The Making of the Card

Tiff and I had so much fun dressing up for Halloween we just couldn't stop. Our friends Marc and Meredith had heard about this place where you could do a glamorous photo shoot in traditional Chinese costume. Of course we signed right up! As you can see, Marc and I carefully examined the racks of clothing for the ultimate in imperial fashion.

After much debate, we decided on one Tang Dynasty costume set, and one "classic" Shanghai set. We were going for that classic, 1920's and 30's "Paris of the East" look.




Marc realizes the costumes were not made with tall white guys in mind.....










Tiffany with her blond tresses looks more Rapunzel than Zhang Ziyi, but don't worry, these guys were pros, and soon had her fixed up appropriately...

With the proper hair extensions, wigs and makeup, Tiffany was soon transformed into a vision of Middle Kingdom majesty...








You can barely tell Meredith and Tiffany aren't just two local Chinese village girls made good!








Here I am getting pretty for the big photo shoot. There's nothing like a little man makeup to make your eyes pop.

I wanted them to add some bushy eyebrows to give me that scowling emperor disdainful-of-his-minions overtone, but somehow that didn't translate...







It's amazing how traditional Tang dynasty wear and Tang dynasty-esque hair extensions can convert two blonds.

Local Shanghainese who walked into the photo shoot quickly dropped into deep kow-towing in fear of these feudal empresses.








The royal couple all made up and ready to go! Unfortunately, as the photographers were soon to scold us, Chinese dynastic imperials do NOT smile.









A group photo with Marc, Meredith Tiffany and me. Every time we started cracking up laughing (about every 4 seconds or so), the photographer would yell at us to stop smiling. Our job was to master the oh-so-slight curl of the lip smile, which would exude mystery and enhance our powerful mystique, as if the all the secrets in China were locked up tightly behind those lips. Or something like that...




Here is one of Tiffany and me, elite members of Shanghai's roaring 20's upper crust, out for a quiet Sunday stroll with the timeless 'sun umbrella'.

Other artistic shots...

All in all, the day was incredible fun and great inspiration for our holiday cards (see below). As Tiffany and I jet off with man makeup and black extensions in tow to celebrate Christmas in the US, we'd like to wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Put On Your Yarmulka......

A shout out to all our dreidel-loving friends during this Hanukkah season! We hope you're having fun and eating plenty of latkes and Sufganiyot during your 8 crazy nights......


Zach and I have been vigorously preparing for the holidays. We had a fantastic pre-Christmas dinner at the newly opened Le Royal Meridien Shanghai last week. We ate plenty in hopes of expanding our stomachs for what will be 10 days of full on gluttony during our upcoming holiday road trip home.









Zach's also been busy closing his very first real estate deal for Credit Suisse-China before year end! Congrats Zach!







To get in the holiday spirit, we've put up our Charlie Brown tree, draped our bamboo with fairy lights, and held constant screenings of 'Love Actually' and Elf'.

We're heading to the US this Friday to spend the holidays with friends and family in Chicago and San Francisco but before we go, we do have a very special holiday blog entry to post, so be sure to check back before the end of the week. Hope you're having a happy holiday season!

Who Wouldn't Love to Pet a Penguin?

Last month, we were fortunate to have a very special visitor, my best friend, Kimmy, took time from her grad school studies to trek all the way to Asia to see us. Zach was temporarily held back with the whole recovering from surgery thing, so we loaded him down with a bunch of delivery menus and pirated movies, then Kim and I headed to Hiroshima!









Zach's parents and his Uncle Neil and cousin Kara were in Hiroshima at the same time, so we met up and spent the day exploring the A-Bomb Museum and Peace Park. It was unbelievable to see the devastating effects of the bomb, the museum contained articles such as melted bicycles and burnt clothing and lunch pails, pictures of the devastation, and letters discussing the A-bomb testing and decision to drop from influential people such as FDR and Einstein.







The city was basically leveled after the bomb was dropped over 60 years ago, but there are a few buildings like this dome that survived.












After the bomb, it was predicted that nothing would grow in the area for 75 years. Kim and I are standing in front of a famous Phoenix tree in the center of the city that started growing the spring after the bomb was dropped. The tree provided hope for the devastated people of Hiroshima as they began to rebuild their city.









Lionel (Zach's dad) was kind enough to set up a talk with one of the A-Bomb survivors. She spoke candidly about the day the bomb dropped and how she lost many friends and family both at the time of the bombing and since then to the after effects. At age 73, after many surgeries necessary after her exposure to radiation, and as a breast cancer survivor, she was a true inspiration.

After spending the day exploring the history of the A-Bomb, we decided to see a more natural side to Hiroshima and headed to Miyajima, a beautiful island close to the city. The island is covered with vicious, paper eating deer, so we held on to our maps and tried to avoid any confrontations....

