Halloween in Xiamen

Yep, now that Christmas is over, I'm finally getting around to posting Halloween photos...time flies. Xiamen International School had a special day of celebrating, even though there are less than 15% Americans at the school! We had a hard time finding costumes here--all we could find were the same two or three witch-type outfits--so we were thrilled when our friend Pam offered to lend us a bag full of costumes that her children had outgrown. Amanda was very relieved. First up at school was the costume parade. As we see at home, there were tons of princesses and witches, which was fine with us as it was better than party-pooper noncostume-wearers! At first I couldn't locate Amanda's teacher...
and then I spotted him! What a great sport! Even though it was the last week of October, it was still quite warm so I couldn't believe he could stand to wear that mask. I guess he was one of those wrestler guys like in the movie Nacho Libre. Funny.
Amanda nominated herself for "most interesting" costume in her class vote...and won! This will likely be the only Halloween that she wears flip-flops without freezing.
Lining up all the pre-K through 5th graders was quite a challenge and getting a photo of it all without filling the frame with the backs of other parents' heads was equally hard! Next came the trick-or-treating!
Each child was asked to send in a bag of treats so that there would be enough to share. We didn't mind helping supply the candy (it certainly cost less than the 10+ bags I usually hand out at home!) Notice Amanda has a cloth reusable shopping bag for her treats--some things never change. I tagged along with the class as they went to 5 different offices around the school. I think the other parents had left by now (we had already attended the middle and high school-sponsored haunted basement, listened to some scary stories and played Halloween bingo--I even won a round!) but I couldn't miss the trick-or-treating.
The evening celebration was more for Liz and the other older kids. A bunch of parents in the PTSA organized a school dance for them. Liz and I had found a picture of a "Harajuku girl" of Japanese teen fame online and had a similar dress made at a local tailor shop. I'm not sure if the other kids know what her costume was, but we thought she looked fabulous!
Liz and two of her friends, waiting for the school bus that will take them to the dance.
We celebrated again on Saturday, with a special Halloween party at the local PCD department store. I had swallowed my pride and called the mother of Liz's friend (on the far right) who is a buyer for the store and organizer of the party to beg our way onto the guest list...the things we do for our kids! I also asked if our friends could come along with us; the parents are originally from China but studied in the US and lived in NM for many years so the girls were both born there. They moved here in March when the dad took a job as the dean of the energy department at Xiamen University (he's a nuclear specialist). I used one of the on-loan costumes but got really hot in the felt jester's hat!
Amanda and friends making a ghost craft. The party was fun but so crowded...we left a bit early to get going with the store trick-or-treating. The department stores here are different than ours in that each section is a separate store with each brand in its own area. We formed a group of expats and made a spectacle of ourselves...
some more than others! Our friend John did us proud by dressing up like a bathing beauty. He found a kindred soul on the sales floor...and got a good many points and stares. He's obviously not shy.
How many times have you trick-or-treated at Gucci?! Or Hugo Boss? The list goes on and we had so much fun!
The main entrance to the store opens onto the most popular pedestrian shopping street in the city. There was a large pumpkin display that we posed in front of...and a hoard of Chinese people grabbed their cameras and cell phones and took pictures. The spectacle continued!
I think the store had 4 floors, but we got tired out after two...and thought we better leave some candy for the other kids who were still upstairs in the bridal section at the party. By now it was getting late and we were ready to get to our next party, this time at the beach! Our friend the bathing beauty agreed to give us a ride with his driver but we had to wait for him to return for us since there wasn't room for both families. We got lots more stares and photos snapped as we walked and waited. Liz opted for Pocahontas this time, again from the loaned bag.
Once at the beach party, we discovered that Amanda's teacher was in the band! Read his guitar carefully--no bad words, I promise! The band was set up on the sand and there was a big patio with tables and food and drinks for purchase...and lots of fun-loving people. We were glad to be with good friends and ran into more after we got settled in.

The girls spent most of their time running around in the sand with their friends and watching the bonfire. These two days of fun were most certainly a bright spot in our fall; the first few months had many hard days and we were so happy for the escape!

