More Tang

I’m back! I don’t know why but my blog was blocked again in the last few weeks of my stay in China so I couldn’t write any random thoughts.

Anyways, we’ve been back for a couple days now and eegh! – it is always a pain to adjust jetlag coming this way. It’s just harder. My husband and I debated how to do it again, like we do every year. Do we adjust backwards or forwards? IE: do we let them sleep later everyday, or wake them up earlier everyday.  So I point him to my blog entry that I wrote last time about adjusting jetlag: http://pj.moretang.com/2009/02/09/adjusting-your-babies-jet-lag/ and we agree to do it my way. We’ll wake them up one hour early each day and pray they sleep an hour early that night.

So far it’s going pretty well. I think partly because we know what to expect and partly because the kids are older now. First night my 2 year old slept from 2 am until 10 am. My 1 year old son has not done as well, waking up in the middle of then night for several hours and breaking up his sleep patterns into several long naps. Finally I decided he needed one long sleep cycle, a good 9 hours and made sure he got that.

I think because I’m not as worried about them not adjusting, I’m also letting them sleep more during the day. I remember part of the worry before is “what if they sleep too much and don’t sleep at night?”. And we push off their nap and push off and push off, until either 1) they can’t take it anymore and crash too early just to wake up in the middle of the night or 2) they are too jittery to have a good nights sleep.  So this time it appears they are sleeping the right amount and still sleeping well at night.

A fun chat I had with my husband this morning:

My kids love Easy Mac and we brought a few packages with us to China. We haven’t really had to make any, since the food here is so good anyways, until my husband went back to US first. The first couple of days my daughter missed her dad so much, and because daddy always made her those yummy yellow noodles back in the US, she wanted some.

We were down to two pouched when we decide we should try to see if they were available in stores in China. So off to Walmart we go. We were able to find some pasta that resembled quite well. Then boiling some milk and three slices of American cheese – I made some homemade Easy Mac. The kids loved it, very tasty.

A lot of my daughter’s fears and nightmares stems from all these children stories that she reads or watches on TV.  And they usually involve me being missing.

It all a started with Finding Nemo where in that first scene, Nemo’s mother never returns again.  That week she would wake up in the middle of the night screaming “Mei you ma ma” or “no more mommy”.

It’s been a while since she’s had any of these problems, but recently I was reading another children’s story to her, I think something like Snow White and she had to ask “Why did her mommy die?”

Then there’s Cinderella – mother dies. Or what about the stories where there is no mother character at all, like in Aladdin?

We were watching Totoro the other day and their mother is sick in the hospital throughout the story.

I can see why my daughter gets these worries about losing me from.

Our main goal for coming to China as often as we do, is to have my kids become fluent in Mandarin Chinese.  Both my husband and I know how hard it will be to ask them to take an interest in the language when they get older. As both him and I have struggled with our own parents against learning Mandarin.

One of the barriers of putting our kids in school here is they require some lab work. It’s not a huge barrier, but taking your kids to the hospital to get a needle stick is never fun. However, this year, our neighborhood school started a parent participation infant class that doesn’t require the lab work. It’s great because both my kids can also be in the same class. That’s twice a week.

For the other days of the week we’re going to Gymboree. Today my daughter started art class and painted with her fingers. My son went to gym. I think these next few weeks will pass very quick for them with classes everyday.

At lunch, my mother-in-law: Nina, brought up an interesting thought.  It seems to her that people here in China are a lot more bossy of each other, in a good way.  IE: During a simple meal, people would routinely tell their family and friends to eat more, even if they already had a standard sized meal, they should have another bowl of rice or soup.  In US, if you were eating a simple meal with a good friend and you told them to eat more, they might look at you weird.

The part that is kind of off putting is that what if it wasn’t your friend or family member that was doing this, but a random stranger in the street? This is definitely something we have noticed during our stays in China, than random people would come up to us and give us random advice – as if they knew us.

Why is that?

Subsequently, we could not help but start sharing our stories of when and where we have been given advice out of the blue on the streets of China.

Once my husband and I were walking on a street with our 15 month old daughter. She had her pacifier with her because it was close to her nap time. I believe we were walking her to try to get her to sleep. A random grandma type person crossed our path and yelled at us for letting our daughter use a pacifier and said it would ruin her teeth.

