typical Chinese contemporary art – political hyper-realism that by now has become flat and tiresome, derivative mimicry, and naive reinventions of the wheel (it’s hard to argue that you differentiate your highly polished amorphous stainless steel blob sculptures from Anish Kapoor’s by making them smaller). But there were some interesting surprises.

That afternoon, we found a grocery store, got milk (from Australia), yogurt (from Switzerland), and dish soap (from the US).

The next day, Frances and I went to the Today Art Museum (Beijing’s contemporary art museum). It is located in two very modern concrete warehouse-like buildings. They were getting ready for a huge opening called Fat Art and were busy transforming a walking street space beside the museum with food and bars and stages for bands. It was all very slick and hip and riddled with product placement – Moto and Smart Car and Puma. I met a few of the artists and looked around the exhibition – so-so.

Outside the museum, there was a Yue Minjun sculpture of 15 of his sarcastically ecstatic self-portraits, cast in steel or aluminum, each 12 feet or so high. Frances ran around and through the statues and the irony was lost on her – she thought they were all sharing a great joke.

After the Museum, Frances and I took a cab to Tiananmen Square down a long polluted boulevard where visibility was significantly reduced beyond

50 feet. Even at the square, it was as if we were in a cloud; we could not see any details of the buildings and even Mao’s huge portrait was a smudge in the distance.

The huge, gated-off, space was scattered with groups of people, tourists presumably, and all Chinese. I was disappointed that my visit didn’t coincide with any fancy marching or the rows and rows of guards in formation. I felt like I had been granted access to a vast concrete courtyard, lined by Potemkin buildings, but I was glad to have seen it.

That night, we got a hotel sitter and Courtenay (M’s friend from Fletcher who is the new Jamaican Ambassador to China) and his wife picked us up (with their driver!) at the hotel and we went to a dinner

Courtenay was hosting at a swank restaurant called 1949 – get it?. We were let out on a cobblestone driveway and were led through a maze of teak pathways and lush outdoor corridors, through two massive rolling, steel barricades to a private room in the heart of the uber-fancy tragically hip members’ only portion of the restaurant called the 49 club. The dinner was a traditional Chinese round table for 20 with a massive lazy susan inset into its center. I think there must have been a waiter for each guest; as soon as I took a sip of water, someone was refilling my glass and my dinner plate was replaced every time I turned away.

Courtenay was hosting the dinner for his predecessor, the former

Jamaican Ambassador to China and the attendees were his inner circle of friends from his four years in Beijing. They were a diverse and illustrious lot – ranging from the Bureau Chief of CBS in Asia (gorgeous Jamaican woman, flawlessly dressed, stick thin, chic afro), the head of Time Out Beijing (The international magazine about cultural happenings) and his cute wife (hip-thirty something Londoners), The head of Film acquisition and production for CCTV, the Chinese television channel (gorgeous porcelain-faced Chinese woman who ironically just produced a documentary about Ranch life in Texas and was thrilled to learn that I was actually from Texas…).

There were several ambassadors, two guys working for a mining company,  and the head of web development for the China News newspaper. It was an interesting mix of ex-pats and locals, all of whom unabashedly love

Beijing and could not say enough good things about it, with the exception of the air.

The next morning we woke up early and a driver picked us up and drove us about an hour and a half outside the city to Mutianyu to a section of the Great Wall that has been restored. The drive was really interesting. We watched the bravado of Beijing abruptly dissolve and in its place, emerge the hutong housing compounds and dusty country roads that I imagine comprise most of the country. We saw a lot of people gathering sticks in fields or by the roadside and many of the bikers and motorcyclists we saw were piled high with bundles of sticks. The walls of sticks stacked in all the alleys behind compounds confirmed our growing suspicion that wood-burning fire was the primary source of heat for these homes located as little as an hour outside Beijing.

We drove primarily through farmland and in trying to place what felt ‘different’ about it, we decided that the roadways and even the fields that they cut through felt as if they were built recently and organized by a central body, which it probably was; all the trees for miles were spaced at exact intervals in exact rows. We weren’t sure if it was a ‘green’ effort or evidence of a non-existent electrical grid, but all the streetlights were run by solar panels.

