An Amazing April: Jesse Visits, A Birthday Celebration, Hiking the Great Wall, Passover, and more!

Hi Everyone,

Thank you for returning to my Astronomer in Beijing blog. I hope you’re all doing well and staying safe and healthy! Here in Beijing, spring is fully in season and most days it feels like it’s already summer. While I’m enjoying the warmer weather, I’m already not looking forward to the crazy heat and humidity that July and August will bring. Thankfully, that’s still a few months away. While I’ve already said that life in Beijing has basically returned to the pre-COVID normal (they even removed the mandate for masks on subways – although they still recommend them and I’m still wearing one), the big policy shift is that China now no longer requires a negative PCR test to return to China! This means that for my upcoming travel in June, I don’t need to worry about figuring out where I can get a COVID test 24 – 48 hours before the flight, which is a bit of a relief!

In terms of life in April, this was a very full month and I got to do a lot of different things that I’m excited to share with you. Most importantly, Jesse was able to come up to Beijing and we were able to celebrate our birthday together for the first time since 2018 (thank you to everyone who reached out to wish me a happy birthday)!! Enjoy hearing about everything below!

Jesse Visits Beijing: A 32nd Birthday Celebration!

As I said above, two weekends ago, Jesse was able to come up to Beijing so that we could celebrate our birthday together (it was April 24). While we obviously celebrated together every year when we were growing up and when we were at Brown, in the last 10 years we’ve only been together a handful of times (and many of those were when our Birthday corresponded with Passover). Given all of the mess of the last year in terms of travel restrictions and lockdowns (last year, I was able to celebrate with friends, but Jesse was stuck in lockdown, though Beijing locked down shortly after my birthday), I’m really glad that we could have one birthday that we could celebrate together in China! It’s nice to make some positive China memories together, especially as Jesse’s time here is coming to an end this summer (for those of you who don’t read his blog, he accepted a new postdoc at the University of Nottingham in the UK). It’s been so nice to get to see Jesse regularly and to get to show him Beijing! Since I was able to go to a Shabbat at Kehillat Shanghai when I visited him, I was really glad that we had an in person Shabbat when he was here!

Friday: A Visit to 798 + Shabbat

Jesse arrived early Friday afternoon and after spending about an hour trying and failing to get him registered online (for those of you that don’t remember, foreigners must register every time they enter a new city in China – if you stay at a hotel, this is done for you), Jesse and I decided to forgo that and do it Saturday morning (you have 24 hours to register). Because we had Shabbat later that evening, we decided to explore 798, since it’s both near Roberta & Ted’s home and one of the coolest parts of Beijing. I’ve visited 798 a few times, but it’s one of my favorite parts of Beijing because there is always a cool new art exhibit and it’s just a fun place to explore! However, the first thing I wanted to do was show Jesse the giant mecha panda that’s near the Wangjing South Subway station (it’s the closest station to 798 and the subway station I get off at when I go to Shabbat). When I visited Shanghai, we’d stopped at X11, a toy store in Xuhui, and I got us miniature versions of it, so I wanted to make sure to show Jesse the real thing.

As you can see fro the photos above, 798 is a great place to just walk around and explore. Although I have a general sense of the layout, every time I go I notice a new cool statue, mural, or display! While we didn’t have a plan, we knew there was a cool exhibit by Inoue Naoku, who had worked as a background artist on some of Hayao Miyazaki’s work and we wanted to check that out. It has an impressionistic quality and I can definitely see the influence from Miyazaki’s work, especially movies like Nausicaa, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Spirited Away!

After visiting that gallery, we spent much of the afternoon wandering in a few different galleries and seeing all of the cool art that’s on display. While I wish it had been a bit warmer, it was a ton of fun and we saw some really cool stuff!

However, I think the most surprising thing were these two 100% automated dessert trucks! Although we didn’t get anything, the trucks actually talk to you (in Mandarin, so I couldn’t really understand them) when you approach them!

After our visit to 798, we made our way to Shabbat. This week, some of the students from Peking University who come to Shabbat had volunteered to make dinner and they cooked up a delicious Italian American Eco-Friendly Feast (I also made a yummy quinoa salad with tofu – The “Wholesome Harvest” below!). It was fun to show Jesse how we do Shabbat here in Beijing and get to sing with him in person! Although it was a bit of a smaller crowd than usual, I’m really glad that I could have him join!

Saturday: The Ancient Observatory & The Vegan Market

On Saturday morning, Jesse and I decided to head to the police station to take care of his registration in person. While during Jesse’s previous visit, there was some confusion as to whether Jesse was a visitor or moving in, this time, the officer who took care of our registration knew exactly what to do! Ironically, we had the same officer who helped me with my own registration when I moved in almost a year and a half ago (she remembered me, so clearly Saturday morning is the best time to come). She spoke English and was able to get Jesse registered (and even gave me a new copy of my own registration as mine was a bit beaten up). It was definitely a far more positive experience than the last time!

After that, we made our way to the Ancient Observatory. I last visited the Ancient Observatory with Richard nearly a year ago, so it was great to go back (especially after trying to visit with Daniele in February only to find out that it is closed on Mondays). As an astronomer, it’s definitely a must visit here in Beijing and I’m so glad that I could take Jesse! The Observatory is one of the oldest observatories in the world, dating back to the 1400s.

