China 2019, day 11: Xingxian

We had breakfast at the hotel and went to Nainai’s house. There was not a lot do, so we just hung out until lunch. Mali, Sanda’s other daughter showed up with her new baby. It’s the chubbiest thing.

Then we all left to the restaurant where the big celebration was happening. In a typical setting for a celebration in China, we sat around two big tables, with a big Lazy Susan in the middle of each of them, and tons of dishes are shared family-style. Tize’s brothers insisted that I sit with them so that I can help them finish all the baijiu they bought.

Ada started opening up to Tize and all the other members of the family, which made us very happy.

Lunch was excellent, with a whole baked fish, stir-fried green beans, shrimp, Chinese bacon which is thicker than the American bacon and cooked in sauce, an amazing dish of eggplant with peas, and all kinds of noodley things that I’ve never seen before. Another dish they had was slices of pig skull jelly. I know, it’s sounds weird, but it’s actually really good, and it’s not that different from a Jewish dish of calve’s foot jelly. 

The main conversation topic at the table is who had how much to drink. Everybody got a little flask and a tiny glass, and Sanda initiated toasts every few minutes. Most of the time just him and me drank, but he did try to include as many people at the table. When someone announced that they can’t drink anymore, somehow their flask, with the baijiu that they couldn’t finish, ended up next to my plate. Make no mistake – I drank it all.

We went back to Nainai’s house and Ada and I tried to take a nap, but it was too cold, and my head was hurting a little from all that Baijiu. In the living room, Julia mentioned that Sida wanted to take me to play pool, and since there was nothing to do until dinner, we left the house. 

Sida doesn’t speak any English, and I can say in Mandarin things like “She is not cold”, “Don’t worry about it”, “I don’t want it”, “what are you looking at?” and “I don’t understand”. And so, the two of us walked silently through the market until Sida found a pool club. 

People often say about music that it transcends language, and I think there are other activities, like playing chess, that are like that as well. Playing pool is almost like that, up to the point where you hit a situation where everybody plays by different rules. By the rules I know, when you’re down to the 8-ball, you have to announce which hole you’re shooting for, and if you accidentally get it in the wrong hole, you lost the game. In the only game that I kinda won, I got the 8-ball in the wrong hole. I think Sida treated it as if I won, and I was fine with that. Also, it happened to him in the following game, so there.

As Sida was busy tearing me a new one, a little girl, the daughter of the owners, walked in, and at some point I picked up her talking about me with her parents – I could parse the word “shushu” that means something like “random uncle”. I turned to her, waved, and said hello. Her dad said something in Chinese, and I’m pretty sure he said that she learns English at school and that I should try speaking English to her. I asked her for her name, and with the help of her dad she answered. I’m sorry, but I forgot what her name was. I let Sida explain to them what I was doing in town, and I asked the girl if she wants to see pictures of my family. OK, I just asked “ni yao kan ma?” (“do you want to see?”) and pointed at my phone. I showed her pictures of Julia and Ada, and then the dad asked to take a picture of me with the daughter and the mom. I gave him my phone to take a picture with it as well:

Then we walked back to the house. People stared at me, as they always do, but my new strategy is working great. In the past, when some one stared to much for my taste, I would turn around and say “ni kan shengma?!” (“what are you looking at?!”), but they would actually find that funny, think I speak Chinese and continue the conversation. That’s not the result I was trying to achieve. Now, I put a big smile on my face and wave until the person stops staring. It’s working way better.

China 2019, day 10: Xingxian

We got up early in the morning, packed quickly, and got a taxi that took us to the railroad station. From there, we took train to Xingxian. It’s not the bullet train – it’s just the regular train, and the ride to Xingxian takes 4 hours. That’s still better than our last trip. Back then, two and a half years ago, the train didn’t even go to Xingxian, and someone had to pick us up by car from Taiyuan. Still, there’s room to complain: the seats are incredibly uncomfortable, everyone stares at me and at Ada, and loud noises are coming from every phone on the train. I really don’t get it – they keep the volume on both their notifications and their media on the highest setting, to the point movies and music play in terrible distortion, and when they are on an active chat, the notification sounds just keep on going. Now multiply that by every single person in a space at any given situation: how do they not lose their minds?

Luckily, halfway through the ride, as we were getting deeper and deeper into the mountains, the train was getting pretty empty.

