Spring has Sprung (Celebrating Purim, seeing The Batman, and exploring Jingshan Park)

Hi Everyone,

Welcome back to Astronomer in Beijing! I hope that you’re all doing well and staying safe and healthy. Since many of you also subscribe to my brother Jesse’s blog, I feel like I have to begin with the state of COVID in China. China is currently dealing with its worst COVID outbreak in over two years and many cities (including Shanghai) are currently in various stages of lockdown. Because of China’s Dynamic Zero COVID policy, currently anyone who tests positive has to be sent to either a hospital or a quarantine site, which means that you can’t quarantine from home like in the US. Thankfully for me, Beijing has some how managed to stay relatively COVID free. In the last couple of weeks, there’s been about 60 cases total in Beijing, so while the city has been on high alert, the increased restrictions to prevent people from entering the city seem to have been very effective. While much of my daily life has been unaffected (as you’ll see below), Tsinghua has remained ever vigilant and has had all employees and students be tested over the last two weeks (thankfully I got the negative result from this COVID test!). They’ve also been encouraging people to get their third shot if eligible (I won’t be eligible until August since I got my second shot in February). However, given that Jesse is in Shanghai, the state of Shanghai (and waiting for Jesse’s COVID tests to come back negative) has been at the front of my mind much of the month. It’s really hard to relax and feel like life is normal (and not feel guilty about getting to eat out or go for a run) when Jesse is stuck in his apartment all day. I truly hope that things improve soon (especially in Shanghai, where almost the entire city is locked – by the time you’re all reading this, Jesse will have finished 3 days of lockdown, but I’m sure he’ll tell you more in his next blog post). In chatting with friends both on campus and at Kehillat Beijing, we’re all hoping that things improve soon and that life can return to normal. I do have to say that given the increased number of cases throughout China, I’m genuinely surprised that I still see a number of people not wearing masks outside. Maybe I’m just hyper vigilant and a bit paranoid, but given the higher number of cases in China (as opposed to almost none a couple of months ago), it still is surprising. Thankfully, masks are still required on the subway and in stores (at least for my own personal sanity, as well as for disease prevention).

Beyond COVID, I wish I could say that my attention has been focused entirely on science. However, the current war in Ukraine has also been close to my mind. I tend to check CNN daily for updates about the situation and continually hope for a resolution to the conflict and that the increased sanctions against Russia help. Being in China, it’s been interesting to see the Chinese coverage, especially given the current tensions between the US and China. The coverage that I’ve seen paints quite a different picture and it’s certainly interesting to see (I’ll definitely be quite intrigued to see how the midterm elections are covered here given the less than enthusiastic response to the USA). I really hope that when I write you in early May we’ll find resolution here, because it’s definitely a bit terrifying to be living in a foreign country, especially one closer to the the conflict. However, on slightly more positive news, as I mentioned in my last post, Kehillat Beijing and the collective Jews of China (including Kehillat Shanghai) have been doing their best to raise money to donate to help Ukrainian refugees. After about a month of fundraising, we’ve raised (with Roberta & Ted’s generous matching) over $30,000.

However, despite a lot of serious things going on, I have been able to do some things that were a bit more fun this month.

A Visit to Jingshan Park!

As can probably be inferred by the title of this blog post, spring has definitely started to creep into Beijing (as I’m writing this, the temperature has reached highs in the 70s, although that didn’t stop Beijing from experiencing a freak St. Patrick’s day snow storm a few weeks ago). Because of the generally warmer weather, Richard and I have resumed our quest to visit more of the landmarks, parks, and historical sites here in Beijing (especially before the summer humidity kicks in). The first site on our list was Jingshan Park. Jingshan Park is a large park at the center of Beijing (there is actually a plaque in the park marking the center of the city) that overlooks the Forbidden City. I first saw the park when Richard and I visited the Forbidden City because it’s the first thing you see when you leave the Palace grounds. What I didn’t realize is that historically, Jingshan Park was part of the greater Forbidden City grounds and that it wasn’t until 1928 that the park was opened to the public. As you can see, buds are just starting to appear on trees, so expect to see even more nature photos next month!