While it isn’t an observatory in the modern sense (all of the science and stargazing here was done pre-telescope), I’ve always found early Astronomical equipment to be fascinating. In particular, the Ancient Observatory is home to a number of incredibly large and ornate Jesuit era astronomical tools (the observatory does an excellent job highlighting the work done by Jesuit Astronomers who visited China, as well as by Chinese Astronomers). These machines are inlaid with ornate Chinese dragons, which make them beautiful works of art, too. One of the aspects that I hadn’t remembered about the Observatory was that like the Old Summer Palace, it was pillaged as part of the Opium Wars that led to France, Britain, and Germany claiming many Chinese artifacts and destroying historical landmarks here in Beijing. In fact, the large astronomical pieces that I show below were actually stolen by the French and Germans (with the French returning them in the 1910s and the Germans not returning them until after WWII). The museum included photos that showed how the Germans displayed the many tools at various castles in Germany.

Beyond the giant astronomical equipment, the Ancient Observatory also features a number of cool displays on ancient Chinese astronomy (including the role that Jesuit astronomers played in bringing new technologies to China), the history of the observatory (and other observatories in China), how the Chinese Lunar Calendar works, as well as observations of other planets in the solar system.

However, my favorite part of the Ancient Observatory is that you can climb the tower to see where the observing would have been done and marvel at the giant equipment, many of which I was unfamiliar with (including an armilla – for determining solar time, a quadrant – for estimating altitude and zenith, a celestial globe – for estimating the rising and setting times of celestial bodies – an ecliptic armilla – for determining the ecliptic latitude and longitude – the ecliptic is the plane the planets orbit the sun in, an altazimuth – for determining the azimuth of celestial bodies, an azimuth theolodite – for determining the azimuth and altitude of celestial bodies, a sextant – for measuring the angular distance between two points, and an equatorial armilla – for determining the true solar time and the right ascension and declination of celestial bodies – right ascension and declination are the astronomical equivalent of latitude and longitude in the plane of the sky). Although today the top of the tower is dwarfed by the hundreds of skyscrapers in the area, it’s easy to imagine how this location would make for a great place to observe in ancient Beijing!

After our visit to the Ancient Observatory, Jesse and I made our way to the April Vegan Market! Jesse was really excited to get to try all of the different vegan foods that I get to have on a regular basis and the selection this month did not disappoint! As you can see in the below photos, we got a ton of food, including some delicious vegan crepes (including a luxurious vegan homemade nutella crepe and two delicious savory crepes), a really delicious falafel, Grassroots mac n cheese, and a vegan goat cheese spread! We also got to enjoy some vegan peanut butter cups, too! It was nice having Jesse here for the market as I didn’t need to choose what to get, we could just split things!

At the market, it was also nice to get to introduce Jesse to the vegan community here. He’d met a few people on some of the online events that they’ve done, but it was great to have him in person. Additionally, there is always a raffle for charity (this time it was Rain animal shelter) and Jesse and I won three times! We got a free vegan lemonade soda, vegan soap, and a vegan minced meat (sort of akin to if you chopped up veggie sausages and put them in a container with some sauce – quite tasty on a wrap)! It’s always great to support a good cause and eat well while doing it!

After the market, we walked back to my apartment (we did a lot of walking that day, approximately 30,000 steps) and then decided to do a quick stroll around Shichahai Lake! It’s hard to believe that it was only ~ 10 weeks ago that Jesse was visiting for the first time and the lakes were fully frozen over! How time flies! Also, since i don’t usually go to the lakes at night too often, it’s always amazing to see how the entire area totally transforms when the sun goes down! And of course, we had to get some delicious sugar covered strawberries to cap off the day!

Sunday: A Hike on the “Wild” Part of the Great Wall

On Sunday, Jesse and I got to do one of the coolest things we’ve done here in China and that was walk the Great Wall! This was my fourth trip to the Great Wall and every time I go, I see a new part of the wall and have an amazing time. This time, I organized a small hike with my friend Kevin from Kehillat Beijing and fellow postdoc Pablo through the company Our Beijing. While I’d been on larger hikes before, it was fun to move at our own pace and Dom, from our Beijing, was a great guide (although I’ve done larger group hikes, because Jesse was visiting, I wanted to make sure that we’d be able to go on a hike as some of the hiking groups that I know don’t hike every weekend). While I know the Great Wall is iconic, it’s important to note that it wasn’t built entirely at once, so it’s difficult to say exactly how old the section of the wall we were on was (approximately 700 years or so). Also, although the more touristy parts of the walls have been maintained/rebuilt, we were on the “Wild” wall, which means that it hasn’t been rebuilt and is more akin to exploring historical ruins. However, despite being on the “wild” Wall, you can still see all of the grandeur of the wall. As you can see from the photos below, while we were following a pretty well defined trail to get to the Great Wall, it wasn’t always the easiest on our feet! Though some parts had a clear easy path, there were other parts where we needed to leverage our weight against trees to climb up the side of the mountain! There was definitely a lot of using my hands to maneuver around! By the end of the hike, my jeans, shoes, and sweater were covered in a lot of dirt and dust!