Once my husband and I was at the Beijing Zoo. I was 34 weeks pregnant. A couple of grandma type persons again first asked us for directions to get out of the zoo. We told them. Then, looking at my bulging belly, one of them told my husband that he should not sleep with me for the next few weeks.

Coincidentally right after we had this fun conversation about how it’s just so different here in China and how in US people just don’t butt into other people’s business – it happened again. My mother-in-law, I, and my son walked my husband out to the gates to wait for his ride to send him back to US.

Yet again, a grandma liked person started talk to us by asking “Where are you going?” “Wow these are nice luggage”. “Is it expensive or cheap?” She even went ahead to lift one of them for a feel without asking. Went on to say how much my son looked like by husband. And my husband not like her mother, but if he had he would be even more handsome. Where were we from. If I was from Taiwan, was my parents still in Taiwan. On and on and on.

Maybe it’s just these grandma types in China.

At lunch, my mother-in-law: Nina, brought up an interesting thought.  It seems to her that people here in China are a lot more bossy of each other, in a good way.  IE: During a simple meal, people would routinely tell their family and friends to eat more, even if they already had a standard sized meal, they should have another bowl of rice or soup.  In US, if you were eating a simple meal with a good friend and you told them to eat more, they might look at you weird.

The part that is kind of off putting is that what if it wasn’t your friend or family member that was doing this, but a random stranger in the street? This is definitely something we have noticed during our stays in China, than random people would come up to us and give us random advice – as if they knew us.

Why is that?

Subsequently, we could not help but start sharing our stories of when and where we have been given advice out of the blue on the streets of China.

Once my husband and I were walking on a street with our 15 month old daughter. She had her pacifier with her because it was close to her nap time. I believe we were walking her to try to get her to sleep. A random grandma type person crossed our path and yelled at us for letting our daughter use a pacifier and said it would ruin her teeth.

Once my husband and I was at the Beijing Zoo. I was 34 weeks pregnant. A couple of grandma type persons again first asked us for directions to get out of the zoo. We told them. Then, looking at my bulging belly, one of them told my husband that he should not sleep with me for the next few weeks.

Coincidentally right after we had this fun conversation about how it’s just so different here in China and how in US people just don’t butt into other people’s business – it happened again. My mother-in-law, I, and my son walked my husband out to the gates to wait for his ride to send him back to US.

Yet again, a grandma liked person started talk to us by asking “Where are you going?” “Wow these are nice luggage”. “Is it expensive or cheap?” She even went ahead to lift one of them for a feel without asking. Went on to say how much my son looked like by husband. And my husband not like her mother, but if he had he would be even more handsome. Where were we from. If I was from Taiwan, was my parents still in Taiwan. On and on and on.

Maybe it’s just these grandma types in China.

Chicken, salt, slow cooker, optional: ginger and mushroom

First take the gizzards out of the chicken and rinse it under the sink. Place it in a large pot and cover with water. Bring to boil. As it boils, remove that uppermost layer of froth/fat that is coming out.

Once it is fully to a boil, switch to slow cooker. I do this best by moving the chicken first and then pouring the water over. At this point you can add some slices of ginger or dried shiitake mushroom.

Then let your slow cooker do the rest, you can set it up for however long you want. Just remember to season it with salt in the end. If you bought a big chicken, you will want to turn over the chicken at some point to let it cook through.

Chi Hao!

Welcome to the Tang family website. This is a personal site for our close family and friends. We’re currently vacationing in China and I didn’t realized but all our pictures of Picasa Google is blocked and all our relatives in China can’t see the pictures of my two adorable kids. So my hope is that this will act as a main photo album for all of us. The family calendar will also be very handy. Maybe have a place where I can also keep our family recipes.

I wanted Tanglife.com, but that is already taken. thetangs.com is also taken. So I thought about lifeoftang or mootang. I liked how mootang was more simple and played with the idea that we live by farms and cows. And that’s when I thought of moretang.com. Very easy to remember.

Merry Christmas everybody!

I spent my Christmas at the Sheraton Resort in DaMeiSha. It’s a beach-y tourist place on the outskirts of Shenzhen, still part of Shenzhen. This 5 star hotel with its own private beach with sand shipped in from Hainan was just built in 2008.

The hotel it definitely architecturally 5 stars in itself. It was gorgeous. Just driving up to the hotel was candy to my eyes. The rooms were extremely spacious and luxurious, we had ocean-view suites with two master bedrooms and balcony.