The deer didn't seem to mind the rain, as they blended right into the crowd of tourists.

Here Kim is almost being attacked by an aggressive deer, fortunately, she is not made of paper (their #1 snack choice) so she was safe.

Miyajima had the world's biggest rice paddle, as you can see, I'm on the right side by the handle and it is quite large.


















Now to what Kim and I have decided was the absolute highlight of her trip.........we stopped into the Miyajima Aquarium to dry off and warm up, and stumbled upon their 'Penguin Walk', where we got to walk around with penguins and actually pet them.













Kim and I had no shame as we lined up with all the little kids, waiting for our turn. Thank goodness Zach wasn't with us, as he has me on a strict 'no touching strange animals' policy after the monkey biting incident in Indonesia last May.





After our 2 days in Hiroshima, we headed to Shanghai to show Kim around our home (where she creatively concocted the drawing for our guest room wall that you see at the beginning of the entry). We were happy to see Zach had managed just fine....although he did keep mentioning the weekend would have been a lot more comfortable with an Xbox 360. C'est la vie.










After 3 days in Shanghai, we headed to Beijing to accompany Zach on a business trip (and when we say accompany, we really mean stay in his nice suite at the Grand Hyatt courtesy of Credit Suisse). We visited the Forbidden City and had our picture taken with Mao (left).





Visited the Summer Palace.......











where Kim made a furry friend.....








And had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner at the Grand Hyatt, turkey, pumpkin pie, and all the traditional fixings.




















To work off all that turkey, we headed to the Great Wall.







The day we went it snowed, which was beautiful, but very cold.











We ended the week with a fantastic Beijing Duck dinner.......all in all, it was a wonderful visit, Kimmy, we can't wait for you to come back to China!!!!!!

Giving thanks in China

Here is more of what happened while Blogger was shut down in China:



In case you didn't get a chance to see on Flickr, this was Tiffany's ingenious Halloween idea. It is the opposite of the City Weekend magazine cover (see earlier blog entry for photo) and constitutes what I consider to be a good Halloween costume. Well, there's two kinds of "good" costumes, I guess. One would be the classic, elaborate, no-holds-barred costume that is detailed and complicated, and requires a lot of effort. The other is ours. Which is to say timely, humorous and slightly offensive. Maybe not as much effort, but a lot more thought.

Clearly, the recent magazine met the timely requirement. And it was humorous to see that we had switched the text on our t-shirts (and exhibited the requisite ethnic correlation). The life of single expats in China follows one dominant rule of thumb: White (non-Asian), usually older men like to date younger, Chinese girls. Thus, the City Weekend magazine cover article. So when Tiffany and I walked in to an expat Halloween party with our friends Meredith and Mark (dressed as Chinese crossing guards on left), we were greeted with lots of slightly uncomfortable laughs. Like, "ha ha, that's really funny. Have you met my new Chinese girlfriend?" To a Halloween aficionado like myself, it was music to my ears!



Later that weekend, Tiffany had her work Halloween party at Shanghai Centre. We took a group of kids trick or treating through the apartment towers and then finished in the main hall and watched the kids flying around on a candy-fueled high. We went as a classic devil and angel duo. I was only able to scare one child, and he barely cried, but it was a fun afternoon nevertheless. On the right is Tiffany up on stage with a bunch of the kids at Shanghai Centre, where she works.

And my parents were back in town, on a tour through Asia. Unfortunately they arrived, only to find me handicapped.

Nevertheless, it was great to see them, and we got to show them around Shanghai, and some of our favorite hangouts.

I did get my cast off and while I'm still on crutches, I have a removable walking boot, so at least I can take it off at night and sleep easier. I'm seeing my surgeon tomorrow and hopefully he will give me the green light to start physical therapy.

Despite the torn Achilles that we're dealing with right now (and by "we" I really mean Tiffany, since my job is to lie still, and she has to cook all the meals, clear my dishes, and basically run around and get everything for me, not entirely unenjoyable for me, but she is definitely ready for me to get back on my feet), Tiffany and I have a lot to be thankful for. We both have great jobs in China, we have gotten to do some incredible traveling around Asia, Tiffany has her health, and I'm working on getting mine back.

And besides, we have great blog readers who motivate us to keep up our little travel journal! Like my Aunt Bessie, one of our faithful readers, who just celebrated her 80th birthday, and is kind enough to print up our blog entries and bring them over to my grandmother to read. So thank you Aunt Bessie, and thanks to all our readers. We will keep bringing you our stories from China and around Asia, and hopefully you will enjoy reading them and get to share a little bit of our experiences!