L’Shana Tovah from Beijing/Meet Goldie (my new cat!): A September full of High Holy Days, Vegan Cooking, and much more!

Hi Everyone,

As always, thank you all so much for once again returning to my Astronomer in Beijing blog. I hope that this post finds you all doing well and staying safe and healthy. For those of you who are Jewish, L’Shana Tovah! I hope you were able to have a lovely and meaningful Rosh Hashanah (more on my Rosh Hashanah celebrations below) and are using these ten days of awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to reflect on the previous year and the year ahead. I hope that for everyone who is fasting, that it is a safe and meaningful fast. For those of you in academia/education, I hope that the school year is off to a good start and that you’re all staying safe and healthy. Lastly, if any of you have family in the Florida area, I hope they are doing ok given the hurricane.

Before I dive into my month (and introduce you all to Goldie), I wanted to give a brief update on the COVID situation. For now, it’s safe to say that no news is good news. Currently, Beijing is still averaging less than one case a day. However, that has not changed any of the policies and the government is still requiring everyone to test every three days if we want to use the subway, go to any stores, or eat at restaurants. It is currently “Golden Week”, the Chinese National Day holiday, which traditionally means lots of travel, so I’m hoping we don’t see a spike later next week. While much of the country gets a full week days off, Tsinghua only gives us Monday off to try to prevent travel and any associated COVID outbreaks and with Yom Kippur being on Tuesday night/Wednesday, I plan to spend the day working (since I’ll be co-leading services on Wednesday). I know that a lot of you (my parents included) are dealing with waves of COVID outbreaks at schools in what seems to be the new normal in the US. While that sounds exhausting, I will say, that needing to plan your life around getting tested can also be exhausting. I did however, see this cool photo about the collective COVID experience that I just had to share (I don’t think it’s real, but it’s also perfect)!

While having to regularly get tested can be tiring, one of the added bonuses of getting tested by the Drum Tower is that sometimes I get to see some pretty cool artistic/acrobatic displays happening on the weekend!

Also, while not COVID related, China did have its first cases of Monkey Pox, which led to some extremely xenophobic/rascist reactions. Specifically, the Chinese equivalent of Dr. Fauci first issued a warning to avoid touching any foreigners as we might all be carriers for Monkey Pox. This extreme reaction reminded me of the similar avoidance of foreigners during the height of the COVID wave here in May (and of the absolutely horrendous treatment of Africans in certain parts of China at the heigh of COVID). While the Chinese CDC director eventually changed the statement to say 1) Avoid any direct contact with foreigners who’ve returned to China in the last 3 weeks and 2) Avoid contact with anyone who has returned to China in the last 3 weeks, the damage isn’t really mitigated and it is damage. There is no reason to separate foreigners from those returning to China, but it is much easier to identify foreigners than Chinese nationals who were abroad. Listen, America isn’t perfect, we have our own history and reality of racism (one that Chinese news coverage likes to point out a lot – but doesn’t always seem to look inward on), but I do think that liberal leaning people are working to make the US a better country for everyone. I hope people are doing the same here, because it doesn’t always feel that way when you see things like this coming directly from the government.

Meet Goldie!

So the big life update for me this month is that I decided to adopt a wonderful orange cat named Goldie. If someone had commented on my post from a year ago asking if I would get a cat while I’m in China, I probably would have laughed them off, but here I am with a cat cuddled next to me. I think part of me realized that, and I’ve mentioned this before, it is quite isolating living alone in a foreign country. Yes, I have my friends from Tsinghua and my friends from Kehillat Beijing, but I do spend a lot of time in my apartment in the evenings or on the weekends and even though I like my apartment, it still feels lonely. I think it’s harder than I realized to be totally alone in a foreign place. For those wondering, Goldie is a 100% rescue. One of my friends from the Vegans of Beijing, Mio, found her when she was traveling in the outskirts of Beijing (areas more akin to the country). She said that when she got off the train, she saw the sweetest little cat (Goldie), who was super affectionate and being treated like a stray by all of the locals. As you’ll see in the photos, Goldie has a hurt paw (it doesn’t actually seem to bother her, but she doesn’t use her right paw – she won’t put weight on it and she kind of moves her arm like a club), so my friend Mio decided to take her with her and see if she could find a safe home for her.