When we finally got to Xingxian and got off the train, it was immediately noticeable that the air is colder and thinner. Tize, Julia’s dad, and one of Tize’s brother who I call “Sanda”, literally meaning “third uncle on father’s side”, were waiting for us at the train station. We timed our trip so we could be here for Nainai, Julia’s grandmother’s 85th birthday, and the entire family is coming together to celebrate. Sanda, who is a taxi driver, drove us to a hotel that Tize booked for us to drop off our stuff. 

When president Trump talked about shitholes countries, he has never heard of Xingxian, just like you. If he had, he would never have called them that, because Xingxian sets a different standard. As evidence, here’s the decoration of our hotel room:

Other than that, the town is cold and smells from coal, a major industry in this area. It often smells of feces, since many houses don’t have indoor toilets, so many people use the overflowing public toilets that are scattered throughout the town. Even houses that do have toilets avoid using them, since due to the limited rainfall, water is rationed.

After dropping off our stuff, we continued to Nainai’s house. There, already gathered, were Nainai, Sanda’s wife and his daughter Mare, Erda (second uncle) with his wife and daughter Doudou, and later joined Sida (fourth uncle). We had lunch.

In the back room of the house, we discovered, were more than 30 packages that Julia’s mom had shipped from all around China to Nainai’s house so that Tize can traffic them to the U.S. on his way back. She does this every time when either she or Tize travel to China, regardless of the inconvenience that it causes whoever has to store all these packages for her. One of the packages was for us: it’s a suitcase that Ada can sit on. We already told Julia’s mom that we have no intention of taking this thing with us so she better not order it, but she did it anyway. We put Ada on the suitcase just for fun, and she had a blast. It looks like the suitcase is coming home with us after all.

Tize said we’ll open the rest of the packages in the next couple of days. I can’t wait.

After lunch, we went to the hotel to take showers and nap, and we walked over back to Nainai’s house for dinner. Everybody was trying to pick Ada up, but she doesn’t really get along with strangers. 

Until Sida offered her a date-like fruit that grows around here, and then picked her up in the most casual way. From that point on, Ada prefered being held by Sida over anyone else, including Julia and me.

Sida also noticed that Ada is always happy to be near Nainai’s cat and dog, so he takes her outside to hang out with them, or corners them inside the house so that she can pet them.

Tize felt a little bad over this, since Ada wouldn’t let him hold her, but we told him that he should do what Sida does and bribe her with food and proximity to pets. Tize asked what Ada’s favorite food is, and we told him that his best bet is grapes. He promised to bring her grapes tomorrow.

And then there was the drinking. It’s cold here, and there’s nothing to do, so they drink Baijiu, which is a clear liquor. They remembered from our last visit that I’m good at drinking, so they bought extra. As we drank more and more, it became clear to me what was going on: Sanda likes to drink, but he’s not really good at it. Erda, on the other hand, just likes to meddle, so he keeps encouraging Sanda to drink with me. What he actually wants is to see Sanda fall. I’m happy to see Sanda fall as well, but Ada was tired, and we had to call it a day.

China 2019, day 9: Taiyuan

Finally, we left Xi’an. We took it easy in the morning, had breakfast at the hotel and did our laundry, and went to a mall around the corner, not before a hotel staff member offered Ada some candy. It looked sweet and tasty and in the perfect shape to get stuck in Ada’s esophagus and kill her, so we kindly refused. We found the floor that had kids’ stuff, but it mostly clothes. Like this garment, which could be useful if you intend to take your toddler to the Folsom St. Fair*:

* if you’re not familiar with this, the Folsom St. Fair is the main yearly event for the San Francisco leather community and other BDSM enthusiasts.

We had a cup of coffee while Ada had her morning nap and finally had a chance to chat like grown-ups. When Ada woke up it was time for lunch, and we had that in the mall as well. It wasn’t bad. Towards the end of the meal, Ada pooped, and it looks like she has diarrhea now. We evacuated quickly, found a bathroom, changed her, gave her a quick rinse in the sink, and went back to the hotel. Jiujiu was already there waiting for us. He accompanied us on the subway all the way to the railway station. We said our goodbyes and went into the terminal.

