A Very Busy October: A Hike to the Great Wall, A Return to the Old Summer Palace, A Meaningful Yom Kippur, a Lovely Sukkot, the Tsinghua Astro Games, Batober, and Lots of Vegan Food!

Hi Everyone,

Thank you all for returning to my Astronomer in Beijing blog. I really appreciate hearing from so many of you about these posts. I hope this month’s installment finds you all safe and healthy (and maybe with a bit of a sugar rush if you were able to get some Halloween candy). Before I dive into what wound up being a very exhausting and busy month, I wanted to update you all on the state of life in Beijing. As I’m sure some of you were aware of, the big government meetings occurred in Beijing in the middle of October. Because of this, the city has been hyper vigilant about letting people return to Beijing (one of my friends wasn’t initially allowed to return after a 3 day visit to another city even though that city had no COVID cases) and there has been an added degree of security at subway stations (lots of guards). While the meetings didn’t explicitly prevent me from doing anything, I did try to avoid the area around the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. Beyond the added degree of security, the meetings also means that we’re still getting COVID tests every 72 hours (my department has been particularly strict about reminding everyone to get tested). While the testing is now pretty routine, it’s still quite stressful between the waiting for the results and the daily announcements of where the COVID cases are. So far, nothing has impacted me, but the case counts have been on the rise in the city basically since the Chinese National Day holiday. We’re now averaging between 20 and 30 cases a day. While most of those cases are isolated (meaning they were existing close contacts), it’s still a bit stressful to have to follow the reports to make sure my hutong isn’t going to lock down again (I’ve made sure to stock up on cat food and litter for Goldie just in case). On the bright side, on Friday, there were some reports of foreign nationals being able to get the Pfizer booster here in China. Right now, it’s looking like it’ll just be German nationals, but here’s hoping the rest of us can get a Pfizer shot eventually. On a covid adjacent note, I was able to track down a flu shot thanks to some help from Roberta! Given all of the COVID concerns here, I figured getting a flu shot to prevent against that would be helpful.

Before I dive into my month, I feel like I need to address the scary rise in antisemitism in the US over the last month. While I’m slightly sheltered by my living in China (we’ll table a discussion of the complicated history of Jews in China for later), I know that many of you aren’t and that this is a scary time. It’s really concerning to me that both GOP lawmakers and candidates (if you haven’t already voted, PLEASE VOTE) as well as people like Kanye West and Kyrie Irving have decided to renormalize hate speech towards Jews. I’ve never cared for Kanye West as a musician, so I won’t dwell on him beyond saying his statements are extremely concerning, but I am a basketball fan and I listen to a lot of basketball podcasts. While uniformly all of the commentators immediately condemned Kyrie’s implicit and explicit statements, I still find the lack of comments from players both disheartening and frustrating. I remember proudly hearing stories about Rabbis marching with Dr. Martin Luther King and playing an active role as allies in the Civil Rights movement when I was a kid, so given so many players active roles in denouncing violence against the African American community, I was hoping some might speak out to condemn not just antisemitism, but hate speech in general. That no prominent active players have (ok, Lebron and CJ McCollum made statements yesterday, but come on, did they need to wait a week) has really made it harder to enjoy following the NBA. Beyond that, that so many of the comments on articles that condemn Kyrie are people supporting him and saying he was right also terrifies me. While I may be living abroad, I don’t think of myself as anything other than an American Jew and it’s terrifying to think that the home I left might not be as welcoming as it was when I left. Again, for me this is all abstract since I’m not living in the US right now, but I know for many of you that it isn’t. I hope you all are able to find solace within your communities and are able to still feel safe.

Hiking the Old Great Wall

Although I usually go in order of events for my posts, I wanted to jump out of order to share some of the coolest and more picture-worthy things that I did this month. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to join some friends from Kehillat Beijing (including Roberta & Ted and their puppies Mimi & Honey) on a hike to some of the oldest parts of the Great Wall near Beijing. If you remember (or notice the background photo on this website), I visited the Great Wall last fall and was able to walk around both touristy and less touristy parts. However, all of the Great Wall near Huairou has either restored so that it makes for a magnificent view of ancient China and allows for the experience of standing atop a pristine wall to imagine fighting back the Mongols. Unlike last time, what I saw was more akin to the ancient ruins that are seen throughout Europe. So without further ado, enjoy the photos of the hike!