Once we neared the Great Wall, tourist restaurants started to pop up and evidence of an infrastructure increased. We parked and fought our way through the stalls of people selling Great Wall T-Shirts, hats, etc., and started the steep climb. We took turns carrying Frances in the Ergo backpack and then let her walk once we got to the actual wall. She was great. She really had fun peeking through the little windows that line the bottom of the edges of the wall and she must have been photographed 100 times. We decided that Frances is to the Chinese what puppies are to Americans; no one can resist a puppy.

The Wall is really beautiful, snaking and winding through the lush mountains and creating a lookout to the valleys to either side. Sadly, the visibility is ridiculously poor. Even out in this rural area, the air quality is still so bad that the sky is a white void and looking into the distance, it is as if through the smoke of a forest fire.

Anyway, we really were glad to have seen it and to have brought Frances to this ancient place. We had time left over with the driver, so we had him take us to the Forbidden City, which was much bigger that we expected it to be and very crowded, but incredibly beautiful, overwhelming in its scale. We decided that super-sized scale is a recurring theme in this country. Again, Frances was a showstopper. Whole tour-groups would corner us and all take her picture at once! Of course, she thought it was fabulous and sat on M’s shoulders saying, ‘hello, hello, hello.’ Just like HRH.

The next afternoon, we flew to Shanghai. It was incredible to be in Beijing. It is a city with so many layers. I don’t feel as though I got a sense for it at all, but that will keep us coming back.

798 Arts District

Gallery at 798

Man gathering sticks

Chinese car seat

local electrician

Neighborhood we passed on way to Great Wall

M and Frances climb the wall

Frances in the Forbidden City

Frances with Yue MinJun sculpture

Frances ponders Yue Minjun self portrait

Tiananmen Square

April 4th is Chinese Ching Ming Festival, one of the 24 segments of the Chinese calendar. Ching Ming is also known as ‘Remembrance of Ancestors Day’ or ‘Grave Sweeping Day’. Today, all over China, people visited their ancestors’ graves and offered flowers, food, and paper replicas of anything that might be materially desirable – stereos, TVs, cigarettes, dining room sets, and money in every denomination. These items are burned not in memory of their ancestors but as a means of transference. 

Paper stereo and air-conditioner

paper tea and mugs

Paper toiletries and effects

Paper Smokes

This day is also my parents 39^th wedding anniversary. Though they won’t be needing a paper DVD player anytime soon, I offer my deepest respect to them for making family a priority and loving each other so well, for their perspective and their decency, for their fortitude and their capacity for joy.

My grandmother clipped a grace out of Emily Post’s column in the New York Times many years ago. Every Thanksgiving or Christmas, it turns up under someone’s seat cushion to be read aloud before the meal. Yellowed and torn, glued to a faded square of blue construction paper, the grace says something to the effect of…

‘Families give you the roots to grow, the wings to fly away, and the security of knowing there is always a home to return to. This family will always be together.’

My parent’s marriage and the home they have created has been my foundation, my continuity, enabling me to spread my wings and always there upon my return.  Thank you both for seeing the wide world and for offering it up to me. Happy Ching Ming. Happy Anniversary. 

Dad at Mui Wo Pier with Frances - 2009

Mom circa 1973

Mom in the DB Plaza with Frances - 2009

What we lack are ‘shows’. There are stations that you can subscribe to that show shows – FX shows all crime shows and The Hallmark Channel shows Oprah around the clock as far as I can tell, but we do not have those. We can watch shows like Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty, or Lost on pay-per-view, but that isn’t the same as flipping through channels to see what’s on.

The whole linear concept of flipping through channels is sort of non-existent here. Vast wastelands of channels with no assignation are interspersed with the few channels you have subscribed to and channels on which 30 seconds of programming is cut off by an invitation to subscribe to view further. And then of course, there are the Chinese Language channels (to skip past in my case).

