Family Month

For the second year in a row during the month of April, representatives of both the Chan and Tomaszewskis have visited us in Shanghai, so April is officially crowned Family month.

First up, the Chans. Zach's cousin, Josh, is spending the semester studying in Hangzhou, a little town (re: only 4M people) a few hours out of Shanghai. Josh's parents, Thalia and Tyler, and sister, Lindsay, all came out to visit him, and we had the honor of joining their whole family to celebrate Lindsay's 18th birthday in style at Shanghai's famous 'M on the Bund' restaurant. It was great to see them and hear all about their fabric market shopping extravaganzas and brave bike tour through the crowded streets of Shanghai.

Next up, the whole Tomaszewski clan! My parents returned almost a year to the day of the 'Tomaszewski-Chan Families Take on China for the Best Trip Ever' tour. But this time, they were joined by the brothers, Tom and Todd. They spent an action/chinese food packed few days in Beijing seeing the Wall, Forbidden City, and the Summer Palace, as well as a few other places that weren't on the trip last year. Unfortunately, the shopping was limited, so there were no trips to the silk factory or tie-dye demonstrations. We made up for that once they got to Shanghai. A few members of the Tomaszewski clan who will remain nameless left the fabric market with huge bags of clothes made from cashmere, wool, cotton, you name it.



Todd definitely won the award for best Chinese food eater. He even ordered Chinese dishes at the Western restaurants!

The whole family braved the metro system during morning rush hour......














We celebrated the April birthdays, Dad's 2nd consecutive birthday in Shanghai......












And mom finally learned that there was more than just shopping in the Yu Yuan garden area!


All in all, we had a great time taking our family out to our favorite restaurants, massage places, and of course DVD stores. And while this trip didn't have half as many shopping stops as last year, everyone still managed to go home with suitcases splitting at the seams!

Bay Area visitors!

My good friend Aaron Lee (aka “Matchmaker Extraordinaire” from our wedding) came through China a few weeks ago. His girlfriend, Christina, is spending part of her final year in medical school in a Beijing hospital, where apparently one can witness psoriasis in volumes unmatched in the US. Which, according to her, is exciting. That’s a med student for you…

Anyway, Tiffany and I met up with Aaron and Christina in Beijing for the weekend and planned a visit to a scenic, river valley gorge outside of Beijing. It was a beautiful, crisp spring day, ripe for adventure, and China did not disappoint.

It started out simply enough. Along with some of Christina’s fellow med students, we needed two cabs to get to the bus station, where we would catch a bus to the gorge. Immediately our two cabs separated (and of course, Tiffany and I were in different cabs), and we lost each other. When we arrived at the bus station about 20 minutes later, we couldn’t find the other cab party. Time to figure out where each other is via a quick cell phone call – easy, right? Fifteen minutes and about five phone calls later, we still couldn’t find each other. I was certain the cabs had dropped us off at different stations. Our ability to succinctly and accurately communicate pertinent information with the other party was sorely tested. A sample call sounded like this, “Where are you?! We’re at a bus station, too. There’s like a huge, gray building right next to us. Yeah, it looks really old. Yeah, and there’s like a whole line of people waiting for the bus right near it. Do you see it? Do you see us?! Oh, there’s a gray old building with lots of Chinese people milling around where you are too? Oh.” And so on. It turned out we were at the same station, just about a half mile apart. And it turns out Beijing actually has many buses, and quite a few old, gray, Chinese-looking buildings with lots of Chinese people wandering around all of them.

So with that mystery solved we were off to the famous gorge. Or so we thought. Two hours and two buses later, we arrived at the gorge, only to find that it was still closed for the winter. We were the only visitors there, except for the few pre-pubescent boys watching over the park entrance in their oversized military uniforms. But all was not lost. We were accosted by some locals who only saw dollar signs when they looked at our unsuspecting faces. After some debate and haggling, we ended up with two horses to ride and a local trail guide to show us the way up the mountain outside of the gorge park. It was a nice day and we’d come all this way, and the poor horses looked like they could use some food, so we figured why not. And it did turn out to be a nice little hike, with some pretty vistas and a great way to spend the day. Of course, on the way home we jumped on what we thought was the same bus, same route number and all, but it turned out to be the 3 ½ hour local bus, instead of the express bus we’d ridden that morning. We closed out our adventurous day with a classic Beijing dinner at Red Capital Club, which is completely covered in Cultural Revolution era décor, and specializes in all of Mao’s favorite dishes, including this hong shao rou, or red pork, which included a nice little Mao figurine carved out of taro, or a potato, I think.

Once Aaron and Christina got to Shanghai the following week, we took them on the standard Tiff and Zach Tour de Shanghai. This includes the fabric market, walks through the local streets, a tour of my office, eating at our favorite restaurants, and strolling the Bund at night. Oh, and of course, massages. Aaron and I opted for the TV room where we drank beer and enjoyed foot massages, while Tiffany and Christina went the classy route and had the traditional Chinese massage. Aaron and I provided the day’s entertainment for our masseuses, as they tried speaking to us in Chinese and then tried to figure out why the two Chinese-looking boys couldn’t answer their simple questions. Always good fun…

All in all, it was great to see them in China, great to show them our Shanghai hangouts, and great to show them how it really is possible to live in China and not speak Chinese. We got to spend hours and hours (and then a few more hours depending on which bus we'd chosen) catching up on each others' lives, retelling old stories (we are now officially old enough to do that), and, at least for Aaron and I, marvelling at the fact that we made it this far into adulthood. Trust me, there were plenty of nights we were together in New York where I would surely not have made that bet. But that's a blog entry for another time...