I saw Mio’s post on WeChat looking for someone to adopt Goldie (Mio already has two cats) and after thinking long and hard about it, I decided that I’d like to meet Goldie and adopt her. When I met Goldie, she immediately snuggled up next to me and I knew she was the cat for me. Mio brought her to my apartment on Tuesday, and after spending much of the afternoon under my bed, she’s been out and about ever since. While I’ve had her less than a week, she definitely seems to like living with me (although she has a bit of separation anxiety when I leave to go to work or even just to get a COVID test). She likes to snuggle right up to my side when I’m sitting on the couch and hop all over me when I’m falling asleep. Just for a full update on Goldie’s health, she received a clean bill of health from the vet. Based on her teeth, the vet thinks she’s about one year old. She’s also tested negative for all of the viruses they’ve tested for and has received her two doses of feline vaccines. She also doesn’t have a broken paw, what Mio originally thought, so we aren’t quite sure why she doesn’t use her paw. She still needs to be spayed (I’m hoping to do that in the next couple of weeks), but for now she’s loving here life. And for those of you who are wondering, while she isn’t the most hyperactive cat, she is an active hopper and jumper and definitely likes exploring all of my apartment (and burrowing in my blankets). She’s also very talkative and always likes me to know where she is. She really reminds me of both of the female cats my parents have had (Rose and LC) and I can’t wait to share my cat-dad experience with all of you!

L’Shana Tovah: Rosh Hashanah at Kehillat Beijing

Like many of you who are reading this blog, Kehillat Beijing celebrated Rosh Hashanah last Sunday night/Monday (we don’t do a 2nd day). It was overall a lovely holiday and a bit of a surreal one. While I’ve already reflected on my year in China, this was another year marker as my first event at Kehillat Beijing was going to last year’s Rosh Hashanah service. While last year I was being introduced to so many people, this year, I got to co-lead the service and act as a de facto cantor (many thanks to all of the wonderful singers who’ve acted as cantors at Temple Sinai over the year – e.g., Gil Harwood and Rabbi Anna Sugarman – for helping ingrain the High Holy Day melodies in my head). Because we had a large crowd of about 60 people and were having a Rosh Hashanah dinner after the Erev Rosh Hashanah service, Roberta had us set up outside in their yard. It certainly made for a magical evening. As you can see, I was one of the four song leaders and then led some of the more High Holy Day specific prayers (or ones with rather unique tunes).

While we usually have a nice crowd of about 20 – 30 people coming for Shabbat, the influx of people also brought some new or returning faces (a lot of people that I had met last year and hadn’t seen since). It made for a lovely evening filled with wonderful food (although Ted did a lot of the cooking, it was also a potluck, so many other members contributed – I made a vegan apple cake (see below)).

While Erev Rosh Hashanah was very crowded, our day service was much smaller, though equally lovely. Because we only had about 14 people, we all took turns reading various different English readings. I was also one of four Torah chanters on Rosh Hashanah (I’m in the process of memorizing my two Torah portions for Yom Kippur), which was very meaningful. I’m especially grateful to my Rabbis from Temple Sinai, Rabbi Linda and Jonathan, for sharing recordings of the High Holy Day torah readings with Jesse last year as they have been invaluable to help us all learn to chant! After our service, we also had a lovely Tashlich service in Wangjing park (which is right behind Roberta & Ted’s home) and then all of the torah readers went out to lunch in 798. While fasting is never fun, I’m certainly looking forward to a meaningful Yom Kippur at Kehillat Beijing next week.