The coolest part of the hike is when the Great Wall appears, almost out of nowhere. Once we got to the wall and hiked along the edges, everything becomes a bit surreal, especially when you think that all of the guard towers used to be occupied and that messengers would ride on horseback across the wall. Even though this part of the wall is in ruins, you can still see just how steep it was and you definitely need to watch your step! However, the views are amazing! Because the Great Wall follows the natural curvature of the mountains, there aren’t a ton of flat areas (my phone said we walked over 100 flights of stairs) and it still amazes me that parts of the wall with stairs are still relatively intact.

Although at times we could see other small towns that are technically part of Beijing proper (Beijing is both a city and a province), it’s really amazing that we were only ~ 1.5 hours outside of the city. It feels almost like you were transported back in time. The hike itself was pretty amazing! It was fun to hang out with Jesse, Kevin, Pablo, and Dom and talk about all sorts of random things from life in China to Astronomy and basically everything in between. As we hiked, I will say that it struck me that China has allowed the wall to remain in ruin and not tried to rebuild everything. I’d imagine a New Deal style economic boost to refurbish the entire wall could be in order at some point if the economy every really struggles. However, for now, I’m glad we could see what remains. It’s far cooler to see the ruins and marvel at what’s left than just know that everything was rebuilt 10 years ago. As you’ll see below, although we weren’t in the touristy part, we did get to see the Great Wall on the Lake from our vantage point, which made for some amazing photos!

While the pictures are definitely better than my words for this part, I’m really glad that Jesse and I could spend our birthday weekend hiking the wall. Since this will be our last birthday together in China, it was really nice to make some fun memories at such an iconic Chinese location!

The hike was amazing and I’m so glad that I got to do this! If any of you ever visit Beijing, I definitely recommend trying a Great Wall hike if you’re able! One small disclaimer though. It’s also worth noting that while I’ve been to the Great Wall four times, I’ve only ever been to the eastern-most portion of the wall and it extends for ~13,000 miles, so if you have friends who’ve visited and hiked the wall, it’s highly unlikely that we’ve been to the same places.

Monday & Tuesday: Exploring Tsinghua, the Olympic Park, Birthday Cake, and Jesse gives a Talk!

Monday, our Birthday, started out with a lovely Birthday zoom call from our parents (we also got a call from our Aunt Pam the night before). After exchanging some presents, Jesse and I had to head into Tsinghua so that I could get some work done. For those of you wondering, unlike when I was at BU and Jesse could just show up, it’s a bit overly complicated to have non-employees visit Tsinghua. In theory, you just have to apply for permission, but although I had applied for Jesse via one of the faculty in the department (Jesse gave a talk on Tuesday, so the professor who coordinated it filled out the form), the form didn’t go through Monday morning, so we had a bit of a mess getting in. Thankfully, we were able to have him enter. After a really good zoom talk (ironically on a topic similar to Jesse’s own work and with a speaker that Jesse knows pretty well), we met up with my friend Miriam from Kehillat Beijing (she works at Tsinghua). She’d met Jesse virtually because we took Chinese lessons with her last year, but it was nice to hang out in person and show Jesse the campus! As you can see from the photos below, Tsinghua’s campus is enormous, so I’m really glad I could show some of my favorite parts to Jesse!

I’m especially glad that I could show Jesse my favorite place on campus, the old pond which is in the style of a traditional Chinese garden!

After exploring Tsinghua, Jesse and I made our way back to my apartment. However, we decided to veer off course a bit and visit the Olympic Park. Although the Beijing 2022 games were over a year ago, Jesse had originally hoped to come to the games (prior to the announcement of the quarantining for any attendees), so I’m really glad we could see the Bird’s Nest and the Water/Ice Cube! Also, although I travel under the Olympic Park multiple times a week (it’s on my way to work), I hadn’t been to the Olympic Park since they reopened it to the public after the games. There were also a ton of really cool statues and memento’s from the games (lots of the iconic mascot Bing Dwen Dwen and the giant snowflake) and even a fun little train that you can take around the park – I definitely want to do a tour while I’m here!

After we got home, we had an amazing vegan dinner at Ye Bo Zhai, a vegetarian Chinese restaurant near the Lama Temple (see photos in the Vegan Food section below). However, no birthday would be complete without a birthday cake, so Jesse and I made a delicious strawberry cake with vegan icing and vegan dolce du leche (that I had picked up at the vegan market a few months ago). It was a delicious way to cap off a lovely 32nd Birthday!

While Jesse had to head back to Shanghai on Tuesday, he visited campus again on Tuesday so he could give a special seminar. With China reopening, we’ve had a number of talks every week (usually 4+ per week), but I’m really glad Jesse could share his work. We had a good attendance and Jesse got a ton of great questions from Prof. Cheng Li. Because we had barely made it to the train station when I visited Shanghai, this time, we made sure to leave with plenty of time to spare.

It was really amazing to have Jesse come and visit Beijing (and tiring, we walked over 100,000 steps in the 5 days)! Although we have a few more joint trips planned, I’m not sure he’ll spend an extended time in Beijing again (at least not for a while), so I’m so glad we could top things off with such an awesome birthday weekend!

