{"id":18873,"date":"2023-12-24T12:29:05","date_gmt":"2023-12-24T12:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/astronomerinbeijing.com\/?p=18873"},"modified":"2023-12-24T12:29:05","modified_gmt":"2023-12-24T12:29:05","slug":"happy-holidays-from-beijing-a-busy-november-and-december-in-beijing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/astronomerinbeijing.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/24\/happy-holidays-from-beijing-a-busy-november-and-december-in-beijing\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Holidays from Beijing! A Busy November and December in Beijing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hi Everyone,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happy Holidays! Welcome back to my Astronomer in Beijing Blog. I hope you’re all doing well, staying safe and healthy, and enjoying the holiday season. For those of your who celebrate Channukkah, I hope you all had a wonderful festival of lights and despite the challenging times were able to congregate with friends and family to celebrate, spin a dreidel, sings some songs, and eat some latkes & apple sauce. For those of you who celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a very Merry Christmas! Having spent a third Thanksgiving and holiday season away from family, I hope those of you who are able to celebrate with family enjoy it and realize how special that is. Give your loved ones a big hug for me. Here in Beijing, winter is in full swing, with record cold temperatures for December (we’ve had highs in the teens and wind chills below freezing pretty constantly for the last two weeks). Despite the cold weather, life continues on in Beijing. You might be thinking that the semester must be close to wrapping up, but because Tsinghua follows the Chinese calendar, the semester won’t end for another month. As expected, most of my time has been spent applying for postdocs (I’ll update you more on that below), but I did have time to do a few fun things (though there were long stretches of near-constant work and most of the fun things have been in the last week).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Very Vegans of Beijing Thanksgiving and a Thanksgiving Shabbat! <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though it feels like longer than 5 weeks ago, the week after my last blog post, was Thanksgiving! As Thanksgiving is a very American holiday, I’m always grateful that I can do anything to celebrate Thanksgiving. Here in Beijing, a lot of the Western-style restaurants and pubs host Thanksgiving dinners and this year, Vegans of Beijing partnered with Arrow Factory to have a marvelous Vegan Thanksgiving meal. Arrow is a British style pub and although they offered both a traditional Omnivore Thanksgiving and a Vegan Thanksgiving meal, they actually sold 3x more Vegan meals! Since it’s always more fun to celebrate Thanksgiving with friends, Pablo, Daniele, Richard, and Tom all joined me at the Vegans of Beijing community dinner, which was really nice! It was their first Thanksgiving and I think they got a pretty representative meal. We had an eggplant, lentil, and mushroom duxelle wellington; sage and onion stuffing; omnipork (a vegan fake meat brand) sausage stuffing; mashed potatoes; sweet potato fries; green bean casserole; torched sweet corn; cranberry sauce; vegan gravy; and vegan apple pie! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The following night, Kehillat Beijing did it’s own Thanksgiving Shabbat, so I got to celebrate twice! Ted went all out with an amazing array of foods featuring just about every Thanksgiving food I can think of (at least all of the vegetarian ones). Since I couldn’t be with my own family (my parents did get to go visit Jesse in Nottingham for Thanksgiving), it was really nice to celebrate with the two expat communities that I’m a part of here in Beijing (though the seitan “ducks” that Ted got looked a bit too real for me). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Happy Channukkah from Beijing (featuring Shabbatukkah!)!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After last year, where any and all Channukkah festivities were cancelled due to the wave of COVID cases that emerged after the removal of COVID Zero, it was so nice to get to celebrate as a community this year. Because Channukkah started on a Thursday, on December 8, the second night of Channukkah, we had an amazing Shabbatukkah Channukkah Shabbat at Kehillat Beijing. Featuring lots of latkes and other Jewish foods (matzo ball soup, rugelach, kugel). This was the biggest Shabbat we’ve had in quite some time (there were ~ 40 people). To make the night even more festive, we had community members play Channukkah music as part of a sing-a-long after the meal! It was a ton of fun and so nice to hear everyone singing together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Outside of Shabbatukkah, I also did a little celebrating of my own. You can see I was able to get candles from Chabad (thank you again Chabad of Beijing – without them, I’d have needed to buy a whole lot of birthday candles) and light the lights on my own (including two near midnight-candle lightings due to some very late nights working on applications). I did make latkes and homemade apple sauce (using my Mom’s recipe). Since I couldn’t be home, it was nice to have that little taste of home for the holidays. Also, I must say, Goldie was really fascinated by the flames this year! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Although Channukkah only lasts 8 days, we extended the celebration in Beijing with a Moishe House Channukkah party. For those of you unfamiliar, Moishe House is an international organization with the goal of promoting Jewish community amount young adults (post college, 20s & 30s). While Shanghai had a relatively active Moishe House at various points when Jesse was in Shanghai, Beijing’s Moishe house has been pretty dormant since COVID started. One of my friends is trying to restart one, and this was definitely a fun start!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Vegans of Beijing Dumpling Making<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two Sunday’s ago, I got to take a brief respite from working on postdoc applications and go to another wonderful cooking class with Vegans of Beijing at the Hutong Cooking School with Chef Chao! If you remember back a few blog posts to the summer, this is actually my second dumpling making activity with Vegans of Beijing, but the two were incredibly different. While the previous class was more focused on communal filling and shaping of dumplings – we did cook the filling, but more as a group, not individually, and I didn’t get a recipe. For this class, as per usual with Chef Chao, he taught us how to do everything, including making the dough! For those of your who’ve never made jiaozi – Chinese dumplings, the dough is just flour and water and you work the dough, first with chopsticks, and then with your hands, until it is silky smooth! All of us in the class were responsible for making 16 dumplings, so after we made the dough, we got to work on making the fillings. Unlike the last class I did, where we had a cooked filling, for this, because we used a mix of tofu, pickled veggies, and rehydrated dried mushrooms, we didn’t have to cook anything ahead of time. Within the group, we split up and were each responsible for a different jiaozi. I did the pickled greens with dried tofu and rice noodles (see my plate with the chopped up tofu skins that look like scrambled eggs)! The other two dumplings were water chestnut, mushroom, and carrot jiaozi, and fennel & sweet potato noodle jiaozi (too bad I only just learned what I could do with all of that fennel from when my hutong locked down). Once all of the different fillings were chopped, we went about rolling out the dough and filling the dumplings. Each dough ball rolled out to be a bit smaller that the size of my palm – the rolling technique is a bit unique as it stresses a uniformity around all of the sides of the jiaozi – so it goes from being silver dollar sized to being much bigger. Chef Chao taught us a few different techniques, you can see the examples of his quite pretty jiaozi, but mine still were definitely the ugliest. It’s really hard to make pretty jiaozi! Thankfully they were all tasty regardless! We cooked them in three different manors, steaming, pan frying + steaming, and boiling. I think the pan frying + steaming was my favorite, since it added a bit more texture. Also, collectively, the tofu and pickle jiaozi that I made were the favorite (based only on the filling)! To top everything off, we made a black vinegar dipping sauce and had some of Chef Chao’s homemade chili oil! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The December Vegan Market & Modern Vegan at the Zarah Christmas Market<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last Sunday, I went to the Christmas Vegan Market! After not having a vegan market in November, it was really nice to get to buy tons of vegan baked goods and other things! This month’s market featured Grassroots, selling their signature vegan mac n’ cheese and a delicious cauliflower soup (with grilled cheese crustini) and my friend Jennifer’s Lief & Tree bakery (Jennifer is one of the organizers of Vegans of Beijing – I got so many delicious vegan baked goods from her, see below). There were also homemade traditional Chinese candies (I got the hawthorn fruit leather), lots of fresh produce, some really delicious tofu, and lots of other goodies! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To show off my haul, you can see the Grassroots soup & crustini, all of the delicious Lief & Tree baked goods – vegan cupcake, cookies, peanut butter cups, cranberry bread, and cake – a vegan German Christmas Stollen, and a yummy vegan carrot roll! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Also, the day before, my friend Alex (another one of the organizers of Vegans of Beijing), debuted her own Modern Vegan bakery at the Cafe Zarah Christmas Market! So I got even more vegan baked goods (cookies, brownie, vegan cheesecake, and lemon cake)!!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Chinese Nutcracker!