Life at Tsinghua

While the last week has been a whirlwind between adopting Goldie, celebrating Rosh Hashanah, and preparing for Yom Kippur, much of this month was spent doing my astronomy research. As I mentioned in my last update, IDL was finally installed on the Department of Astronomy server. Thus, much of my time spent on Project Morphology was making sure that I can run everything properly. While I was able to verify that both Source Extractor and Galfit work properly, I’m still working on getting Galapagos to run. While I’m confident that it’s installed correctly, it doesn’t help that I’ve never used it successfully and am also not an expert on using the server, so it’s taken me a bit longer than I’d hoped to figure out how to get everything running. However, I’m hoping to have some new results shortly. The bulk of my time this month was spent working on Project Radio. I’m in the process of writing up this project (I’m hoping to have it fully drafted by the end of the month). Beyond writing the introduction and observations sections, I’ve spent a lot of time making more plots for the analysis. This month, my primary new results were in regards to comparing the Radio Luminosity (how bright the emission from these supermassive black holes is in the radio band) to various other properties to see if this allows us to further investigate our findings in regards to bent radio AGNs both in and out of clusters. While I still have a few last plots to work out, I’m really liking the results of this paper. It isn’t going to be ground-breaking, but I do think it provides some new insights into the evolution of bent radio AGNs.

Beyond my own research, the department also hosted two lovely events to welcome the new postdocs to the department. At the beginning of the month, we had a formal coffee hour reception to welcome all the new postdocs and then just last week, we had a Postdoc Academic Salon, where we all got to present approximately 5 minute presentations on our research. While my presentation went very well, we did have a few technical difficulties (one of my plots somehow lost all of the data points when I uploaded the powerpoint file to the cloud and Richard’s powerpoint got rotated 90 degrees). Regardless, I’m really glad that these events are happening because I had raised that when I arrived, the department (outside of my research group) hadn’t been very welcoming and I’m glad that the faculty heard my (and many of the other foreign postdocs) concerns. Additionally, since my friend Miriam is now working at Tsinghua, I was able to invite her to the Academic Salon and she got to meet Richard and Paulo (she had taught us all Mandarin last winter).

Beyond Astronomy, I also started taking free online Mandarin lessons offered by Tsinghua (The classes have had 4-6 other students, including my colleague Pablo). While I’m glad to take the classes, I don’t know how helpful they’ll be. Although I’m signed up for the beginner level, I think the professor believes we should be at a higher level and is very quick to cover material without correcting our tones. Maybe it’s just my being self-conscience, but I’m usually pretty unsure of the tone and would rather be corrected than just blitzing through material. Given how tone sensitive Mandarin is, I’m not sure how good the results will be.

The Vegan Market

This month I went to a lot of food related vegan events. The first was the September Vegan Market. Because of changes in ownership of Chez Soi, where we usually have the markets, September’s market was actually hosted at a restaurant that is approximately a 10 minute walk from my apartment (making it super convenient)! I’ve mentioned multiple times, but these are some of my favorite events and I’m so glad that they happen. It’s so nice to see some familiar faces, eat really good Western style vegan food (vegan mac n’ cheese, crepes, vegan goat cheese & beet crustini, vegan mango mousse, and so many cookies!), and support a good cause. At all of the markets, they usually do a raffle where the money goes to various animal rescue charities. As an animal lover, I’m happy to buy raffle tickets as a donation, even if I don’t win. This time, I actually did win! and I won 4 times!! I got a copy of Beijing-opoly (a monopoly style game set around the laowai experience in Beijing – and yes, at any future game nights, be them in Saratoga or elsewhere, I’ll definitely be bringing this out even if just to talk about my China experience), peanut butter, cookies, and mac n’cheese!

Jianbing Making

The following day, Richard, Tom, and I went to a Jianbing making class hosted by the Hutong. For those of you who don’t remember, jianbing is a crepe like delicacy with a dough made of wheat and mung bean flour that is cooked on a large flat surface and stuffed with fresh vegetables and a cracker (with a spicy sauce, too!). Traditionally, an egg is scrambled on top of the dough as it is cooking as well. Although it’s usually thought of as a breakfast food here, given my Western diet, I like to eat them for lunch. While this wasn’t an explicitly vegan class, they did offer vegan alternatives (including just egg) for everyone, which was really great for me. If you remember, one of the first Chinese foods I had in Shanghai with Jesse was a jianbing made with just egg and while mine weren’t as pretty, they are super tasty!

