Hi Everyone,
Thank you so much for returning to my Astronomer in Beijing blog. I hope you’re all staying safe and healthy and for those of you in collegiate academia are enjoying your spring break or looking forward to your upcoming Spring break. As the title says, this was a life changing month for me as my plans for post-June 2024 were finally finalized (see below). Outside of that, I was mostly working, trying to make more headway on my research, enjoy the tail end of the Lunar New Year Celebrations in Beijing, and enjoy the start of spring in Beijing, too! So without further ado …
Life At Tsinghua … Coming to an End
After applying to 65 postdoc positions, I am happy to announce that I recently accepted a position in Padova (Padua for the Americans/Brits) at INAF-OaPD (the Italian National Research Center associated with Padova Observatory and affiliated with the University of Padova). I’ll be doing similar science – still focusing on galaxy clusters/protoclusters and galaxy evolution, but with a focus toward future Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) science. ELT is one of the upcoming 30m telescopes that the European Space Agency is working on and while first light is closer to 2030, there is a lot of science that can be done in the meantime to prepare for it. I’ll be using new data sets from JWST, HST, and Euclid to study galaxy evolution! I’m definitely excited to know where I’ll be going, but also be done with the applications (I won’t go into full detail, but 65 applications takes a lot out of you!). I am eternally grateful to my letter writers for both writing 60+ letters and their help in making this decision. I’m also very excited to move to Italy! If any of you have been to Padova (or have plans to visit Italy starting in July 2024), let me know! As an added bonus, my mother’s first cousin’s Amy & Terry live in Vicenza, which is only ~ 30 minutes away, so I’ll get to see some family, too!
On the actual research front, once I had postdoc offers (I was deciding between two different positions), that was really my work focus for the better part of this month. While the interviews for various positions are always stressful, making a decision was a lot harder! Beyond that, I have been slowly chipping away at both Project Morphology and Project Low-z and I am now back going into the office regularly since the Lunar New Year break is over (see the nice blossoms starting to pop up on the trees near my building). Ideally, I’ll have both the science for both projects “functionally done” in the next month, so that I can focus on writing up the drafts and submitting the papers before I leave China. It’s going to be a bit of a sprint, but now that I can focus my attention purely on science again, I’m excited to dive back in! Additionally, I spent a lot of time this month classifying grism spectroscopy as part of the C3VO team for their spectroscopic campaign. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this technique, traditional spectroscopy measure the amount of light in a very narrow wavelength range in a very particular target on the sky, whereas grism spectroscopy uses a grating over a normal photometric imaging instrument to spread out the light across a wider range of wavelengths for all objects in the field. As such, grism spectroscopy gives a bit messier data, but I’ve really enjoyed getting to explore a new data set and technique! Furthermore, I got to observe on Keck again (albeit remotely). In late February, one of my PhD supervisor’s colleague’s had secured a half night on Keck to observe the host galaxies of some of the bent, double-lobed radio sources in my dissertation. Since a first half of the night on Keck was ~ 12 – 6pm Beijing time, I was excited to join and take new spectra (and not have to stay up late to do it!). I haven’t seen the data yet, but I’m excited to see what we find!
Further on the Astronomy front, as many of you are likely aware, there is a Solar Eclipse that will cross a large swath of New York and other parts of the US (Here’s a handy NASA link). I’m super bummed that I’m on the wrong side of the world to see this eclipse, but I encourage you all to check it out (don’t forget to wear proper eye wear – you NEED eclipse glasses) and as an Astronomer, I’m happy to answer any eclipse related questions you have!
On less fun news, the 2025 NASA budget was recently released and it includes MAJOR slashes to the current budget of the Chandra X-ray Observatory that is operated out of Boston. While I’ve not used Chandra directly, I’ve been involved in a number of COBRA-related Chandra proposals and projects and now how important this telescope is. I really hope that the US government can shift some money around and find a way to keep X-ray Astronomy afloat in the US as we build the next generation X-ray telescopes.