While the hike started out with walking through fields of trees, we quickly approached the more hilly/mountainous terrain, which led us to the Beiqi Wall, which dates to over 1500 years old. While I’ve seen artifacts in museums that are this old, it’s amazing to actually walk along a road that old! As you can see from the photos, we were basically the only people at these ruins when we were there, so there was a feeling of being transported far away from Beijing proper (but amazingly, we had cell reception the entire time).

Although only a small portion of the hike was on the Beiqi wall, we did hike a large portion of the Ming Wall, which was built in the 14th Century. It was really cool to walk the wall and I could definitely see the architectural similarities between this portion of the wall and the part of the wall I visited in Huairou. It was really cool to see the remains of the outposts at the wall as we traversed the hills. As you can see the wall mirrors the terrain, so we had to climb a lot of very steep stairs (and I do mean climb, these were pretty steep, so it was more like rock climbing, using your hands and feet, than just walking). I will say that I was pretty amazed by how easily Mimi & Honey moved over all of the terrain. I’m so used to seeing them run around Roberta & Ted’s house, so it was cool to see them in action.

Overall, the hike was amazing and I’m so glad that I was invited to do it. I’m always so fascinated by the size of Beijing and how even an hour and a half outside of the city, I’m able to find myself seemingly in the middle of nowhere surrounded only by nature and history. I hope you all enjoyed seeing so many pictures of a very different side of the Great Wall! It was also really nice to see the fall colors. While there are parks in Beijing and on campus, I miss the reds, yellows, and oranges of autumn in Upstate NY.

Not to be outdone, but on our way back to Beijing proper, we passed an apple orchard and got to pick some apples! While it wasn’t the sprawling fields of Saratoga apple and there were no cider donuts, it was so nice to pick fruit off a tree! I really missed getting to do that (and the apples have been pretty tasty, too!).

A Return to the Old Summer Palace

This month I also visited the Old Summer Palace again with a few of the postdocs from the Astronomy Department (Richard, Pablo, and Daniele – Daniele is the latest international postdoc to join the department – he just came from Italy at the end of September). Like the Great Wall, some of you may remember that Richard and I visited the Old Summer Palace last November, so it was nice to both return and go a bit earlier in the fall when everything still had the iconic fall colors (it was very gray the last time I visited). One of the things that I love about the Old Summer Palace is that when you enter it, you’re immediately transported away from the very urban surroundings of Haidian (the district where both Tsinghua and the Old Summer Palace are). Once you pass through the initial gates, you find a sprawling park full of large lakes, lots of bridges, pagodas, and pretty trees (special thanks to Pablo and Daniele for a few of the photos below, especially some of the non-selfies that I’m in).

The grounds, which house a former residence for the emperor, are one of the major attractions at the Old Summer Palace. Seeing all of the large lakes, it’s easy to imagine the ruling elite of ancient China spending summers removed from the Forbidden City and cooling off in the waters. The Old Summer Palace itself dates back to the 1500s and unlike the Forbidden City, was built in a hybrid European-Chinese style. However, unlike many of the other temples and palaces that I’ve visited, all that remains of the Old Summer Palace are the ruins that were left after the British and French ransacked the palace during the Opium Wars (interestingly, reparations from the opium wars led to the creation of Tsinghua University – for a full history, check out my past blog post). Because much of the Chinese architecture was built in wood, while the European-style architecture was built in stone, the ruins look far more like something one might find in Europe. While most everything is in ruins, there is a very fun and rather European style stone maze (we were able to make it to the center without getting too turned around)! You can see all of us in front of it below. Having visited both the Old and New Summer Palace now, it’s nice to see the contrast. While both are marvelous, the central Lake is the dominant feature of the New Summer Palace, while there are far more manicured gardens in the Old Summer Palace. Also, I do want to highlight again the bust of Victor Hugo, who is honored for his writings condemning the destruction by the joint British-French forces. Given his warm remembrance here, I have to wonder what the popularity of Les Miserables is here (especially given the use of various songs during the Shanghai lockdowns).

Since the ruins only take up a small portion of the grounds, and the gardens and lakes are magnificent, it must seem like I’ve shown you all everything. However, there’s a whole third of the grounds that I still haven’t seen, so I’ll have to go back – maybe sometime in the spring. It was a ton of fun to just wander around the park and explore. We even stumbled upon a little market that was there selling jewelry, toys, and sweets! It’s so nice to see parts of the city so vibrant, especially as the winter chill starts to set in.