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This past Thursday, I had the opportunity to go to the “Chinese New Year” ballet, a Chinese adaptation of the Nutcracker! I found out about it because the Tsinghua International Scholars office posted about having some extra tickets (the event was designed as another friendship learning experience for Foreign Talents in Beijing – so it started off with a long speech about China being open to foreigners), so Daniele and I decided to check it out (it was a nice way to mark finishing a bunch of applications)! I was particularly excited about it because the last ballet I saw was the original Nutcracker in Boston with my friends Phil and Kerry, so it was really cool to see this. I’ve included the synopsis below, but it hit a lot of the same plot points. The major difference is it’s set around the Lunar New Year and not Christmas, which given the Chinese setting, makes a ton of sense. The ballet opens up at a traditional Chinese temple fair and the main motif is the zodiac. The main through line connecting this to the Nutcracker (beyond the music) is the actual Nutcracker – in this it is given to Yuan Yuan (the heroine) by a foreign friend. While it’s a bit odd since Nutcrackers aren’t Chinese, it’s a nice homage to the original. Once that occurs, much of the ballet’s plot is the same. The main difference is that the villains are Dragons instead of rats and the heroes are Tigers (except for the Nutcracker) instead of toy soldiers. The dancing was pretty amazing (I really liked the fight scenes). I also liked that in the second act, they embraced a lot of the elements of the zodiac again in reinterpreting that act. It was a beautiful performance and one I’m really glad I got to see! Additionally, I ran into my friends Greg & Michelle from Kehillat Beijing there (they’re kids noticed me as “the guy who sings before we eat Challah at Roberta’s,” which is a pretty apt description of me! ). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Life at Tsinghua\/An Astronomy Update<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I stated in the top of this post, despite the fun events that I got to partake in this month, the overwhelming majority of my time was spent applying for new postdoc positions. While the bulk of my research statement is constant, I do add a customized statement on synergy with the proposed position\/researcher, so I spend a fair amount of time looking at the different research teams and how my work fits. Additionally, the cover letter is unique for each position. Taken with the fact that different applications have different requirements in terms of length, CV style, and other things, all of the applications take up a lot of time. In terms of statistics, the most applications that I’ve had due on a single day was 12. And that week, I was up until 1 or 2 am three days in a row working on applications (there have been a lot of very late nights – Goldie likes that though, since she can get a late night snack in lieu of an early morning breakfast). As of today, I’ve applied to 44 positions. All of them are in either the US, Europe, or Canada. Currently my list has nearly 70 positions (if I get something before I apply to that number it’d be great), so it’s definitely an exhausting process. Thankfully, my letter writers have been willing to submit so many letters! Optimistically, I should know by sometime in February or March where I’m heading to next, so I will definitely keep you all posted! Outsides of the applications, I’m still making slow and steady progress on Project Morphology and Project Low-Z. As I only have a handful of applications due over the next two weeks, I’m excited to focus on those projects and do my best to get as close to finishing them as possible! Additionally, last week, I helped one of my fellow postdocs, Hongming, who also studies radio active galactic nuclei, in cross-matching his machine-learning trained sample with my samples of bent radio AGNs, so it’s cool to see some collaborations start from being in person at Tsinghua!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond working on applications, a few of the postdocs got to check out the new Physics & Astronomy building at Tsinghua (note that ~ 85% of the building will belong to the various Physics Departments – they break up Applied and Regular Physics). While no timetable for a move has been officially set (so it’s still possible I won’t actually get to move into this building), it’s nice to see the building be complete (they’ve been talking about it since I arrived). The building is pretty big and much nicer than our current location. The only concerning thing for the postdocs was the potential office space for us. There were rumblings that they might be putting us in large windowless offices, which seems to have been changed (thankfully), and you can see some potential office spaces below (including one with a backdoor to the seminar room). Fingers crossed we’ll move this Spring! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Additionally, the International Scholars Office had a New Years Party this past week! Richard, Daniele, Teppei, and my friend Miriam (from Kehillat Beijing who teaches English at Tsinghua) all went! It was fun! They had traditional Chinese crafts – I painted the characters for Good Fortune seen below (I was told my strokes were a bit too angular, but hey, at least it looks all right) and I won a Tsinghua Day Planner in a raffle! I also got to do some “karaoke,” singing Stars from Les Miserables. However, instead of karaoke, it was more of a sing-a-long as the video had the lyrics, but also had Russel Crowe singing (and the volume was not turned down), so it was a bit strange. We also attempted to end with a sing-a-long of the Happy New Year song, which I don’t think anyone realized isn’t a thing, so they played “Happy New Year” by ABBA, which none of us had heard before. It’s really nice that the University does these kind of events, so hopefully I’ll get to go to a few more before I leave. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On Friday, the Astronomy Department also did a Postdoc Salon, where each postdoc gave a 5-10 minute talk on his\/her research! You can see some pictures below. While it was nice to get to hear about everyone’s research and that the department is trying to include us, I wish more non-postdocs had attended. It’d be nice to see the room full and the postdocs feel a bit more connected to the department. We also gave short presentations about our home towns (given that I’m the only American and nobody else who was in the room had spent an extended time working in the US, I felt like I had to share a bit about Saratoga). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Additionally, last night, I got the opportunity to join the C3VO team and observe (virtually) at the Keck Observatory in Mauna Kea (one of the benefits of being here is that it was from 6pm-12am here, so not too late a night for me). We were taking spectroscopy of different high-z galaxy targets in one of the C3VO protoclusters. This was my first time getting to do any observing in a long time and my first time on Keck, so it was really cool to see a different set up! Additionally, part of the night included a Shadow a Scientist session, where we had people from all over the world join us on zoom to learn about protocluster science and what’s being done with Keck! If I get to partake in any future Shadow a Scientist sessions, I’ll definitely share the link with all of you!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, I want to highlight an amazing Astronomy Picture of Day<\/a> featuring the Beijing Ancient Observatory! I shared it with the Kehillat Beijing wechat group and people got really excited, so I’m going to try to organize a field trip there with the community this Spring!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Blizzard in Beijing!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early in December, I awoke to a Monday morning full of snow! While those of you who live in Saratoga might be thinking that these photos don’t look bad (we got ~ 1 inch), I want to highlight that all of the media outlets were claiming that this was a blizzard! While that actively goes against my upstate NY sensibilities, I did want to share some fun photos of the snow (and ice, the lakes have officially iced over). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Goldie!!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was another great month for Goldie! While I definitely feel bad that all of my late nights in the office doing applications means a lot of long days for Goldie waiting for me to come home, it’s really so nice to have her sitting on the couch next to me keeping me company (don’t worry, when I get home late, I make sure to feed her with the automatic feeder). It’s so nice to have her waiting at the door for me, too! As you can see, the cold weather has meant lots of extra long naps for Goldie. Also, this month, I started the preparations for Goldie to leave China with me in June. For her, that meant going to the vet and getting her Rabies vaccine and microchip installed. While she had no issues with the rabies vaccine (though she does not like having to go in the cat backpack), the microchip was the largest needle I’d ever seen! She was a trooper though and despite a lot of squirming, did a great job (and then spent the rest of the day taking a very well deserved nap)! Next month, I’ll take her back to the vet to do the titre test and then we’ll be all set (except for the paperwork). Goldie’s also really enjoyed her new red ribbons, that come from the pomelo’s I’ve been getting – it’s always fun when there is a new “toy” to play with! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Also, with the cold weather, Goldie is continuing to enjoy burrowing under the covers. Most mornings, once I get out of bed, Goldie will crawl back in and burrow under the covers, finding the warmest and most comfortable places to spend the day. She’s so cute when she burrows! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Additionally, this month, we had my neighbors cat visit via my skylight not once, but twice (including once this morning). While Goldie doesn’t shriek like my Mom & Dad’s cat LC, she does get very vocal. I don’t know if she’s trying to get my attention, the other cat’s attention, or just mark her territory, but she seems very interested in the cat (although I don’t think he notices her). As I don’t really have any easy windows for her to sit on, the skylight is one of the few ways she can experience the world, so I think she sometimes is a bit shocked when she sees another cat! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jewish Life in Beijing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside of the Thanksgiving and Channukkah Shabbats, we’ve had three other lovely shabbats since my last blog post. However, only one of the them was at Roberta & Ted’s house. For that one, it was Romanian Shabbat and we had a wonderful array of Romanian food! Ted really outdid himself on the menu and it, like all of the Shabbats, were fantastic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Additionally, starting this month, we’ve restructured some of the organization for Kehillat Beijing to take a bit of the leadership pressure off Roberta (especially for the Friday nights) and to make it a bit easier to know who is in charge when they are out of town. As such, I, along with my friends Kevin, Sam, and Aaron, are now on the “Worship” team, basically in charge of making sure there is a D’var torah each week and that someone is able and willing to lead services (usually one of the four of us). The past two weeks, we’ve had Shabbat at alternative locations. While they’ve been small (and featured a more normal dinner at restaurants), it’s still lovely to get together as part of the community! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Additionally, this month, I had the honor of going to my friends Jonathon & Sissel’s wedding here in Beijing! This is my first wedding in China (and unless something changes, will be one of two weddings I attend). This was also the first Jewish wedding that I’d been to in a long time, which made it extra special! As Jonathon’s family is from both the US and Colombia and Sissel is Chinese, it also featured four languages (Hebrew, English, Spanish, and Mandarin)! For those of you wondering, because Sissel isn’t Jewish, the Chabad rabbi cannot officiate, but Aaron (who’s on the worship team with me) did an excellent job acting as rabbi. The ceremony featured a lot of members of the community doing readings and was a really lovely night. Since this isn’t my event, I don’t want to share too many photos, but I did want to share this photo of their lovely Chuppah! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vegan Food<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although many of my meals have been at extremely late hours this month, I was able to have a few nice meals both at the beginning and end of the last 5 weeks in writing this post! Late in November, Chris (the one foreign professor in our department), Richard, Pablo, Daniele, Tom, and I got together for our semi-regular “laowai” dinner to chat about the department, the new building, and just general thoughts on life in Beijing. This time we went to a Syrian restaurant called BRBR and I got a delicious meal full of lots of hummus, baba ganoush, falafel, & tabouleh. I really enjoy Middle Eastern food, but it’s pretty rare in Beijing, so it’s always nice to get to eat some! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Last weekend (notice the large gap between fun meals), Richard, Daniele, Teppei, and I went to an amazing Duli pop-up at Ori, a vegetarian sake bar\/restaurant near my apartment. For those of you who remember Jesse’s blog, Duli is an amazing Chinese-Fusion restaurant from Shanghai, and it is so wonderful to have their delicious food in Beijing (the pop-up is during December and January). It also made me really miss Jesse, since I always went to Duli with him! Because Duli’s menu isn’t huge, we got the entire menu! We got an apple spice tea (which reminded me of apple cider), mapo tofu hummus, tom yum wonton soup, yuba (tofu skin) and avocado salad, truffle pumpkin cannelloni, vegan lasagna, roasted curry cauliflower, and corn & cauliflower fritter with bao! Everything was amazing, but the mapo tofu hummus and the cauliflower & corn fritter were my favorites!!! I’m so glad that I could share one of Jesse’s favorite restaurants with my friends here and I’m definitely going to try to go again before it ends!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This past Thursday (before the ballet), Daniel, Pablo, Josh (Chris’s new postdoc from Australia who just arrived in Beijing), and I went for a delicious lunch at Tianchun Miaoxiang, the vegan restaurant near Tsinghua! We got jasmine tea, mapo tofu, eggplant & chickpeas, flame tofu, dry pot with spicy vegan sausage, orange juice, spicy vegetarian mock fish (seitan), and taro balls with walnuts & chestnuts! It was all amazing! Since this place is so close to Tsinghua, it is definitely our go to restaurant so I’m glad I always have great meals here! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lastly, this afternoon, after seeing Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Daniele and I went to Wutai Yan, a vegan restaurant near the theatre (yes, although a day early, I did the stereotypically Jewish tradition of seeing a movie and getting Chinese food on Christmas – Christmas Eve in my case). This was my first time going to Wutai Yan and it definitely won’t be my last (they had an amazing looking vegan hot pot that I want to try too). We got fresh apples and rice tea to start. We then got mapo tofu, apricot juice, kung pao mushrooms, sword beans, and crispy monkey head mushrooms! It was a really delicious meal and the restaurant definitely had a bit more of a neighborhood restaurant vibe (as opposed to being a bit more formal). Also, they had a really great organic food selection in the front of the restaurant (I wish I hadn’t gone grocery shopping yesterday), and I got some great dried fruits and dried mushrooms! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This month, I also did a ton of my own vegan cooking. For the week of Thanksgiving, I made a Thanksgiving-style meal, featuring a seitan roast, sword beans (for the green beans), and roasted cauliflower. The following weeks, I made a delicious Thai red curry soup, black bean soup, the Lunch Room’s Corn & Potato Chowder (the Lunch Room was a wonderful vegan restaurant in Ann Arbor that is now the Detroit Street filling station – they merged with their sister restaurant during COVID), and a West African Peanut Stew. I also made a delicious and very popular sticky sesame cauliflower for the Moishe House Channukah party! And because I have a sweet tooth, I made more vegan tofu chocolate pudding, and peanut butter thumbprint cookies featuring my friend Lionel’s delicious vegan “notella”. Also, it doesn’t really feel like winter until I have the first sugar covered strawberries of the season, so with the chill, I say, “Let winter begin!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Exploring Beijing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In wandering around Beijing this month, I saw lots of fun signs, statues, and other things that I wanted to share! You can see that a few Lunar New Years decorations are starting to appear – more coming in January, and a lot of fun mascots! Enjoy! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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With the cold in full effect, I also saw lots of cool bike covers, as well as some cool decals and stickers! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Animals of Beijing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the chill and after, I saw a lot of animals in Beijing this month. The first I wanted to highlight was a duck that was just walking around Houhai when I went for a run! Although not the pig walking down the street, this is definitely one of the more surreal animal sightings. Of course, I got to see Roberta & Ted’s puppies Mimi & Honey at Shabbat this month, too! They are definitely my favorite dogs in Beijing. Outside of the visits to my skylight, I also got spotted a number of neighborhood cats. While I’m definitely a bit concerned that I still see many of them outside in the winter (I’m hoping they all have someplace warm to go), it’s always nice to see a cat and I try to give them snacks when I can! You can see my neighbors cats are excellent climbers, so it’s no surprise that they can get up to my skylight! Also, when we had the Moishe House Channukkah Party, my friend Jennifer who hosted it has a roommate, who’s white cat was very pretty and very friendly – I don’t think she liked all of us being in her space, but she didn’t run and hide like Goldie does when it gets too noisy in my apartment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What am I Reading\/Watching?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To kick things off, I just got back from seeing Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom! This is a direct sequel to the 2018 Aquaman film and I really enjoyed it! While it’s a bummer that it marks the end of this iteration of the DC universe (I’m very excited for James Gunn’s new DCU coming in 2025), I’m glad this film was the last one so that this era could go out on a high note. The film is a lot of fun. It’s mostly a buddy adventure featuring Jason Momoa’s Aquaman & Patrick Wilson’s Orm as they fight Yahya Abdul-Mateen’s Black Manta, with a lot of action, both above and below water. While the fight scenes are particularly great, I think my favorite thing is the dynamic between Momoa & Wilson! I also really liked Randall Park’s Dr. Stephen Shin! While it’s not a perfect movie, if you enjoyed the first one, it’s a lot of fun and definitely my favorite of the most recent batch of DC films, so you should definitely go see it! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Outside of Aquaman 2, I also finished watching two different shows this month. On Netflix, I watched The Diplomat starring Keri Russel and Rufus Sewell. This is a political soap opera centering around the US Ambassador to the UK, who is also currently being vetted as a VP candidate. While it was a bit more of a soap opera than I would have liked, I really liked all of the political drama and the cliffhanger at the end of the season was awesome! I also finished season 4 of Bosh on Amazon Prime! As always, it’s a really great cop drama and I loved the way they honed in on police corruption in this season. I’m really enjoyed working my way through Bosch and am definitely excited that I still have a few more seasons to go! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the reading front, I read Hilo vol 3, 4, 5, & 6 by Judd Winick. This is an all ages comic about a young robot boy who crash lands on Earth and needs to save the world from the evil robot Razorhawk with the help of his friends! Vol 6 marked the end of the initial story arc and it’s a really satisfying arc. I have two more volumes here in China, so I’m excited to read them. It’s a lot of fun and I definitely recommend it to anyone who liked superhero comics, or has kids who do! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

East Meets West (and a lot of Christmas decorations in Beijing)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I’m posting this on Christmas Eve, even in Beijing we see a lot of Christmas decorations up and about. Although mostly at western restaurants and malls, it’s always a bit surreal how decked things get up for Christmas since it isn’t really a holiday here. Still, Christmas trees look pretty, so enjoy all of the decorations! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Outside of Christmas decorations, I saw lots of other fun stickers, signs, casette tapes, and other aspects of the west! Although mostly Disney and Harry Potter, I also saw a fun “Waiting for Godot” cafe and lots of Harry Potter posters at the movie theatre. Also, I want to highlight that a Chinese adaptation of Les Miserables is being put on and playing in Beijing in January! I’m a huge fan of Les Miserables, but unfortunately, the play sold out before I even realized you could get tickets :(. I’m definitely a bit bummed that I won’t get to see it (I think I know the story well enough that I could follow the plot beats even in Mandarin), but I’ll be keeping an eye out to see if more tickets miraculously appear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Anime & Comics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No Astronomer in Beijing blog post would be complete without all of the anime, comics, and manga statues that I saw this month! While I obviously saw a lot of Aquaman posters, I also saw a ton of cool statues – including a few at the movie theatre – the giant Hulk Buster Iron Man – as well as lots of anime figurine displays featuring One Piece, Pokemon, and DragonBall Z! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Outside of figurines, I also saw tons of anime stickers on bikes, featuring Ultraman, Pokemon, and Hello Kitty! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As always, if you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for reading my blog! I really appreciate it and hope you enjoyed hearing about my very busy December. While January will also be full of lots more postdoc applications (and some interviews), I hope I’ll be able to share some more fun things with you next month (again, aiming for a mid-January post). If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please let me know either here or via e-mail. I hope you all have a very happy New Year! Stay safe and healthy! See you all in 2024!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Peace,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emmet<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Everyone, Happy Holidays! Welcome back to my Astronomer in Beijing Blog. I hope you’re all doing well, staying safe and healthy, and enjoying the holiday season. For those of your who celebrate Channukkah, I hope you all had a wonderful festival of lights and despite the challenging times were able to congregate with friends … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Happy Holidays from Beijing! A Busy November and December in Beijing”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astronomerinbeijing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astronomerinbeijing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astronomerinbeijing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astronomerinbeijing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astronomerinbeijing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18873"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/astronomerinbeijing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19500,"href":"https:\/\/astronomerinbeijing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18873\/revisions\/19500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astronomerinbeijing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astronomerinbeijing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astronomerinbeijing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}