Vegan Cooking Class
Yesterday, I spent my morning at another wonderful Vegans of Beijing Cooking Class. We didn’t have one in February (due to Lunar New Year), so it was great to be back with Chef Chao at the Hutong Cooking School. This time, we made three dishes, Sichuan Style cold dressed tofu, vegan Guobao Mushrooms, and stir-fried broccoli with garlic. It was a really nice balance of tofu and veggies and made for a delicious meal! For this class, we started off by doing all of the various prep work for the different dishes. We began with the stir-fried broccoli with garlic. This is a pretty classic homestyle Chinese dish (I’ve had it a number of times at Roberta & Ted’s for Shabbat), but Chef Chao showed us how to elevate the dish. One cool general cooking technique he suggested was that instead of cutting the broccoli by cutting the head part first, cut it from the stem and then pull it apart, that way you loose less of the leaves! And you make way less of a mess! For this dish, the sauce is pretty simple, just garlic, with a little salt, sugar, soy sauce, and corn starch. We blanched the broccoli first to give it a quick cook, but then stir fried the garlic before adding back the broccoli and the sauce. The end result was amazing. The garlic sauce was super creamy and delicious and we all thought that if you served this in a restaurant, you’d think it must have butter! This will definitely be a go to dish for me!
The second dish we made was the Sichuan cold dressed tofu! I remember seeing similar dishes when Jesse and I (and Tom & Daniele) went to Chengdu, so I was definitely excited. While the preparation for the tofu is simple (it’s just the block of tofu straight from the box – we used silken tofu, which makes for a great canvas for the chili oil), we got to make homemade chili oil again. One of my favorite parts of the cooking classes is getting to eat Chef Chao’s homemade chili oil when we do Sichuan cuisine! While I have the recipe, chili oil is a bit intimidating to make, so I haven’t made it myself yet, and this was a treat. We started with the chili oil featuring a ton of aromatics (Sichuan pepper, bay lief, cardamom, ginger, spring onion, leak, star anise, and cinnamon) and let those fry off in sunflower oil (you want a good neutral oil). Once those were fried, we removed the veggies, added sesame seeds and a copious amounts of red chili flake! While we let that cook, we prepared roasted peanuts and some additional seasonings for our sauce (scallion, garlic, ginger, sugar, soy sauce, and sesame oil). The end result was pretty magical! The tofu is super neutral, so it absorbs all of the heat and deliciousness of the chili oil! And since it’s a cold dish, though spicy, isn’t overly hot!
Lastly, we made Guobao Mushrooms, a vegan spin on a popular Guobao meat dish. We used oyster mushrooms, and the result was fantastic. We started by tearing the mushrooms into smaller pieces (some of the mushrooms were huge!) and then quickly boiled them to remove excess water. Once we wrung out the mushrooms, we added corn starch, flour, and a bit of water to make our breading mixture. We also chopped up leak, carrots, coriander to garnish. The mushrooms themselves were twice fried. I’m always a bit intimidated by the deep fryer (I may try to roast these on high heat in my apartment), but the end result was super crunchy, very light, and crazy delicious! After frying the mushrooms, we quickly cooked our sauce (a mix of soy sauce, sugar, and vinegar – for that sweet & sour kick), and then added it to the mushrooms. It was amazing!
I’m so glad that I’ve had the opportunity to do all of these vegan cooking classes while I’ve been in Beijing and will be able to take a bit of Beijing with me (other than Goldie) when I move to Padova. I’m definitely excited for the next class, but will also really miss having them and will be super envious when they post new photos.
Even More Lunar New Year Displays
Although the actual Lunar New Year holiday started before I posted my last post, the Lantern Festival is still two weeks after, and as such, I did see a few more cool dragon displays. My favorite was this amazing transforming Great Wall Dragon at the old summer palace. I’d seen photos online and arrived all of five minutes before I got to see it transform, which was pretty amazing! Enjoy! (sorry one of the videos is oriented the wrong way!).