A Meaningful Yom Kippur and a Lovely Sukkot

While much of September was spent preparing for the High Holy Days, we hadn’t yet celebrated Yom Kippur when I wrote my last blog post. We had a lovely and very full day of Yom Kippur services at Kehillat Beijing. We had about 30-40 people gathered at Roberta & Ted’s home for Kol Nidre and then there was a crowd of about 15 people who were there for our very full day of services. I was able to continue my role leading some of the prayers (I didn’t do Kol Nidre, though one of these years I’d like to try to learn it), although I did do two torah readings! Once again, I want to thank Rabbi Linda and Rabbi Jonathan from Temple Sinai for their very helpful tapes for learning the Torah Portions! I had to scramble to learn a second one in about 5 days and I wouldn’t have been able to do it without them. We had a lovely day complete with some discussion on Jewish identity and a walk through Wangjing Park which is right behind Roberta & Ted’s house (see below). And of course, after a long day of fasting, we were able to top everything off with a lovely break fast of bagels (and some chocolate cookies that I made).

We followed up our Yom Kippur celebration with some Sukkah building the following Erev Shabbat and a lovely Sukkah party hosted by Roberta & Ted on Sunday.

Last year, Roberta & I built the Sukkah from scratch at their home in Huairou, so it was definitely nice to have some help this year! I really loved the majestic roof that we made covered in bamboo and natural foliage (though with enough spacing to see what few stars you can see in Beijing at night). It’s still amazing to me that I can be so far removed from my home Jewish community, yet am still able to find a sukkah (and shake a lulav and etrog). It was a lovely way to spend a fall afternoon!

One of the big highlights for me was that Roberta & Ted hired a jianbing maker so there were jianbing for everyone! I really love jianbing, but I don’t eat them that often, so it was nice to get one (and have Ted help me get one without egg)! There was also delicious apple cider (and I really forgot how much I missed apple cider) and peanut butter cookies that I made that were a big hit! Thanks to the jianbing, I was able to complete the mitzvah of having a meal in the Sukkah!

The Vegan Market, Vegan Cookies, and Vegan Cooking

As should be apparent by this blog post, October was a pretty full month! Outside of all I’ve already shared, I also went to three different vegan events! The first was the October Vegan market. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, but it was a lot of fun and full of a ton of delicious food (Tom even joined me at this one and really enjoyed it too)!

Like most vegan markets, I left with a full stomach and lots of goodies to enjoy during the week. Some of the highlights include a delicious Crepe Suzette, a scrumptious grilled cheese toastie with a pepper and pesto sauce, chocolate pretzel bark, and lots of cookies and other desserts. I also won some black tea in the raffle!

The following week, one of the bakers, Small Batch Cookie (you can see her delicious offerings right above these words), was doing a vegan baking Q&A at Silence Coffee (which is a cafe run & operated entirely by people who are deaf, which is both a great cause and makes some really good teas/sodas and definitely a venue I want to support – it’s also about 15 minutes from my apartment, too!). It was really fun to hang out with some of the people that I know from Vegans of Beijing in a more casual setting! And I even got some tips on how to make vegan butter! I haven’t tried it yet, but I will!

Lastly, I went to this month’s Vegans of Beijing cooking class at the Hutong Cooking school. I’ve so loved learning so many recipes and this class definitely didn’t disappoint! This month’s theme was Buddhist cuisine, which meant that we used no garlic or onion (because of their pungent fragrance). We made braised tofu with mushrooms and bamboo shoots, stir-fried potatoes with mushrooms, stir fried corn with cucumber and carrot, and stir fried lotus root with snow peas and black fungus! Since a lot of the vegetarian restaurants I’ve gone to in Beijing are Buddhist restaurants, I definitely recognized a few of the dishes. Although we did all of the prep work first before the cooking, I’ll highlight each dish separately! One of the culinary things that I’ve most enjoyed here is moving beyond what is deemed as “Chinese vegetables” based on my time in American Chinese restaurants. Before coming here, I only associated baby corn with Chinese cuisine. However, corn on the cob is super popular here and it was really fun to learn how it can be used in Chinese food. Also, the Chef’s knife skills are just amazing! He had a pretty ingenious way of getting all of the kernels off the corn by removing one column of corn and then cutting at the base (instead of the classical western approach of just running your knife down the cob). This dish had an incredibly homey and fall feel to it and would definitely be fun for a Chinese inspired Thanksgiving meal!

