This week I traveled to Shanghai to meet the Chen's, Wei's family, and on the way experienced some serious travel anxiety, perhaps best summed up by Chairman Mao’s expression “People Mountain, People Sea” (???? rén shan rén hai). 
Meanwhile, in preparation for the Olympics Beijing has started to create a sea side beach in Chaoyang park. 17,000 tons of fine island sand is making its way from Hainan island to become the beach volleyball court. I fear the wind. I also hope that by the time the Games begin, local taxi drivers will have learnt the words ‘Long-legged Brazilians’. Every day, Beijing's cab drivers are are being given two new English words to learn and to keep their driving licenses, the drivers must pass an English test. Wei and I recently took the written driving test (we both scored over the required 90%), although apparently for RMB800 it is possible to ‘acquire’ a licence without the formality of a test. This though is not an option for Beijing taxi drivers who earn perhaps only twice that per month. I can’t believe Beijing will risk having stranded passengers to or from the airport. Each time I take an airplane in China I am struck by the same marvels. Air China came into being in 1988 and flew nearly 34 million passengers in 2006 and therefore there must be by now an understanding of some elementals of flight travel. For example, seat allocations should mean that a panic to find one’s seat is unnecessary. When the seat belt sign is on, getting up to go to talk to a friend is off. Treating the trolley dolly as young waitress in a Mongolian hot pot restaurant isn’t polite. Touchdown on the tarmac is not a signal to reach for the phone and be the first person on the plane to shout into the mouthpiece “wo dao le” (I have arrived) while simultaneously leaping out of the seat to open the overhead compartment. And then there's the desperate dash to get two rows ahead before the cabin door opens only to stand like cattle waiting to be released into a field. It's not as if all this will help a passenger get out of the airport early, because if you checked in luggage, expect to wait at least twenty minutes at the carousel (no matter how close to the belt you inch your trolley). I am starting to call this the China Travel Syndrome (CTS) and marking points is helping ease my stress, especially when travelling with a pregnant woman. Meeting the in-laws for the first time presented me with some anxiety, but as we walked up the four flights to Mrs. Chen’s spotless apartment I was quickly put at ease. Mrs. Chen laid on a magnificent spread of Shanghainese food, in spite of the sticky Shanghai heat. As a younger lady she was a celebrated textile designer for the Government and is still a Communist Party Member. Her daughters Wei, Pei & Lei are modern Chinese women; self employed and professional. As soon as we entered the 3 bedroom split level apartment and sat down, Jia Jia, the 10 year old daughter of Lei played the Chinese harp. Shortly afterwards the Majong set was put out and my tediously slow play tolerated until Jia Jia rescued me with the Sony Play Station. 
Mahjong is a national pastime in China, and it is nice how family and friends will still sit for hours and play a game together in a way that I think we have lost in the busyness of the west. There is some ambiguity over the origins of Mahjong. One school attributes the game to Confucius in 500BC. Another suggests it was officers in the Taiping Rebellion (1850 and 1865) who created the game, while another theory is that it is an adaptation of a card game from the Ming dynasty. Apparently mahjong was banned in 1949 until the early 1970’s as the Communist Party saw it purely as a gambling activity; for which it certainly holds an interest. Four people sit at a table with 144 tiles trying to build pairs and threes, or rows of a kind in a form similar to the card game of Rummy. One rule is that if a player benefits from the actions of another, they must indicate that and even pay the player, but if not then spoils of victory are unshared – an interesting insight into the nature of doing many things here in China. Over dinner the conversation wandered over many subjects, my Mandarin struggling to make conversation, especially when Wei’s family spoke Shanghainese. “We like Americans but we don’t like Bush,” explained Pei’s boyfriend Xia Wu. His sentiment echoed by the younger people while Mrs Chen listened in silence. “The Chinese like everyone” piped up Jia Jia in a familiar spirit of “China befriending the world” that one reads in the papers and on TV. “Who is your favourite politician?” I asked. “Putin,” came back the universal reply, “because he is young, handsome and strong.” No one else drank beer but Mrs Chen had bought six cans of Heineken for me, and I drank one to be polite but no more lest I cause offence by being drunk on my first showing with their pregnant daughter. Meeting the Chen’s has been a heart warming experience, and of course it will be a recurring one, as our child will share their heritage as much from streets of Shanghai as it does from the lanes of Kent. Some elements of being with a family are universal, although getting to them does have different levels of stress. Perhaps with a crying baby I will become not the victim but a chief protagonist of CTS. Revenge is mine.