I also stopped by the Olympic Park to see the Lunar New Year festivities/displays at the Water Cube/Ice Cube. They had a smaller, but equally cool dragon lantern outside the Cube. You may remember this venue from NBC’s Olympic coverage, but while there is still active swimming and skating at the site, they’ve also converted part of the venue for other activities (that’s where the giant inflatable dragon was). I also got to see a bit of the Olympic history, which was pretty cool! I do wonder how many of the cutesy mascots were added now that it’s a tourist site or if these were all there for the Olympics!
And of course, there were still a few more fun displays that I saw walking around the city!
One Last Grasp of Winter Before Spring
If you read my last blog post, you may remember that I said that Beijing was starting to warm up. Well, two days after posting that, Beijing got a sold 3+ inches of snow, so boy was I wrong! However, Beijing looks really pretty in the snow, so I hope you enjoy seeing some photos of snow covered hutongs and Shichahai Lake!
Also, the Shichahai Dragon is still up and looks pretty in the snow! If you look closely at some of the photos, you can see that people were inside the structure shoveling out the snow!
However, now that we’re in March, I think I can safely say that Spring has arrived. We’ve had three straight 70 degree days and while the temperature will drop to the high-50s/low-60s next week, it really is nice to pack up my winter coat and go running outside without a ton of layers. Beijing and the area where I live looks equally pretty in the spring, too! You can see progressively less and less ice on the lakes (it’s all gone now) and even the early buds on some trees! I can’t wait to share more springtime in Beijing photos with you next month!
Jewish Life in Beijing
Since my last post, we’ve had four lovely weekly Shabbat dinners in Beijing! While we were a smaller crowd most nights (between 10 and 20), we’ve also had visitors from Russia & Germany, as well as a few new community members join us! It’s definitely a highlight of my week and now that Kevin & Sam are back from their Lunar New Year holidays, it’s really nice to co-lead services with other people (and not have to do the weekly d’var every week). While we haven’t had any of Ted’s amazing themed Shabbat dinners post Lunar New Year, I have organized four pretty great Vegetarian Potluck Shabbats! I’ve gotten to share some of my cooking with others (my Dad’s vegetarian meatballs, a quinoa salad, pra ram tofu, sticky sesame cauliflower, and no bake Peanut Butter chocolate bars) and enjoy some really nice meals together! Especially now that I know where I’ll be going (there is a small Jewish community in Padova and a larger one in Venice, about 30 minutes away), I’m definitely feeling more bittersweet and sad about my time in this amazing community coming to an end. This group has really been my home here, especially when I just moved to the city and literally knew nobody and during the worst times of COVID and I can’t imagine my time here without them. I’m sure I’ll say this again, but I’m eternally thankful to Roberta & Ted for fostering such an amazing Jewish community in Beijing.
Goldie
Goldie continues to be my constant companion. While she doesn’t know that we’ll be moving to Italy in June (I’m sure once I start packing, she’ll get curious), she’s been a great help in keeping me motivated (and making sure I’m up early). She’s always super cute and very happy to have me at home. I’m so glad that I adopted her.
Goldie still loves burrowing, but now she’s become a bit of a box cat, too (and she’s even jumped in her new cat carrier – the one for the plane – too! I’m hoping she likes that since she’ll have to spend a pretty miserable day in there when we move)! She also likes playing the box game where she gets to attack my hands, too! Hopefully whatever apartment I find in Padova will give her a couple of windows to explore the world in. I know it’ll be a big challenge for her, but I’m sure she’ll be happy since I’ll be there.
And of course, we had another visitor!
Vegan Food
Between the end of the Lunar New Year break and getting to celebrate a bit for accepting my new postdoc, I got to get some delicious meals with friends. During the Lunar New Year break, I went to In & Out (No, not the burger chain), a Yunnanese restaurant with my friend Andrea from the Vegan community. In & Out isn’t a vegetarian restaurant, but Andrea’s Mandarin is better than mine, so she was able to help us navigate the menu. Yunnan cuisine is known for its use of mushrooms and veggies, so we were not disappointed. We got mint limeade, spicy mushrooms, bamboo rice, Yunnanese tofu, spicy potatoes, eggplant in black bean sauce, mushrooms with asparagus, and fried beans! While I probably won’t get to visit Yunnan before I leave China, I’m glad I got to try the food (I think I also made some in one of the cooking classes, too!).
