Hi Everyone,
Thank you so much for returning to my Astronomer in Beijing blog! I really appreciated all of the feedback I got on my post about the Forbidden City. I hope your 2022 is off to a good start and that you’re all doing well and staying safe and healthy. This was a bit quieter month for me, especially since Tsinghua has been on the Lunar New Year break and I’ve been working from home. Although I really enjoyed my visit to the Forbidden City, it’s been a bit too cold some of the past weekends to want to spend all day outside. Don’t worry, I still have lots of fun pictures and events to share with you all and hopefully I’ll get back to some sightseeing as the warmth begins to creep back in (it’s supposed to get into the 40s next week). Also, with the start of the winter Olympics on Friday (more on the Olympics below), I’m sure many of you are seeing and reading a lot more about Beijing. If you have any non-sports related questions about things you see on the Olympic coverage, feel free to ask (either here or via e-mail), especially if it relates to life in Beijing.
Before I dive what I did this month, I do want to thank those of you who reached out when you saw reports of COVID lockdowns near Beijing and checked to see if I’m doing ok. As some of you have probably read, there have been a handful of cases (including Omicron) in Beijing (probably about 50-ish in total, but when you’re usually at 0, any is a lot) and between the Lunar New Year Holiday and the Olympics, the government is trying to prevent any kind of outbreak. Thankfully, In the past month, I was only slightly impacted because there were cases in Haidian, where Tsinghua is, and Xicheng, where I live. The case in Haidian wasn’t too near Tsinghua, so despite a flurry of WeChat messages causing some initial concern on my end, I wasn’t ever in a risky area. Similarly, there were positive cases in Xicheng, but the nearest one was eight miles from my apartment. However, I did have the fun experience of having a stranger/health & safely volunteer knock on my door a couple of weekends ago and tell me that I needed to get a COVID test as they were testing everyone in Xicheng. Now, you might think this seems pretty straight forward, but since my Mandarin is still pretty rough (the classes I’ve taken have been very helpful, but much like I tend to speak English rather quickly, so to do native Chinese speakers speak Mandarin and though I sometimes can make out a word here and then, it’s generally really difficult to understand what people are saying, especially when you have no context), everything becomes more difficult. However, with the help of the Baidu translate app, I was able to figure out what the volunteer was telling me (and with the help of Apple maps, where I needed to go). However, the most difficult part of the whole ordeal came when I arrived. Although the COVID test is pretty standard everywhere I’ve gotten one, I think I’ve taken for granted how much easier it is to get one at a location that caters (to some extent) to foreigners. Between the fact that I have four names on my passport (Emmet Gabriel Golden-Marx, and had to try to tell the staff that Gabriel was not my last name) and the fact that nobody in charge seemed comfortable with writing English names (either physically or on a phone – most Chinese phone apps don’t use keyboards since that wouldn’t make sense for characters and thus makes writing English letters quite difficult), it felt like a miracle that I was able to get tested at all. Thankfully everything went smoothly and nobody came to bring me to a quarantine hospital, which meant that I wasn’t positive, but it still made for a rather chaotic and stressful afternoon. Other than that, my life hasn’t been too impacted and have been able to live pretty normally in Beijing. With all that said, please stay safe. If you’re able to get boosted and haven’t yet, please consider doing so. Now, on to the more fun stuff!
An Evening of Art
As I’ve said before in this blog, I really am thankful for Kehillat Beijing and the community that I’m a part of there. Not only have I found a place to be Jewish here in Beijing, but I’ve also gotten to meet some really cool people who do some pretty awesome things that aren’t astronomy. Two of those people are Michael Cherney and his wife, Dong Huang. At the start of the Lunar New Year Holiday break, Dong invited me to a lecture she and Michael were giving (Michael in English and Dong in Mandarin) on Michael’s art and process.
Above, you’ll find one of Michael’s pieces that was on display at the venue where Michael and Dong gave the talk. Can you guess what medium Michael works in? It’s actually photography! When I first saw this piece I was both amazed and confused because I knew Michael was a world renowned photographer and this is pretty much unlike any photograph I’ve ever seen. The way Michael uses a mixture of cutting photographs, enlarging different regions, and printing on traditional ink paper instead of photo paper transforms his work into a modern day ink masterpiece. It’s really no surprise that he was the second westerner to be included in the Asia Department at the Met (the first being Italian missionary Guiseppe Castiglione from the 1700s).