The second dish we prepared was the tofu dish, which was probably my favorite as this is the first time we made the classic fried tofu that is in a lot of American Chinese restaurants. While I’ve cooked a lot of tofu in my life, I’ve never been great at frying it, so it was really helpful to get some pointers about the oil needing to be sufficiently hot so that you can slide the tofu around the entire wok!

The third dish was probably the most surprising as it involved potatoes cut into wedges, almost like french fries! While I’ve seen (and made) the shredded potato dishes, this was the first time I’d seen this kind of dish! It was so fun to have a fried potato and it not just be french fries! It was really yummy and I look forward to making it again!

The last dish was the lotus root with black fungus! I really like the black fungus mushrooms (I’m not sure I’ve ever seen them in the US outside of Asian markets), but they’re every where here. We used rehydrated dried mushrooms (which are super popular here and really yummy) and cooked it with lotus root for a very yummy dish! I’ve never handled lotus root before, but it was surprisingly easy and really delicious!

I’m definitely always excited for more cooking classes and to build up my repertoire of Chinese dishes that I can make. I’ll definitely be preparing one big Chinese feast whenever I’m back in the US.

Life at Tsinghua

Although I did a ton of fun stuff this month, I also spent a lot of time at Tsinghua doing Astronomy. While I’m still juggling a few different projects, I spent the majority of my time on Project Radio, my study of the radio morphology of bent, double-lobed radio sources in and not in galaxy clusters. I’m very pleased to report that things are coming along nicely and shaping up well to be sent to co-authors in December. I spent a lot of the month between the actual writing process, making figures for the paper (including some example images to highlight the diversity of bent radio AGNs in our sample), and adding error bars to existing figures and plots. I will say that one of the annoying things about this project can be the overly complex nature of estimating error (since I have both error in my own measurements and error in the redshift, it can get a bit complicated). Thankfully I’ve been able to cannibalize some of the existing error code from my dissertation for this project, so not everything was needed to be done from scratch. Also, I had a mini breakthrough yesterday morning when I realized I needed to remake a plot and we definitely have what I think will be the most interesting result of the paper in regards to the symmetry in the size of radio lobes in clusters. I won’t spoil things here, but I’m very excited! I’ll be spending the rest of the week locking in the majority of the paper so that I can focus on the analysis with the spectral index (which still needs to be finalized).

While Project Radio has been my focus, I also spent some time working on Project Morphology, my study of the morphology-density relationship in protoclusters at high redshift. I’ve been able to start to use Galapagos to do the analysis and am excited to spend some more time on that project later this week. Additionally, one of Zheng’s graduate students is interested in galaxy morphology, so he’s going to help with the analysis. It’ll be great to be able to mentor a student (and help him as he works on his own projects that relate to galaxy morphology and clusters). Also, while not my own research, I was asked by the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal to review a new paper on bent radio AGNs. I’ve just started reading it, but I’m excited to be a referee! I also had the opportunity to give a Zoom presentation with Jesse in Prof. Maggie Greaves’s EN105 Science Writing Class at Skidmore, which was a lot of fun, too!

This month also marked my approximate 1 year of being employed by the Department of Astronomy. As part of my contract, that means that I (along with Richard and a few other postdocs) had our one year review where we presented the work we did to a few faculty members in the department and they nominally give us some feedback for how to either improve our research or make for stronger candidates when we next apply for jobs. While the actual 8 minute presentation was pretty straight forward, there was a bit of a snafu for Richard and me because the online form required a 2000 character statement on our research. As it was meant to be in Mandarin (the actual presentations were in English), we assumed we needed to write 2000 words. In reality, they wanted 2000 key strokes (which is closer to 2000 words in Mandarin, but only 300 in English), so we both ended up spending far too much time on that! Thankfully the presentation went well. The major feedback was that all of the postdocs could stand to publish more (something that I am actively trying to remedy) and I’m hoping to meet with my supervisor later this month to map out a research plan for the coming year.

Outside of my research, I also went to a few different events for International scholars on campus (hence why I saw so much of the campus and got to take some lovely photos above).