The last week of my Lunar New Year break, I met up with my friend Miriam from Kehilat Beijing and had a delicious Israeli-style lunch at Toast! It was so nice to catch up with her and hear about her Lunar New Year travels. We got passion fruit soda, muhammara, tabouleh salad, roasted eggplant hummus, and falafel! Although I really enjoy making my own hummus, it’s nice to get some delicious Israeli food (and it’s right near my apartment, which is a major plus!).
Last weekend, Richard and I met up for a delicious lunch at Bestease (AKA Bai Yishushi Lanzhou Stretched noodles), for an amazing vegan meal. We got Asian pear juice, tofu skin rolls (filled with mushrooms), sizzling tofu, seitan with poached chili oil veggies and noodles, and sauteed bamboo. It was a great meal and a great way to catch up a bit with Richard, too!
Additionally, all though not a full blown Vegan Market, two of my friends, Lionel and Alex were at the February Rumble in the Jungle Market selling amazing and delicious vegan pastries. Lionel is an excellent vegan cheese maker and he and Alex partnered to make vegan chocolate truffles, vegan cheesecake, a vegan lemon meringue pie, a vegan apple tart, and a vegan chocolate orange cake. It was all amazing!
As the market was at a restaurant called Side Street, which does a mix of Indian and American food, I got a delicious Gobi Manchurian Cauliflower dish! I also ran into one of the animal rescues that I’ve donated to and they gave me a bunch of goodies (including the vegan carrot cae) and a blanket for Goldie as a thank you for all of my donations (the purple blanket in the photos above)! And there was also this really cool Environmental Education Quiz game about the causes of Global Warming that I got to play! My Dad would’ve really enjoyed that!
I also did a lot of vegan cooking of my own this month (both for myself and for Shabbat). I made gluten free blueberry cookies, a chickpea & spinach soup, roasted veggies and veggie meatballs (for Shabbat), quinoa & black bean chili, quinoa salad (for Shabbat), apple cake, pra ram tofu (for Shabbat), Southwestern Corn Chowder, sticky sesame cauliflower, and no bake peanut butter-chocolate bars (for Shabbat). Also, in walking around the lakes, I had more sugar covered fruits! This time some kind of dried fruit (maybe raisins?) and strawberries!
Exploring Beijing
While you’ve already seen a lot of fun things around the city, especially under the snow, I wanted to highlight that when I was walking to In & Out, I walked right past the Sierra Leone Embassy. As one of my Dad’s favorite students, Joseph Kaifala, is from Sierra Leone, I was keen to take a photo! Beyond that, I did see some other cool posters and subway art (especially the amazing art at the subway station near the Ancient Observatory) around the city that I wanted to share with you all!
Outside the normal signs and displays, when I got lunch with Richard at Bestease, we also got to explore the YuanDadu Chengyuan Ruins Park (as well as the Shichahai). It’s an area I’ve really only been once before, so it was nice to see some place new!
Animals of Beijing
While Goldie is still doing well and enjoys snuggling on all of my sweaters and blankets, the hutong cats are now out in force, especially with the warmer weather. While I was a bit concerned that one of my neighbors cats was out and about during the snowstorm, he/she appears to be doing well and I’ve been trying to feed all of the neighborhood cats that let me when I can!
I also wandered by a new cat cafe near Shichahai with the most amazing array of cats! I definitely need to check it out!
Additionally, with Shabbat at Roberta & Ted’s, I’ve gotten to see my favorite Beijing puppies, Mimi & Honey! They definitely seem to be excited when we have a crowd for Shabbat! And twice, Mich’s cat, Mango, made an appearance. She totally bosses the puppies around!
What Am I Reading/Watching?