While my iphone pictures of Michael’s art can’t do the actual photographs justice, I do want to share some of the pictures with you (see above). The entire lecture was quite interesting, especially learning how Michael chooses the location he’s going to shoot and how he attempts to remove directionality and perspective from the photos to create something more akin to traditional Chinese landscapes, which are usually painted not from a singular perspective, but done to encompass an ideal view of a mountain from all vantage points (which is in drastic contrast to western landscapes). I really enjoyed when he compared and contrasted not just his own photos, but also the images of traditional paintings of the same scenery with google earth views of the places to see how the landscape changes and how he captures it. Although I’d seen a few examples of Michael’s artwork prior to this, it was really great to see Michael and Dong in their element discussing his work! If you’re interested in learning more about his art, his website is https://qiumai.net/.
Although not Michael’s art, here are some of the other pieces that were at the gallery where the lecture was.
The Land of the Frozen Lakes
One of my favorite parts about living in Gulou is the Shichahai lakes. I get to go running there a couple times a week and it’s a great place to take a good photograph on a sunny day. However, as I hinted at in last month’s blog, in the winter, they transform into a winter wonderland. Unlike the ponds in Congress Park in Saratoga Springs, the Beijing government lets the lakes freeze over to allow people of all ages (and yes, even babies – check out the zorbs – the giant inflatable balloons that people can play in) to fun on the ice. Although there is a large portion of the lakes dedicated to traditional ice skating, there are even more people on sleds, chairs, and bikes!
While I was able to enjoy walking around Shichahai and seeing the festivities, unfortunately I haven’t been able to make it out on the ice yet (I’m not sure when the season will end, as it all really just depends on the temperature and as you can see in some of the photos below, the water is starting to creep back and the ducks are getting their lake back). Both of the times Richard and I tried to go, we were unable to go skating. The first time, we got to the lake at closing time, and the second time, we found out that they made it so we needed to reserved spots ahead of time (as a precaution due to COVID). One of these days, if not this year, then next, I’ll get out onto the ice.
I will say that despite the frozen nature of the lakes, I’ve still seen a handful of people jumping in the lakes even in January. I think they basically go in and get out, but that’s one event that I’ll definitely pass on.
Life at Tsinghua
This was an interesting month for me in terms of research. Because of the Lunar New Year holiday, Tsinghua’s semester ended on January 12, so I spent the first half of the month working on campus, and the last couple weeks working remotely. Although it took a while to find a set up that worked for me to be productive at home, I now have my bedroom desk set up for work. In terms of the actual science, I’ve again been focusing primarily on Project Morphology. I have the morphology measured for all of the star-forming galaxies in the protoclusters that I’m looking at and am now working to tease out the results and the impact of the cluster environment. Thanks to a helpful zoom chat with my friend and collaborator Brian Lemaux, I have some ideas on how to better quantify my results and some different things to check as to the efficiency of our methodology. In terms of the other projects, I’m hoping to spend a bit more time this week on Project Evolution and Project Radio, so hopefully I’ll have an update on those soon. I also submitted abstracts to two virtual conferences in the coming months to present on my results on Project Morphology. One of them is based in Japan, so at least I shouldn’t have to stay up until the wee hours of the night for that one, while the other is based in the US, which likely means some late nights.
In terms of other things happening at Tsinghua, before the end of the semester, the Astronomy Department had an end of semester review/lecture/celebration. After some brief confusion as to what the event actually was (the English translation made me think it was just a meeting about the department), it was nice to see the entire (or at least most) of the department in one room together. Unfortunately for me, the entire presentation was in Mandarin, so a lot of the praise was lost on me. I can say that my supervisor, Zheng Cai, and a number of students in our research group were recognized for their work (as were a number of other faculty members and students). Unlike our seminars, the celebration did have some pretty looking western style cakes and cookies (the chocolate one was the best). After the formal portion of the celebration ended, the floor was opened up to karaoke and other singing. To my surprise, Zheng brought out his guitar and sang a song in Mandarin. With the chair’s urging (and really I was going to do it anyway), I sang two songs karaoke style (I’m Yours by Jason Mraz and Yellow by Coldplay – it’s super interesting to see which American/Western songs actually make it to Chinese Karaoke). Both songs, especially I’m Yours, were very popular with the students.