In order to select what you want to watch, you must visit a menu page (also not linear; channels are displayed in groups according to genres – Movies, News Channels/Documentary, Sports, Entertainment and Leisure). There are some really quirky channels: the Panda Channel – a live feed from Ocean Park, Hong Kong’s water park/zoo; the traffic channel (watch the traffic driving through Aberdeen Tunnel!); and the Flight Arrivals and Departures Channel, a helpful channel on an island with access to one airport and a population that travels quite a bit. There is also a channel that gives [really] local restaurant recommendations and a channel where you can upload a picture of your pet and send him or her a card (available samples included, ‘I promise to love you forever!’ and ‘I promise to take care of you and feed you!’).

It took me a couple of months to pinpoint the disconnect that I feel when watching TV here. Finally M pointed out what should have been obvious; TV in Hong Kong does not have commercials. There are promos for upcoming programs on a given channel and a few general commercials for the rare network sponsor, but there is nothing of the constant barrage of products, services, fast-food, casual dining, music, theme parks, movie trailers, toys, credit services, etc. Watching TV in Hong Kong is like watching TV on an airplane; it feels like pre-packaged media, bundled and sold to satellite markets, which is exactly what it is.

To my horror (I am not a TV person!), since moving to Hong Kong, I have really noticed a widening mental divide between me and ‘what is happening in the world’ ie what the American public is told on a daily basis to care about. I no longer have any idea what movies are coming out. There is no little bear in my head telling me which toilet paper to buy, no unconscious pull toward a specific brand in the grocery store, no girl in the short skirt kicking her tan legs and reminding me that I am not a size 2. I am strangely unmoored from consumer culture and it feels great.

There is nothing worse than spending a night watching unsatisfying TV. We have made a Chinese New Year’s resolution to spend less time hoping in vain that Hong Kong TV will satisfy and pick up our books instead.

A trip to Fo Tan in the new territories last Saturday revealed that cultural production does exist in Hong Kong! The Fotanian 2009 Artists Open Studios (http://www.fotanian.com/events.php) was a refreshing reminder of the importance of artistic community.

Fo Tan is an industrial hamlet located about half an hour by train into the new territories where artists have been living and working since 2001. Reminiscent of early Williamsburg or the Brewery in LA,  Fo Tan is home to the studios of 170 artists (A handful of well-known local artists as well as recent art school graduates) who live and/or work in light-industrial warehouse spaces.

Studios too numerous to be covered in one trip doubled as galleries for the weekend. We visited fewer than half the participating spaces and saw some interesting work.

Studio Biblioteque presented a drawing show that included hand drawn personal maps by Hong Kong artist Ho Sin Tung (hosintung.com) and stop-motion animated graffiti by Singapore artist Joo Choon Lin. On another floor, Man Fug-yi presented a series of sculptures of welded ‘clothing’, which despite being constructed of 1/8” steel and copper, appeared to drape delicately over invisible figural forms.

Perhaps more interesting than the art was the scene: hundreds of people streaming from floor to floor in building after building, trudging up stairwells, packing elevators, lining up outside studios to enter the small spaces and see (and take tons of photos of) the art. The vibe was laid-back. One space welcomed the crowds with a raucous guitar/piano/violin trio. Another was playing Arcade Fire (sniff…very W’burg).

Walking through the industrial hallways from studio to studio, I imagined the place at night, empty except for a few artists breaking to share a cigarette, music pumping through the stairwells, food cooking on hotplates and the sense that something important is being created.

In this city that serves as the marketplace for some of the most expensive (and often overblown) artwork in Asia, it is reassuring to see that a base of creativity exists and to hope that the work made there, the conversations in the hallways late at night, will one day dictate what moves through the clean, well-lighted spaces of Hollywood Road.

Morning Commute in downtown Shanghai

Last week, M learned at the last minute that he had business in Shanghai and I quickly arranged for visas so that Frances and I could join him.

I had no idea what to expect. My ‘China’ consisted of media images of the Bejing Olympics and memories of a brief trip to [what was then called] Canton in 1989. I had no idea that Shanghai was such a blend of east and west, filled with neoclassical architecture and gorgeous old French and German Concessions (neighborhoods that had been conceded to foreign governments in the mid 1800s). I was not expecting tree-lined streets, spired cathedrals, leafy neighborhoods, funky bars and coffee shops, vintage clothing stores, or the malls and their luxury brand stores that lined Nanjing Lu. Shanghai is old and new, public and private, rich and poor, and very prominently eastern and western.