Passover

Although it feels like it’s been more than a month, between this blog post and my previous blog post, we celebrated Passover (I’m really glad Passover didn’t fall during my birthday as Pesadicah cakes are never the best)! For those of you who celebrate, I hope you all had lovely Seders! As I know I’ve touched on in the blog before, getting Jewish foods and holiday items, specifically Channukkah candles and matzah is a bit trickier here in Beijing than it is in the US. Thankfully, the Chabad house gets a huge shipment of matzah from Israel each year and I was able to buy the two boxes of matzah that I needed to get me through Passover. This year they even had lots of Kosher for Passover cakes and cookies (but since it’s only me here, I just stuck with making my own chocolate covered matzah).

Outside of the matzah, Kehillat Beijing celebrated Passover at the Capital Club (where the community used to do services prior to the pandemic – although it’s a lovely venue, I really do love the comfort of having it at Roberta & Ted’s home). While I still think of Passover as more of an “at home” holiday than a communal holiday (I really miss getting to go to my family’s Seder and hear my Dad tell his Passover story), it was a really nice Seder. I helped lead the community is singing a few less traditional Passover songs (“When You Believe” from the Prince of Egypt – I sang that in my first two years in the Alef Beats, so it’s always fun to sing – and “Let My People Go”). Outside of that, we had a fairly traditional Seder, complete with a slew of kids getting very generous afi komen presents (although those same kids need a bit of work on the Four Questions) and lots matzah, horse radish, and haroset. It was a lovely meal (thankfully the matzah ball soup was vegetarian, although the tofu dish, though tasty, was interestingly the most American Chinese food I’ve had here in Beijing) and also really nice to see some community members and friends that I hadn’t seen since the High Holy Days. We had approximately 70 people (which is definitely on the smaller side for Kehillat Beijing – I think we’re still feeling a bit of the post-China COVID-Zero population crunch). Also, the Capital Club is an amazing venue and the view of the city really cannot be beat!

Outside of Kehillat Beijing’s Seder, I also got to join my parents for a small virtual Seder on their first night of Passover (they did their main Seder on the second night). Although it isn’t the same as being there in person, I’m so glad I could come!

Vegan Cooking Class

For this months vegan cooking class, we focused a bit more on seasonal ingredients, specifically, Chinese toon and bamboo shoots! While I’ve seen toon on many a menu, I wasn’t entirely sure what it was (usually it’s been in toon cakes, which look like scallion pancakes, so I assumed it must be some kind of green). It’s actually a leaf that grows on trees that are super common in China (there was even one right outside of the hutong where we do the classes)! For this class, we made a super refreshing cold tofu salad with Chinese toon! Given that tofu on it’s own is pretty bland, it’s amazing how we could transform the flavor with so few ingredients (the tofu is seasoned with toon and a chili oil)! This is definitely the kind of dish that I can see myself making a lot this summer as a nice simple addition to salads (assuming I can get toon). One of the cool things about toon is that in its raw form, it’s red, but once you blanch it, it becomes green!

For our second dish, Chef Zhou taught us to make braised bamboo! While I think most everyone is familiar with bamboo as a plant, I’d never actually seen the bamboo that people can eat in its 100% raw form. As you can see in some of the photos below, it’s quite stalky and definitely a little intimidating to work with. Thankfully, peeling it is relatively straight forward! Once we peeled it, it looked like the pickled bamboo that I’ve seen in grocery stores here! I will say that while the cutting was rather easy (bamboo is hollow), it does take quite a long time to cook! But the flavor is totally worth it! If you’ve never had bamboo before, it has a really nice texture that gives it a great bite and it absorbs flavors really well!

The last dish we made was braised eggplant with green beans! Sort of a hybrid between the sword beans that Jesse and I love and some of the eggplant dishes that we’ve enjoyed. In this dish, we surprisingly used the larger European eggplants as opposed to the smaller Japanese eggplants. While I usually struggle to cook eggplant properly (usually it’s too chewy and slightly undercooked), the key here was to let the eggplant soak in salt water for about 10 minutes). We started by sauteing the beans until they started to blister and then cooked down the eggplant (it gets a bit smoky!). After cooking the ginger and garlic, we finished everything off by cooking it all together in the sauce! The end result was a silky smooth eggplant with blistered beans!

All of the dishes were delicious! I’m really excited to add these to my repertoire! I’m so glad that these classes have continued to happen. Since my attempts at learning Mandarin have not been terribly successful, I feel like these classes at least allow me to gain a better understanding of Chinese food culture and also give me tangible food memories that I’ll be able to take with me when I leave China. I already cannot wait for the next class!

The Confucius Temple

Early in April, I visited the Confucius Temple with my friend and fellow Astronomy postdoc Tom. Although I’ve visited the Lama Temple multiple times, I’d never visited the Confucius Temple (it’s basically next door) and I’m really glad I did! Though far less crowded, the temple is really cool! You’re probably wondering what a Confucius Temple is as Confucianism is a philosophy and not a religion. While I’m not entirely sure of how the monks who live(d) – still unsure how active the temple is – would identify, the temple has both traditional temple grounds as well as an exhibit on the history of Confucianism and Confucius. Interestingly, there is a main temple that looks similar aesthetically to some of the Buddhist temples I’ve seen here in Beijing. However, unlike those temples, there are no Buddha statues (ok, that shouldn’t be surprising) and nobody seemed to be actively praying (which is why I felt ok taking photos). The Temple and grounds date back to the early 1300s and this was where Chinese imperial officials would pay homage to Confucius.

