How to Stay Warm in Beijing

Dear All Who Had a Surprise Return to Winter,

I heard that you had a light dusting of snow while we were in Beijing. Beijing is a 12 hour fast train ride north from Shanghai -- and they were exactly in the same place in spring were we had started with in Shanghai in the beginning of March. Now of course we were prepared with our quilted Chinese jackets and glass tea holders that you can carry around with you -- we are old pros and we just yawn when huge magnolias trees transform from quiet fuzzy grey potential into gorgeous pink flower over a day.

Beijing has its own answers to the cold which I discovered. By the youth hostel in the hutong (small streets that run east-west were courtyard's red entrance face into and little shops sell salty bread and alcohol and men play cards and a type of checkers and dispute items big and small and grandparents walk the kids) are public toilets as people do not have them in their homes and public baths. And in the public bath by our hutong was a sauna. What a wonderful way throw off that bone chilling winter wind! I declined to have the soap rub down by one of the 5 women that worked at the public shower where they lay you out naked on a table and they only wear underwear bottoms, as I had already been clucked at enough for not knowing that my shoes go at the bottom of the locker and that the shower turns on by pulling a piece of metal sticking directly out of the pipes.

The other answer is to drink very hot very high quality tea all day (we had a tea ceremony which had 12 servings) and cool it off by slurping it and letting it roll of your tongue as you drink. The lady instructing us looked like a ballet teacher and she was just as strict -- correcting my tea drinking position (thumb and forefinger to hold the rim, middle finger to stabilize, ring and pinkie tucked under) and making us continue to the last course in spite of buying tea midway through. She insisted that her good physique came from drinking pu er and oolong tea all day long as she had not a drop of fat on her, but she did not drink green tea because it is cooling and she was easily cold.

Oh and the final answer is to adorn all your clothes with fur.

We are now taking part in another important Chinese activity -- watching Prision Break. All the Chinese we have met who speak English want to know if we know more then them. And neither of us had ever seen the show. We started last night with episode one: little did we know that it takes place in Illinois and parts in Chicago and we could have said that is where we are from. Thank goodness that show is about the evil government and the good people -- we just should have invested in some tattoos before we came.

We are back in Shanghai and the MU DAN PI (Chinese spring peonies) are blooming. They are beautiful open peonies with bigger, but less, petals. See you soon, Elaine