Hi Everyone,
I hope you’re all doing well and staying safe and healthy! For those of you in the Northeast and other cold weather parts of the US, I hope the winter hasn’t been too chilly and you haven’t had too much snow. Here in Beijing, spring is starting to creep in (it was a very mild winter with hardly any snow). Before I dive into what I did this month, obviously China has continued to be in the news for most of February. On the COVID front, life in Beijing has returned to normal. Although I continue to wear a mask, outside of when I’m on the subway, I’m definitely in the minority. The reports from a few different news outlets here have somewhere between 80% and 90% of the population of Beijing getting COVID in December/January, which is insane. Interestingly, just this past week, China announced that they had successfully defeated COVID and that every action here made was the correct action. I think it’s pretty safe to say that this is putting the most positive spin possible on everything that has happened over the last 4 months. While China seems to have weathered its first real COVID surge since 2020, it didn’t leave unscathed (just about everyone believes the COVID death counts are severely under-reported, the economy hit a tail-spin, and there was real public unrest). If you’re interested in hearing more about this, I highly recommend listening to the most recent episode of the Drum Tower podcast (which is from the Economist), entitled “Decisive victory?”, which does a great job discussing the ongoing societal ramifications of COVID Zero. While I understand that people are excited that COVID restrictions are over, I do think this victorious attitude is a bit concerning, because COVID isn’t gone forever. As all of you in the US know, COVID comes in waves and if people aren’t getting vaccinated (and the health care system isn’t optimized), then we’ll just wind up in a vicious cycle of COVID cases.
Additionally, February has been an interesting month for US-China relations. Between the balloon and the more recent lab-leak report, there has been a lot of US bashing in the Chinese news. Obviously these are two drastically different issues, but given that both sort of put China and the US in direct competition, I would say things could definitely be better. While I haven’t been directly impacted by any of this, it’s definitely a concern. While I think much of the world is pretty unsatisfied with the Chinese response to the balloon crisis, I really can’t speak to the likelihood of the lab-leak theory. However, in general, the constant bashing of the West (including China’s recent statements on trying to end the war in Ukraine), especially when portrayed against the propaganda infallibility of China, can be frustrating at times.
Now, on to the fun stuff!
A Visit to the British School of Beijing
Early in February, one of my friends from the Vegans of Beijing asked if I would be interested in visiting her Kindergarten class at the British School of Beijing. As I always enjoyed visiting my cousin Alex’s elementary school classes when I was in Boston, I was excited to visit! The kindergarteners had done a unit on the planets, so I was really excited to answer all of their questions! When the fifth grade teachers heard that I was coming, they asked if I could talk to their classes, and I was more than happy to visit them, too!
I gave a presentation to all three kindergarten classes, so there were probably ~50 – 60 Kindergarteners eager to ask space questions. Although I had prepared a slideshow highlighting the solar system and other fun astronomy images, I always find that school visits work best when the I let the students just ask questions. I was a bit nervous with the Kindergarteners because they’re so young, but once I said who I was, they were ready to ask questions! There were lots of questions about the sun (why it’s hot), the size of the solar system, and the moon (and how it formed)! Overall, I was really impressed with the questions from the Kindergarteners!
After visiting with the Kindergarteners, I got a short break before presenting to all of the 5th graders. This time, we were in the auditorium and there were probably close to 100 students. Like with the Kindergarteners, I prepared a presentation, this time focusing on how Astronomers do Astronomy (i.e., how telescopes work) and then everything from the solar system, to exoplanets, stars, nebulae, galaxies, and my personal favorite galaxy clusters. This time, I could barely get through the first slide before the students started raising their hands to ask questions (the teachers had given me a heads up that the students would have lots of questions – they did a unit on space before the Lunar New Year break and were also excited to have a visitor in school – the school (and all Chinese schools) had basically been closed to anyone who isn’t a student or teacher due to COVID). And boy, did they ask fantastic questions. Lots of questions about black holes, the number of stars in the galaxy, terra-forming other planets, galaxies, how one becomes an astronomer, and even questions about JWST and ALMA (I’m really glad I had my slides, because a lot of times, they helped to show answers to the students questions)! While I was originally slated to have about 30 minutes, the students were so enthusiastic and kept asking questions that we went for almost an hour (and if they didn’t need to stop for lunch, they could have kept going even longer). It was so great to see their enthusiasm and interest in space! I will say, that with all of the students, it’s definitely hard to make sure that everyone can ask a question who wants and I definitely tried to work my way around the auditorium, but I was so glad that the students really did enjoy my visit! The teachers also were really pleased with how enthusiastic everyone was and I hope that I’ll be back sometime in the future!