Early in October, the International Scholars Office hosted a happy hour of sorts. It was very nice to meet some new foreigners on campus and enjoy some yummy snacks! They also asked if anyone would be interested in doing any kind of performance, so since I love singing, I sang Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. Given the range of nationalities, I never know what songs people will know, but I figured I couldn’t go wrong with Hallelujah. Last week, the International Scholars Office hosted a frisbee break and it was so much fun to toss a frisbee around (and I even got a Tsinghua frisbee!). Additionally, I also got to eat a lot of cake this month as we had the Department’s special coffee hour to welcome new postdocs (both the one in October and November since my last post) and one of the students in Zheng’s group had a birthday, so the students brought a cake. While I still greatly prefer Western style cake, these cakes were definitely some of the better ones I’ve had here.

Beyond work, we also had some celebratory dinners among the foreign postdocs. We had a lovely welcome dinner at Jing-A Brewery to welcome Daniele to Beijing (they had a great vegan mapo tofu dip and a falafel burger). We also celebrated Tom’s Birthday with dinner at a Syrian restaurant near campus (it was so lovely to get to eat hummus, baba ganoush, tabouleh, and a falafel wrap! Lastly, we said goodbye to Paulo, who is leaving Beijing to take a research scientist position at Peng Cheng Labs in Shenzhen. While it was a lot of fun to get to hangout as a group one last time, I’ll definitely miss having Paulo here in Beijing. When I arrived, he was the only foreign postdoc and I really appreciated all of his help he provided me with managing everything and getting used to life in Beijing. It also reminds me just how quickly a year passes. Since he’s staying in China, hopefully either I’ll get to visit him in Shenzhen at some point or he’ll come back to Beijing for a visit (assuming traveling to Beijing becomes easier).

The Tsinghua Astro Games

This month, the Department of Astronomy also organized a very fun Astro Games events, where teams competed in a free throw shooting contest, darts, and a four legged race. Because Zheng’s students didn’t put together a team until the last minute, I was on a team with Richard, Tom, and some of the grad students from their group. While my free throw shooting was abysmal (I used to be decent at it), the four legged race was a lot of fun even if we lost. Tom and I attempted to lift Richard and run that way and made fools of ourselves as we did it. While we didn’t win, it was a blast! I also got to take a fun picture with everyone from my research group!

Batober

As I mentioned last month, for drawing this month, I decided to follow the spirit of Inktober (an instagram event for artists in the mont of October) and follow prompts to draw Batman. Comic book artist Chris Samnee created the event a few years back and while I’ve enjoyed looking at his art, this was the first time I tried it out. It was a lot of fun! I’m a huge Batman fan, so it was cool to try out all of the different poses and characters and figure out how they link to the prompts. It you’re wondering what the prompts were, I’ve written them all at the bottom of each drawing. Please let me know if you have any favorites!

While I’ve truly enjoyed doing all of these daily drawings, I’ve decided to take a break from the daily drawings for the time being so that I can spend a bit more time working on my paper. While I’ll still do drawings and post them here, it’ll be closer to 5 – 10 drawings a month instead of 30.

Goldie!!!

When I haven’t been out and about doing fun things in Beijing, I’ve spent a lot of time with Goldie hanging out either on my couch or in my bedroom (she really loves my fuzzy grey blanket). It’s been so nice to have her run to the door when I come home (and then immediately meow until she gets fed). While we still haven’t figured out an ideal sleeping/feeding schedule (every day she tries to get me up between 5 and 6:30 to feed her – I usually try to be up at 7, so 6:30 isn’t that bad, but 5 is too early – if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know). I was able to get an automatic cat feeder so that I can give her dinner when I go to Shabbat or meals with friends.

For Goldie, the major event this month was her getting spayed. The vet that I went to was very friendly and helpful (the vet didn’t speak English, but the nurses all did). While the surgery went fine, Goldie did have to wear a little vest for about 2 weeks, which she didn’t really love. Hence, you’ll see she’s wearing it in about half of the photos above. When I was at the vet, they did confirm that she has nerve damage and that’s why she can’t use her paw. It doesn’t bother her though, so as long as she’s happy, that’s all that matters. This month, Goldie’s also been spending a lot of time curled up on my lap and she’s discovered the fun of playing with toys (both actual toys and boxes and paper bags)! Goldie tends to curl right by my side at night and has even started to lick my beard on occasion (I guess it tastes good). I’m so glad that I adopted her and can give her a loving home.

Exploring Beijing

In all of my running around this month, I got to see a lot of cool things that I thought I’d share with you! This month, I got to see some cool sights around my apartment, including this really cool flower and dragon display (it showed up around the national day holiday, but I have no idea what the purpose was other than looking cool). I also saw more of the people playing with the streamers and got to enjoy the Shichahai lakes!