One of the cool things that I learned was the mythic origin of jianbing. As much of Chinese cuisine uses rice or noodles and not bread like products, jianbing is unique. It originated originated almost 2000 years ago during the Three Kingdoms period, where a general, who was having trouble feeding his army realized that he could feed his soldiers by creating a dough and baking it on their shields! Unlike the classes that I’ve done as part of the Vegans of Beijing, much of the prep work was already done for us (chopping vegetables). However, we were still able to mix the batter (a mix of water, mung bean flower, and wheat flower), so that we could make as many jianbing as possible (you can see all of mine below)! Because the hot plates we were using are not as big as those at the professional stalls, we made slightly smaller jianbing. The entire event was a lot of fun and although I don’t have a crepe pan in my apartment, I’m hoping to use one of my normal pans to try to make some! After making a few, it definitely takes a bit of time to get used to making the pastry correctly, but I think I’ve got a sense of it now. Also, for the life of me, I don’t know how someone in NYC or LA hasn’t monopolized a Jianbing fusion restaurant with classic jianbing, falafel jianbing, hot dog jianbing, or burrito jianbing.

Baozi Making

Last weekend, I attended another vegan cooking class hosting by Vegans of Beijing. This is my third cooking class and it’s nice to see a similar group of people coming every time. This time we were making baozi! Of all of the other recipes that I’ve learned, this was probably the most technical and challenging. For those of you who are unfamiliar, baozi are steamed (or pan fried) buns filled with veggies (and other things). We made three different baozi (mapo tofu, just egg with Chinese chive and sweet potato noodles, and vesta vegan pork with scallions). As you can see below, the dough needs to get very smooth and almost shiny, so we had to continuously knead the dough with our fists and fold it in half. It definitely helped that our teacher, Mr. Zhou, is an expert, because I definitely wasn’t sure if my dough would ever get smooth enough. Once the dough was kneaded, we then let it rise for about 30+ minutes.

While the dough was rising, we got to work on the fillings! Unlike the previous classes, where everyone made everything, for this one, each person chose a station and was responsible for making one type of baozi (since the cooking time for baozi is longer than for any of the dishes we’ve made previously). Since I had learned to make mapo tofu last time (and it’s really good!), I decided I’d try making the just egg, Chinese chive, and sweet potato noodle boazi (the vesta vegan pork was just a bit too realistic looking for me). For the just egg, we basically made a scramble that we then added the chives and sweet potato noodles too (the noodles were to add a bit of texture and then worked really well). Although I didn’t make it, for the mapo tofu, the main difference is that you need to chop the tofu into much smaller pieces so that it can easily fit into the baozi.

Once we had the fillings made, we rolled out our dough and cut it into eight pieces. Then we needed to flatten the dough to get an approximately circular dough shell to fill with filling. While I’m used to rolling out dough for cookies, you needed to be careful to constantly turn the dough to keep it uniform in size. Once you had a thin enough dough, assembly began. And this is where it’s all technique. After you put the filling in the center, you need to keep you thumb near the center as you use your other fingers and other thumb to pinch the sides of the dough to get the typically beautiful pinched top. I found this to be quite difficult and while my baozi were tasty, they were definitely NOT the prettiest (though none exploded!).

Once we’d finished assembling all our baozi, Mr. Zhou pan fried half of them and steamed the other half. I’d never had pan fried baozi and I’ll definitely be on the lookout for them! They are delicious (all of the types are). Because you pan fry them and then steam them, you get a nice hard sear (the photos below almost look like a pineapple upside down cake or a monkey bread) and then a nice steamed bun on top. They were incredibly delicious and we all really enjoyed a lovely meal after making them! While it is a bit of a time commitment, I do hope to try to make them on my own sometime soon.