Although I don’t have any pictures of the visit that I can share (since they all have lots of kids in them), I can link to an article that the British School of Beijing posted about my visit! Also, I do want to show some of the photos of the school, which I thought was really nice! While I haven’t been in a school for a while, everything here was very shiny and new and had a real international vibe (with both Mandarin and English). As with most/all of the international schools, a lot of the teachers, are foreigners and all of the students are required to have a foreign passport (although some of them are ethnically Chinese). Although I obviously spend most of my time doing science, it’s so nice when I can do some outreach and get people excited about space!
Also, although I don’t have an photos, I must say that Shunyi, the district where the British School of Beijing is, has some of the most American looking suburban style housing complexes I’ve seen here. If you removed the Mandarin street signs, I could have been in a rather nice development in Wilton!
Beijing Royal Fighters vs the Jiangsu Dragons
On Wednesday, I got a message from the secretary in charge of the postdocs asking if any of the foreign postdocs would be interested in attending a professional basketball game (the Chinese League is the CBA – Chinese Basketball Association). As I think many of you know, I’m a huge basketball fan and really enjoyed getting to go to games in Boston (mostly Celtics-Jazz games with my friends Mike and Phil), so when I got this message, I knew that I wanted to go. Thankfully, I was able to get a free ticket and Tom, who just got back from the UK, was also able to join! So Thursday night, I ventured down to the Olympic Sports Center to go see the Beijing Royal Fighters play the Jiangsu Dragons!
Although I’ve been under the Olympic stadium on the subway multiple times a week, I’ve never seen the Bird’s Nest lit up at night, so that was really cool to see! The game was held in the National Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium, which hosted some of the handball in the 2008 games. Beyond this being the first sporting event that I attended in China, this was also the first sporting event I’ve been to go to since I went to a Jazz-Celtics game in March 2020 (almost 3 years ago, and just a few days before the NBA shutdown due to COVID). With all of that, it was a bit surreal to see a game in person!
As you can see from the photos, the stadium was pretty packed! I didn’t really know what to expect, because Beijing has two teams, the Beijing Ducks (see the pun!) and the Royal Fighters. Much like the Knicks and the Nets in the NBA, the Ducks are definitely the more famous/more popular team. However, the Royal Fighters coach is Stephon Marbury (if you followed the NBA in the 90s and early 2000s, you might remember him – he was one of the first NBA players to continue his career in China and he’s become a national icon in terms of basketball here – and he even has a green card). Not too surprisingly, Stephon Marbury definitely got the loudest cheers! While I won’t give you a play by play breakdown of the game, I will say that not being terribly familiar with the level of the CBA relative to the NBA, I thought the play was quite good. Sure there were definitely a few more sloppy plays, but it’s a competitive league! And boy, did we get a good game. The Dragons came out to a hot start (they’re lead scorer is former NBA player Antonio Blakeney – for those of you who aren’t familiar, each team is allowed to have three foreign players, with many of them coming from the US), but the Royal Fighters clawed back taking the lead in the second and hanging on to it until midway through the 4th quarter. With about 5 minutes (of game time left), Tom asked me if I thought the Beijing lead of 8 points was safe and I said all Jiangsu needs is a few made baskets and unfortunately for Beijing, that’s what happened and the Beijing Royal Fighters lost 89 – 94.
Despite the loss, it was a ton of fun and I’m so glad that Tom could join me! Beyond the game play, I think the atmosphere was surprisingly American (or at least a facsimile of an NBA game). In particular, the soundtrack of the game could have been taken right out of the TD Bank North Garden in Boston (although the music was mostly the muzak version of the songs). The announcer’s were constantly cheering on the Royal Fighters with the Chinese equivalents of the typical “Defense” chant and other cheers. The refs even dressed like NBA refs! There were a few differences from an NBA game. In particular, the stadium is obviously much smaller than an NBA arena. Additionally, you can’t go anywhere in an NBA arena without seeing a place to buy food and team merchandise. Here there were only one or two places to buy team gear and food. I did get a cool scarf, though (also the food portions were normal size, but that’s to be expected)! Additionally, although the NBA has their dance teams, the cheerleading routines were far less athletic and had a 1950s aesthetic, which was a bit odd. Regardless of the differences and the Beijing loss, the game was great and it was a great night, so I’m so glad that I could go!