Somehow, despite the increasingly cool temperatures (the high temperatures are usually in the mid-50s), there are still lots of flowers in Beijing.

But with the lower temperatures, the bike blankets and decals have been out in abundance.

I also saw some really fun ads, statues, and random guy in a Panda suit (this was weeks before Halloween) that I thought I’d share.

Lastly, after Richard, Pablo, Daniele and I went to the Old Summer Palace, we went to a cafe that Richard recommended that was full of lots of fun decorations, including some up especially for Halloween!

I also walked right past a Toyota Prius when I was heading home from the cafe and saw another one when I was on my way into Tsinghua earlier in the month. Although electric cars are super popular here, seeing Priuses always reminds me of my family since everyone in my immediate family has owned a Prius at some point and the silver one looked to be the same generation as my Dad’s old car, while the gray one looked like my old car.

Jewish Life in Beijing

Beyond Yom Kippur and Sukkot, Roberta & Ted hosted five lovely Shabbat Dinners since my last blog post. The themes included a Sukkot Shabbat dinner, a Sukkah PARTY Shabbat dinner (in honor of the big government meetings), a Garden of Eden Shabbat (which included some baseball puns for “In the Big Inning”), a Challah-ween Shabbat (which included a barfing pumpking guacamole dip, delicious pumpkin shaped challah from Roberta, and some very on brand and thematic dishes including pesto pasta with eyeballs), and Guy Fawkes Shabbat. As always, the food and company was wonderful!

After “Challah-ween” Shabbat, we also watched the documentary “Minyan in Kaifeng,” which is about a group of Kehillat Beijingers circa 2000 visiting Kaifeng, the historic home of Jews in China. Having read Pearl Buck’s Peony, it was really interesting to see how little remains of the Jewish quarter (really nothing is left) and to meet the Chinese people who trace their lineage to those families and identify as Jewish. The movie raises a lot of interesting questions about what it means to be a Jew (I think my opinion on Jewish identity is a bit skewed since I grew up in a Reform community and to my knowledge, nobody every had to prove their Jewish-ness). It was interesting as the only practice that seemed to remain was to not eat pork (which was something emphasized as a problem in Peony). I wish I could recommend the documentary to all of you, but to my knowledge, it isn’t available on any streaming platforms. Roberta had a digital file and that’s how we watched it. On another note entirely, I got to lead services last Friday because Roberta was stuck in Shanghai (ironically, she ended up having Shabbat dinner with Jesse and some of his friends from Kehillat Shanghai and she’s going to be delivering me some jam and a book from Jesse!), which was really nice!

More Vegan Food

While I went to a ton of vegan events, I also got to eat a lot of yummy vegan food that I didn’t make. After the vegan cookie event, I went to a lovely little hutong restaurant with some of my friends who were there and got some yummy veggie dishes (including sword beans, which are my favorite)!

I also went back to the vegetarian restaurant by Tsinghua before we went to the Old Summer Palace. As usual, the food was wonderful (it’s also nice to go with a large group, so we can try lots of dishes). We got a wood mushroom dish, mushrooms & okra, sweet water chestnuts (which though not explicitly dessert was dessert), veggie stir fry with veggie sausage, sauteed eggplant & chickpeas, cantaloupe juice, fried tofu & peppers (very similar to what I learned how to cook), and fried lotus root. All of the dishes were delicious, but I think my favorites were the wood mushrooms, the eggplant, the tofu, and the lotus root! It’s really nice to have a great vegetarian restaurant so close to campus!

Beyond eating at restaurants, I also did some vegan cooking of my own (including trying to make some of the Chinese dishes I learned previously and a sichuan eggplant – unfortunately despite ordering Japanese eggplants twice, both times I was given western style eggplants). I mostly made lots of different curries and tofu stir fries as the temperature get cooler. I also got to try some lovely homemade vegan donuts that my friend Jennifer from Vegans of Beijing made!

What am I Reading/Watching?

