Jolly Old England

I like visiting Great Britain. It is old, feels foreign but if you close your eyes and concentrate very carefully you can understand everything that they are saying. As a profeshunal English teacher, I can confidently state that it is well known that Canadians have the purest spoken English in the world, but those eloquent British are pretty darn close.

Our first stop was the beautiful, touristy city of Brighton where the newly minted, newly weds Leah and Will shared their flat (apartment for you Americans) and life with us for a few days. The weather was spot on (perfect for you Americans) and besides wandering around the city, we were treated to a walk on the wild side. Well, as wild as the south of England can get as they have been living here for a few thousand years. Sunday morning came early as Leah and Will had to attend an obligatory chapel at Hogwarts as Will lovingly likes to call the private school where they work. As Nonie and I were satorially challenged for attending chapel, we opted to wander around Brighton. We spent an hour visiting Brighton Palace. It was the summer home of Prince, then King, Charles V. He was a bit of a party boy and had an eye for decorating. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) and especially liked the Chinoise style of decoration. Bamboo and dragons can can be found throughout the place. Queen Victoria found the palace too small and sold it to the City of Brighton. In the afternoon, we enjoyed a three hour ramble (hike for you Americans) around Devils Dyke. (Dike for you Americans) The two days we spent with Will and Leah was a lovely start to our newest adventure. Monday morning dawned early for all of us as Leah and Will went back to work and we caught a train to London Station. I love the train system here. It is fast, convenient and on time. I find train travel very civilized and although it takes a bit longer than a plane, you arrive more rested, relaxed and with out any full body pat downs.

A short tube ride (subway for you Americans) to another train station found us on our way to Menson/Ilkley and a visit with Lorelie. Loralie is a an old friend who we first met in Kamloops when Nonie and I were just newly minted newly weds. She has been part of our life for over thirty years. She has been the only friend who has been brave or perhaps crazy enough to visit us here in Harbin. In fact, she came to visit in the dead of winter. Dead is a very appropriate word to use when describing the winters here in Harbin. The day she arrived on the train from Russia, the temperature was -27 C. (See blog entries for January 2009) She lives in Menston, a photographic little village about 20 minutes from Leeds. We spent two fabulous days touring around, with some glorious walks in the countryside. Weather was a little spotty (poor for you Americans) but not enough to stop us.

Another contest for our regular readers. Based on the definitions below can you identify where we were walking in the two pictures above.

dale (n)- an open river valley (in a hilly area)

moor (n)- an open tract of land usually covered with heath and often marshy or peaty

Next stop, we bring light to the Dark Continent.

New Adventures

It was with mixed emotions that we returned and left the Okanagan. We only had a short time, seven days in which to get reacquainted with family and family. Many things went unsaid but God willing we will say them in six months or so after our newest adventure. First stop and the one that we have most look forward to, a visit with the grandchildren. And as per the Official Rules and Regulations of the Grandparents Handbook, find enclosed the requisite number of cute pictures that we are required to post after each visit. Ronan is four and while he doesn't rule the roost like he used to as he must now share that with his sister, he continues to be a dynamo of creative energy and activity. His sister Isla is still a happy and content little girl. But when made necessary by her brother chauvinistic attitude on toy ownership, she can quickly display an iron will to get her way.

Sadly our time was short and we moved on for a short visit with Nonie's sister Lynda and another wonderful turkey dinner with our thirty something nieces and nephews and thier children. They are all so busy with their careers and family, I was exhausted just being around them. Ahhh, to still have that much energy at the end of the day. It was a fabulous ending to our short sojourn in Canada. Next stop England and the beginning of our African adventure. Stay tuned.

A Feast of Festivities

Santa made a surprise visit to Harbin. He and Mrs. Claus want to wish all our readers a very merry Christmas and especially, a Snovum Godum.




One of the best things about living in a multi-cultural setting is the opportunity to celebrate. A month or week does not go by when we do not have an excuse to celebrate a special occasion occurring in one of the dozen countries represented by our little group.

Canada's Thanksgiving rolled into Halloween, followed closely by China's National Teachers Day with a big dinner put on by the provincial government. We were just slimming down when American Thanksgiving arrived and another dinner, all be it with a shortage of turkey. A pause, then Yalda, an Iranian celebration of the Winter Equinox and another great meal at Abbas's and Solmaz's. We had time to let out our belts before a 30+ birthday celebration that included the "Knife Dance".