I just wanted to write a quick post about its somewhat lack of experienced management. It may be designed to be a 5-star hotel and it may look like a 5 star hotel, but it’s people were not 5-star trained.

- My husband turned on the do-no-disturb sign when our kids were napping. Shortly after we get a phone call to our room. Thankfully it didn’t wake up the kids. My father-in-law picks up and tells them that the do-not-disturb sign is on. The staff on the phone says that they saw the sign and didn’t want to knock so decided to call instead to give us our welcoming fruit platter and wine. I believe the next words were along the lines of “are you guys crazy! we have kids sleeping here”

It’s really only funny because the kids didn’t wake up. At a couple meals it also took the waiters 20 minutes just to get a couple of classes of chilled milk for the kids. And when we asked the waiters what took so long, they actually told us not to feel rushed. It’s not really us feeling rushed, it’s our crying toddlers. Do you not hear them asking for their milk?

Otherwise it was fun getting out of the house for a day. It’s only half an hour away. We made the mistake of forgetting my daughter’s blankie, but she wasn’t too upset about it. They both got to play on the beach and swim for a little bit. We were literally like the only clients there, I loved it.

I made it to Shenzhen, yet again with my two little kids.  I think everybody including myself were expecting this to be the worst flight so far. It’s been extremely tiring on all of us in the past.  I was expecting it to be hard on me because of my son, who is now 14 months and just such a boy.

Instead, surprise, surprise! It was such a refreshing flight. They both slept remarkably well. My son didn’t want to wonder the hallways too much. He did a little bit in our first-class cabin, but didn’t have to chase after him into business class or economy or anything. And he took a 2 hour nap after wards. And fell asleep as we landed. I got breaks to eat. I got breaks to watch a little bit of TV. It was amazing.

My daughter slept well too, and had a long nap all the way until the landing.

Adjusting the two kids jet lag is an art that I like to think that I have mastered. This time it is going well beyond my expectations.  My son usually sleeps at 9 pm Pacific time and wakes up around 8 am. That is 1 pm and midnight China time.  So that is what we are working with. The week prior to leaving, we started trying to let the kids sleep later and later. It was a bit tricky since no matter how late I slept with my son, I would still have to wake up early the next day and I had interviews.

In China, they usually would go to bed around 2 pm and wake up a little after midnight.

This time it was just amazing. First day they both slept around 5 pm. We were in aww. Even more in aww that they both woke up 3/4 am. Second day they slept around 6/7 pm. Both still woke up around 4/4:30 am. But it does look like this time it will only take a couple of days to adjust.

Now tips to myself for the future. We always mail clothes and we mail summer clothes. Just in case it is soo hot and we can’t buy any summer clothes locally. And we bring little winter clothes thinking we can easily buy all the winter clothes we want.

This plan has been fairly backfiring. We end up with loads of summer clothes, fell rushed to go buy winter clothes.

I think in the future it is to mail winter clothes. What they ultimately need is long-sleeve t-shirts and medium thickness sweat pants. Don’t need that much shorts, or tanks, or dresses, or skirts.

Looking at the weather pattern is will be in the mid 60s to 70s for this week in ShenZhen. Very comfortable.

We did mail summer clothes in the case we go to Sanya – which is in the mid 80s. So it might work out this time in that sense.

I also brought one thick set of winter clothes for the possibility of going to Nanjing – which is unlikely as it is raining all week and it is in the mid 40s to low 50s.

For myself – the main thing is to have two pants that I love, two shirts I can easily interchange. And one comfy cardigan.  I think I did well this time packing. Just not as much long-sleeves shirts for daughter (only two) and socks for son.

I’d just like to see it go easier next time. Mail more clothes that we need, and less that we don’t. And we can always adjust as the weather gets colder.

All this might be moot, since I don’t know when is the next time we will do such a trip. And in April we will be going to Nanjing and the weather will be completely different.

Addendum: For the past few days here in Shenzhen, it has been a lot warmer. It gets to 85 in my room. The t-shirts and shorts have come in handy. Can’t go outside in shorts, yes in T-shirts. I think it would still be best to mail some t-shirts, not as much, and just of couple of shorts for son, none for daughter. A good thing to remember is that the clothes dry a lot faster when it’s warm, so we don’t need to worry as much about laundry backing up.