Birthday party on Gulangyu

This info is a bit dated, but all my current pictures are on the laptop which is not cooperating with blogger at the moment. Amanda was invited, along with the rest of her class, to a birthday party at the island home of her classmate. We were initially very confused by the invitation since it told us to "get on a boat and go to the party." We were to go to "something, something matou ferry" and not be late. Ummmm, okay. We are not likely to miss a good party, so we asked around and finally figured out where to go. We met the birthday boy's daddy (a British man, married to a lovely Chinese wife, parents of three boys) at the terminal and accepted his offer of ferry tickets. When it was time to depart, we joined to mass of people...orderly lines just don't exist here, but don't get me started on that nonsense. Above is a picture of the ferry and below is the path we followed to board the boat.
Yep, we had to navigate our way to the fourth boat along bobbing boards set up between the boats. We were grateful for full use of our limbs as this would not have worked very well with a wheelchair or crutches.
Once on the boat we were treated to nice views of Gulangyu, the small, picturesque island off our main island that has become quite a tourist attraction. It is said to be one of the top ten destinations for tourists within China. It was home to early embassies years ago and also has a now defunct missionary hospital that was staffed by nurses from our own Hope College way back in the early 1900s.
A famous statue of a famous guy that looks out over the sea. If I were not a lazy person (and not feeling fed up with living here at the moment...) I would look up the information about this site. Perhaps at a later date. Regardless of the story, it was pretty cool to see from the water.
Once off the rocking boat, we walked down the long dock and down a sidewalk to the home. We felt very privileged to be invited to a private home on the island as not many people get to see this side of Gulangyu.
It felt like being at a backyard party at home! We are still not really accustomed to apartment living so this was a treat for us. The yellow building in the background houses a family room and full bathroom.
This nicely appointed kitchen was in its own separate building, right behind the main house. It had full-sized appliances, not commonly seen here, and was expertly attended by the family's ayi (household helper) who cooked all day long.
The back stairs to the house (kitchen is to the left, unseen). The dad told us that this was originally a missionary home, still owned by the church (can't recall which denomination just now). His company made an agreement with the church that they would fix it up (it had been sitting vacant for quite some time) in exchange for the rights to use it for housing at a low rent for the next 20 years. Our friends are the lucky occupants for now.
Amanda and Gene loved the outdoor ping pong table in the back corner of the yard. The children also took turns on the trampoline in the front yard and had fun running around the large, private yard that is shielded from view by lots of lush trees and other tropical foliage.

We took the long way back, walking through the center of the island to the main tourist ferry, since we missed the other ferry (couldn't miss the cutting of the cake, you know!). I got us lost three times but we finally made it back, just to be shoved and pushed onto the ferry by a huge crowd of weekend tourists. We intend to avoid crossing at this hour in the future as this was not a good ending to a fun day. As we are finding more each day, we must learn to hold tightly to the good things so that the bad don't overcome us (of course this is true in every corner of the world, but has been magnified for us here!).

Liz's 13th birthday party

Of course, we are not nearly old enough to have a thirteen year old daughter, so I don't know how this happened...believe what you will. Liz and some of her school friends gathered on a Friday night in mid-November to celebrate her birthday. Here are AJ, Liz, Justine, Sherou and Silke waiting for our ride. We were not happy that the night turned out to be rainy since we had planned to walk to the restaurant for dinner, but this turned out to be an advantage in the end. (you'll have to keep reading to find out why) Two of the moms offered to have their drivers run us over to Me & You 2--the outdoor restaurant/pub with a boardwalk and ocean view where we planned to eat. Good thing we had two vans offered to us since we had 10 people. The original plan was to eat pizza and then come back to our place to play games, etc...
We brought along the cake we had purchased earlier in the day, figuring it was easier to eat around a large table than to try to all fit around our small one.
Thankfully the cake ended up tasting pretty good. We were a little leery but decided that it was a must-have item, even if it didn't taste good! Notice the "happy birthday" in English and the pile of fruit--they insist on putting fruit on all cakes, sometimes even cherry tomatoes! We fought over the chocolate and white chocolate discs...they were yummy!
We also brought this bouquet of daisy-type flowers we had purchased from a little shop in our neighborhood. I was a bit nervous to try to negotiate ordering a bouquet with extremely limited language skills, but, once again, my pointing and nodding skills came in handy and we ended up with this nice arrangement for about $5! They have an ingenious way of wrapping the stems in a big sheet of thick plastic and securing it all with tape (and covering it with decorative paper) that precludes the need for a vase. The lady was an artist, I tell you.