February’s Vegan Market
February also saw the return of Vegan Markets in Beijing (ok, there was one in January, but I was still a bit hesitant about crowds at that point, so I didn’t go). These are some of my favorite events in Beijing, not just because of the delicious food, but also the great music, and getting to see some familiar faces (given how large Beijing is, outside of the Jewish community and the Astronomy Department, I think I’ve only run into people I know around the city less than 10 times in the last year and a half). This month’s market had a Valentine’s Day theme, and I stocked up on a ton of delicious food!
As you can see from the photos, I got some delicious vegan mac n’cheese, savory crepes, mock baozi, focaccia and pretzels!
I also got tons of delicious sweets! Including a delicious mini apple pie, vegan chocolate caramel cheesecake, vegan strawberry yogurt, and lots of yummy other goodies! While I love to do my own vegan cooking, it is so nice to be able to buy some tasty ones, too!
Vegan Chinese Cooking Classes – Spring Pancakes
February also brought the return of the Vegans of Beijing Chinese cooking class. This month, we made spring pancakes (chunbing in Mandarin). We did this in honor of the Lunar New Year (also called Spring Festival) because spring pancakes are the traditional food of the beginning of spring (signified by Lichun, ~ two weeks after the Lunar New Year). Similar to when we made baozi, we made the spring pancakes first and then a variety of different fillings! For those of you unfamiliar with chunbing (I know I was!), I think the closest thing I’ve had in the US is moo shu pancakes (I have no recollection of the filling for the moo shu pancakes I’ve had in the US, so I can’t compare that, but I think texturally, the pancake is similar). It’s a paper thin dough, which you stuff yourself with a variety of different fillings.
I want to say that while the English word is pancake, these are nothing like Western-style pancakes! The dough is surprisingly simple (just two parts flour to one part water with a little salt). We rolled the dough until is was very smooth and then let it rest while we prepped the ingredients for the fillings. In terms of making the actual pancakes, we cut our dough into eight pieces and then flattened them by pushing it down with our hand. We then put a bit of oil on the top of each dough circle and then placed two of them together. We then rolled them until they were approximately the size of a small tortilla and cooked them in a pan (the pancake is also sometimes traditionally steamed, but we didn’t do that). After they were cooked (they looked a bit like tortilla), you pull the two pieces apart (almost like you would for a pita pocket – to get a really thin pancake!
Once we had the pancakes made, we went about cooking the fillings. We made three different fillings. The first filling was stir fried chives, rice noodles, carrots, and mung bean sprouts. We needed to chop everything (other than the mung beans) into really fine strips so that we could saute them quickly. One of the things I really love here is the use of the rice noodle to add a little textural difference to the bean and the sprouts! I also hadn’t used Chinese cabbage before, so it was interesting to see how it’s cooked (traditional Chinese dishes very rarely include raw leafy greens). Because of the simplicity of the sauce (just soy sauce), the pop of the different veggies really comes through!
The second pancake was probably my favorite! It was a stir-fried mushroom and potato pancake. I’ve made a lot of different mushroom and potato dishes in these classes and they always end up being both delicious and different from the previous ones! We cut the potatoes into very small matchsticks and then sauteed them with chili and garlic to gave a nice spicy potato and mushroom dish!
Lastly, we made a stir-fried pickled cabbage and mung bean noodle pancake. While this was probably the simplest prep (since we bought pre-pickled cabbage), the cooking was the most involved as we needed to cook down the noodles and cabbage with a fair amount of water until they were soft and the dish had an almost scrambled egg like look. All of the dishes were delicious and could have been eaten without the pancakes, but it was really fun to assemble them ourselves and make some delicious pancakes! I’ll definitely be making these again soon!