 We stayed in the Luwan district near the French Concession and spent our first morning walking around that area. The streets of the French Concession are lined with Plane trees similar to those found across Paris. The trees create shady canopies in the summer months, but were heavily pruned and leafless in January, lending a slightly ominous cohesion to each street (incidentally, Plane trees are also highly tolerant of urban pollution which is lucky because Shanghai has plenty of that).

Tree-lined streets

The Concession’s architecture is a blend of Chinese and western. Traditional Shikumen lane houses are interspersed with Tudor, French colonial, and even art deco buildings reminiscent of Shanghai in the 1930’s. Shikumen lane houses are a local merger of traditional Chinese architecture (enclosed spaces encompassing the homes of several families around a courtyard) and western style townhouse living. As Shanghai rapidly reinvents itself, the Shikumen lane house blocks are being razed and replaced with high-rise apartment blocks and anonymous glass towers, leaving the city checker-boarded with the bald patches of demolition and construction.

Lane houses being demolished

The concept of public vs. private space is much more fluid than in a city like New York. Though people live in enclosed spaces, they use the public sidewalks to hang out their laundry, dry their meat and fish, and even to set up a table and have a meal. Much like Hong Kong, even numbingly repetitive apartment blocks are individualized and brought to life with colorful flags of laundry strung from poles extended out above windows

Yellow Gloves

Apartment on Doulon Road

Later that first afternoon, we walked along Nanjing Lu from the French Concession to the Bund, the stretch of embanked riverfront that runs along the western bank of the Huangpu River, facing the Pudong (the skyline on the Eastern bank of the river that is most commonly used to represent Shanghai). We were shocked by the number of luxury brand stores in mall after mall lining Nanjing Lu, many of which there were multiples. There is truth to the statistic that 30% of the luxury goods market is owed to Asia. . .

The Bund is located in the former International Settlement and is lined with former banks and trading houses, consulates, private clubs and restaurants in the architectural styles of their residents’ former homelands – Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neo-Classical, Beaux-Arts, and Art Deco (apparently, Shanghai has an impressive collection of Art Deco architecture). Neglected after years under Communist rule, the buildings on the Bund have recently become the focus of preservation efforts, and today once again house Shanghai’s major banks and trading houses (along with some super fancy stores, galleries, and restaurants).

The Bund - elevation

The Bund

Frances and I spent Monday and Tuesday going to museums and galleries. There was a show about the work of couples in Chinese contemporary art at the Museum of Contemporary Art (http://www.mocashanghai.org), located in the People’s Square amidst gardens and teahouses (and a great museum store). Shanghart (http://www.shanghartgallery.com/) has several locations, but we went to their new space in a converted mansion in old Shanghai and saw a survey of Chinese contemporary art that included some artists I am starting to recognize as old standards in Chinese contemporary art. The Shanghai Gallery of Art (http://www.shanghaigalleryofart.com/) is in a gorgeous old building on the Bund. It had a great painting show up called Surfacing that included work by Chen ji and Li Shurui.

Walking around the French Concession on Tuesday, I stumbled upon ‘The Pottery Workshop’ (http://potteryworkshop.org/shanghai). The front window displayed a grid of shelves with one piece of pottery in each square. The work ranged from traditional to conceptual but were all technically sophisticated. I mentioned to the shop manager that my grandmother was a potter and asked if she knew of the Cranbrook school, the place that shaped my grandmother’s creative life. I almost could not believe it when she told me that the director of The Pottery Workshop was married to a man from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and both he and both their sons attended Cranbrook. That was just so crazy I had to buy a few pots.

On Tuesday afternoon, Frances and I took a taxi out to the Doulun Musuem of Modern Art (http://www.duolunmoma.org/start.html). The museum is located north of the North Sichuan Road Trade Area on a little historic road surrounded on all sides by miles of dusty Chinese villages and anonymous concrete apartment blocks. The museum was showing a retrospective of Chinese contemporary art that was much less commercial than work I’d seen in the other galleries. I was glad to have ventured outside the relative familiarity of Shanghai’s more wealthy downtown. I wandered around the lanes near the museum and looking for a taxi just a few roads over, I realized that for the first time since arriving in Asia, I felt utterly foreign there, the only English speaker for miles.