Additionally, after the celebration, some of Zheng’s students invited me to go to one of the Tsinghua dining halls with them to celebrate the Laba Festival, a holiday celebrated on the 8th day of the 12th month in the Chinese calendar, which originated in the Song Dynasty and has Buddhist origins. We ate Laba porridge (see above), which reminded me a of thin oat meal with dried fruits and nuts. It was nice to get to interact with the students outside our group meeting and get to find out what they were doing for the Lunar New Year holiday. In comparison to my previous meals on Tsinghua’s campus, this one was far superior as the dining hall had a vegetarian section that was clearly labeled in both English and Mandarin! As such, I got to try an eggplant dish, too! Additionally, the students all got me a cute little tiger statue for the Chinese New Year, which was really nice!
Beyond all of that, I was able to FINALLY get access to the Chinese vaccine and got my first dose on Tsinghua’s campus in the first week of January (My second dose is scheduled for next week). It was both a relief to get and I’m treating this as my booster since I don’t have access to Pfizer or Moderna here. Although getting a shot is pretty straight forward, I’m eternally grateful to Yuning, one of the department secretaries (she’s in charge of postdoc affairs and works with Richard & Paulo’s group) for helping me, Richard, and Paulo fill out all of the paperwork and get everything taken care of. Although we had an English translation of the forms, there was definitely some confusion as to what information they needed from us. Additionally, Paulo, Richard, me, and Prof. Chris Ormel (the sole foreign faculty member in the department) met up for the first of what will hopefully be many laowai (foreigner) hang outs. It was nice to get to socialize with Chris a bit and also hear about his experience being a foreign faculty member here in China! I know both Richard and I are hoping to make these a regular thing.
Vegan Trivia, Market, and Lots of Vegan Food!
During January, I took part in a ton of different vegan events. Early in the month, the Vegans of Beijing hosted a vegan trivia and brunch. As there are a number of vegans and vegetarians at Kehillat Beijing and Ted & Michael Cherney are avid trivia players, I joined the Kehillat Beijing team, which we dubbed the “Kale Blazers”. The trivia was a lot of fun and consisted primarily of questions regarding the environment and the impact of eating animal products on the world, as well as topics like food waste and vegan alternatives. It was a very fun way to spend and afternoon and we even won the event (I’ve got a nice new Beyond Meat notebook that I’m using as a new research notebook)! At the trivia, we also got a lovely French-Indian fusion brunch, which consisted of toast, orange juice, a vegan omelette, ratatouille samosa, naan, and crepes!
The following week, the Vegans of Beijing hosted an amazing Vegan Market and Rock for Rescues event. As I’ve said before, I love these events. They remind me of the many vegan markets I used to go to in Boston and it’s so great to be able to get vegan baked goods here in Beijing. I got some amazing brownies, cookies, fudge, samosa calzone, focaccia, pesto, tiramisu, and vegan cheese! Yes, you read that right, for the first time here in Beijing, I was able to get vegan shredded style cheese! I usually make my own mozzarella style soft cheese (which is more like a cashew hummus/cheese spread), but it’s been really nice to enjoy the Grassroots vegan cheese (for those of you who were wondering, you can get some vegan cheese on TaoBao, but it’s all imported and thus usually costs anywhere between 3x and 5x the cost in the US). The cookies, especially the peanut butter & jelly cookie and the double chocolate cookie were amazing, as was the samosa calzone! The event also featured some really great performances. It was a mix of original music and covers of American songs and just an overall great afternoon. There was also a raffle and I won an Energy tea drink (I haven’t tried it, but I’ll let you know when I do).
Lastly, Richard and I had an amazing vegan lunch at a vegan restaurant near the Lama Temple. We got Beijing style Eggplant, ma po tofu, roasted bamboo, steamed tea mushrooms, and a spicy seitan dish. Everything was amazing, but I think the ma po tofu was my favorite, but really it’s impossible to choose!
Happy Lunar New Year!