Life at Tsinghua
This month, I started to go back into the office regularly. While I definitely didn’t miss the packed subway commute every morning, it’s been really nice to be back on campus. As I mentioned last month, I successfully submitted my paper (Project Radio) to ApJ (the Astrophysical Journal). For those of you who are unfamiliar with Astronomy publishing, unlike in English (the field outside of Astronomy that I’m most familiar with because of my parents), Astronomers have to pay to publish. Thus, I’ll definitely let you know the cost of this paper (I’m expecting it’ll be quite a lot given that its ~ 32 pages and has 2 tables and 20 Figures). Right now, I’m still in the waiting game. The last I’d heard, a scientific editor had been selected, but their job is to find a referee, who will usually get 4 – 6 weeks to review the paper. As such, it could be a while before I get any feedback. Still, it feels great to have this paper done!
As Project Radio is in the final stages, I shifted my focus to Project Morphology (my study of the shape of galaxies in early universe protoclusters) and Project Low-z (my project with Jesse studying low-z clusters with bent AGNs – the type of radio active super massive black hole that I wrote my dissertation on). While I wish I could say that February was a super successful month for Project Morphology, unfortunately, it was mostly spent troubleshooting various issues that I’ve had with the Galapagos code. Thankfully the astronomer who wrote the code has been incredibly helpful and we seem to have finally narrowed down the specific issue that I’m having. Right now, I’m planning on spending time tomorrow attempting to use Galfit on the images (Galapagos is an IDL wrapper that allows you to run Galfit in multi-image mode) to determine why it doesn’t seem to be working for the cutouts that Galapagos creates. I didn’t have any issues previously running Galfit on these same images, but I added a new image to better scale the detections and I have a sneaking suspicion that something went wrong there. Thankfully, I have made headway on Project Low-z, though I’m still working my way through double checking the classification of host galaxies with each AGN. While it’s a bit slow, I’m hoping to finish with that sooner rather than later so that Jesse and I can dive into the more fun science.
Additionally, I’ve started reading up on some background material for two new projects dealing with galaxy quenching in galaxy cluster/protocluster environments. One working with a postdoc at Peking University (who was a grad student at Tsinghua) to use galaxy colors to identify quiescient (non-star forming) and star forming galaxies in distant galaxy groups to better quantify how galaxies quench (stop forming stars) as a function of environment in the early universe and another working with Pablo (my colleague at Tsinghua) to use new data to analyze similar quenching mechanisms in the outskirts of more local clusters.
Beyond my science, the Department of Astronomy held its annual Year End Meeting (delayed from December due to COVID). While much of the ceremony/meeting portion outside of the chair’s speech are in Mandarin, it’s a nice way to celebrate the department. Also, I was incredibly surprised to be one of three postdocs to receive the 2022 Annual Active Postdoc Award! I know I’ve done a fair amount in the department, so it’s nice to get some recognition! Additionally, at the end of meeting, we do some musical performances! I think my love for singing and karaoke is pretty well known by now, so I wasn’t too surprised that I was asked to sing. I sang Falling Slowly by Glen Hansard from the movie musical Once (if you haven’t seen Once, I highly recommend it). It was so much fun to sing and everyone really liked it!
I wasn’t the only one who sang. A grad student in my group sang a duet in Mandarin and one of the professors did a trio with two of her graduate students (also in Mandarin, so I didn’t know the songs). While this event is always a bit of a juxtaposition – going from traditional meeting to karaoke – for those of you from BU, this would be like if at the end of a department meeting, we immediately started unplugged (but it only lasted 3 songs) – it’s a nice way to end (or in this case start) a new semester! Additionally, as part of my award and a thank you for singing, I now have more coffee than I know what to do with!
Goldie
Throughout February, Goldie has continued to be a bundle of cuteness! She loves sleeping on the couch next to me while I work (her new thing is to sit in my usual spot on the couch when I’m doing my work at my living room table). Since I’ve been going into the office, I definitely feel a bit sad to leave her alone all day, but she’s always happy to see me when I get home (and usually a bit anxious for dinner, too!). I’m so glad she’s here to keep me company!