For the first time in China, we were not allowed to transport the stroller on an escalator. Instead, we were told to wait for somebody to escort us to the elevator. We were very confused, but when another family with a stroller were told to the same and complied, we followed along. We were relieved when someone showed up not to long afterwards. The elevator in question turned out to be the freight elevator, which is mostly used for trash.

The train ride was fine, and other than people wanting to know where I’m from, where’s Julia from, why are we going to Taiyuan, if Ada speaks any Chinese (at one year old), why is Julia’s hair shaved on one side, and if Ada is not cold, it was uneventful. Oh, and somebody offered Ada sunflower seeds. I swear, there must be a contract on Ada’s head.

We got to Taiyuan and went to get a taxi. There’s a line you need to stand in and it takes forever.

The taxi driver, who refused to listen to Julia and instead of putting the exact address of the hotel, was trying, with little success, to search for the hotel on his navigation app while driving on the freeway, somehow managed to get us to the hotel without killing us all. I am really impressed by the navigation app – it’s very similar to Google Maps, but with two main differences: first, in complicated intersections, the screen splits into two, and the new section shows a diagram of the intersection and arrows showing you exactly where to be. It’s like a few other things that the Chinese figured out how to tweak to make them way better than what we have in the west. Another example of that is cash – it’s almost completely obsolete at this point, and so are credit cards. In China, pretty much all transactions are done through WeChat, an app similar to WhatsApp, but on steroids. You can use it for anything from ordering a taxi to paying at a restaurant. Vendors, including the shittiest hole-in-the-wall restaurants, have a QR code of their WeChat account on display. You scan the QR code, transfer money to that account, and a receipt with a barcode is shown on your screen. The vendor would confirm that you paid whether looking at your screen or scanning the barcode, and hand you the goods. It’s unbelievably simple and efficient.

The second difference between the Chinese navigation app and Google Maps is that the Chinese app is very micromanaging. Not only does it tells you, way more often than needed, where to turn, but also to slow down, stay in your lane, and be careful. It blends well with the rest of the constant noise of devices and people telling you what to do.

Anyway, we got to the area of Taiyuan where our hotel is. The amount of LEDs in this city is insane, and the scale of everything is huge. Have you heard of Taiyuan? No? Well, it has 4.5 million people in it.

We settled in quickly and went out for dinner. The main streets around the hotel are some sort of a fashion district, and perhaps because it’s the weekend, they were packed with young people. The alleys, on the other hand, are peppered with tiny hole-in-the-wall places to it. The place we found was a hole-in-the-wall gone wild. There are several stations where you can order skewers of all kinds that you get in a little cardboard bucket. Julia was a little overwhelmed, so she got us some dumplings, a soup, a couple of Bao-zi, and a scallion pancake for Ada. We went to bed way too late – early in the morning tomorrow we leave to Xingxian.

China 2019, day 8: Xi'an

We were supposed to meet Jiujiu’s son, who we nicknamed “Cousin-Cousin”, at 10AM at the Shaanxi history museum. We had to have him reserve the tickets, for us online, and we spent most of yesterday being annoyed with him for buying us tickets for 10AM without asking us. That’s not accurate, he did ask us, but only after he got the tickets. Ada usually wakes us up at 6:30, and falls down for a nap around 9:30, so we’d have nothing to do all morning and then have to traffic her in the middle of her nap. Luckily, Ada woke up at 8, so it kinda worked out.

Instead of buying breakfast, we decided to pack with us some of the food we’ve accumulated and eat it while we wait for Cousin-Cousin in front of the museum. At this point, we had a bag of peanut cookies, a bag of date cookies, grapes, and a pomelo that Yeye packed for us when we left Chengdu; a pre-packed cranberries and walnut cake and some Oreos that I bought on the train station; and some apples, pomegranates, grapes, and persimmons that Jiujiu brought in the shopping bag he returned us which we used for bringing him a bag of peanut cookies date cookies that Yeye sent him with us. I guess he didn’t want to return us an empty bag, even though it’s not even our empty bag – it’s Yeye’s, and he’s never getting it back. We had a nice breakfast, and when Cousin-Cousin showed up we hung out in the museum for a couple of hours. It’s a really nice museum, with archaeological artifacts from all around the Shaanxi province:

We took advantage of the opportunity to ask Cousin-Cousin a bunch of questions, and we learned that the reason that  there was nothing to see in the Emperor Qin Mausoleum is because there's a lot of work in progress going on. The mound where the emperor himself is buried is not excavated because researchers don't have a good way to get in there: both historical records and scientific measurements show that the emperor had mercury poured all over his grave, so that nobody messes with his shit after his death. How bad-ass is that?!