Meanwhile, in preparation for the Olympics Beijing has started to create a sea side beach in Chaoyang park. 17,000 tons of fine island sand is making its way from Hainan island to become the beach volleyball court. I fear the wind. I also hope that by the time the Games begin, local taxi drivers will have learnt the words ‘Long-legged Brazilians’. Every day, Beijing's cab drivers are are being given two new English words to learn and to keep their driving licenses, the drivers must pass an English test. Wei and I recently took the written driving test (we both scored over the required 90%), although apparently for RMB800 it is possible to ‘acquire’ a licence without the formality of a test. This though is not an option for Beijing taxi drivers who earn perhaps only twice that per month. I can’t believe Beijing will risk having stranded passengers to or from the airport. Each time I take an airplane in China I am struck by the same marvels. Air China came into being in 1988 and flew nearly 34 million passengers in 2006 and therefore there must be by now an understanding of some elementals of flight travel. For example, seat allocations should mean that a panic to find one’s seat is unnecessary. When the seat belt sign is on, getting up to go to talk to a friend is off. Treating the trolley dolly as young waitress in a Mongolian hot pot restaurant isn’t polite. Touchdown on the tarmac is not a signal to reach for the phone and be the first person on the plane to shout into the mouthpiece “wo dao le” (I have arrived) while simultaneously leaping out of the seat to open the overhead compartment. And then there's the desperate dash to get two rows ahead before the cabin door opens only to stand like cattle waiting to be released into a field. It's not as if all this will help a passenger get out of the airport early, because if you checked in luggage, expect to wait at least twenty minutes at the carousel (no matter how close to the belt you inch your trolley). I am starting to call this the China Travel Syndrome (CTS) and marking points is helping ease my stress, especially when travelling with a pregnant woman. Meeting the in-laws for the first time presented me with some anxiety, but as we walked up the four flights to Mrs. Chen’s spotless apartment I was quickly put at ease. Mrs. Chen laid on a magnificent spread of Shanghainese food, in spite of the sticky Shanghai heat. As a younger lady she was a celebrated textile designer for the Government and is still a Communist Party Member. Her daughters Wei, Pei & Lei are modern Chinese women; self employed and professional. As soon as we entered the 3 bedroom split level apartment and sat down, Jia Jia, the 10 year old daughter of Lei played the Chinese harp. Shortly afterwards the Majong set was put out and my tediously slow play tolerated until Jia Jia rescued me with the Sony Play Station. 
Mahjong is a national pastime in China, and it is nice how family and friends will still sit for hours and play a game together in a way that I think we have lost in the busyness of the west. There is some ambiguity over the origins of Mahjong. One school attributes the game to Confucius in 500BC. Another suggests it was officers in the Taiping Rebellion (1850 and 1865) who created the game, while another theory is that it is an adaptation of a card game from the Ming dynasty. Apparently mahjong was banned in 1949 until the early 1970’s as the Communist Party saw it purely as a gambling activity; for which it certainly holds an interest. Four people sit at a table with 144 tiles trying to build pairs and threes, or rows of a kind in a form similar to the card game of Rummy. One rule is that if a player benefits from the actions of another, they must indicate that and even pay the player, but if not then spoils of victory are unshared – an interesting insight into the nature of doing many things here in China. Over dinner the conversation wandered over many subjects, my Mandarin struggling to make conversation, especially when Wei’s family spoke Shanghainese. “We like Americans but we don’t like Bush,” explained Pei’s boyfriend Xia Wu. His sentiment echoed by the younger people while Mrs Chen listened in silence. “The Chinese like everyone” piped up Jia Jia in a familiar spirit of “China befriending the world” that one reads in the papers and on TV. “Who is your favourite politician?” I asked. “Putin,” came back the universal reply, “because he is young, handsome and strong.” No one else drank beer but Mrs Chen had bought six cans of Heineken for me, and I drank one to be polite but no more lest I cause offence by being drunk on my first showing with their pregnant daughter. Meeting the Chen’s has been a heart warming experience, and of course it will be a recurring one, as our child will share their heritage as much from streets of Shanghai as it does from the lanes of Kent. Some elements of being with a family are universal, although getting to them does have different levels of stress. Perhaps with a crying baby I will become not the victim but a chief protagonist of CTS. Revenge is mine.