Summer Palace - Winter time

Last time we went to the Summer Palace, it was packed and the queue for pleasure boats was really long; the queue was non-existent but the boats weren't much use on the ice.

Tim's 42nd birthday

As you get older, birthdays seem to come round faster and faster - in this case, it wasn't even 365 days since the last one as Tim had to go to the UK on 30th Jan in order to take part in negotiations with 6 members of the Chinese company with which his company hopes to create a Joint Venture.

How Chinese imperial history might have been different

Jingshan Park houses a big buddha that overlooks the Forbidden City - you get great views over Beijing and there's also the chance to dress-up ...

The Forbidden City - take two

Mum & Dad live in Norfolk so they weren't for long going to be put off by a little wind and sub-zero temperatures. Today we went to the Forbidden City.

Temple fair at Ditan Park

The Temple of the Earth in Ditan Park is one of the main sites for a temple fair in the week after Chinese New Year. It was amazing that a crowd of people that big could fit into such a small space with so much good humour!

Smoke flowers at midnight

The Chinese have two names for firework: Firecrackers are 'bian pao' = plait explosion and coloured fireworks are 'yan hua' = smoke flower. The night of Chinese New Year saw us surrounded by both types. At midnight, the sky went wild with sound and light with explosions all around us and the sharp smell of gunpowder everywhere. We'd never seen anything like it and it inspired Mum & Dad to rush outside in whatever they were wearing, err or not!

New Year's lunch

Our Chinese teacher, Mary, is very nice and brought us some lovely presents on the day before New Year. We thought that she was just going to come over on her own at some point in the afternoon but she arrived at lunchtime with her husband and son so we had an impromptu New Year's lunch (well done Lou).

Flour or flower?

Verity hardly ate a lunch at school last term because they don't really have vegetarians in China and the Chinese cook thought it would be fine to just give her a bit of vegetable and a cold fried egg. Lou decided to help them improve the menu; surveyed the pupils and staff; created a two-week menu and kept going in to school to make sure that the caterers were following the new programme. The school said 'thank you' with flowers.

The boys have a rough week

On one level, Tris had a great week: He was elected Class Rep; came top in several of his exams and had the most positive parent's evening of his career in which almost all of his teachers said that he could do really well or was already doing really well at their subject. On another level, it was his worst week ever: The problem with the girls teasing him on the bus continued and two of his friends cut him out of things and then took his lunch and laughed about it - we've never seen him so down. Hopefully, things will improve after the New Year's holiday.

At work, Tim was busy trying to get his company's prospective Chinese partner to answer questions so that the two companies can sign an agreement when the Chinese team flies to London in two week's time; he was also trying to procure consultants to help him run the two projects that the Foreign Office is funding and was working horrible hours. All week, he was sandwiched between the UK Team that kept pushing for progress and generating new documents and the Chinese Team that kept failing to respond - value added = tiny; effort required = huge; extent to which he is enjoying his job = almost zero.

In Chinese dress

The children's schools are good at everything except providing warning - Lou got a day's warning that she needed to find a Chinese costume for Verity but both she and Verity rose to the occasion.

New Year's play

2009 Is the year of the Ox so Verity was, umm, a chicken in her school play. Katie got a better costume as a follower of the Emperor and Tristan (not pictured) had a really rough week.

Wind stops play

Beijing is cold in the winter, very cold. Add strong wind and Tian'anmen Square becomes uninhabitable. Mum & Dad were intending to go to the Forbidden City but they only got as far as KFC.

What goes up must come down ... slowly

We were amazed she tried it; she was amazed that she spent the whole ride trying to get it to go faster.

On top of the wall

It started foggy but cleared just as we arrived at Mutianyu.

No one's watching - put it on automatic!

Sometimes, brothers share a passion ...

Chinese rabbits could not all be this well-endowed, but she didn't like to ask ...

Armchair skating - a delight for young and old

Terminal mistake?

Tim's parents were due to arrive at 9:55am. On every one of the several occasions that we have collected people from the airport, they have flown into terminal 3 and spent at least 45 mins getting to the gate. Today, Tim's parents arrived at 9:35 at terminal 2 while their reception committee (us) arrived at 10:35 at terminal 3. It took us a while to realise our mistake and get to the other terminal but they were remarkably relaxed considering that they had had very little sleep, spent an hour waiting for us and were on their own in a country whose language they can neither speak nor read. We were impressed!

Where's the 'sleep' in sleepover?

Verity will soon be 10 years old but Tim's parents are coming to stay and Chinese New Year means that some of her friends won't be in town on her birthday so she had what is known as a 'sleepover' involving 10 x 10 year-olds, lots of talking, lots of laughing, lots of shrieking and not very much sleep - still, they were happy!

Just for the record ...

Two weeks off helped restore my perspective and I have, at least, the illusion of sanity as I start the New Year. By year end, both Lou and I wanted to go home and felt at the end of our tethers: One of our friends has lived all over Asia and was attacked with molotov cocktails in Indonesia but she feels that China is the most stressful place she has lived and says that she has been here five years and the stress doesn't go away. Everything is harder than it is at home and you can never be certain that things will work; add to that the fact that you're trying to get a lot of things done at once; that you have little support; that your London colleagues expect to be able to contact you in their time zone rather than yours so you're never off duty; that your wife is exhausted; that your children miss their friends; that you have to spend any spare time trying to learn the language and you have an idea of why this feels like hard work.