Then he drove us to lunch. China doesn’t really believe in car seats, so nobody bothers to check if we have one before telling us we’re taking a car. In situations like this, we just let ourselves be terrible parents for 10 minutes, buckles ourselves, and hold Ada to the best of our abilities. Don’t judge us.

 We met Jiujiu and Jiuma at a mall for lunch. Jiujiu told us that he made sure to order an extra dish of lamb, since I like meat so much. “Chi ro!” (“eat meat!”) he demanded, pointing at a whole roasted chicken. They also ordered sweet and sour chicken. We always thought it’s an Americanized Chinese dish that you can’t really find in China, but it turns out we were wrong. This actually tasted very similar to what you’d get in Panda Express.

Jiujiu was curious about my beard. He said that if he doesn’t shave for one day, his colleagues at work give him a hard time. He wanted to know if it’s acceptable in Israel. I don’t shave because I’m lazy and nobody cares, but I asked Julia to tell him that beard are in fashion now. Julia said she doesn’t know the Chinese word for Fashion. I told Jiujiu that Julia’s Chinese is not very good. It’s one of the few things I can say in Chinese and it gets a laugh every time.

When Jiujiu told us yesterday what his plans for us were, we told him that Ada needs time to play and exert some energy, preferably in an indoor playground. Across from the restaurant was a small play area, but it was mostly a sand pit, and we didn’t want to deal with that. There was a small fish pond with both real and plastic fish, and Ada was perfectly happy with that, but when I went to the bathroom I saw a real indoor playground with a huge ball pit and a slide, and I was really annoyed that we didn’t get a chance to take her to that one, but it was already time to go.

Jiujiu and Cousin-Cousin took us to the Small Wild Goose Pagoda. We started at the Xi’an museum that’s right next to it. It focuses on the Silk Road and the Qin dynasty. Ada was starting to get antsy and bored, so we decided to take turns – one of us would see the exhibits while the other one hangs out with Ada.  I said I would stay with her first. I sat on a bench in the lobby and let her stand and climb around me, but five minutes later she slipped and hit her head pretty bad. It’s my fault. I’m responsible for her, so anything that happens to her is my fault, and I felt so bad that I wanted to find something else to put the blame on: if we had taken her to proper indoor playground she would have had the opportunity to take all that energy out in a safe environment! That’s not untrue, I reckoned, but it’s still my fault.

Julia heard Ada scream and came running to my help. We switched, and I did a quick round on the main level. Then Jiujiu said he’d take me to the lower lever, and Julia will stay with Ada. We can’t really communicate without Julia translating, so every time I stood in front of an exhibit Jiujiu would point at the label, and then make a big gesture with his arms that says: “This... all of this...”.

We came back to the main level, and Ada had calmed down, so I suggested that we switch. Now it was Jiujiu, Ada, and me in the lobby. Ada was getting unsettled again, and it was getting past her nap time, so I put her down. She got fussy as she often does, and Jiujiu shoved his unfamiliar face in front of hers, in an attempt to help. It didn’t help, and Ada started crying. I wanted to try to comfort her with food. I pulled a baby food pack and opened it. Jiujiu took the cap in an attempt to help. I gave Ada the food, but she squeezed it and shook it and now there was baby food everywhere – on her clothes, her blanket and on the stroller. I got the pack out of her hands and looked for the cap, as Ada moved to screaming. Jiujiu handed me a tissue in an attempt to help. I need the cap first, didn’t he take it? I gestured for the cap – held the pack in my hand and mimed closing the pack. He gave me another tissue. I’ve been known to be absent-minded – maybe I’m wrong and he doesn’t have the cap? As Ada kept on screaming, I balanced the pack on the floor and got Ada out of the stroller. Jiujiu took the blanket in attempt to help, but my next move was to clean the blanket. It was then that I noticed that he was holding the cap the whole time.