As I mentioned in the title of this blog, last week was the Lunar New Year (or Spring Festival) celebration. For all of you who celebrate, I hope you had a wonderful holiday! It was really nice to wake up to dozens of fun messages on WeChat from my colleagues and group members. I’ve included some of my favorite Tiger related images for the Lunar New Year above. I hope you all enjoy them! Unfortunately, my Lunar New Year celebrations were a bit more subdued. Most people celebrate with their families and because of the travel restrictions, I decided not to visit Jesse out of caution (this didn’t prevent many of my Chinese colleagues from traveling to their own home towns, but to each their own). I did get to partake in some of the festivities as we had a lovely Lunar New Year Shabbat at Kehillat Beijing, complete with piles of dumplings, as is the tradition (more on that below). My supervisor also gave everyone ceremonial red packets on WeChat as a token of the new year. For those not familiar, traditionally, people will give red envelopes with small cash gifts as part of the holiday (I got 12rmb, which is ~ $2), although in chatting with Paulo, he was saying that now that he is married, he and his wife have to give money to all of their family members who are younger than them and though it’s a small amount, in large families, that number adds up.
As this is my first Lunar New Year here in Beijing, I really enjoyed seeing all of the decorations and advertisements all around the city! It’s the year of the Tiger, and as you can see, there are tons of cute tigers everywhere (I even got one of the tiger stickers for my front door). The city is also littered with thousands of red lanterns for the holidays, too. Although there aren’t any fireworks for the Lunar New Year (the Beijing government banned fireworks because of the pollution and fire hazard – the Olympic opening ceremony – and maybe the closing one, too – are the only time we’ll see fireworks in Beijing anytime soon), seeing all the lanterns and banners really does transform the city for the holiday.
Welcome to the Olympics – Beijing 2022!
When I first accepted the position here at Tsinghua, I knew that Beijing would be hosting the games in 2022. Now I accepted the position right as things were shutting down in the US (like literally two days after Rudy Gobert tested positive and the NBA shut down), so in March 2020, I think I was optimistic that life would return to normal before then and I’d be able to attend the games (or at least walk around the area looking for athletes wearing US gear). Unfortunately, the pandemic is still raging and with small outbreaks here in Beijing, the government has severely limited the number of fans at venues, so I’ll be experiencing the games like most of you, via the power of television (although at least there’s no tape delay for me). For those of your who watched the Opening Ceremonies, there were actually a lot of fans as the government did invite some foreign nationals who live in Beijing to attend (both Ted, Roberta, and another friend of mine from Kehillat Beijing were all invited, though they all declined for various reasons, mostly due to the strict testing procedures – they needed to be on specific days at specific sites that weren’t super convenient). Although I can’t experience the games in person, one of Zheng’s students is a volunteer and I’ve really been enjoying his posts on WeChat with all of the pictures from the Olympic village. I’ll be sure to chat with him more once we’re all back on campus and let you know if he has any cool stories.
Despite not being able to attend events, January finally brought out all of the Olympic advertisements here in Beijing. Above, you can see pictures of the two mascots (Shuey Rhon Rhon – a red lantern and Bing Dwen Dwen a panda – and yes, I did buy little figurines of each of them) that they set up near Shichahai, as well as various ads highlighting the sports and Chinese athletes that can be seen around the city (including at the Olympic Park Stadium, which I usually pass through on my way to work).
For those of you who missed the Opening Ceremonies, I highly recommend them as it was a visually amazing show! Although there was more CGI than the 2008 games, there were some really amazing displays and I really liked how they used snowflakes to represent all of the nations when surrounding the torch/Olympic flame. One thing that I thought was interesting was that I watched the Chinese coverage of the ceremonies (at our Kehillat Beijing Olympic Shabbat) and some of the NBC coverage the next morning and it was an interesting reminder of how much more of a human interest story the athletes are in the US coverage. Now I couldn’t understand any of the Mandarin narration (there wasn’t much), so it’s possible there was more that I missed, but it’s interesting to see how the games are covered differently.