Although I knew a bit about Confucius, I didn’t know much about the spread of Confucius thought, especially in terms of ideas like equality of education (Confucius fundamentally believed in access to education for all regardless of social status). As the museum highlights, he was often entwined in various political affairs, but, at least according the exhibit, seemed far more interested in philosophical thought on topics like ethics and doing actions for the betterment of the community, not out of self interest.

Interestingly, the temple hosts one of the most famous mythic trees in Beijing, the Chu-jian cypress, which is over 700 year, and is known for identifying wicked and dishonest courtiers! It’s sort of amazing to be able to trace a tree that far back in time (though I guess the Newton Apple Tree at Cambridge exists, so it does happen in the West). Also, the temple grounds are the home to a few lovely looking cats! They had water and food dishes, so it’s clear that though they may be stray cats, they are well cared for. The temple also has a number of stone steles to commemorate different events and featuring magnificent Chinese dragons at their base (and turtle-dragons, too). These are some of my favorite types of statues and I loved getting to see so many!

Outside of the original temple grounds, the Confucius Temple is connected to the Imperial College (which is Tom’s Alma Mater – ok, the one in the UK is, but I had to take the photo). The Imperial College is actually the original Chinese university (until it was eventually replaced by Peking University) and was the center of Chinese learning during the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. As the students were primarily studying Confucius thought (hence the proximity to the temple!). Interestingly when Tom and I were visiting, there was some kind of children’s music competition going on, so it looks like it is still a place for education!

Beihai Park

After visiting so many parks in Shanghai in March, I decided to visit one more park in April. Specifically, I visited Beihai park. Behai Lake is the natural extension of the Houhai and Shichahai lakes that I run around. If you’re wondering why I’d never visited (the park is only ~ 1 mile from my apartment), it’s because unless you know it’s there, the park is walled off, so I hadn’t realized I’d walked past it many times! I must say that Beihai park did not disappoint!

As you can see from the photos above, the Beihai Lake is enormous (at least double the size of Shichahai) and the grounds are filled with tons of historical landmarks. Beihai Park is an amazing park encapsulating basically all of the types of traditional Chinese architecture and style. The grounds were originally built as a country residence for the Jin emperor in the 12th Century, but during the Ming Dynasty in the 1400s, the park was combined with the Forbidden City to be part of the extensive Xiyuan royal gardens.

While the architecture shares many similarities to the Forbidden City, including the dragon motifs (the dragon represents the emperor), it’s also interesting how many Buddhist temples are here! I’ve commented before that the lack of religious iconography at the Forbidden City, Old Summer Palace, and New Summer Palace is interesting and this stands in sharp contrast, as the grounds house multiple Buddhist temples. The most striking example of this is the magnificent Jade Island, home to the towering White Pagoda (also called the White Bagoda), at the center of the lake! It was really cool to get to walk up to the top of the mountain and see the Pagoda up close (it’s massive!)! Depending on your approach, you walk through a series of Buddhist temples to get to the Pagoda (I actually didn’t realize this and went the other way first and then saw the Temples after and came up that way a second time). For those of you wondering, Beijing is a really flat city, so like the hill in Jingshan Park, this mountain was also man made. In fact, the entire area is man made (and it’s the soil that they dug out when constructing the lakes that they used to build the mountains). Interestingly, like many of the historical sites here, this is not the original White Pagoda (although it does contain relics from the original) as it was damaged during earthquakes in the 17th and 20th Centuries). However, despite that, it still makes for a breathtaking view!

Although the temples are visually stunning, my favorite part of the park is by far the Nine Dragon Wall, which was built in 1402 and features 7 colored glazed bricks to create a magnificent display of dragons playfully moving through the clouds!

As I hadn’t visited Beihai before, the enclosed nature of the park allows for a startling contrast to the Houhai and Shichahai Lakes that I run around. Given the modernization and commercialization of the areas surrounding those lakes, this offers a bit more of a glimpse to life in the past (at least architecturally – there are hundreds of motor boats on the lake) and having it closed off from the rest of the city does help to separate it from the hustle and bustle of Beijing. I’m so glad that I visited as it made for an amazing day!