As with last month, my apartment (or more aptly, my rooftop deck and skylight, continues to be the hot spot for the neighborhood cats. Almost every day that I work from home, I hear Goldie meowing and staring at the skylight because there’s a cat there (we even had 3 different cats stop by within an hour of one another last week!). She’s taken to sitting on the couch and staring constantly at the skylight. I still can’t tell if she’s sad she can’t play with them or if she’s just trying to get their attention, but I’m glad she isn’t shrieking in terror like my parents’ cat LC (and no, she won’t be going outside to meet them, a few of them are much bigger than here and she can’t climb like they do). I did go up on the roof to see if there was anything up there that might be attracting them, but couldn’t find anything. My guess is it gets a lot of sun, is softish wood, and the skylight is probably really warm. Also, unfortunately there’s too much dust and glare on the skylight for the cats outside to see Goldie, so they don’t know she’s there.
Jewish Life in Beijing
After nearly 3 months of zoom services, Kehillat Beijing finally returned to in person services this month (it helped that Roberta & Ted got back to Beijing). It has been so nice to see so many people after such a long time. Although I loved leading Zoom services, it’s so nice to hear other people sing (since that’s lost on zoom) and it just feels like a community when we can all be together in person. Additionally, the return of in person Shabbat’s has meant the return of Ted’s delicious Shabbat dinner’s and Roberta’s wonderful Challah! This month we had two welcome back Shabbat’s (one for Ted and one for Roberta) and a Mexican Shabbat. All three were amazing and I really missed these fun dinners! I’m so excited for some fun Jewish celebrations in the coming months, including Purim & Passover, and that we can celebrate together and in person.
Exploring Beijing
Between the various vegan events and school visits, I did a lot of exploring this month! However, the best exploring came when Daniele and I met up to attempt to visit the Ancient Observatory. I say attempt, because unfortunately, Apple Maps lied to us and told us the Ancient Observatory was only closed on Tuesdays, when in fact, it is also closed on Mondays as well. While it was disappointing, we’ll definitely try to visit again once he’s back in China. However, because we were close to downtown, we thought we’d walk around and see some of the massive skyscrapers in Beijing (including the famous CCTV building, famous for looking like a pair of pants!). Because I live closer to the historical part of the city, it’s easy to forget that there are enormous modern high-rises here, too! Also, there were a ton of fun Lunar New Year’s decorations still up!
Beyond exploring downtown, I also saw some more Lunar New Year’s decorations up this month in other parts of the city.
Additionally, I saw a ton of other cool looking buildings and signs while wandering the city (as well as some fun cars and motorcycle/scooter blankets)! Enjoy!
More Vegan Food
Outside of the Vegan Market and Vegan cooking classes, Pablo, Daniele, and I went to the Vegetarian restaurant near Tsinghua as a send off for their trips to Europe for some relevant conferences (I’m still searching for some galaxy cluster conferences this summer – there will be one in China that I’ll be attending with Jesse, Pablo, Paulo, and Richard, but it’d be fun to go to a relevant international one, too!). We had a delicious meal! We got jasmine tea, watermelon juice, “military tofu” – a cold tofu dish with a spicy sauce (really good!), flame tofu, eggplant & chickpeas, tofu skin “fish”, translucent mushrooms, fried lotus root, and chestnuts & lotus root “meatballs”. We also got some interesting quasi-desserts, little grain cakes and yam with blueberry jam (that’s the one that looks like an ice cream sundae). My favorites were the military tofu, tofu skin, and walnut & lotus root meatballs, but everything was delicious! It’s really great to have such a delicious restaurant so close to campus!
I also did some cooking of my own this month. I made a delicious hearty vegan chili, two different types of veggie burgers, and a miso mushroom soup!
China Drawings
This month, I only did one drawing, but I really loved how it turned out. It’s a drawing of a dragon lurking in the darkness and it was inspired by this dragon statue hiding in one of the pagodas at the Lama Temple. Let me know what you think!
Animals of Beijing
With the return to in person Kehillat Beijing services, I also got to see my favorite puppies in Beijing, Mimi & Honey (Roberta & Ted’s dogs). As always, they love hanging around all of us during services and begging (usually unsuccessfully for food) during dinner. Beyond them, I also saw multiple cats around my neighborhood (not just on my roof) and a few dogs, too! While I love having Goldie, it’s nice to wander past a cat, too!
What Am I Reading/Watching?