Little did we know that Olf, the Swedish owner of the pub, and his wife had ordered TWO DOZEN roses for Liz! When we dropped in to tell him that we'd be coming with a party, just to make sure we had a table reserved, we did not have this in mind! He got on the mic (one of his favorite things to do) and announced that there was a new teenager in the house...don't remind us! It was very sweet. Then he told us that the band was going to be starting soon and that they would sing a birthday song for Liz. So we had to stick around for that and the girls were having fun so we didn't mind changing our plans a little. By the time the band came out and sang to her, it was past 7pm and other patrons were showing up but, since it was bad weather, the crowd was pretty sparse. Lucky for us because it meant more special attention for our group.

The band members came over, one by one, and stood on this little area, right by our table, and sang songs from the huge list the girls had made for them! Cordless mics helped make this work, even though I think they had a bit of a hard time timing their words to the music because of the distance. The girls were a little embarrassed at first but they warmed up quickly by singing along, loudly! Of course, the natural progression was for them to be invited onto the stage to sing with the band!
Wow! We never expected this kind of treatment...but they had a ball! We thanked the band and Olf profusely and his response was, "Hey, you want a party, I'll make you a party!" Not sure how we're going to top this in four years when Amanda turns 13!

Tulou/Hakka houses

Well, I thought I had posted pictures of this trip a long time ago...guess I just thought about it, but never really did it! One day on our October break we took a bus tour to see the famous Hakka houses of Fujian province. After much debate (nothing seems to be easy here, or maybe we're just too indecisive at times) we decided to tag along with one of Gene's coworkers and her visiting-for-the-holidays sister on a Chinese tour. Yes, we were the only foreigners on the packed bus. We secured seats in the back row, a slightly elevated view of the rest of the bus, but no more leg room. Thus, we sat sort of sideways so that our long, Western legs had a bit of space. Pretty funny that my 5'4" frame is on the "tall" side! The ride was quite uncomfortable which was too bad for us since it was 3 hours long! The first two hours were unremarkable except for the miles and miles of banana farms (orchards? groves?) that we passed. We enjoyed some nice samples when we stopped for a quick break and I was feeling pretty good about eating local, until I realized that bananas seem to be a mono-crop in this area. Just can't win sometimes! The last hour of the ride offered some great views along very winding and increasingly high mountain roads. Our driver was not exactly steady and was very heavy on the horn-blowing...we were glad we didn't eat large breakfasts that morning.
Our first views of the houses. Here's a bit of info, lifted from a local travel site since we couldn't understand our tour guide and we didn't expect our friend to translate every word. The earthen buildings (tulou in Chinese) were mostly built between the 12th to 20th centuries (very precise!). They can be round, square or half-moon in shape, with an open courtyard in the center. They are built with up to 6 foot wide walls, made up of "earth" packed onto a wooden skeleton, three to five stories high. Depending on the size, they can house up to 80 families. The structures have just one main entrance, a heavily guarded gate. Apparently they were built this way as a means of defense against attacks. There is some evidence that the US authorities thought these round structures were missile silos and saw them as a threat. Some people think this is funny, but I'm sure they look quite curious from the sky/satellite!
After the very long bus ride, we stopped at a large, rectangular Tulou that is a restaurant and hotel/guest house. We were placed at an outdoor table while the rest of the group went into private rooms. We were fine with this since our table was in the shade and we wanted some fresh air after being in the bus for so long. Our sweet guide, Jenny, and her identical twin sister, Jenny, were kind enough to secure a vegetarian lunch for our table. We had a vast bowl of rice, some "green vegetable" (we call it bokchoi), tofu and some other vegetable dishes, all arrayed on the handy-dandy lazy susan in the middle of our round table. Gene and I also shared a nice, tall, cold beer.
Our girls finished lunch first and then wandered around the Tulou, taking pictures from the upper floors, while we finished our food. Notice the cobble stone floor--looks cool but made scooting the chairs in and out a bit difficult!
Liz and Amanda posing for pictures for the two Jennys in the courtyard. Notice the well to the far left side--we also saw laundry hanging around the top levels, so we think the people who run the restaurant and guest house also live here.
The inner corridors, complete with good-luck Chinese New Year lanterns and freshly washed laundry.
Next we walked about 3/4 of a mile down the road to the entrance of the giant, tourist Tulous. Amanda made friends with the only other child on the tour. This little girl ran right up to her and held her hand as we walked! Very sweet. We did a lot of smiling and nodding as we had no language skills whatsoever at that point (and can't do a whole lot better now--okay, maybe a little better, but we still do a lot of smiling, nodding and pointing, along with gesturing wildly now and then).
We spotted this interesting truck along our walk...the Jennys thought it was funny that we don't tend to have exposed-engine trucks in the US! I thought it was pretty bad of this guy to just dump the truckload of who-knows-what over the edge of the hill, but this is not uncommon here, even in places that are crawling with tourists! We shudder to think of what must go on in more private areas.
This round Tulou seems to be more modern and sleek. Don't have much information about it, but I liked the look of it.
After our tour guide paid the entrance fee for our busload, we entered into a wide yard with this giant Tulou. Since the tour was conducted in Mandarin and all the signs and brochures were also Chinese, we don't have much historical information to pass along. Good thing a picture is worth a thousand words. (feel free to google Hakka houses, the Hakka people built the tulou) We did manage to learn that this big house and some others like it are now under protection by UNESCO (I think that's the name of the organization, anyway!).