Life at Tsinghua/Astronomy Update

In terms of Astronomy this month, my time is again split between Project Radio and Project Morphology. As a reminder, I got the referee comments for Project Radio in late March and while I’d hoped to be done with them, some of the updates are taking a bit longer than I’d hoped. The main issue was in how I measured the spectral index. Thankfully, I just re-measured the spectral index and found similar results (for the most part) (if anyone who is reading this ever needs to know how to convert python made contours into contours that are workable for the program CASA, please let me know, I wrote a script for that!). While I haven’t finished all of the analysis, I’m optimistic that while I’ll be spending some time in the next couple weeks re-working different sections of the paper, that I won’t need to dramatically overhaul the results section, which is definitely a relief. I’ll be visiting some of my collaborators in Leiden in early June and ideally I’d like to have the paper sent to everyone before then (so minimally we can discuss that as well as some potential future work that I hope to include in my postdoc applications for next fall). I’m also scheduled to give a lunch talk on that work at Tsinghua at the beginning of June, so I definitely want to be done before then, even if it means a lot of long days! I’ve got to keep getting work done to get another job anyway! Outside of the updated analysis, I also spent a lot of time reworking the introduction to my paper and to the COBRA survey (the Clusters Occupied by Bent Radio AGN Survey that I worked on as part of my dissertation and that this paper builds off of) so that the paper better stands alone and potential readers don’t need to read all of my previous papers unless they want to.

Beyond Project Radio, Project Morphology is finally starting to move along. I’ve got Galapagos running smoothly (though I needed to end up making some tweaks to the images as the large amounts of blank space in the images were causing issues- the Hubble images are stitched together and basically there are regions of the sky where we are missing coverage). Thankfully, running it on the server takes very little time (about 3 – 10 minutes depending on how many sources I want to look at). I’ve got a bit of a time crunch for that work as I’m planning to give a presentation on that at the Galaxies & Cosmology Conference in Huangshan in two weeks. As I still don’t know if I’m giving a poster or a talk, I’d rather give a poster at this point as it’s easier to focus on what’s been done rather than having to try to present a completed picture that might not be complete. However, I’m hoping to have initial measurements of the morphology-density relationship for one of the three protoclusters I’m studying by the end of the weekend (so hopefully as you’re reading this).

Outside of those two projects, I’m starting to get my part of Project Low-Z, my collaboration with Jesse studying bent radio sources in redMaPPer clusters into focus. We’ve got our sample and Jesse’s done the statistical analysis, so I’ll be looking at the radio properties to see if some of the trends that I saw in my previous work hold at lower redshift, where the clusters should be more evolved. Additionally, I’m still working on Project Quench, specifically measuring K-corrections of galaxies observed with the Hyper-Suprime Cam to better quantify whether or not galaxies are truly quiescent or are dusty-star forming galaxies in low-z clusters. Also, one of the other postdocs in Zheng’s group introduced a cool project cross-correlating HSC clusters (the same sample from above) with luminous red galaxies identified as part of DESI (the spectroscopic survey that Jesse works on). He’s looking for someone to help with the project and I told him I’d definitely be interested as it would allow Jesse and me to continue collaborating and to study BCG evolution, something that we’re both super interested in.

Outside of research, the Department of Astronomy also celebrated its 4th Birthday this year (there was Astronomy at Tsinghua long before that, but it was part of the Physics department). We had a party and the department made a slide show showing how people had aged over 4 year intervals in their life. Because I submitted the most photos (4, they asked photos between 2000 and 2020), I got some cool commemorative FAST (Five Hundred Meter Aperture Spherical Telescope) stamps!

Additionally, although unrelated to my research, we had our first colloquium speaker from the US! Dr. Johanna Teske visited Tsinghua to give a colloquium on exoplanets and although exoplanets are not my area of interest, she gave a really great talk. I mention it here because when she was being introduced, it was mentioned that she was a vegan, so when I was chatting with her afterward, I mentioned that I’d be happy to give some restaurant recommendations. Unsurprisingly, she’d had some issues finding vegetarian and vegan food here (it’s not that hard if you know where to look, but the key is knowing where to look and unfortunately, most of my Chinese colleagues don’t know). I was able to recommend Gongdelin to her as she was visiting Tian’anmen Square and am happy to report that she really enjoyed the meal! Clearly, I’ll need to tell whoever is in charge of colloquiums that if any other speakers come who are vegan or vegetarian to let me know and I can keep them well fed!

Goldie!!!

This was another great month to be Goldie! She continues to be my constant companion, spending her days either snuggled beside me on the couch or burrowing under the covers on my bed (she really does conk out when she sleeps). She’s also definitely getting ready for summer as she’s been shedding up a storm! Thankfully, I’m used to having cat hair covering my clothes, because if not, I’d be spending a fortune on lint rollers. While Jesse was here, he borrowed a red backpack that I have and when it was on the floor, Goldie decided that it’s her new favorite spot (it must be comfy), and she’ll ball up and snuggle right on the bag!

While we only had one cat visitor via the skylight (at least while I was home and she was awake – once it happened while she was burrowed under my covers), she did get to enjoy Jesse visiting. She really seems to enjoy having Jesse here. She snuggled with him while he was sleeping on the couch and would hop up between us when we were watching tv.

Goldie also got to meet my friend Richard, though she was definitely a bit more timid around him (she basically stayed under the covers the entire time). I think she likes to meet new people on her terms (meaning she’s awake and not napping). Still, she’s such a cute cat and I’m so glad I have her in my life.

Exploring Beijing

With all of my adventures around Beijing this month, I got to see a lot of other cool things that I wanted to share. As I touched on in Jesse’s visit, the area that I live in, specifically the Shichahai and Houhai lakes and the Drum Tower and Bell Tower look stunning in the spring! I’m really glad that the air quality has improved so that I can go running around them regularly again!