I got so pissed, and everybody was staring at the white guy with the screaming baby. I gestured Jiujiu to stay put, and I took Ada outside to regroup. After five minutes, I got Ada to calm down. I realized that through all this mess, I forgot to check her diaper. I came back and reached for the diaper bag. Jiujiu started moving things to try to help. “Oh my God, stop it!” I took the bag and looked for the bathroom. He started following me. “No! you stay here and watch our shit!”. Affirmative tone works in any language. Ada indeed needed a change, and when I was done, she was feeling much better, and so was I. I stalked Jiujiu from a distance, and only when I saw that Julia was back, I joined them. We started getting ready to leave, rejecting all kinds of un-necessary help offering from Cousin-Cousin and Jiujiu: they were offering her food, moving the stroller, taking the blanket, and generally being in the way. I kept telling them “Gei wo!” (“give me!” or “let me!”, depending on the context) and my new favorite “Mei guan xi!” (“don’t worry about it!”).

Ada finally fell asleep, and we walked around in the park to see the pagoda. It’s ok:

We used Ada’s sleeping as an excuse to not get a ride from them, since that would require waking her up. We started walking towards the hotel. On the way, we found a mall with a great indoor playground, and Ada just woke up. Everyone was happy again, especially me: big portions of the playground were made from big Lego-like pieces made of foam, so I started doing some renovations to the place:

That entire floor of the mall had amazing facilities for kids: other than the playground, there was model racing car track, a sand pit, a martial arts studio, a theater school, an hip-hop studio, a  roller-blades studio, a gym, a water playground and the most adorable music school:

We took the subway home, put Ada to sleep, and I went to the hotel bar to get a drink – I deserved one. At the bar, there was that incompetent apprentice from two nights ago, and she had an apprentice of her own. Now that I knew that they had Jack Daniels, I pointed at that on the menu. They both went to the shelves and started trying to read every label on every bottle. The apprentice’s apprentice could read some English, so this time they found the bottle on their own. The shelf, however, was out of the two ladies’ short reach, so Twiddle Dee picked Twiddle Dum by her waist and lifted her up so she can get the bottle. Then Twiddle Dum explained to Twiddle Dee how to measure a shot of whiskey and pour it to a glass, and when the show was over, I gave them 40 Yuan and a standing ovation.

China 2019, day 7: The Terra Cotta Warriors

Today we went to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. To get there, we had to take a subway to the city wall’s north gate, walk to the railway station, and take a bus from there all the way to the Terra Cotta Warriors Site. It’s an hour-long bus ride, and Ada slept through most of it.

The Terra Cotta Warriors are not to be confused with the Panna Cotta Warriors, which is Jamie Oliver’s blog’s name, a review some idiot made on TripAdvisor, and a project Julia and I have decided to pursue at some point. For that, we’ll need to make small molds that look like warriors, and wouldn’t you know it, but they sell figurines of them at the railway stations – three pieces for 10 Yuan. We decided to get a pack on the way back.

The site is basically 3 pits where the warriors were found. They were built to guard Emperor Qin, the first emperor of China, in the afterlife. The main pit is the famous one, and the thousands of life-size clay people are really impressive:

The thousands of life-size real people who come to see them are not that impressive. They shove, speak loudly on their phones, and just act like assholes. Multiple times we were blocked by people who stood behind us when we were looking at down at the pit, and would not move to let us out, even after we asked them repeatedly. When this happens, I just start walking, regardless of what’s in my way. One of the very few advantages of getting old is that the nice belly I developed keeps me cushioned as I trample old Chinese women.

The second and third pits have very few exposed warriors, since most of them are still buried under the petrified ceiling. After we saw them, we went to the restaurant for lunch – we’ve decided to try to be better about getting Ada to eat and nap on her regular schedule, since yesterday we completely messed up her schedule and paid for that by having a very fussy child.

Lunch was a very confusing buffet, and in the middle of lunch, Ada had a blowout. She hadn’t had one in a while, so that caught us completely unprepared. Most dramatic was the absence of spare pants. We improvised something from my plaid shirt. There’s a reason these were so popular in the 90’s: they were very versatile. They were like towels from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, but for kids who hitchhiked to rock festivals. On Earth.

Right after lunch Ada fell asleep right after it, and we got to see the last part of the museum, which is the exhibition hall.