An Afternoon at the Opera

Much like my going to a Chinese ballet in August, early in September, all of the foreign postdocs were invited to go to a Chinese Opera Experience as part of the Mid-Autumn Festival Gathering for Foreign Talents in Beijing. Unfortunately, only Tom and I were able to go, but it was a really fun event, and like with the ballet, probably something that I wouldn’t have experienced on my own. The event started with an informal arts and crafts session where we could paint our own Chinese opera masks, make intricate string lanyards, do paper cutting, and egg painting (I ran out of time and wasn’t able to do the egg painting). Since I’m a big fan of art in general, I really enjoyed getting do this, especially the mask painting (you’ll see that it even inspired one of my drawings this month).

While the above examples are all professionally done, I think my own versions came out pretty well (see below, especially the mask – the lanyard was really tough)! One of the things that I liked the most was that we were all painting masks in the style of the Monkey King, one of the principal players in Chinese folklore. Personally, the Monkey King always has held a special place for me, because Journey to the West, the tale of the Monkey King was the inspiration for DragonBall and the character Goku, who’s my favorite manga/anime character. With the masks, it was really cool to see how they emphasize the eyes and nose and add a flare for the dramatic. Beyond the actual activities, one of the most surprising things was that I ran into Roberta there! Having spent a year living in Beijing, I’ve only run into people a handful of times (like four, one of which was this week), and I certainly wasn’t expecting to see her there (though it makes sense since she is a highly talent foreign worker herself). It ended up working out perfectly since this was on a Friday afternoon and I was able to get a ride with her to her home for Shabbat.

After the arts and crafts, we were then shuttled into a magnificent Beijing Opera theatre. The entire room was probably the size of a typical black box theatre (with COVID separation in the seating, there were ~ 40 seats on each of the two floors). After a series of long speeches praising the initiative and asking us to think fondly of our time in China, we got to see an actual Beijing (or Peking) Opera! Well, not a full opera. We saw an excerpt from The Peony Pavilion, which is one of the most famous Beijing operas. In its full extent, it lasts 55 scenes or approximately 22 hours. While the portion of the performance we saw dealt with a young court woman feeling ill-at-ease with her beauty being locked away from the world to see, the entire play actually has a lot of mythical and supernatural elements to it. When I was talking to Roberta afterward, she mentioned that an abridged version of The Peony Pavilion had been performed in the Astor Court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the early 2010s and that it was fantastic (if any of you saw it, please let me know!). While I had a bit of trouble following the narrative through the lyrics (they had translations on a side screen), I did notice how different the opera tradition is in the east from the west. I could definitely hear the influence of the tonality of Chinese language in the music and could hear the progression from spoken Mandarin to singing Mandarin. Please take some time to marvel at the architecture of the opera house (both inside and outside) below and the lovely costuming.

After the event, we were all gifted some lovely looking mooncakes (the traditional dessert of the Mid-Autumn Festival) and other pastries (as well as a recreation of a ticket to the opera). While this was incredibly generous, I’ve never felt more like the mother in Pearl Buck’s Peony making sure that pastries were made without pork fat (she had to because they were a Jewish family and kept Kosher). Because traditional mooncakes and other pastries typically use lard and other animal fats, I decided not to risk it and instead gave the pastries to my colleagues (who definitely enjoyed them). Thankfully, as I showed in the Vegan Market section, I was able to get some yummy vegan mooncakes.

Exploring Chaoyang Park and Ditan Park

At the beginning of the September, Richard, Tom, and I met up with Pablo (one of the new foreign postdocs in my group) to welcome him to Beijing. Since we all had a hankering for pizza, we decided to check our Bottega, which was awarded the 2nd best Neopolitan Pizzeria in all of Asia (including Japan and Australia – apparently outside of Italy, Japan has the most Neopolitan pizzerias in the world). While I follow a vegan diet, I do occasionally eat dairy, so I figured for award winning pizza, it was worth a try (I got an Eggplant Parm pizza). It definitely took me back to my visits to Italy and all of the yummy pizza I had there.