Additionally, one of the reasons that I was excited to visit Jingshan Park is that it’s one of the highest points in the city and thus allows for wonderful photos of the greater Beijing city scape (You can see a selfie of me and the Forbidden City in the background)! It was really cool to be able to find the Drum Tower (the tiny red tower in the bottom pictures) and point out approximately where my apartment was!

Additionally, the top of the hill isn’t just a cool vantage point, but there are also some magnificent temples at the top! One of the things that I didn’t realize until after I visited is that the hill at the center of the park is actually entirely manmade (given how flat Beijing is, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised).

While it is in no way aesthetically similar to Central Park in New York or Boston Commons, I definitely got that vibe because the park is basically surrounded by Beijing (and residential buildings) on all sides and feels like a little green oasis (although there were kids running around, there’s no large green spaces to play catch and far fewer food vendors). It’s almost surreal when you walk in and feel immediately transported to another city since the gates close it off to the rest of the city. One thing to note is that unlike the parks I mentioned above, Jingshan Park isn’t free to visit, though the cost was only 2rmb (~ 25 cents), so it’s definitely affordable (I kind of wonder why they charge given the price).

Beyond the more park-like parts of Jingshan Park, the grounds also host a number of palaces designed in the same manner as the Forbidden City. As I really loved visiting the Forbidden City, it was nice to see more! I love all of the dragon motifs (the dragon, long in Mandarin, represents the Emperor), too! If you’re ever able to visit Beijing, I’d definitely recommend heading over to the park either before or after to a visit to the Forbidden City.

One of the most unexpected things was that there were a number of cute figurines and statues throughout the grounds of the park (including my favorite Olympic mascots) , likely for children, but I really enjoyed seeing them!

The Batman

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been excited to see The Batman since the movie was announced and my hype has been building since I saw the first trailer. Seeing The Batman was both my first time seeing a movie in China (see the ads I saw in the subway above) and the first movie I’d been to in over two years. In terms of the Chinese cinema, Richard and I chose to go to a smaller theatre closer to my apartment since neither of us knew where any of the larger IMAX theatres are (this would have been a great movie to see in IMAX). The cinema we went to was on the top floor of the mall and aside from everything being in Mandarin, it looked pretty similar to a smaller theatre in the US, even down to the seats. The only thing that was different was that the movie just started at the allotted time. No ten minutes of previews, no random ads to tell us to silence our cell phones, nothing. All of the sudden the lights went off and the movie started (Richard and I were definitely caught off guard by that). So that was a bit odd, but nothing else was too different. I did ask some friends at Kehillat Beijing, including one who is a documentary filmmaker, and they said that generally movies do have trailers, but given the irregular release of Western movies, they might not have wanted to have Chinese trailers for a western movie (there were Chinese subtitles, but the movie was in English). While movies are very popular here, given the influx of COVID cases, I wasn’t surprised that Richard and I were the only ones in the theatre (we also went to a noon showing, and when we left the theatre, it looked like more people were going to later showings, there were also 10+ screenings per day and one that started 30 minutes before ours and 30 minutes after ours). Given my general state of COVID nervousness, I was pretty happy to have the theatre to ourselves (and then we knew we’d get no random interruptions as was the case when I saw some of the DC movies in Boston – I know some of you who read this blog remember those).

Because I’m sure not all of you have gotten to see The Batman (sorry Jesse), I’ll leave my review spoiler free. The film is AMAZING. As I think is readily apparent, I’m a huge comic book fan, but Batman has always had a special place for me. I grew up on Batman: The Animated Series and continue to read and watch the many iterations of Batman today. The movie is an atmospheric masterpiece, blending classic detective, noir, and superhero tropes to create a unique take on the Dark Knight. While stylistically the movie is closer to Christopher Nolan’s Trilogy than Ben Affleck’s take, Matt Reeves, Robert Pattinson, and company do successfully separate themselves from those movies by focusing singularly on the grit, grime, and filth of Gotham. This movie shines showing the downfall of American wealth and capitalism. Additionally, I loved the psychological aspect of the movie and how it focuses on the mental state of someone who chooses to become Batman. This is a unique take on the psyche of Bruce Wayne that hasn’t been presented on screen before. Also, it was nice to see Batman as a detective rather than just a muscle-bound fighter. Additionally, Zoe Kravitz’s Selina Kyle adds a wonderful foil to the movie and helps to further expand the mythos. While the movie is long (it clocks in at just under 3 hours and because I was double masked during the movie, my nose definitely felt it), it doesn’t feel long because you’re both on the edge of your seat and I genuinely didn’t know where it’s going next (I really tried to avoid watching too many clips/trailers and reading reviews). Also, I must say, Paul Dano’s Riddler radically recreates the character, but is equally compelling. I cannot wait to see what they do with the HBOMAX Penguin Spin-off staring Colin Farrell, who was fantastic and unrecognizable in the role, and the future sequels. Batman is in very good hands. If you haven’t seen the movie, I definitely recommend it. Even if you’re not a huge superhero fan, this is far more of a grim detective/cop movie than the Avengers style melee movie.

A Purim Shpiel to Remember!

As some of you are probably aware, the Jewish holiday of Purim happened in March. Purim is a holiday where we recount the story of Esther saving the Jews from the evil Hamen (BOO) and eat delicious triangular shaped hamentaschen cookies. One of the typical traditions of Purim is recounting the entire story as a community, Here in Beijing, Kehillat Beijing has cultivated a rather unusual, but incredibly fun tradition of creating a Purim Shpiel play which combines political satire with the story of Esther to create a unique experience (much thanks to Ted’s wonderfully fun and funny script). To nobody’s surprise, this years script took queues from the Ukraine conflict, combining Esther and Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Esther Zelenskyy), Mordechai and Joe Biden (Joe Mordechai), and Hamen (BOO) and Putin. Ted also sprinkled many American politics Easter egg into the story, including appearances by Trump (as a potential bride to King Achesveros seeking immunity from his crimes), Marjorie Taylor Greene, Joe Manchin, and Kyrsten Sinema. We also got an Eileen Gu sighting for a little Chinese pop culture. Because I was in the show (I played a bit role as a reporter), I didn’t get to take many pictures, but here are some that I have (one of our members who is a professional photographer took photos, so if I get access to them, I’ll share them in future blogs).

Since I knew that I was going to be busy with a conference the week before, I only wanted a small bit part as a reporter, but it was quite fun. Because I thought Richard would get a kick out of the political commentary, I had him come since the performance was after we saw The Batman. Because we were missing someone to play the role of the King’s flunky, Richard got drafted into the production at the last minute and did a great job (his British accent certainly added a bit of flare to the role!). Thanks to the generosity of the Chabad house, we were able to host the Shpiel at Chabad and open it up for the entire community (we had 50+ people attend). Although I’ve been to Chabad before, I hadn’t gotten to take a peak in the sanctuary, and it is quite beautiful.

Life at Tsinghua

As I mentioned in my last post, the month started with my presentation of Project Morphology, my study of the shape of galaxies in MAMMOTH protoclusters at high redshift, at the Cosmic Cartography Virtual conference. This was my first virtual conference since arriving in China and it was nice that since it was based in Japan, the timing was convenient. The conference was very interesting with lots of great talks (though I will say, a week of 6+ hours staring at my computer screen was surprisingly exhausting). For those of you who are interested, here’s the link to my talk. It’s definitely geared at an Astronomy audience, but I think it should be relatively accessible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMv1lTkun8U&list=PLmXdKmtgaCcEIwRd9aNClOguCt4rt2V9q&index=20

In terms of actual science this month, it was a lot of the same. I’ve just started to write up Project Morphology, but I’m still trying to figure out what sample will be best for our comparison sample. I’ve been chatting with Zheng, my supervisor, so hopefully we’ll have a solution in the next couple of days (either to use the one I started working on for my presentation, or a different one). In terms of Project Radio, I’m going to be downloading a new chunk of data for the project from the LOFAR survey this week, so I’m hoping to ramp that project back up. While I haven’t worked on Project Evolution this month, I did also join a new collaboration to look at high-redshift (early universe) galaxy clusters (similar in principle to what I did my dissertation on, but with more robust data over a slightly smaller scope). While it isn’t clear what my role will be in this collaboration, which I’ll call Project Key for now, I’m excited as the other members are some very well-respected cluster scientists in Europe.

While not my science, this week was incredibly exciting for the high-redshift (early universe) Astronomy community, as we saw the release of observations from the Hubble Space Telescope of the first high-redshift star ever individually viewed (z ~ 6.2, observed ~ 900 million years after the Big Bang). Now you might be thinking that we see lots of stars in then night sky, but because stars are small and not terribly bright, almost all of the stars that we view (even with telescopes) are in the Milky Way. In general, in my own research, I look at the collective light from all of the stars in a galaxy (so when I see a red galaxy, that means older stars, no recent star formation – younger stars are bluer). Here, the star was observed not because of the power of Hubble, but because the star was gravitationally lensed by a foreground galaxy cluster. This means that the light from the star was magnified due to the bending of space-time by a massive galaxy cluster so that it is possible to view distant faint objects. However, because the geometry required to observe a lensed object is incredibly precise, we usually see galaxies lensed, not individual stars. These observations could allow Astronomers to identify Population Zero stars, the original stars that formed purely of Hydrogen and Helium (all of the other elements, which Astronomers refer to as metals, form after supernova explosions of stars) and is thus an amazing discovery. It was also really cool to recognize some co-authors that I knew since they were at Michigan when Jesse was in grad school.

In terms of actual life on campus, I was able to walk around the campus and see some of the trees in bloom when I went to get my COVID test on campus. Additionally, after being at Tsinghua since September (and being officially hired since October), the International Scholars Office finally had an orientation for new International Scholars. While it was a bit surreal to have an orientation months after my arrival, it was a nice sentiment. Most of the information was about how to use our health insurance as well as a lot of the selling points of Tsinghua as being an International University (apparently they have a few satellite campuses around the world, and it is clear that pandemic not withstanding, they are trying to attract more international scholars). Ironically, after Richard and I had been looking for more Mandarin lessons since our class with Miriam ended, we found out at the orientation that the International Scholar Office does offer online Mandarin lessons, but we’d missed the sign up for this semester. Hopefully we’ll be able to take them in the fall.

Additionally, this month, we had our regular Laowei (Foreigner) hang out dinner with me, Richard, Paulo, and Chris (one of the faculty in our department). It’s always nice to get to hear about how the other foreigners are experiencing China and what we think of the current state of things in the department and the country. Additionally, I was part of a very productive lunch with postdocs and faculty to brainstorm some ideas on how to improve postdoc life in the department. Some of the ideas we’ve raised include having a monthly lunch with postdocs and faculty (we got an ~ 1200rmb budget! ~ $200 a month), having more informal department social events, and maybe doing some postdoc led tutorials for the grad students on how to give presentations. All in all, it was nice to see some of the faculty reach out and acknowledge that moving the postdocs to a separate building hasn’t been ideal for departmental unity and I’m optimistic that we’ll see a more united department in the next couple months (we also were able to further express our complaints about someone smoking on our floor, which so far have been met with added signs, but nothing to actually stop the person from smoking).

Exploring Beijing

Between going to see The Batman and walking to Jingshan Park (it’s only about 1.5 miles from my apartment), I got to take a lot of photos of interesting things around Beijing (including a recreation of the FAST – Five hundred meter Aperture Survey Telescope – in China in one of the subway stations).

Although I’ve seen a lot of cool things around Beijing, one of the most unexpected things was this large alley way of grafitti around the corner from the vegetarian restaurant that Richard and I went to after visiting Jingshan Park. I’m not sure if it was some kind of community project, or just random, but as you can see all of the pieces are pretty spectacular and there was a pretty wide array of subjects, from animals to astronauts.

As I mentioned earlier, though Spring is here, we did have a freak winter storm on St. Patrick’s Day, so I hope you enjoy hopefully my last photos for a while of Beijing in the snow. I will say that this was the most New England/Northeastern-style snow storm I’ve seen here in Beijing. As you can see, when I left for Shabbat, there was just a light dusting and in the hour or so it takes me to get to Roberta and Ted’s house, there was a solid couple of inches and the snow was really coming down. Unfortunately, people here are not quite familiar with driving in snow, so things are definitely way more chaotic when it snows (I saw someone wipeout on a motor scooter when I went into Tsinghua the next day for my Saturday group meeting). However, within 24 hours, almost all of the snow was gone.

Also, while I usually just show off the vegan food that I eat, I also got a few prettier pastries this month that, while vegetarian, are likely not vegan (unsure of the flower popsicle from Jingshan Park). While pastries can be hit or miss here, they do tend to look pretty and are generally pretty good (though not always in the western style).

Jewish Life

Beyond the Purim Shpiel, the remainder of my Jewish life revolved around going to Kehillat Beijing for Shabbat Dinners. Roberta and Ted really do a wonderful job creating such a warm and welcoming community and I love how much fun we have with our Shabbat celebrations (it’s also nice to see familiar faces and friends and meet the occasional new person). This month, we started with Ukranian Shabbat for obvious reasons, which included Vegetarian Chicken Kyiv, stuffed cabbage, and a Peace cake.

Because St. Patrick’s Day coincided with our Purim Shabbat, we had a St. Patrick’s day Shabbat featuring everyone’s favorite Irish foods and lots of hamentaschen (including traditional flavors and red bean ones)!

We also had a lovely Greek Shabbat in honor of Greek National Day (I even gave a very brief d’var on the history of Greek Jews, some of whom have lived in Greece since before Christ, which means they didn’t really come from anywhere, but have always been there).

Although all of the dinners were spectacular, Ted really went all out for April Fool’s Day! Many of the foods were designed to look like other foods (including putting salad in the soup pot and the soup in the dressing container, a vegetarian shepherd’s pie shaped like a birthday cake, and a desert pizza).

Outside of Kehillat Beijing, I did also attend a virtual event about Chinese-Jewish Identity co-sponsored by Kehillat Shanghai and LUNAR, an Asian-Jewish film project, in the beginning of the month. The event was quite interesting and it was nice to hear from young adults on where they felt they fit in with the Jewish community. I look forward to attending the other two sessions. I thought it was quite interesting that a lot of the speakers found identity in the fusion of traditional Asian cuisine (all four speakers grew up partially in China and partially in the US) and Jewish cuisine, which isn’t something I expected to here. While I associate Shabbat dinner with Judaism, I only have an abstract relationship with many of the traditionally Jewish foods (gefilteh fish, brisket, …) since I grew up in a vegetarian household. Really, the only Jewish foods that I eat are the occasional kugel (usually made by my mother’s friend, Lollie), challah, latkes, hamentaschen, matzah (and other assorted Passover traditions), and rugelach (so not things you eat regularly). Maybe it’s because I grew up in the Northeast, but I don’t really think of bagels as a Jewish food (although I’ve eaten quite a few), so it was interesting to hear how so much identity was tied to food. Also, I was saddened, but not surprised, how many of them touched on feeling isolated or unwelcome in traditional Jewish spaces (and for those of them who’d been to Kehillat Shanghai, how accepting that community is). I hope we can touch on what people who more easily fit into the stereotypical notion of New York Jews can do to help make Jewish spaces more accepting and welcoming in the future, because I know I’ve been rather self conscious that a lot of the Jewish spaces I’ve been to have been super white (and I remember when I was in the Alef Beats – Brown’s Premiere Jewish A Capella Group – getting asked some really awkward and uncomfortable questions from elderly people about the non-white members of our group).

Vegan Food

After Richard and I visited Jingshan Park, we went back to Fu Hui Ci Yuan, the vegetarian restaurant near the Forbidden City. We had an amazing meal their last time and it was definitely deserving of being revisited (and I’ll definitely be back again). We actively tried to pick out different dishes and again had an amazing meal. We got fresh peach juice (which smelled amazing), bamboo shoots, crispy veggie beef, green & mushrooms, tofu with a spicy sauce, and a tofu, mushroom, and lotus root spicy stir fry. All of the food was amazing, but I think the tofu with the spicy sauce and the crispy veggie beef were my favorites. One thing worth noting for those of you unfamiliar with Chinese cooking is that all of these spicy peppers in the spicy stir fry are meant to season the dish, you don’t want to eat them unless you want to completely numb your mouth.

While I’ve had many wonderful meals here in Beijing at vegan restaurants, I’m not always so lucky. At both our Laowei dinner and the meeting with faculty and postdocs, I found myself limited to various salads and fries (which though tasted fine aren’t the ideal meal – ok, there was a pizza option at the 2nd place, but I didn’t need a full size pizza for myself). While in the US most places at least have a vegetarian sandwich on the menu, here, Western-style restaurants haven’t quite realized that it would be nice to have at least a vegetarian option. However, I was able to make do. I will say that the sweet potato fries were one of the more interesting things I’ve had here as they had sugar on them and were oddly reminiscent of an apple cider donut – not to sweet, but just a tad savory.

Animals of Beijing

Although I didn’t adopt any kittens this month (Jesse did!), that doesn’t mean that I didn’t see lots of animals this month. As the weather has gotten warmer many of the outdoor cats have started to roam. In particular, my neighbors have a cat that likes to sleep in their window.

Additionally, since I was working from home due to the conference, I discovered that my roof is a hot bed of cat hangouts. Through my skylights, I saw at least three different cats and one of the times (they made quite a racket during the conference), I went up to my roof patio to investigate and was able to see all three cats without the grime of my skylight (if anyone has any suggestions on how to clean the outside of a skylight that isn’t easily accessible from my roof patio, let me know). They definitely were a bit skittish and ran off after seeing me, but that hasn’t stopped them from coming back. At this point, I assume every random thud I hear or high pitched cry is a cat on my roof.

I also saw an acrobatic cat (I’m not sure if this was a new cat or not) and a colorful dog among some of the other animals I spotted this month.

And of course, no Astronomer in Beijing blog would be complete without some pictures of Mimi and Honey, Roberta and Ted’s dogs, and my favorite puppies in Beijing.

What was I Reading/Watching?

Although the viewing highlight of the month was The Batman, I also enjoyed a few different tv shows that I thought I’d recommend. I finished season 4 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime. While I still enjoy the show, I felt a bit let down by this season as I think they focused far too much on the side characters and did very little to actually bring Midge’s narrative forward. However, I did really enjoy the finale and especially loved when Lenny Bruce basically smacked Midge back to reality about what it takes to be a comedian (the set at the Jackie Kennedy event was also quite fun). Additionally, I finished the third season of TNT’s Snowpiercer, based on both the graphic novel and the movie. The show stars Daveed Diggs as he leads a train full of refugees through a frozen dystopian world. I highly recommend the show and the 3rd season really brought a lot of added stakes that were a ton of fun.

On the reading front, I finished reading the manga Muhyo & Roji’s Bureau of Paranormal Investigation. For manga fans, it’s quite a fun supernatural romp. For fans of more classical literature, I also read Peony by Pearl Buck. My Mom had given me Peony before I left since the story centers around a family of Kaifeng Jews living in China. The Kaifeng Jews were a community of Jews that arrived in China via the Silk Road trading and slowly assimilated with the Chinese people, while remaining Jewish and still practicing Judaism in some form (the end of my copy of the novel features a history of the Kaifeng Jews and it’s interesting to see how they slowly assimilated to the point where they were basically a historical lineage and were interestingly reinvigorated by a mix of the more recent Jewish immigrants (around 1900) to Shanghai and by Christian missionaries in the 1800s (because the Kaifeng Jews didn’t realize that Christians are not Jewish). If any of you find yourselves in Toronto, the Royal Ontario Museum houses many artifacts from the Kaifeng Jewish community (the why of that is a long story). In terms of the novel, Peony is quite an interesting book and definitely not the typical kind of narrative that I read. The story centers around the relationship between Peony, a bonds maid, and the young son of the house of Ezra, David. While I’ll leave an in depth discussion of the plot to the comments section if anyone is interested, I found the description of the Chinese servants views on Jewish customs and the description of Jewish practices to be somewhat apt to my experience in China. The book opens at Passover, where the servants don’t really understand the various customs and comment on how strange they are, especially how Jews don’t eat pork and on how different everyone looks, especially in regards to brow and nose shape. Given that one of the more derogatory name for foreigners here refers to our noses, this didn’t surprise me (although historically the Kaifeng Jews were a mixed race community, so how prominent those features might have been is up to some debate). However, the curiosity and notion that all of the Jewish customs are strange while the Chinese superstitions and customs are totally normal is something I’ve definitely experienced here. While Peony is written from a lens that doesn’t really have any idea about western culture since this is China just at the point of the Boxer Rebellion, as someone who isn’t a stereotypical American, as both a vegetarian/vegan and a Jew, I’ve seen confusion about what American culture is. Also, in the novel, Pearl Buck touches on Chinese people not being allowed in the synagogue because they are not Jewish. I thought it was an interesting parallel given the restrictions on religious activities today, where foreign passport holders can partake in religious ceremonies, but unless you are married to someone who is a foreign passport holder, Chinese citizens cannot attend them. Although much of the novel is set in Kaifeng, which I haven’t visited, they do visit Beijing and the Forbidden City Palace, so it was cool to see descriptions of places I’ve visited, as well as Buddhist vegetarian restaurants. I did find that Pearl Buck is a bit heavy handed with the notions of Jewish guilt as the dominant driver of the Jewish religion/cultural practice. Additionally, it was hard not to read the description of the House of Ezra with both Chinese and Jewish influences and think of Roberta and Ted’s home which is decorated with both themes as well. Ironically, we were discussing the Kaifeng Jews a couple of weeks ago at Kehillat Beijing (I believe one of our members may be a Kaifeng Jew) and we’re hoping to do a viewing of the documentary on the Kaifeng Jews narrated by Leonard Nimoy later this year.

East Meets West

This month, a lot of the Western influences I saw came from pop culture (as seems to be the case, although I did go to a Starbucks and aside from everything being in Mandarin, it was weirdly the same as its US counterpart). The House of Mouse was again the dominant player.

Beyond noticing fun stickers and toys, the wall of graffiti also had some fun Western related murals (and a couple more in the Anime & Comics section) with Kung Fu Panda, Angry Birds, and Mario.

Also, when I went to lunch with the faculty and postdocs, the cafe that we went to on campus was full of Western books and definitely had a distinct hipster/US vibe. The array of books was pretty eclectic, so I thought I’d share them with you. Additionally, I saw a sign for a production of Rebecca, which based on the character posters, I believe is an adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s novel (I haven’t read the novel, but the Netflix movie was quite good), and I knew my Mom would enjoy seeing this.

Anime & Comics

No Astronomer in Beijing blog can be complete without showing all of the anime and comic book paraphernalia that I see around Beijing. Beyond seeing posters for The Batman, this month, I saw lots of what I dub “found anime,” e.g., stickers, signs, and the like, not statues for sale. I did find Dragon Ball Z chocolate wafer cookies featuring Goku and Vegeta that of course I had to buy. Beyond Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z, the main anime I saw were Neon Genesis Evangelion and Demon Slayer (including on cakes!). Also, the graffiti wall had two great renditions of the Incredible Hulk and Captain America, which were very cool.

For those of you who’ve made it this far, thank you so much for reading my Astronomy in Beijing blog. I hope you’ve all enjoyed hearing about Jingshan Park and my various other adventures this month. With Passover and my birthday coming up in April, I’m hopeful that April will be another fun month (and that the COVID situation will improve here in China so that it can be a fun month for Jesse). I hope April is a safe, happy, and healthy month for all of you and that for those of you that celebrate Passover have a lovely Passover (and those that celebrate Easter have a lovely Easter and for those that celebrate Ramadan are having a safe and healthy fast). As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to either comment below or contact me directly. It’d be great to hear from you.

In Peace,

Emmet