Outside of my neighborhood, I’ve also taken tons of photos of flowers and budding trees. I think spring has arrived for many of you, so I hope you’re able to enjoy your own neighborhoods fully in bloom, too!

Also, last Monday, Pablo, Richard, and I met up to hang out in downtown Beijing and explore that area a bit! We had a delicious lunch at a Spanish restaurant (Migas Mercado – I was able to get a few vegetarian dishes – I got a roasted red pepper dish, a warm vegetable salad, and carrot cake) and a wonderful view of the CCTV building (the iconic pants building). We also walked around a few of the parks in that area (even one with a very small amusement park!). It was a wonderful day and great to catch up with Richard now that he’s back in Beijing!

And of course, I also saw lots of cool sculptures, bike blankets, and other things that don’t really fit in a category!

Jewish Life in Beijing

Outside of Passover and the Shabbat when Jesse visited, we had one other in person Shabbat in April (we decided to have virtual Shabbats during the Friday of Passover and during the May Day holiday as that’s the biggest travel holiday here in China). For this Shabbat, we did a potluck Shabbat! I made roasted cauliflower, cumin mushrooms, and peanut tofu! We also had a ton of other delicious food and it was really great that despite a smaller crowd, we could all come together for a Shabbat! I know with the summer coming up and people traveling more that the Shabbats will likely be smaller for a while (although maybe we’ll get some tourists or former community members visiting Beijing), but I really do enjoy our Shabbats and hope we can have more in person, too!

China Drawings

This month I finished three very different drawings in my sketchbook! Let me know what you think! I really tried to do something different in each of them (and when I’m running code for long periods of time, sometimes my eyes need a screen break and it’s nice to pick up a pencil and pen and let my imagination go wild!). I also made a fun One Piece birthday card for Jesse that I thought I’d share, too! Let me know what you think!

Vegan Food

Between Jesse’s visit and getting some meals with friends, I ate at a lot of vegetarian and vegan restaurants this month! All of the meals were delicious! Before visiting the Confucius Temple, Tom and I went to Ye Bo Zhai for a delicious meal. We got red bean and barley tea, Japanese style eggplant, roasted bamboo shoots (similar to the dish I learned to make), super spicy seitan and peppers, sticky glazed mushrooms, and house noodles with a mushroom sauce! The bamboo, eggplant, and seitan were my favorites!

After our Great Wall hike, Jesse, Pablo, Kevin, and I went to Blossom vegetarian! While also a Buddhist-style restaurant, they have a bit more pan-Asian influence on their menu, too! We got a traditional pear soup (warm pear juice), spicy cumin mushroom skewers, kaofu, roasted bamboo, curry tofu, sweet veggie ribs, three kingdom spicy hot pot, kung pao mushrooms, and broad beans! This was another delicious meal (it’s fun to go with more people since a lot of these restaurants have huge menus, so we can try more dishes!). The mushroom skewers, curry tofu, and three kingdom hot pot were my favorite!

For our birthday, Jesse and I went to Ye Bo Zhai and had a lovely dinner (thank you Mom & Dad for treating!). We got a traditional sour plum juice, fried mushrooms, bamboo/mushroom/carrot rolls, traditional Beijing eggplant, spicy mushrooms and peppers, tofu with matsutake mushrooms, and spicy seitan with bamboo. This was a delicious meal (we might have ordered a bit too much between us, but it was our birthday and worth indulging). My favorite dishes were both mushroom dishes, the eggplant, and the seitan!

Before Jesse left, Pablo, Jesse, and I went to Tianchun MiaoXiang, the vegetarian restaurant near Tsinghua’s campus for a final meal to send Jesse off in style. We got coconut milk with mango and sago (tapioca balls), chestnuts and taro balls, flame tofu (which they light on fire at the table), fried lotus root (Pablo’s favorite), tofu skin rolls filled with mushrooms, vegetarian eel (tofu), and cauliflower! It was another amazing meal and my favorites were definitely the chestnut and taro balls, the tofu skins, the vegetarian eel, and the lotus root! Although Jesse’s only been able to visit twice, I’m so glad I could show him some of my favorite restaurants!

Last weekend, I met up with one of my friends from the Vegans of Beijing to try Ori a new Japanese vegetarian restaurant that’s really close to my apartment (Jesse and I had hoped to go, but unfortunately Ori was closed when we went). It’s a fun little restaurant that specializes in small plates and since the food looked so good, we wanted to try a lot of dishes! We got yuzu soda, yuba (tofu skins) with green peppers, vegetable balls, peanut noodles, miso tofu, sichuan duplings, lemony peanut buds (one of the most unusual dishes I’ve had here), bamboo shoots with Chinese toon, mapo tofu, and rice pudding! It was a delicious meal and a ton of fun! My favorite dishes were the yuba (possibly the best yuba I’ve had here), the vegetable balls, the peanut noodles (the noodles were really fat and had a really different texture from the noodles I’ve had before), the miso tofu, and the mapo tofu!