After that, we decided to explore Chaoyang Park (see above), one of the most popular parks in Beijing and a place that I hadn’t been to yet. As you can see from the above photos, Chaoyang Park is beautiful! it was a nice lake and an overall relaxing vibe. However, this is only half the park. The other half is an amusement park! While this is no Disney World, I definitely got flashbacks to when my grandparents used to take me to Fantasy Island near Buffalo with all of the retro mascots and even a log flume! Although we didn’t go on any of the rides (most of the rides are for little kids), it was fun to walk around and see. I can certainly see why it’s popular with families

Later in the month, Richard, Tom, and I went to Ditan Park (full disclosure, after our Jianbing class, we had made a plan to go bowling, but unfortunately, the bowling alley that we walked to is no longer open, so we decided to pivot and explore Ditan Park). Like many of the other parks/temples, this has both lovely grounds and some historical significance. Ditan Park is the home of the Temple of Earth (which pairs with the Temple of Heaven on the other side of the city). While not as ornate as the Temple of Heaven (or as touristy), you can see the architectural parallels in the alters to earth and the smaller temples. It was cool to visit after going to the Temple of Heaven and get to notice the similarities.

It’s also just a really pretty park in general, so enjoy some of the pictures of the rest of the grounds (including some very large croquet courts!).

Exploring Beijing

Between going to Mio’s to meet Goldie, going to all of the different cooking classes, and visiting lots of parks, I certainly saw a lot of Beijing this month. As such, I saw a lot of cool subway art, street art (we went to 798 for lunch after Tashlich), flowers, and other cool stuff. Additionally, I got to explore a whole other part of the Chaoyang area when I was able to visit the United States Embassy in Beijing to do my civic duty and give them my absentee ballot. Although some states let you vote online, New York still requires that all ballots be sent my mail. As the US Embassy is aware of the sometimes excessive lag times between sending mail between China and the US right now, they offered to any residents living in Beijing to send their ballots via diplomatic pouch if they arrived before October 1. Hence, I spent my Friday going to the Embassy. While I couldn’t take pictures inside the embassy (electronics are not allowed in), I must say that the embassy has some pretty amazing artwork (I think all done by American artists). While I have no idea if I’ll be back, it would be cool to get a tour at some point (though I have no idea if that is allowed).

While much of what I saw near my apartment were the typical beauty of the Shichahai lakes, one of my neighbors also seems to be growing gourds on their roof and another is drying dragon fruit and banana’s (I’m assuming for some kind of dried fruit snack). Oh what you see in the hutongs!

Beyond that, I also saw some pretty cool advertisements, art on scooters, street art, and other big statues all around the city (in both Sanlitun, 798, and near Chaoyang Park).

I also got to see some more interesting buildings and parts of the city as I wandered around walking from the US Embassy to Shabbat on Friday (and you can also see where the bowling alley used to be).

And lastly, all of the flowers and other bits of nature!

Jewish Life in Beijing

Beyond Rosh Hashanah, we’ve also had some lovely Shabbat dinners this month at Kehillat Beijing. Our themes included Pizza Shabbat, Malaysia “Truly Asia” Shabbat, Native American Day Shabbat, and Chinese National Day Shabbat. As always, the food that Ted made (and Roberta & Ted’s Ayi for Chinese National Day Shabbat) was amazing and the meal was a ton of fun (though I’ll need to get an automatic cat feeder as Goldie was very hungry when I got back from Shabbat – I had fed her before I went to work, but she ate it all right away).

Vegan Food

While I did a lot of Vegan Chinese cooking this month, I didn’t get to visit any vegan restaurants. I did do some Western style cooking of my own (a Mushroom sandwich and tofu nuggets), as well as try my hand at recreating the mapo tofu, cumin mushrooms, Sichuan sword beans, and cold spinach salad with peanuts that I learned at my Chinese cooking class and I think they all came out well. I also made some really delicious chocolate chocolate chip cookies for the first group meeting of the semester (yes, they’re still bright and early on Saturday morning) and they were a big hit with all of the students and my fellow postdocs. I was also gifted an interesting chilled Chinese dessert from some of the students in my group (the last photo). It was some kind of mochi-like dessert in a clear broth with red beans! While it’s unlike any Western desserts, it was quite refreshing on a hot day!