We went inside this big Tulou, but I much prefer the exterior pictures. The insides were, regrettably, filled to the hilt with crippity-crap for sale. I realize that is not a proper word, but it's the only one that fits here. We were terribly disappointed to see every square inch covered with stands selling the same junk as all the other stands lining the narrow hallways.
I believe this is a type of altar for making burnt offerings. It was not being used when we were there.
Drying fruit the old-fashioned way. We had no info about the extent to which these Tulou were inhabited, but we surmised that the people selling plastic replicas, etc are the residents. I couldn't figure out what type of fruit this was, though.
Liz checked out the goods at one of the fancier stalls, but we did not buy anything. Notice the website posted above the bracelets--you can order yourself some genuine Hakka memorabilia!
Some of the houses were double-packed, with smaller structures inside the courtyards of a bigger, outer house. They felt very close and crowded and I don't think they would be very pleasant in the rain, what with all those roof-lines to drip on the people below.
A warn stone path along the outside of one house. The trough to the left is for drainage, we think. Or sewage...thankfully it was dry!
We continued to snap photos through the bus windows on the long ride home...still like the outside views better than the inside and the homes look so beautiful in their natural surroundings (as opposed to the tourist surroundings that we left behind). We also saw rows and rows of tea bushes, planted on narrow terraces along the mountainsides. The guide said something about which type of tea it was, but we are not tea connoisseurs so we did not ask for a translation.
We stopped at another banana stand on the way home--nice specimens!
The lovely ladies--the middle Jenny is Gene's coworker . It is hard to tell in this picture, but both the twins are wearing 3-inch wedge heels! As is common with most tours of historical places, we walked many miles, mostly in the beating sun. I guess they are accustomed to it because they never complained. A side note about the Jennys: the visiting twin had chosen the English name Jenny when she was in high school, our Jenny was assigned the name by one of her college teachers! Must be a twin thing. Overall, we had an enjoyable day but we were glad to be off the bus and thankful to have made it home in one piece. The bus driver's mad technique defies description so I won't even try, just know that we were very glad to be back on solid ground (and away from the woman whose stomach was a bit weaker than ours on the winding ride home...)