Since my last post, I’ve continued reading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. While I’m inching closer to the end (less than 100 pages), I haven’t finished it yet. Outside of American Gods, I’ve obviously read a fair amount of manga and comics. I recently started reading the graphic novel series The Unwritten by Mike Carey and Peter Gross. I’m currently on volume 5, but one of the nicest things is that I get to read physical comics again! I had brought it with me to China, but gave it to Jesse when I arrived, so we were able to swap graphic novels that each other had read when he visited last month.
I’ve also been watching some good tv as well. While I’ve picked up a few new streaming shows that are airing weekly (I’ll discuss them when I finish them), this month I finished Tokyo Vice on HBOMax and Ozark on Netflix. Tokyo Vice is a hard-boiled crime drama set in 1990s Tokyo. It’s an adaptation of the memoir by Jake Adelstein and tells the story of his time as the first American reporter at a Japanese language newspaper and his investigation of the Yakuza. While part of me wishes that we could get a show centered around people of Asian descent without a white lead, the show does do a really good job portraying the difficulties of being a foreigner in Japan as well as the more dangerous elements of Tokyo life in the 1990s (without dipping too much into the white savior trope). While China is not Japan, I can definitely see some of the similarities between my own experience here, including foreigners creating small communities among themselves and the belittlement by some of the inability to speak the language. Additionally, although not the characteristic of Japanese society that I’m most fond of, I was glad that the show portrayed the casual anti-semitism that is unfortunately prevalent in Japan (only from an honesty standpoint to Japanese culture). The show stars Ansel Elgort as Adelstein, and the always fantastic Ken Watanabe as the honest Detective Katagiri. The show has been renewed for a second season and I’m really excited to see what happens next! As mentioned above, I also just finished the 4th and final season of Ozark. I’ve talked about it before, but Ozark is both amazing and incredibly dark and depressing. It’s really a deconstruction of how you can succeed in America by doing the worst possible things. It’s dark and hard to find anyone to root for, especially as it seems like everyone with a shred of redemption either gets their hands dirty or is killed throughout the season. While at times not the most fun show to watch, it’s always been top notch television and Jason Bateman and Julia Garner are both amazing (as is the entire cast). I was really impressed with the end because Wendy, played by Laura Linney, got a shred of redemption that I was hoping for (because she had pretty much built her path toward total destruction) by finally confronting the abuse she had from her father. It’s a fantastic show and I highly recommend it.
East Meets West
While this section is usually an array of US brands that I saw throughout Beijing, this time, I stumbled on an FAO Schwarz toy store when I was exploring downtown with Daniele and I thought you’d all enjoy seeing the wide array of toys! I always think of FAO Schwarz as the iconic NYC toy store (although I’ve never been), but it’s cool to see one here in Beijing (and given the prestige of the brand, not terribly surprising). This definitely looked way more like a store in the US than the typical toy stores (where I see all of the anime figures) that I’ve seen here (although they had a lot of cool figures here, too!). There was also a Lego Store next store, so I thought I’d share some photos from that, too!
Anime & Comics
No Astronomer in Beijing post would be complete without a look into all of the anime & comics paraphernalia that I saw around Beijing and this month is no exception. When I was in the FAO Schwarz, I wandered by a ton of gatchapod machines for anime (Demon Slayer, One Piece, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Pokemon) and comics figures (mostly Marvel movie stuff)! While I couldn’t figure out how to buy one (and neither could Chinese patrons there, too), I did take a ton of pictures.
I also saw some other cool anime figures and ton of cool anime stickers on bikes throughout the city! My favorite two were the giant gundam play structure and the cool Batman figure (that one was at FAO Schwarz and was well outside my price range).
Additionally, the unofficial Marvel movie embargo appears to have ended because I saw advertisements for Antman Quantumania around the city! While I didn’t go, I’m hoping the new Shazam movie opens here, since I really enjoyed the first one!
For those of you who made it this far, thank you so much for reading my blog. I hope you enjoyed hearing about what I was up to in February. I hope you all have a lovely March and whether you’re celebrating Purim, St. Patrick’s Day, or March Madness, that it is a good, safe, and healthy month for you. I’m already looking forward to the end of the month when I’m planning to visit Jesse in Shanghai! As always, if you have any comments, questions, or concerns on anything about my life in Beijing, please feel free to reach out! Stay safe and healthy everyone!
In Peace,
Emmet