Additionally, at the Pizza Shabbat, there was some Vegan Ice Cream, which is a rarity here in China! And I got some gelato mango and strawberry gelato, which depending on how authentic it was, should be vegan, too! Additionally, I got to try some vegan mooncakes from Gongdelin (also known as Godly), which is one of the oldest vegetarian restaurants in China and that Jesse gets to go to often in Shanghai (I’ve been twice to the location here)!

Animals of Beijing

Although Goldie now has her forever home with me, I still like seeing all of the neighborhood cats and dogs (and especially Roberta & Ted’s dogs Mimi and Honey). I even had the return of the cats on the roof this month. Hopefully, Goldie won’t be as territorial as my Mom and Dad’s cat LC, because I don’t want to deal with any kind of screeching.

Daily Drawings

This month, I continued doing my daily drawings, but I tried to change up the style a bit and do some more experimental things in terms of inking. If there are any that you particularly like, please let me know! This October, I’ll be doing Bat-ober inked drawings following prompts from comic book artist Chris Samnee (in the spirit of Inktober). So if you’ve missed seeing me do comic book drawings, you’re in luck!

What am I Reading/Watching?

This month, I finally finished reading Lady of Avalon. While it was a slow read, I think the last third (the book was divided into three parts) was my favorite. All of the connections to the traditional King Arthur mythos finally became evident and I think the narrative in this part was the strongest. While I’m not in a rush to read the other books in the series, if I happened upon them, I wouldn’t say no. Beyond that, I started reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which I really like so far. I saw the movie with Viggo Mortenson at the Saratoga Film Forum when it came out and really liked it, but since it’s been a while, I don’t feel like I’m being spoiled. On a sadder reading note, the largest English language bookstore in Beijing just closed (apparently the building it was housed in is being demolished). While I’m always cognizant of trying not too accumulate too much stuff so as to make it hard to bring it back to the US, it is definitely a bummer. Thankfully, Jesse’s been able to get a lot of books, so hopefully we’ll get to trade sooner rather than later. At least I still have plenty of digital comics and manga to read.

In terms of TV, this month, I finished two different shows, Suspicion on Apple TV+ and season 1 of Jack Ryan on Amazon. I liked both. Suspicion is a bit of a suspense/kidnapping mystery revolving around the kidnapping of the son of an important media mogul (played by Uma Thurman) and the suspects who get caught up in the drama. While the ending is a bit too on the nose, I really liked the build up of the show and did not see the end coming at all. Jack Ryan is the John Krasinski starring show based the Tom Clancy novels. While at times it feels a little too real (especially when there is a major virus outbreak in the US), it’s a really well made show and I’m excited to watch season 2 (and season 3).

East Meets West

In wandering around Beijing, I also saw a lot of different examples of American culture/consumerism. While most of these brands are to be expected (including a super swanky Starbucks and lots of Mickey Mouse/Disney stickers), they’re always fun to see! I also noticed some American games at the venue for the Vegan Market (I do miss game nights – Pablo has some friends here who do game nights, so hopefully I can join them sometime soon), as well as a Little Prince motorcycle mat! I did also see some new Halloween decorations at the import stores, so I’m expecting to see more in the coming weeks.

Anime & Comics

As always, no Astronomer in Beijing blog post will be complete without photos of all of the anime and comics things I saw in Beijing. While I saw a ton of stickers, I also saw some cool figurines and t-shirts, too! It’s so cool to turn the corner and see DragonBall Z stickers, One Piece figurines, Doraemon, or Batman (as well as some anime inspired figurines)! As I told my friends, I’m a sucker for buying the little mini figs and for seeing all of my fandom, so this always puts a smile on my face.

For those of you who made it this far, thank you so much for reading my blog. I hope you enjoyed meeting Goldie (she’s been snuggled up next to me while I write this), seeing all of my vegan cooking, and hearing about my Rosh Hashanah! For those of you that celebrate, I hope you have a safe and meaningful fast for Yom Kippur. I hope October is a happy, safe, and healthy month for you all. I know for me that I’m going to be buckling down and trying to crank out my paper draft on Project Radio (so after Yom Kippur, that becomes priority 1!). If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please let me know! It’d be great to hear from you!

In Peace,

Emmet