Jewish Life
With the start of January came a return of regular Kehillat Beijing Shabbat services. As always, Ted went all out planning wonderfully themed vegetarian meals. Although Roberta wasn’t there to make the challah until last week (she was still in the US/in Shanghai doing her quarantine – and thank you again Roberta for bringing me a new pair of sneakers that I had shipped to her home in the US – buying size 13 shoes here is hard), Roberta had taught her ai (a Chinese equivalent of a housekeeper/nanny) to make challah, we were able to still have wonderful challah!. Although the crowds were a bit smaller (we had a big crowd this past week for Olympic Shabbat, but prior, we were under 20 people), it’s always lovely to see people. This has been especially true since I’ve been working from home and thus don’t even see the handful of other postdocs in my office most days. It’s weird to feel lonely in a city of 20 million people, but it can feel that way when I spend all day in my apartment. Because Roberta wasn’t back yet, I had the opportunity to lead services and pull out some tunes from my Brown-RISD Hillel Reform Minyan leader days and I think people really enjoyed it, especially the Lecha Dodi – Let it Be mash up. The themes from this month included Orthodox Christmas Shabbat, Mexican Shabbat, Indian Shabbat, Shabbat Sha-Springfest (Lunar New Year Shabbat), and Olympic Shabbat!
While all of the meals were amazing, I really appreciated getting to taste a bit of authentic home-cooked Chinese cuisine to celebrate the Lunar New Year! I was hoping there would be dumplings, since those are the traditional dish of the New Year, and was pleasantly surprised to find not only piles of dumplings, but an array of other amazing dishes!
Additionally, I need to highlight Roberta’s amazing Tiger Challah (as well as all of the various themed dishes) for Olympic Shabbat! Although I’ve seen some intricately braided Challah in my day, this reminded me of the various themed birthday cakes that my Mom used to make and I really loved it (It was also quite tasty, too)!
Exploring Beijing
Although I didn’t do any major sightseeing this month, I did see a number of really cool things in Beijing that I wanted to share with you. I think my favorite is the giant Mecha Panda that was put up outside of the Wangjing South subway station, which is where I get off to go to Shabbat. I think it’s supposed to symbolize a past meets future idea for China, but it’s also right by the 798 Art District, so it might just be a symbol of artistic creativity, too! Most of the other sights were found in Gulou/Xicheng, pretty close to where I live, and I always love turning the corner and finding a new piece of art to enjoy.
I also saw a number of cute ads, statues, and window displays.
As most of your who are reading this are in the North East and New England, I know many of you got a solid foot or more of snow in the last couple of weeks. I wanted to share some pictures from one of the recent snow storms that brought much of Beijing to a standstill. While in Upstate NY it takes at least 6 inches to really set delays into motion, any snow in Beijing is more than people are used to. In fact, after the Indian Shabbat, the snow (maybe an inch) severely limited the number of taxis and despite trying to use various apps to get a cab for over an hour, I wasn’t able to get a ride home (thankfully, Ted generously let me crash at his house). Still though, the city does look quite nice under snow. Although we’re hosting the winter Olympics and it does get cold here, it’s a dry cold (almost all of the snow is artificial), so when it snows, it’s special.
Also, a new fruit market opened right by my apartment and the produce selection is fantastic (and yes, that’s durian, but no, I haven’t been brave enough to try it).
Animals of Beijing
No post on Astronomer in Beijing would be complete without pictures of dogs and cats, and this months installment is no different. While you’ll see plenty of Ted & Roberta’s dogs Mimi and Honey, you’ll also see some of the neighborhood dogs and cats, as well as a lovely cat that was hanging out in the foreign import store this week (the last two photos). The Rock for Rescues was a dog friendly event, so you can see some of the cute puppies who attended the event with their owners, too. Although I try my best to capture fun animal pictures, sometimes I’m not quick enough as I was unable to capture the paws of the cat walking across my sky light the other day, but clearly my whole neighborhood is one big cat playground.
What was I Reading/Watching?
Although much of this blog is devoted to my explorations of Beijing, I also wanted to share some recommendations of other media that I’ve been reading lately. I won’t bore you with all of the TV, comic books, and manga that I’ve read while I’ve been here (although if anyone needs some comic book recommendations, I’m your guy), but I did just finish Neal Stephenson’s Anathem. If you’re not familiar with Neal Stephenson, he’s a prolific American writer who made his name in the 90s writing books like Snow Crash (a favorite of mine) and The Cryptonomicon. Anathem is a 900 page behometh science fiction/fantasy novel that blends a lot of real world astronomy with parallel worlds and political intrigue in a radically different world build around orders of mathematics and physics as opposed to religion. I’ve been meaning to read Anathem for a long time now (my Dad got me the book as a Birthday present during my Freshman year of college – and that was a long time ago), but since I wanted to bring mainly longer novels with me to China, now was the perfect time. Although it took me a few months to read it, it was well worth it! I highly recommend it (although it does take a while to figure out what the book is about).