Doulan Road

To fully appreciate the paradox that is Shanghai, I decided to follow the lead of Patricia Marx in her article ‘BUY SHANGHAI!: A city for sale’ in the July 21^st, 2008 New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_marx). I headed down to South Shanxi Road and was immediately approached by a smiling man in a parka flashing a laminated card with pictures of designer handbags, watches, sunglasses, and women’s shoes.  I indicated my interest and he led me down an alleyway, through a courtyard where people were gathered smoking on folding chairs, and up a dark old stairway (that smelled like wee wee) to the second floor of a crumbling lane house. I looked at the bags – fake Guccis, LV, Prada, etc. – and saw that they were no different from the Canal Street selection in New York. ‘I looked around at the people gathered in the room, eating fried chicken and smoking up a storm. Best Quality?’  I asked the one playing the role of ‘salesgirl’. She gave me a weary look and led me up the steep staircase past an alcove of watches and into a room on the top floor of the lane house that was filled with ‘real’ fakes. These bags were leather and were either very good copies or were produced on the same production lines as the real deals. The man in the parka led me around to three other ‘shops’ in other lane houses, all selling the same merchandise. I didn’t end up with a bag, but I was glad to have had the opportunity to see the inside of the lane houses.

Despite their charm, after having seen what the lane houses are like – very low ceilings, six-inch high thresholds between rooms, thin stairways and hallways, small rooms, and Chinese kitchens (ie not designed to house appliances), I can see why the Shanghainese people might favor a highrise style apartment.

The air was relatively clear for the majority of our visit. It tasted like dust and after a day walking around, our throats were scratchy, but at least we could see into the distance from our hotel window. But the sky was white the day we left and the horizontal visibility was (npi) visibly diminished. In answer to my frustration, my incredulity that a country, a people would stand for this level of air quality, M made the point that China has no choice. In order to stay competitive, attract foreign investment, and grow their economy, they must sacrifice the health of their population in the short-term. To be fair, he said, all industrialized countries followed a similar developmental bell curve; it was a difference merely of scale. There comes a point when as a country, people are wealthy enough to have the luxury to care about such things as their health and only then will change come.

Morning in the FC

Private phone lines offered for public use

More construction

Just drying my mop and my laundry and some ducks...

For Courtney...

View from our hotel

View of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower

Chinese cigarettes

A cart in the French Concession

Typical mode of transport of many goods

more street meat...

Cart pushers/cell phone break

Old and New

Construction Cranes

Little table on the sidewalk

The day we left...

Elephant on the Beach

North Chaweng Beach

We spent five days after Christmas in Thailand – eating, lounging, napping, reading, swimming in the pool, lying on the beach, and breathing the beautiful warm fresh air of Koh Samui. Frances was an easy traveler, adapting to her new room (the bathroom in our villa) and loving the attention she got from the hotel staff.

The pool at our hotel

My family spent a Christmas on the same island in 1986 and, while I suppose it is human nature to return to the familiar, it was sort of a coincidence, an accident of proximity that we ended up picking Koh Samui again. It was a huge surprise when we walked down the beach the first morning and I realized we were literally next door to the Coral Bay resort where my family had stayed twenty years ago. The place was updated – landscaping, a pool, a new restaurant/bar – but I remembered the railings on the bungalow porches and I remembered a big tree that leaned toward the ocean to the north of the resort. The beach had lost about 30 feet – in another 20 years, it will be gone – but the air smelled the same. I was glad to be back on that beach with my own baby and to think of all that had passed in the years between holidays.

Frances playing with the tide

Thailand (at least happy/beach/tourist Thailand) is easy and just exotic enough.

Traditional Thai architecture blurs the lines between indoor and outdoor, public and private, nature and culture. Resort lobbies and restaurants have no exterior walls. Views of the ocean are framed by lush tropical vegetation and sea breezes provide natural air-conditioning.

Three barbershops at night

Vernacular Thai architecture uses the same open-air principle. Restaurants, grocers, sweatshops, barbers, and mechanics occupy garage-like structures that open to the street and often double as living space where families gather to eat or watch TV. Walking down the street at night is like passing a series of well-lit theatrical sets, one scene after another set squarely before an audience of pedestrians, streaming steadily past.