Lastly, Richard, Pablo, and I hung out last Monday during the May Day holiday (see photos in the exploring Beijing of the downtown area – as well as some from lunch, which wasn’t entirely vegan) and went to a small vegan noodle & dumpling shop near my apartment called Su Yuan Ju . Ironically, Richard and I had tried to visit during Chinese New Year 2022 and it was closed (and we thought it was closed permanently – we didn’t realize that everything just shuts down during the holiday). It was a really delicious meal! We got savory mushroom noodles, delicious vegetable dumplings, and a cold salad! All in all, all of the vegan meals that I had this month were amazing!

Although I ate out a lot this month, I also did a fair amount of my own cooking! Although Passover dominated the early parts of the month (lots of matzah ball soup, matzah pizzas, haroset, and chocolate covered matzah), I also made two delicious stir fried dishes with vegan gochujang that I got from Jesse, as well as some delicious Dan Dan noodles (that I learned how to make from my vegan cooking classes)!

Animals of Beijing

While Goldie is my constant companion, I also saw a lot of neighborhood cats (ok, primarily two neighborhood cats that I see a lot – I wonder if that’s why Goldie stares at the front door for hours on end) and got to spend some time with my favorite puppies in Beijing (Mimi & Honey). I also saw some rather domesticated ducks when I went for a run around Shichahai, which was a bit startling!

What Am I Reading/Watching?

While I didn’t watch any movies this month, I did finish watching two very different streaming shows this month. On HBOMax, I watched the second season of Perry Mason. Starring Matthew Rhys, Juliet Rylance, and Chris Chalk, the second season picks up shortly after the first season and again finds Perry Mason (played by Matthew Rhys) embroiled in another murder trial with heavy socio-political implications. I thought the season really did an excellent job highlighting the systemic problems of the Los Angeles justice system and also crafting a compelling case that left me guessing though most of the season. It’s unclear if there will be a 3rd season, but i really hope there is, because it’s an excellent slow burn show! In an entirely different genre, I finished Hello Tomorrow on Apple TV+. Starring Billy Crudup, the show focuses on a salesman/conman selling the apartment of your dream on the Moon. While definitely a more cynical take on society than either Shrinking or Ted Lasso (also on Apple TV+), the show is quite intriguing for the world it’s created (a retro Jetsons meets 1950s Americana with flying/floating cars and casual space travel). Like Perry Mason, I have no clue if they’ll do a season two, but it certainly set up for an interesting conundrum if they do! Outside of the streaming shows, I also finished the 6th season of the anime My Hero Academia! For my money, My Hero Academia (by Kohei Horikoshi) is one of the best manga and anime that is currently coming out. It’s an incredibly hybrid of American superhero comics and shonen manga. I highly recommend it, especially if you’re a fan of superhero comics and haven’t read much manga!

Outside of tv, I also finished reading The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. It’s an alternate history novel telling the story of an America where FDR loses his 3rd term presidential bid to noted real-world American Anti-Semite Charles Lindbergh. Roth sets the novel through the protagonist’s eyes, which in this case is a reimagined 10 year old version of himself, and we see the rise of anti-semitism and America first/isolationism in the 1940s. Although the novel was released in 2004, given the rise of Anti-Semitism in the US today (and the rise of Trumpism as a whole – there are some eerie similarities to the way Roth portrays Lindbergh to how Trump actually behaved – mostly in terms of foreign policy), the novel only becomes more important. Although people tend to look back at 1940s America as if the US was the bastion of social acceptance and harmony, the way Roth shows the tensions and fears of Anti-Semitism bubble to the surface really hammers home the otherness of being a Jew in America and serves as a stark reminder of the fears of living in a minority, even one that is passable to the majority. I highly recommend the book to everyone here (and I’m also excited to watch the HBO adaptation later this summer).

East Meets West

In all of my exploring, I obviously saw tons of signs of Western influence. While it was mostly stickers and toys, I also walked by the first Pizza Hut in China! Outside of Pizza Hut, I also saw two interesting statues of Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson, Sesame Street Stickers (that’s a first here), and Spongebob!

Anime & Comics

No Astronomer in Beijing blog post would be complete without me highlighting all of the cool anime & comics paraphernalia that I saw in Beijing. And thanks to Jesse and my visit to 798, I saw a ton of really amazing anime & comics statues. While almost all of these were well beyond my price range (let alone the logistical scale of how on earth I’d ever get them out of China), it’s always amazing to see (and yes, those are life size Spider-man and Iron Man statues)!

Outside of 798, I also spotted a lot of other cool anime and comics statues (primarily Ultraman, Dragonball z, One Piece and Pokemon)! I even saw my first cosplay in Beijing (at least I hope that was Chainsaw Man cosplay – it stands out on the subway for sure). I also saw ads for both Shazam and Guardians of the Galaxy 3, so it’s nice to see that American Superhero movies are opening normally again! Although I’m slowly realizing (especially as Jesse is packing) that I cannot and should not buy everything, it is always fun to window shop!

For those of you who made it this far, thank you so much! I know this was an extra-long post (I don’t think the next couple posts should be as long, but who knows). I hope you enjoyed reading about what I was up to in April! As always, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns please feel free to either comment below or write my e-mail directly. I always love hearing from all of you. I hope you all have a happy, healthy, and safe month of May!

In Peace,

Emmet