We had some time, so we took a shuttle to Lishan park, where the emperor is buried. It was a huge disappointment, since there’s nothing to see. The tomb itself was not excavated, and all the other sites around it – more pits and burial sites – were all closed off. That was really annoying because the way it’s advertised, on the brochures and with the shuttles and everything, you’d think there’s stuff to see. Only when you see the unmanned ticketing station you start to suspect. All this walking around got Ada really bored and antsy, and we were bored and antsy as well. On our way out we stopped at the visitor center, in which there’s a small museum and a gift shop – all still under construction. We were really annoyed, and to add to that, Ada completely lost it.

 On the way out a woman was selling one of those kits of Terra Cotta Warriors figurines. It was a little nicer than the ones we saw at the railway station, and it cost the same, so we got it. Then Julia suggested that we take a taxi back to save Ada from all the hassle of transferring between different modes of transportation. Next to where the taxis were picking up passengers, we were approached by someone who only later we realized was one of those illegal taxi drivers. He offered to take us home for 120 Yuan. This meant that we would not go back to the railway station, so I pointed out to Julia how smart I was to get the figurines.

The ride was hard for Julia. Ada fell asleep on her, so her neck and back were getting stiff, the temperature in the car was too high, she has still not completely recovered from whatever is making her feel not so great, and to top it off, the driver kept making mistakes, causing the ride go in circles around our hotel. Eventually, we just told him to stop, and we walked the rest of the way home, which was really only a few minutes away.

At our hotel, we regrouped, and left for dinner. We walked down an alley that’s close to our hotel and found a small restaurant. We got a local dish made of eggplants and green beans, a dish of mustard leaves and garlic, and another dish that for lack of a better description, I would call it “mangled chicken”. For this picture, I remove the foot and the band sawed in half head of the chicken from the pot:

China 2019, day 6: Xi'an

We started the day with breakfast at the hotel, which was surprisingly good. Then, we walked over to the Bell Tower. While the drums in the Drum Tower were used to played at sunset, the bell in the Bell Tower would ring at dawn. It’s huge bell, made of around 30 molded pieces. A bunch of people were standing in line to take a picture with the bell, so it was impossible getting a picture of the bell on its own. Here’s a picture with a random Chinese girl in front of it:

Inside the tower, there’s an exhibition about teapots and pottery.

And outside it there are way too many Chinese women who think that Ada is cold, or tired, or that we care about what they think.

And then we decided to give everybody a break and find a place for Ada to play. There’s a shopping mall across from the Bell Tower, and in it we found a children’s clothing store that had a small ball pit. That’s all that Ada needs to be happy:

Then we headed to the southern gate of the wall. The wall surrounds the old city, and you can walk on it. The wall is impressive, but other than walking on it, not much is going on. There are some museums along the path, but you have to get out of the ticketed area, and we’re pretty sure there’s no re-entry. All that didn’t matter. Julia was still not feeling well, and Ada was antsy, so it took us forever to move just half a mile from our starting point. I promised Julia that we’ll get off the wall at the next gate which is just a little bit ahead. However, that gate was closed for renovations. Rallied everybody for a pep talk, we pushed through and got to the western gate where we could finally get off the wall.

It was almost 4pm, and we hadn’t had any lunch yet. We walked for a bit until we got to the edge of the Muslim quarter, and one restaurant that was just about to close invited us in. We had some dumplings and the local style of noodles, which are served cold with a Tahini-like sauce.

Since we were already in the Muslim quarter, we walked over to the central mosque. We thought it was supposed to be a tourist attraction, but it’s not – it’s just a mosque, built with Chinese architecture. It was a little strange for me to hear Chinese people greet each other with “Salaam aleiqum”. Also, the Chinese Muslim appearance is interesting: they look Chinese and Arab at the same time.

We went back to the hotel to regroup for dinner, but then we got a text from Jiujiu – he’s coming to take us to dinner. In fact, he’s on his way. However, we didn’t know when he was going to show up, so we were stuck in the hotel waiting for him, with Ada getting fussy as her bedtime was approaching. I did what any responsible father would do and went to the bar to get whisky. The bartender was an apprentice, as her badge stated, and she spoke no English. She also seemed generally clueless, so now, for a few good minutes, she tried to read every single label on every single bottle, with the hope that one of them would have text that looked familiar. It was amusing and painful to watch at the same time, so eventually Julia went behind the bar and showed her the right bottle.

Jiujiu finally showed up, with his wife, who I’m supposed to call Jiuma. They decided to take us to the Muslim quarter, because you can’t miss that if you’re touring Xi’an, even though they knew we ate there yesterday.

