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.
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