Although I spent most of my free time drawing the Batober drawings, I did find the time to read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I really enjoyed it! While I had a vague recollection of the end from the Viggo Mortensen movie, I love how personal a story it was (to the point that the characters don’t have names, it’s just a father and son). It’s a grim look at life in a post apocalyptic future and what it takes to survive. I also liked that McCarthy doesn’t explicitly state what led the world to the state it is currently in since that makes the book ever relevant as it seems that there is always something going on in current events that could lead to world destruction. I highly recommend it! I also saw that he just released two new Physics/math related novels and although I kind of doubt I’ll be able to get them here in China, I know I’ll be picking them up when I’m back in the US. This month I also finished the 8 volumes of Kazu Kibishi’s graphic novel series Amulet. It’s an all-ages series centering on a brother and sister in a magical world as they work to save that world, the sister with a mystical (and perhaps evil) amulet and the brother while driving a mech. The work has a ton of heart and definitely is an overall feel good story. While the 9th and final volume still hasn’t been released (hopefully soon), I definitely recommend it to anyone with young kids (10+). It’s a lot of fun!

In terms of TV, I’ve cut down a bit on TV as works has ramped up, but I did finish a few different series. Of the series I finished, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series on Netflix was definitely my favorite! It’s a really great adaptation of the comic book. While the first episodes might be a bit confusing if you aren’t familiar with the story, the show does a great job adapting the world (to both the modern era – the comic is set in the late 80s and to film). Tom Sturridge does a great job portraying the often emotionless Dream and I’m super excited that they just announced Season 2! I also finished See season 3, the third and final season, on Apple TV+. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it’s a Jason Momoa starring vehicle where he plays a samurai-esque warrior in a world where everyone has lost the ability to see (except for a few, including his children). While I think the show got a bit bogged down in political intrigue instead of world building (they left so much unanswered), the battle scenes are amazing and I really enjoyed the show. It also has the distinction of having the least likable villain of the shows I’ve watched. I also finished the Flight Attendant season 2 on HBO Max. While not as good as season one, I think it does a great job showing the downward spiral of someone struggling to overcome addiction (while throwing together a lot of absolutely crazy stuff). I also finished Night Sky, which starred JK Simmons, on Amazon last night. It’s a show about a couple who discover a machine that can take them to a distant world. It’s a bit of a mystery, but the end really set up some intriguing ideas about the story they were weaving (unfortunately it was cancelled so those answers will never come).

Animals of Beijing

While Goldie is my favorite animal in Beijing, I also saw lots of other animals this month. As it’s still somewhat warm, my neighbors cats were wandering around the hutong a lot (although they seem friendly, Goldie will not be meeting them, she’s an indoor cat). I also got to take lots of cute photos of Mimi & Honey, Roberta & Ted’s dogs! However, probably the most unexpected animal was a large pig that was walking down one of the main streets near where I live! I’m used to seeing dogs roaming around the city, but a pig was something new entirely! It’s wearing a harness, so I think it’s a pet, but I don’t really know since there wasn’t an owner with it!

East Meets West (Happy Halloween from Beijing!)

Like most months, I saw a few signs of western culture, including some Halloween displays at the import store, the 7-11 near me, and El Barrio (where we went for Paulo’s going away dinner)! While Halloween isn’t a big deal here (I think most of the parties that happen cater to expats), it’s always nice to get some candy for Halloween (on top of Kehillat Beijing’s celebration!). When I got my flu shot at Roberta’s hospital, they were selling really cute chocolate jack o’lanterns and I couldn’t help myself and I had to buy one (it was quite tasty!).

Beyond Halloween, I also saw some of the usual signs of American culture and consumerism including Spongebob and Abercrombie & Fitch. Also, while not American per se, I saw a really cool ad for Monkey King (from Journey to West) Legos! I definitley want to get a Monkey King Lego figure!

Anime & Comics

As always, no Astronomer in Beijing post would be complete without some photos of all of the anime and comics stuff that I saw this month. I didn’t stumble on any anime displays this month, so it was a lot of cool found anime stickers, t-shirts, and other things that I noticed when I was walking around the city. It’s always cool to see images from anime/manga like Dragonball Z, Doraemon, Naruto, and One Piece (and stuff from Marvel, too!).

For those of you who’ve made it this far, thank you so much for reading my Astronomer in Beijing blog. I hope you liked learning about what I’ve been up to this month. I hope you all have a safe, happy, and healthy November and lovely Thanksgiving and are able to celebrate with either friends or family. I know I’ve got a lot of writing to do this month, but I’m sure I’ll do a few fun things, too! As always, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, I’d love to hear from you (either below or via e-mail).

In Peace,

Emmet