Jiujiu was impressed by the five words I can say in Mandarin and became very curious about me. He doesn’t speak any English, like everybody else in China, so Julia had to translate everything. He said I look like a Hollywood actor, and I told Julia to tell him that I find that racist, and that he looks to me like a martial arts movie star. She didn’t, which was a good idea. I did tell him, however, that I’m Israeli, and not American. Now he was even more curious. He said that Israelis are considered smart so that must mean that I’m smart. I said that this is correct. He said that Israelis are probably the smartest in the world, and I told him that he’s right, and that Chinese people are second. He thinks I'm strong, because I pick up Ada in her stroller when we need to go up or down some stairs. He points at me as he announces "A-Yong!", my Chinese name, and I think he means something like "this guy!".

In the market, I got another one of those skewers, and a piece of mutton that you buy by the pound. They take the piece you choose, dump it in broth to heat up and cook, and then they give it to you in a little paper box with a fantastic sauce for dipping and silly plastic gloves for holding. It was all that I wanted and more – the “more” part referring to the useless plastic gloves.

China 2019, day 5: Xi'an

Finally, we left Chengdu. Early in the morning, we said our goodbyes to Yeye and Laolao, and Erjiujiu took us to the train station. As we were waiting for the train, Ada needed a diaper change. We have a folding changing mat for her, with pockets for diapers and wet wipes, so I changed her right there, on the benches, in the middle of the terminal. Everyone around was watching every move I made. Men don’t change diapers in China, so the whole spectacle was a real novelty to my audience. Having all this attention meant only one thing: I had to give my best performance, and indeed, I was done in no time, including putting Ada’s pants back on, folding the changing mat, and giving a deep bow to the crowd. 

Then we boarded the bullet train. Damn, that thing is fast! The speed is displayed on a digital sign, and the fastest that I caught it was around 250 km/h. There was so much noise on the train - everybody watching videos, talking on their phones, without headphones, of course. One lady had a half an hour discussion on the phone about how she should call one of her relatives, since most of the time you call your relatives by the way they relate to you: Erjiujiu, for example, means “Second uncle from mother’s side”. I call Erjiujiu because I’m supposed to call people the same way Julia does. Anyway, through all this noise, Ada and Julia managed to fall asleep, and I wrote a little, read a little, and slept a little. 3 hours later, we arrived at Xi’an.

Laolao’s nephew, who Julia and I are supposed to simply call Jiujiu, came to pick us up with his son. They didn’t bring a car or anything – they just accompanied us and helped us carry our stuff. He’s very nice and he was getting along pretty well with Ada. After we got to our hotel and dropped off our stuff, they took us to have lunch at a restaurant just around the corner from our hotel. It’s a local dish which is a soup with small pasta cubes and slices of goat meat. There’s a lot of goat meat here, which I guess is, to some extent, an influence of the large Muslim population here.

We went to see the Drum Tower, that was built in the 14^th century. Back in the days, drums would be played there every day at sunset. Today, it hosts a small drum museum and the world’s largest drum.

Then we went to hang out in the Muslim quarter. It’s super touristy, and the plus side of that is that we could get all kinds of street food as dinner. Julia was still not feeling great, so I was doing most of the eating. I had a fantastic, super juicy goat (I think) skewer with tons of cumin, a disappointing pita stuffed with chopped goat stew meat, a soggy but nice persimmon fritter, and a bowl of tiny spicy potatoes. I had a blast.

People stared at Ada constantly. Some people even took pictures of her, and at some point, Julia got really annoyed because nobody asked us if that’s o.k. She even gave one lady a hard time over it, and the lady deleted the picture, but then we saw someone taking a picture from across the street, with a zoom lens! We stopped to regroup, and I told Julia that the way I see it, we can’t win this war, so we might as well let people have that moment of joy when they look at her. I know I’m not objective, and that to me she’ll always be the cutest – I actually already decided that even when we have more kids, Ada will stay my favorite – but it does seem like Ada spreads a special light in the world. Either that or she’s a freak and I just can’t see it. These are the only explanations I can see for all this attention she’s drawing. Here, you be the judge:

We then watched this beautiful dancing water fountain for a bit while Ada took a massive dump, we changed her on a bench and called it a day.