Outside of novels, I also read Mark Russel and Steve Pugh’s Flintstones comic that DC put out in two graphic novel volumes a couple of years ago. As most of your probably remember the old cartoons, this is definitely not that, put rather a savvy political commentary on modern life, materialism, and the woes of society. On the TV front, I just finished season one of Sweet Tooth on Netflix and am finishing the second season of See on Apple TV tonight (also a shout out to two other great Apple TV shows, Ted Lasso and For All Mankind)! While both are very different (Sweet Tooth, based loosely on Jeff Lemire’s DC/Vertigo comic centers on a 10 year old hybrid child named Gus, while See stars Jason Momoa in all his warrior glory), both are great shows and I definitely recommend them!
Beyond that, I do have to highlight and send a hardy VAMOS and congratulations to Rafael Nadal on winning Major 21 at the Australian Open, completing the career Grand Slam for the 2nd time, and inching ahead of Federer and Djokovic in the Grand Slam race in Men’s Tennis. For those of you who didn’t know, I’m a huge Rafael Nadal fan and the Australian Open has been full of heart break for Nadal fans in the past. Unlike previous years (for me at least), it was really nice to not have to get up at the crack of dawn to watch the match! Although the match, especially the 2nd and 5th sets were stressful (Daniil Medvedev played some amazing tennis), it was great to watch Rafa win and remind everyone what it means to be a graceful champion.
East Meets West
While much of the decorations and advertisements I saw this month were Lunar New Year related, that doesn’t mean I didn’t see any examples of western influences. As should be expected at this point, Disney is always in full force and I usually spot something mouse related all over Beijing. Although most Disney things were normal, I did spot a Tigger Lunar New Year sign (and I saw ads for Disney Land Shanghai starring Tigger in Chinese garb, too)! Given that the Chinese Zodiac includes a dog, pig, rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, and rooster, I can’t help but wonder who Disney uses to advertise during the other years (maybe Pluto/Goofy, Piglet, Mickey, ?, Tigger, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, and ?). If anyone has any ideas, let me know.
I also want to draw your attention to the photo next to the Tigger sign. When I went to Michael & Dong’s lecture, the subway station that I got off at was thoroughly in the Beijing suburbs and I was pretty surprised to see a relatively American looking outlet mall (right down to the US shops and large parking lot). This is truly the most East meets West I’ve seen.
I also saw more NBA influence as can be seen by the murals highlighting Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, James Harden, Kyrie Irving, and Michael Jordan and jerseys in someone’s car (the paintings of the Beatles were in the same bar, so that’s an eclectic mix). Also, although Coca Cola is ubiquitous here, other American sodas aren’t quite as popular. As my go to long car ride soda was Diet Dr. Pepper, I had to grab a can of Dr. Pepper zero when it showed up at the foreign import store!
Anime & Comics
As is evident by now, I love spotting anime and comics merchandise wherever I am in Beijing and January was no exception. I really like when it’s things I see around the city (one of the students was wearing a Naruto sweater at the Astronomy Department end of semester ceremony) or on/in people’s cars (I see you Majin Buu, Pikachu, Goku, and Luffy). The most popular anime still remain Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, One Piece, and Pokemon, but it’s just so cool to see their popularity over here. I also spotted a few DC comics things, too (go Batman and Justice League!). I haven’t seen any ads for the new The Batman movie coming out in March, so fingers crossed that the movie opens here.
Although not anime, I also wanted to share a picture of these amazing wire dragon figurines that I got for Jesse and me. I’d been wanting to get something a bit more China (rather than the multitude of anime figures since that’s Japanese) and these just looked too cool!
Anyway, thank you so much for reading about my first January here in Beijing. I hope you enjoy the Olympics over the next two weeks. As I said in the beginning of the post, as I’m sure Beijing will be in the news a bit more and in the zeitgeist in general, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out (either here, or via e-mail). I hope that February is a great month for all of you and that you all continue to stay safe and healthy!
In Peace,
Emmet