In terms of television, this month I finished a few different shows. I finished season 6 of Bosch on Amazon Prime. This season focused on Bosch diving into a cold case surrounding the death of a friend’s daughter, while simultaneously examining the theft of radioactive material that gets tied to an insurrectionist movement. As always, this show is really good and definitely the best of the classic American cop show! I also finished season 2 of The Rising of the Shield Hero, an anime focusing on a human who is transported to a fantasy world to become it’s mystical protector hero. It’s a ton of fun and a great show! I also finished The Staircase on Max and this was the opposite of fun. While a really compelling and interesting show, it’s definitely a depressing story. Colin Firth plays Michael Peterson who is accused on killing his wife (played by Toni Collete). It’s based off a real story and it’s hard to watch the show and not feel like everyone is pretty horrible. While very good television, not very fun. I also finished Blue Eye Samurai on Netflix, which is an animated show that tells the tale of a samurai named Mizu who is half-Japanese and half-European (and is thus viewed as a demon as it is set after Japan has closed itself off to foreigners). It’s a really great show and an interesting contrast to both Shogun and Tokyo Vice, which I’m watching concurrently (I’ll have more on them and a broader look at foreigners in Japan and their depictions in media next time). The show dives into what it means to be both a woman and a person with a disability in 17th Century Japan as well as having some excellent sword play. I highly recommend it!
In terms of reading this month, I haven’t had as much time as I’d like. I’m still working on Andy Weir’s Artemis and really enjoying it (I’ve had too many late nights and not enough time to read).
East Meets West
In terms of signs of the US, this month, Beijing has been flooded with Kung Fu Panda 4! While not a surprise, it is fun to remember that sometimes US movies are popular here! More off the beaten path, there was a poster for some kind of US movie music concert at Tsinghua and I also saw an ad for performances of The Sound of Music in Beijing!
Anime & Comics
And of course, no Astronomer in Beijing post would be complete with out me showing the vast array of anime, manga, and comics paraphernalia that I saw around Beijing. Before I dive into the array of things, I saw, I did want to take a moment to remember Akira Toriyama. For those of you who aren’t aware, Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, recently passed away from a brain aneurism at age 68. For both Jesse and me, DBZ was the gateway for anime and really inspired our fandom and love for all things manga and comics. I obsessively drew DBZ characters throughout my childhood and I give a huge amount of credit to Akira Toriyama for inspiring my love of drawing. While I don’t want to get into an argument over who is the most influential animator/comic book/manga artist, Toriyama is largely responsible for revolutionizing Shonen manga into what it is today and Dragon Ball Z has been hugely influential among the manga and comic book communities, especially among the generation of comic book artists closer to my age, as well as being one of the first anime that was legally brought over to the US and advertised as a Japanese cartoon without large edits (sorry Pokemon and Astro Boy). This is a huge loss for the comics world as a whole. I’m working on a new Goku sketch that I’ll share with you all next time, but for now, I wanted to share this amazing life-size Goku statue that I saw yesterday, which felt fitting.
This month, I saw a ton of comics, manga, and anime paraphernalia! As you can see, there is a lot of Marvel, Gundam, Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, and One Piece! While I love seeing stickers, I really like seeing the anime figure displays (I’m sure I’ll miss seeing those as frequently when I’m in Italy). It’s so cool for me to walk around an spot different sectors of my own fandom!
For those of you who’ve made it this far, thank you so much for reading my Astronomer in Beijing blog! I hope you enjoyed seeing some more dragon statues, vegan cooking, and other fun sights around Beijing! I hope you’re all as excited for me as I am that my next stop will be in Padova, Italy! If you have any comments, questions, or concerns, please feel free to reach out either directly on the blog or via e-mail! It’d be great to hear from you. We have Purim here next week (Happy Purim to all who celebrate) and while I’ve got a lot of work to do, there is at least one other really awesome thing that I’m planning to do with my fellow postdocs here, so I can’t wait to share it with you. I hope the rest of March and beginning of April is a happy, safe, and healthy month for you all!
In Peace,
Emmet