Open-front store/home

a store at night

Gasoline sold in wine bottles

Morning walk

360 Pagoda

We have enjoyed more than a week of strong winds, cool, dry air and sky blue skies. This is Hong Kong as it is meant to be experienced, the skyline majestic and clear by day and sharp and colorful by night. 

I have been spending as much time as possible outside, storing up for those days that I know will return when the air is still and a brown cloud hangs over us. People attribute the weather’s improvement to the shut-down of factories in China’s Guangdong Province, the southern region to the north of the Pearl River Delta that has in the last 10 years become Hong Kong’s ‘industrial park’. A whole economy of cheap plastic goods that probably wouldn’t pass inspection in the states (think: 99 cent store-knock-offs) is threatened by the current financial crisis as factory after factory (many of which are, ironically, owned by HK companies) turn off their diesel generators and shut down production. The flip side is that the livelihoods of many Chinese migrant workers (who work for 40 cents an hour) have become threatened. There was rioting last week after a Chinese toy factory closed and I can only imagine that as the air clears here, it is going to get worse for those people.

As the GP that I consulted recently about the pollution stated directly to me, “We did this. The third world bears the true cost of the cheap goods at Wal-Mart; we export the ugly side of inexpensive consumption.” He also advised, after suggesting that I was perhaps over-sensitive -ouch- that if I thought Hong Kong’s pollution was bad, travel to Beijing, Shanghai, Canton, Mumbai, and a whole host of other cities should perhaps be avoided.

Anyway, it is beautiful today and it was beautiful yesterday. We broke in our new hiking baby backpack yesterday and hiked to Mui Wo, a village about a two hour hike south of DB. The trail (which, like many public trails in HK, is paved) starts at the DB Marina and follows the eastern crest of Lantau island south through some humble villages and up to a Trappist Monastary. It then leads to a pagoda with 360 degree views and down to Mui Wo, a fishing village where the primary mode of transportation is the bicycle. Almost the entire way, the trail overlooks Victoria Harbor and in the distance, Hong Kong.

Vegetable garden on Lantau

Peng Chau and Hong Kong

Barefoot by the creek

Garden next to Trappist Monastary

Jack!

We wandered around Mui Wo and I found the bike store that had been recommended and where I will return next week to buy a bike with a backseat for Frances. After passing up the row of local seafood restaurants (outdoor seating, stray dogs, traditional Cantonese fare which – I am just saying – all too often privileges function over form), we stumbled upon a kiwi pub on the water. Feeling slightly guilty for being a little TOO excited that the menu had sandwiches (!), shepherd’s pie, and even veggie burgers (!!), we got a table in the shade and had a delicious hard-earned late lunch.

Motor+Bike

It was a friendly ex-pat neighborhood place. Frances was wearing a boyish outfit and people at the restaurant kept calling her a ‘lad’.  We talked to some people who lived in Mui Wo. The ferry ride is about the same as that from Central to DB but the ferries run less frequently. Everyone we spoke to liked the mellow lifestyle and we were once again amazed at how many different ways there are to live in Hong Kong.

China Bear Cafe

One of the lovely things about Chinese culture is the delight that almost everyone takes in children. Grown men, teenage boys, and stylish women who look like they couldn’t be bothered all make great overtures to interact with Frances. It is quite common to pass your child to a stranger on the bus or the table next to you. People often ask to have their pictures taken with Frances and I no wonder what foreign photo albums or blogs she will anonymously end up in, the fair-headed child at the beach…

Mui Wo Parking Lot

Frances by the sea

The view of Hong Kong today!

Disclaimer:  For those who do not like unpleasantries, skip this blog. I am feeling unpleasant.

Today brought with it the worst pollution I have seen so far. The sky is white. The sun is a chemical burn through a whiteout haze. Five minutes walking Jack this morning and my mouth was filled with the now-familiar acidic-metallic taste of chemicals. The calm that I had reached (that whole ‘belief in the body’s resilience…’) is faded and I am feeling panicked again. Panicked that tasting smog is surely a signifier of its seriousness, panicked that Frances is being affected in ways we won’t understand for years to come. In a few more hours, my throat will burn. Then my eyes will sting and by 4 pm, my daily headache will return.

