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Having been publicly chastised by the daughter for not posting post-haste, we now sit ourselves down at the keyboard(s) back in the clean and sun-warmed air of a large-ish metropolitan area in the American South-by-Southwest.  (We’re not sure how far “WonderWife” would have us go with all this web-anonymity business.)

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As we expected from the general good-naturedness of her blogs and our occasional FaceTime/Skype encounters, WonderDaughter seems to have acclimated well to life in the Northern Capital (bei = north; jing = capital).  As parents, we pat ourselves on the back for this, believing that we laid the ground for this ease of acculturation by taking the girl on several international trips and by relocating her to Southeast Asia for a couple of her high-school years.  SuperSon-in-Law was even more of a wildcard in this regard (maybe sons-in-law are always a bit of a wildcard), but he, too, seems to have adapted quite readily.

One thing we might not have predicted is WonderDaughter’s transition from somewhat of a spendthrift, just a few short years ago, to that of a far thriftier individual (dare we say, “tight-wad”).  Indeed, the woman now knows the value of a [unit of currency], although we’ll stop short of calling her a jiao-pincher.  (1 jiao = about 1.5 U.S. pennies)  But perhaps we mischaracterize her here; her skill as a bargainer at the markets in Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, and elsewhere is the stuff of legends.

Our arrival in Beijing coincided with the departure of 2012, but, as has been written elsewhere on this site, we were not very spirited New Year’s Eve companions.  Despite intentions and pledges by some, the newcomers were all semi-conscious or less at 00:00 that first night.  It turns out that the bulk of Beijing shared our unenthusiastic welcome of the new page on the calendar.  They’re saving up for February 10 – Chinese or Lunar New Year.

We won’t recount our entire visit, but we will say that our first truly touristic stop was the Temple of Heaven.  Most will agree that this site is a masterpiece of architecture and landscape design that simply and graphically illustrates a cosmogony of great importance for the evolution of one of the world’s great civilizations.  And anyone who was there with us on that day would also agree that it was frikken cold.  The “cosmogony of great importance” line was admittedly swiped from the UNESCO literature, but the business about being cold is a sincere first-hand – nay… frozen-hand – observation.  Aside from the obvious highlight of the site itself, other points of interest included the one-armed man with his karaoke microphone, singing ballads for passing change, and SuperSon-in-Law’s attempts to brush away and then successfully haggle with the persistent peddlers.  Unfortunately, after his purchase of a neat wooden model of theImperial Vault of Heaven, he made mistake Number 1 in the bargaining game: he continued to ask others about the price for this same model.  Once a price is settled on and paid, we’re pretty sure you don’t want to know at what price you might have gotten elsewhere.
**WonderWife here, making a note, defending SuperHusband's honor as a bargainer -- He didn't ask for the prices of other models, they were thrust at him. "Hey, how much you pay? Mine's cheaper!"**

But our intention here is not to provide a travelogue, but to give our impressions of how the happy couple is faring at the possible halfway point in this particular International Adventure. They are clearly quite comfortable with their transportation options.  We’re glad to see that WonderDaughter is with bike, once again, but we were duly impressed by their knowledge and nimbleness with the Beijing Subway system. It must be noted that we used the subway often and found it to be accessible, clean, punctual, and very cheap.  But the mark of their time in the city was evident in discussions like:

“We should take the Number 5 line and change at Yonghegong.”

“It makes better sense to take the Number 10 from Huixinxijie Nankou down to Jintaixizhao.”

“But you’re forgetting that the station at Fangzhuangdonglu is having construction delays….”

(It was sometimes at this point in the conversation that we vacationers, on less of a shoestring budget, might ask, “Wouldn’t it cost about $2.50 for us just to all hop in a cab?”  As it happens, though, we seldom took taxis, unless we were out past the surprisingly early subway system closing time of 10:30pm.)

Although we never made time to visit the dorm accommodations of SuperYerno / SuperSon-in-Law, we did all meet up in WonderDaughter’s apartment on several occasions.  We were able to convince ourselves that it was the pollution/cold/jetlag that was slowing us down on the fourth, fifth, and sixth flights of stairs.  Although not well-suited to entertaining parties of five – with our various shopping and camera bags and bulky winter wear – the apartment seems quite adequate for their purposes.  It was fortunate that only two of us ever wanted anything to drink at a time, as her cupboards were bare of all but a pair of mugs.  She made a charming hostess, nonetheless.  Try her Lemon-Ginger Tea.

Further demonstrating their adaptation to this densely urban life, our hosts find no need to heavily stock the cabinets and pantry (okay… she doesn’t really have anything that might be called a pantry).  Their walk from the subway or the main street takes them past a number of food stalls, neighborhood eateries, and at least one micro-market.  The latter is the size of a generous walk-in closet, not including the small selection of produce and wares on a few shelves outside the door.  It was clear that they have almost daily interactions with this vendor — I won’t call them conversations because WonderDaughter’s exchanges mostly seem to involve pointing and saying, “jega” (this one).

She employs this same term liberally when in restaurants.  It comes in most handy when picture menus are provided. The photo quality of these menus is often quite good, but not always high-resolution enough to establish that, rather than beef, this is a liver dish, or that the thin white slices are not cabbage but are instead tripe (if not, as the little sister conjectured, cat tongue).  That said, those were the only two dishes we left undevoured in nearly ten days of pointing and “jega”-ing.

We conclude this report by saying that we’ve substantiated most of the claims made in prior entries of this blog and yes, these two are getting on just fine.  We urged them to eat their vegetables and, according to a very recent posting, they are doing just that.  We urged them to cover up better in the sub-zero days ahead and, with the hats and long undies and gloves we left them, we expect they’ll do just that.  We urged them to temper their desire to save money for their return to the U.S. against the opportunity to spend relatively little money on exotic exploration.  We’ll stay tuned to see about that.

At least two readers of this blog are expected to visit Beijing later this year.  We commend the two of you for choosing something other than the coldest and most-polluted days of the year.  We also expect from you further updates on these two characters.   Plus, we’ll want to know what you ate at the Chinese Muslim restaurant.  (We went twice.)  And if you’re going over there any time soon, can you take them a couple of face masks?

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming….