A Quieter June: The Slow Return to Normal Life in Beijing

Hi Everyone,

Thank you so much for returning to my Astronomer in Beijing blog. I hope you’re all doing well and staying safe and healthy! For those of you in the US, I hope you have a nice 4th of July! I want to thank everyone who reached out to me directly (or asked my parents about me) given my last post. Thankfully, the most recent COVID surge seems to have calmed down (more on that below) and life is slowly returning to normal.

Before I dive into my month in Beijing, I just want to take the time to address the multiple Supreme Court decisions in the last few weeks. As an expat living abroad, I’m incredibly concerned that the USA that I left in 2021 will not be the same when I return (whenever that is). The Supreme Court’s decision to repeal Roe v. Wade is horrifying. Fundamentally, I believe that all women should have the right to choose and control their bodies. I feel like the far-Right has turned women into a subservient class of citizens with the removal of Roe v. Wade and the insane abortion bans being put in place throughout the country. If men are allowed to do whatever they want to their bodies, women should be, too. The notion that the ultra-conservative/religious fundamentalist sect has the right to control all woman’s bodies is shameful. Personally, I walked past protests at the Commonwealth Avenue Planned Parenthood nearly every day (and bizarre quasi-religious vigils on Friday evenings) during my time at Boston University. I wish I had done more than smile at the Planned Parenthood volunteers (and give an occasional donation) as countless protestors swarmed the Planned Parenthood to make sure nobody could enter the building in peace. The fact that the Supreme Court (and Clarence Thomas – his remarks are particularly terrifying and scary as it seems like every potential liberal leaning and progressive freedom is now in danger of being rolled back) can roll back any legislation that isn’t Puritanical makes me question why the US created a Supreme Court that has become a Monarchy of Judges in the first place. If the goal was for the court to be a non-political entity, it has clearly failed. I don’t want to go on too much of a rant here, but I hope that President Biden has some kind of a plan, because so far, it appears like the only plan is asking people to vote and I just don’t think that’s enough. While I’m on the subject of Roe v. Wade, for anyone wondering, I’m not exactly sure what China’s stance on abortions is. I believe they are legal, but not encouraged – getting children born out of wedlock in China government IDs is quite difficult and China is currently trying to boost population growth to ensure India doesn’t overtake them as the world’s most populous country.

Beyond the repeal of Roe v. Wade, I’m also concerned about the recent decision to strike down NY’s long standing law restricting the carrying of firearms outside of the home. Given the number of mass shootings in schools, places of worship, grocery stores, …, I find that the idea that the US needs to make it easier for people to have guns to be absurd. More guns don’t automatically make people safe. To interject a little bit of China into the discussion, I’m currently living in a country where even the police don’t carry guns (it’s basically impossible outside of active military to get guns in China) and I feel safe here (other than some lockdown restrictions, but that was mostly out of a lack of communication). This fundamentalist notion of originalists and the constitution doesn’t account for the fact that life in 1780s America is NOT the same as life today and the right to own a musket is not the same as the right to own and carry any weapon you want wherever you go. Additionally, given the fact that NY’s laws had worked well to limit shootings in the state (despite the recent racially motivated mass killing in Buffalo) means that these laws were working. Additionally, I find this week’s Supreme Court ruling in favor of the HS football coach’s right to prayer also concerning. I’m not a legal scholar and I haven’t taken a US history course in ages, but I always thought that terms like the “Separation of Church and State” and “Freedom of Religion” meant that these are separate spheres, even though Christianity is pervasive within US culture. Growing up in a religious minority, I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable when the Christmas songs we sang in Choraliers veered from more festive songs (i.e. Carol of the Bells, White Christmas) to praising of Jesus. I’ve never been an athlete, but as an observer, I get incredibly uncomfortable around impromptu prayer circles because I feel like they are designed to flaunt the superiority or prominence of one religion over another. To have this ruling on top of the other two just seems to further cement the fundamentalist Christian nature of the US and that’s not a country that I feel great about right now. To add on top of all of this, the Supreme Court’s decision to strip power from the EPA for environmental regulations is incredibly disheartening. As a scientist, I’ve shown students the data about global warming and it’s terrifying. We NEED to do things to help the planet and if the EPA continues to lose power, the climate of the world will suffer.

Life in Beijing

I am happy to report that the situation in Beijing appears to have improved dramatically since I last wrote you. While I’ve still needed to be COVID tested frequently (I’ve been tested 18 times since my last post), my community remains open and I’ve been able to get deliveries sent to my door now. Everyone who enters my neighborhood is now required to scan the Beijing health code to enter the alley way into the neighborhood, but thankfully that is the only restriction. That isn’t to say that everything has been entirely stress free. About a week after my last blog post, just as things seemed to be stabilizing for the first time, there was an outbreak of approximately 300+ cases (all associated with a single bar/supermarket). Unfortunately for me, the fact that there were local cases near me (but thankfully not in my hutong neighborhood) meant that we needed to get COVID tests every day instead of the every 72 hours that most of the rest of the city was allowed to do. Thankfully, that mini outbreak seems to be contained as the daily count is now oscillating between 0 and 2 cases a day (we’re at 3 days in a row without any cases, yay!). Because of this second outbreak, bars and gyms remain closed (not that I frequent either – I primarily work out from home – if you’re looking for a home workout routine, I highly recommend Zeus fitness on youtube). Furthermore, until this past week I was not allowed to got onto Tsinghua’s campus (prior to the mini outbreak, they had relaxed the restrictions slightly if you needed to be on campus and you lived in Haidian, the district where Tsinghua is – I don’t, I live in Xicheng). As such, I spent much of the month working from home, but at least I wasn’t trapped in my apartment (and I did get to see some pretty flowers [and even someone growing onions in their window – see below] and other cool looking things on the way to my various COVID tests).

In terms of the overall state of COVID in China, things appear to be improving policy wise as the cases have gone down in both Beijing and Shanghai. Much to the surprise of all of the foreigner weChat groups that I’m in, the Chinese government has cut the quarantine for people entering China from 14 +7 days to 7 + 3 for all arrivals regardless of which city you enter. Additionally, China is doing away with their starred system to limit inter city travel, which might aid in my ability to go visit Jesse (unlike in the US, where I could travel without getting BU’s permission, I still need to get Tsinghua’s permission to travel). While this doesn’t mean that I’ll get to visit the US soon (many of the people I know who went back to the states are now stuck there still unable to find flights), I should be able to visit Jesse.

Beyond that, it’s safe to say that summer is in full gear here in Beijing. For those of you who’ve never experienced a summer in China, it’s really hot and sometimes really humid (more so in Shanghai than Beijing, but we’re entering Plum Rain season, so it’s hot, humid, and wet). It’s been above 90 degrees nearly every day the last month and I am super thankful for my air conditioning! To help me stay cool, I’ve turned to making my own popsicles (I made watermelon popsicles – the ingredients were watermelon, maple syrup, and sugar). For those of you more familiar with Beijing, no I haven’t broken down and turned my shirt into a “Beijing bikini” (a rather common – seemingly only among middle age men – practice of rolling the bottom of your shirt over your stomach so that it hangs out). However this heat won’t prevent me from doing things outside, I just need to make sure I stay hydrated!

Life at Tsinghua

As I mentioned above, I spent most of the month working remotely. Because so few people were allowed on campus, the department decided to do some virtual coffee hours with postdocs and faculty. While the attendance wasn’t always great, it was nice to chat with people rather than just spend all day alone in my apartment. As the cases dwindled the last two weeks and Tsinghua held it’s graduation last weekend, the university finally allowed for people living outside of campus to return, only requiring that you’d been in Beijing for the past 14 days and that you get COVID tested every 72 hours. This meant that I was able to return to the office this past Tuesday. I must say that the campus was surprisingly normal. The only main difference was that there was a bizarre sheet metal fencing surrounding the normal fence that surrounds the campus (see above – I don’t know if that was meant to further separate the campus during the peaks of the last wave or what) and I had to take my temperature to actually enter my office. While I’ll likely work from home more frequently during the summer (the Beijing subway isn’t the most well air conditioned subway I’ve been on and with wearing a mask and 90+ degree weather, it can get a bit uncomfortable to get to work), it was really nice to get to go onto campus and see some of my fellow postdocs in person!

In terms of research, this has been a rather frustrating month for Project Morphology. I’m still toiling away with trying to get the Galapagos program to work properly. I’ve had some very helpful conversations with a number of different astronomers that I’ve reached out to about it, but still can’t seem to get the program to work. We’re currently exploring getting an IDL license for me that can be used on one of the Astronomy Department’s servers (unlike BU, Tsinghua does not have a university/department-wide license) so that we can reinstall everything on a new server from scratch, but that process is taking a bit longer than I hoped (I finally heard back from IDL’s licensor here in China on Friday!). Beyond that I’m working on the borders of what I can do for that project, focusing mostly on reclassifying the merging systems following my previous discussions to better characterize the different merger types. Although I’m still treading water with Project Morphology, I did have a very fruitful discussion with Prof. Simona Mei about my results and how they compare to what she’s found studying similar properties in CARLA clusters between z ~ 2 – 3 (in the small world of Astronomy, the CARLA survey was the primary comparison sample for my dissertation and the COBRA survey). I’m hopeful that we might be able to boost our analysis with some of the additional avenues of study she raised (though a lot depends on what observations are readily available – I’m still checking that out). In the interim, I decided to dive back into Project Radio. I now have my complete sets of LOFAR radio observations of bent, radio AGNs in and not in clusters in the early universe (at least based on my analysis in my 2021 paper) and have made spectral index maps of all of these sources. I’m currently working on comparing various radio source parameters between the two samples to determine if there are any systematic differences in the radio source properties (other than opening angle, which we showed in my 2021 paper) between bent sources in and not in clusters. I’m hoping to have some exciting results on that front in the coming month (and to start writing that one up this summer as well – I feel there is a much stronger narrative there). Additionally, Jesse and I are continuing to work on Project Low-Z and we have some really intriguing new plots. I’m currently in the process of downloading a slew of radio and optical data that will aid in my portion of the analysis (Jesse focuses on the cluster statistics, while I focus on the radio source properties).

Also, though not directly related to my own astronomy research, the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) from July 1 featured a time lapse photo showing the planets as the move across the night sky over the Forbidden City and I wanted to share it with you. My colleagues all really liked it! (https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220701.html)

Visiting the New Summer Palace!

After a couple months of not going anywhere (and with the severe decrease in the number of COVID cases in Beijing), I was finally able to do a little sight seeing again, yesterday! Paulo, Richard, Tom, and I got to visit the New Summer Palace! (For those of you who remember, I visited the Old Summer Palace in November with Richard, though after seeing this one in full bloom, we might need to visit the Old Summer Palace again). Before I dive into the outing, I must say how nice it was to get to be out and about and do things with friends after being stuck on zoom for ages. While we all wore masks (and sweated up a storm – it was quite hot and we all got ice cream to cool off), it was so much fun! Also, since Tom arrived in Beijing in May, we all actually got to meet Tom in person, which was great! I’m sure we’ll have some more fun excursions planned for July!

I’ve broken the many photos into small batches because the Palace is enormous. One of the things that surprised me about the Forbidden City last December was just how urban it was. When I think of palatial European estates like Versailles or the Nymphenburg Palace, I think of the accompanying large grounds, gardens, parks, and lakes, which just aren’t there at the Forbidden City. While it is true that culturally and aesthetically, China differs from Europe, I think I’ve now come to realize that nature is absent from the Forbidden City because both the Old and New Summer Palace account for that.

When entering the Summer Palace, it feels like being transported to another time. Not only is the architecture full of vibrant reds and golds and stone dragons, but everything (like in the Forbidden City) is oversized. To enter the Palace, you first cross a river (or maybe a moat) and enter through a number of gates. Aesthetically, the palace was inspired by the gardens found in Southern China, and aesthetically looks far different from the Old Summer Palace, where there was more Western influence in the architecture.

Although this land has been associated with various imperial families since the 12th Century, much of the Summer Palace wasn’t built (and grounds further cultivated) until the 18th century (completed in 1764) and all of the grounds are inspired by the Chinese myth of the three divine mountains in the eastern sea. Like the Forbidden City, the New Summer Palace was originally only meant for the imperial family and it wasn’t until the early 1900s that the grounds were open to the public as a park. I think what captivated me most about the New Summer Palace is that within this one space, there seemed to exist a number of different landscapes. When we first entered, the grounds appeared more forest-like, with large trees (and a cat, too!), seeming to show a balance between man-made architecture and the beauty of nature.

As we continued our walk, we saw the first sights of the actual palace. While visitors are not allowed to enter any of the buildings (you can look into some windows, as shown below), the ornate architecture makes up for that, as can be seen my the hundreds of Buddhists reliefs carved into the outside of the palace. Interestingly, this was the first site of Buddhism I’d seen at any of the imperial palaces that I’ve visited. Usually, there are carvings of dragons and lions (signs of the Emperor), as opposed to the Buddha. As we made our way down the mountain/hill (the palace is at the top of a hill), I got my first sight of the magnificent Kunming Lake, which spans the entirety of the New Summer Gardens. As you can see by my photos, the grounds are full of lotus flowers and the iconic excavated stones that I’ve now come to expect at all large temples. I think the only downside (other than the heat) of the visit was that the haze in the early parts of the day meant the photos couldn’t quite capture the majesty. As we made our way around the lake, you can see further examples of the castle-esque architecture, featuring the large stone base and incredibly ornate roofing.

As we made our way around Kunming lake, the architecture of the bridges really struck me. As you can see, there are multiple amazing (and very different) bridges that connect the little islands throughout the lake and each is incredibly ornate. For those of you wondering, the bottom bridge, not the one in the first picture below was really steep! Like walking up a ladder instead of a flight of stairs. Apparently it was designed to allow the ornate sailing ships of the imperial court to sail around the lake. I was also captivated by the use of stone throughout the grounds and how even when it was designed to look natural, it always looked perfectly in place.

As we made our way to the other side of the lake, we were surrounds by lotus flowers and small pavilions, each seemingly more magnificent than the last. Since you’re surround by water on two sides, you really do feel like you’re isolated and outside of Beijing. Whereas you can always see downtown Beijing from the Forbidden City, here, you really are separate (it helps that the palace is in Haidian, too, which is on the outskirts of the city).

Before leaving, I realized that the main palace was open from the front (as opposed to the back, where all the Buddhist relief carvings were), so we climbed up to the top of the palace. It’s amazing to see the palace appear in all of its splendor and to see the sheer size. Here, the architecture really did remind me of the Forbidden City, but with far more natural stone, as the palace seemed to be built on top of rougher stone outcroppings. As you can see, the palace really does overlook the entire grounds (and Beijing, too!) and you can see all of the ornate, red, gold, and yellow designs. It was amazing to see this piece of history and the majesty of the Summer Palace. I’m sure this won’t be the last time I visit!

Jewish Life

For the first couple weeks of the month, Jesse and I led Zoom Shabbat services. Despite smaller crowds, it was really nice to get to lead services together and have a calming presence during the week. However, given the reopening of Shanghai and the reopening of my compound, we decided to switch to more in person activities. This past Friday, I was able to attend a small Kehillat Beijing Shabbat dinner organized by my friend Jennifer (she’s the community coordinator for Kehiilat Beijing). It was so nice to get to sing along with everyone and have a nice meal and conversation. I didn’t snap any pictures (though the cauliflower below was my contribution to the pot luck), but I’m looking forward to more smaller Shabbat gatherings this summer (and some larger ones once Roberta & Ted are back).

Beyond Shabbat, since Kehillat Shanghai’s trivia was virtual in June, Richard, Paulo, Tom, and I got to compete as a team and we won! Though we probably won’t get to enjoy the Tacolicious gift card – Jesse will be treating us to a meal whenever he can visit instead – it was so much fun and I’m really glad we could be included.

Vegan Food

Like last month, since I was primarily working from home and didn’t get to do too many excursions, I did a lot of cooking. I thought I’d share some of my most picturesque meals. Below you’ll find a cinnamon raisin walnut cake, peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, homemade baked quinoa falafel, and the barbecued cauliflower that I brought to Kehillat Beijing’s Shabbat on Friday.

After our visit to the New Summer Palace, Richard, Paulo, Tom and I went to the vegetarian restaurant that’s near Tsinghua’s campus. I’ve been there multiple times and I am always amazed how many delicious dishes they have (their menu is huge). It was also really nice to eat Chinese food again! Although I’ve made quite a few Chinese-inspired dishes, it’s not quite the same. I’m also always amazed by the diversity of the dishes I can get here (and when I go with Richard and Paulo, I usually get to try some of the spicier dishes since they like heat). We got an amazing feast (mushrooms and okra, fried shiitake, cauliflower dry hot pot, passion fruit juice, kameshi tofu, spicy veggie beef, spicy veggie fish hot pot – look at all those chilis! – red bean baozi shaped like peaches, and veggie jiaozi (dumplings)). Everything was amazing and I think we all left lunch stuffed (I think we earned the meal given that we walked ~ 20,000 steps at the New Summer Palace). All of the dishes were amazing, but I think the kameshi tofu, mushroom dishes, and cauliflower were my favorites!

Animals of Beijing

Although I don’t have any cats like Jesse does, I did run into my neighbor’s cat quite a few times when I went outside. As you can see the gray tabby cat is quite friendly and definitely owns the area outside my door. I also woke up to a visit this past week from a beautiful white cat that was hanging out on my outside stairs that connect to the roof of my apartment. This cat was a bit skittish if I got too near the door, but it is very pretty! I also saw a few dogs (the black one is Riley, who Jennifer was fostering), and a bird!

What Was I Reading/Watching?

Since I was still working from home for much of the month, I was able to read a lot of great comic books and manga. I also finished The Girl Who Lived Twice, the 6th book in the Millennium series (and the last by David Lagercrantz). This was very much a conclusion to Lagercrantz’s trilogy, and I really liked the revelations he revealed about Lisbeth’s relationship with her sister and allowed each of them to be further fleshed out. The entire novel was quite gripping, especially with the political revelations and the use of flashback to describe an expedition to Mt. Everest that was key to the story (I don’t want to spoil too much). I love the twists and turns and figuring out how all of the seemingly disparate threads connect. Having plowed through the original trilogy just before I left for China and the new trilogy over the last few months, I’ll definitely miss reading these books and seeing the adventures of Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, so I’m glad a 7th book is coming out (it’s been commissioned, but doesn’t have a release date yet).

In terms of TV, I finished watching a few different shows this month. I watched the first season of Alex Rider on Amazon’s Freevee Service. It’s based on the YA novel series of the same name that Jesse and I loved as kids, so it was fun to dive back into that world. It’s a really fun and sleek British spy drama centering around a teenage spy. I also finished season 2 of The Witcher on Netflix. I’m a big Henry Cavill fan and I really love his gruff Geralt. If you’re a swords & sorcery fan, I definitely recommend this one. Shifting topics dramatically, I just finished WeCrashed on Apple TV+. WeCrashed tells the story of the creation (and ultimate self destruction) of WeWork, the shared workspace company. I wasn’t familiar with WeWork other than that Kehillat Shanghai rents space from them, so I found the show quite intriguing in it’s depiction of the outrageousness and outlandish lives that the founders (played excellently by Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway) lived. I also just finished Peacemaker on HBOMax. This is a spinoff from James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad and it’s a super fun, incredibly ridiculous romp through a weird corner of the DC Universe. While I certainly wouldn’t want a Batman movie in this tone, it really works for this show! I also finished the new Shaman King anime, which I thoroughly loved! I am a huge fan of the original manga, and it’s great to see a more faithful adaptation to the anime than the one in the early 2000s. Outside of tv, I also watched 3 movies that I highly recommend, Coda, Sing 2, and A Simple Favor. Obviously, Coda just won the Academy Award for best picture, so you don’t need to hear my praises, but it’s a really wonderful family drama and it’s nice to see differently abled people as main characters of a movie. If you’re looking for a fun, goofy, animated movie musical, Sing 2 is the movie for you. It has a lot of heart and, like the first, is just a good time. I also really enjoyed the twists and turns in A Simple Favor. Anna Kendrick, Black Lively, and Henry Goulding were all excellent and I loved the twists on the typical – something unexpected happens in a sleepy town genre!

I’ve also really enjoyed watching Wimbledon this past week. Though the matches have been late, I’ll always be watching to root on Rafael Nadal ! Here’s hoping he continues to win at Wimbledon!

Quarantine Drawings

Like last month, I’m still doing the quarantine drawings (I’ll actually be finishing up this first small sketchbook tonight). Like last month, if there are any drawings that you particularly like, even if you don’t usually comment, please let me know! I really like doing this, so I’m planning to keep doing these informal drawings (though hopefully they’ll just be China drawings, not quarantine – and as I get to do some more excursions, maybe will take some inspiration from different people I see around Beijing).

Outside of my quarantine drawings, I also had some time to play around with the sketching app on my ipad. I’m still working out what the best way to digitally render in the app is, but I’m pretty pleased with the result here!

East Meets West

While I didn’t get to venture too much around downtown Beijing, I did see three signs of the west, a fun M&M cup (ok, so I bought some M&Ms and thought this looked fun), a guy with a National Geographic backpack, and my ice cream cone at the New Summer Palace had a Minions wrapper.

Anime & Comics

No Astronomer in Beijing post would be complete without at least a few photos of manga and anime inspired things that I saw in Beijing. Since most of the month was spent in my apartment, things were a little more scarce, but there is always anime around. I spied a cute Sailor moon decal on a car, two guys wearing anime shorts when waiting to get a COVID test (Doraemon and Naruto), a cool anime inspired ad on the Subway, and a transformers decal on a car. Also, to alleviate some of my stir craziness, I bought some anime and comic book figurines that I wanted to share with you. I also bought a Vegeta soda, too, so I now have a complete set of the Dragon Ball Super sodas (and hopefully when Jesse comes and visits – whenever that is, we can try them)!

For all of you who’ve made it this far, I hope you enjoyed hearing about my month (and especially liked seeing the sites of the New Summer Palace). While my summer will certainly be full of hot, humid weather (and plenty of COVID tests), I’m optimistic that I’ll get to do more fun things in the coming month and can’t wait to share them with you. I hope you all have a good July (and for those of you in the US, a relaxing 4th of July!). As usual, if you have any thoughts, comments, concerns, I’d love to hear from you (either directly in the comments section or on my e-mail). I hope you all stay safe and healthy!

In Peace,

Emmet