I can’t remember the last time I breathed actual fresh air. Discovery Bay has a different sort of environmental pollution than Hong Kong. In addition to the factory pollution coming down from China (apparently they run diesel generators because there is not enough electricity to meet demand), there is a constant lingering smell of diesel fuel in the air. The DB ferries run on diesel. The many buses that crisscross DB all day run on diesel. The private golf carts that chug up and down the hills all run on diesel. So, it is paradise, but it stinks.

Since moving here, I have begun to have tightness in my chest on an almost-daily basis. The doctor I saw in Hong Kong suggested that my early throat and chest irritation was a result of the adjustment to a new climate, possible allergies. I believe the words ‘flora’ and ‘fauna’ were used. Now I am not so sure. What of the taste in my mouth that is worse on high pollution days? What of the headaches, the chest pains?

M doesn’t feel it. He will admit that the sky seems heavier, but he doesn’t have any physical register of the air quality, which is frustrating for me. Of course, I don’t want him to have physical symptoms, but it would make me feel less alone to have my experiences corroborated, to not feel like the princess and the pea or even the canary in the coal mine.

One of the things that has been difficult for me is that no one I meet seems to feel the sense of urgency, disgust, or panic that I feel. Everyone agrees that the pollution is bad, an issue, but sort of accepts it as the way things are. When I mention that I taste it, smell it even on ‘good’ days, the response is the same unsatisfying tilt of the head accompanied by a ‘Hmmm…Do you suffer from asthma?’ or ‘Oh, you do? Have you seen a doctor?’

Never have I met someone who says, ‘This is ridiculous! Why are we putting up with it!?’ I feel like a rat trapped in a box who keeps throwing itself at the wall with no hope of escape while all the other rats in the box go on admiring the angles of the box. The other day, someone told me to ‘enjoy this lovely weather!,’ referring to the drop in temperature and slight breeze I guess and overlooking the fact that the island of Hong Kong was totally invisible!

One of my best friends – a psychologist – told me that I was likely experiencing cognitive dissonance, which (I googled) refers to the uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously (in my case: I greatly value my family’s health and I live in a very polluted city).

Instinctually, people try to eliminate the discomfort of cognitive dissonance in different ways: by ignoring or eliminating the dissonant cognitions (by pretending that pollution is not bad for them); by altering the importance of their cognitions (deciding that the quality of the air we breathe isn’t that important -‘I don’t have asthma so it must be fine.’); by creating or emphasizing new cognitions that overwhelm the fact that they know pollution is unhealthy (‘it is very safe here’ or ‘the money is so good’ or ‘we love the lifestyle’); or finally, and my personal favorite, by just ignoring it, refusing to accept it, or simply avoiding any information about pollution in general. I guess that is how people can live in Hong Kong and not feel bad about the pollution.

[The whole cognitive dissonance theory struck a cord with me. I realized that I tend to dwell in dissonance and don’t allow myself the comfort of seeking consonance. I try to force alignment between principles rather than accepting things as they are. So, a mental note... ]

My friend predicted that, within a year I too will have successfully eliminated the dissonance I feel. Assimilation is a survival mechanism.

Bring it on. Let me drink the Kool-aid. I can’t take this anymore. I want to be in love with Hong Kong too! I want to take advantage of the city and our time here! I want to wander around and admire its angles and not come home with terrible headaches! I want to take my daughter to the pool and not feel like we are sucking in diesel fumes. I want to play tennis with M and not feel my chest burn. I want to take a walk and not be constantly aware of the diesel fumes aggravating the already polluted air. I want to relax and enjoy it.

I am seeing another doctor tomorrow. Maybe there is medicine they can give me. Maybe it is all mental. Maybe I am transferring some resistance to being in a new place into micro-focus on the pollution. Maybe clean air really isn’t that important. People smoke for years and quit and they are fine. There are 18 million people in Hong Kong; they can’t all be dying of cancer or suffering from respiratory illness. I need to get back to that part of me that believes in resilience. In order to face this day I need to get back to that.