The Persian knife dance involves dancing/gyrating around the birthday cake with a knife, offering it to the birthday person but then pulling it away at the last second when they reach for the knife. Dancing is strictly voluntary but greatly encouraged. The birthday person eventually must ransom the knife by making a donation to the last dancer with the donation based on the number and quality of the dancing. Once they have the knife, then the cake can be cut. The knife dance is done at any celebration with a cake including weddings.

Just days after the birthday celebrations we were hit by Christmas/New Year's week or as it is known in Russia, Веселого Рождества и счастливого Нового года. As I have previously written China, has begun to embrace Christmas as a holiday (See our Dec. 2008 blogs) and for the first time, the Chinese Government declared New Years day a national holiday with people receiving Saturday, Sunday and Monday off. We enjoyed an early new years celebration dinner hosted by the Foreign Language Department and received some lovely gifts. Dinner included a lovely chicken soup with all the trimmings.

Christmas started with a brunch at the Cornell's which led into an early dinner at a local restaurant. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and looks like a duck but has a lovely brown glaze, then it must be a Peking Duck. Turkey was available but priced for only a select few in the restaurant of the 5 Star Shangri La Hotel. (See October 2010 blog for more on the Shangri La). The cost of the buffet ticket was just under 20% of my monthly salary. Budgets decreed that Christmas duck was our cheapest option. A Peking duck is world renowned in duckdom. It starts life as Pekin duck. Pekin duck is a breed of duck that has evolved in China over the last 1000 years. It spends the last 15 days of life being force fed to a fighting weight of 5-7 kg. The demise of the duck usually occurs about 24 hours prior to the oven. The first phase in becoming a Peking Duck is to be eviscerated and have it's skin gently separated from the body fat by blowing air up into the neck cavity. The duck is then meticulously washed with water and boiled for a short period of time. After boiling, it is hung to dry for 24 hours. While hanging it is glazed with a layer of maltose syrup. Traditionally the duck is cooked in a closed, wood fired brick oven. Gaoliang wood is used for fuel and when the fire has gone out the duck is slid into the oven.

About 45 minutes later, the Pekin duck becomes a Peking Duck and is served in three stages. The duck arrives with a chef who gently removes the skin, which is then served to the guests along with a dipping sauce of garlic and sugar. The chef then carves off the meat. The sliced meat is eaten with thin steamed pancakes and bean sauce. You spread the sauce over the pancake then wrap it around the duck meat along with some vegetables. The remaining meat is pulled from the duck, finely minced with a sweet bean sauce and served along with small buns. You stuff the meat into the buns and voila, Chinese quarter pounders.

We celebrated New Years a few days early, attending a wonderful musical and dance celebration organized by our Russian colleagues and their students. Snovum Godum! The phonetic translation of happy New Year in Russian. (See Cyrillic version above) This was followed by a cast party that sadly we had to pass on. My buffet pants had finally met their match. New Years saw us follow our usual tradition and we enjoyed a quiet evening at home with one of my favorite dinners and a bottle of wine. Sadly but happily we will miss the Russian Orthodox (January 7) and Chinese (February 3rd) New Years as we are returning to Canada on January 4th. I can only imagine what other festivals and celebrations we will miss till we return at the end of February.

We managed to fit in the ice festival on our last day in Harbin and of course this included a dinner to close out the evening. I do not have the eloquence to describe this annual Harbin event. I encourage you all to Google, ice festival, Harbin. You will be amazed. The only downside for this event is the sub-zero temperatures required to make this festival possible.

We spent our last night in China in Beijing. We got together with Edoardo and Karen, two of our extended Chinese family and Terry another ex-Harbiner for a dinner in a100+ year old restaurant. Edoardo and Karen have embraced the big city life of Beijing but confess to missing Harbin a little.

A 10 hour flight and a two hour ferry ride found us celebrating a belated Christmas and New Years dinner with Great Grandma and 20 family members. As at most de Lucia dinners, the buffet pants were put to the test and suffice to say they were up to the test. Thanks to Dee and Harv.

For all our Canadian family and friends, we look forward to seeing you all soon and enjoy your festivals. Our adventure continues.

Warning -Epiphany Alert with Dessert

While rereading my previous blog, I was struck by an epiphany. It is not "Living Chinese" that creates our adventures but "Living Canadian in China" that is our problem. Things are different here, to say the least and every day we are faced with that fact. Rather than accept it, we are constantly looking for reminders of home or opportunities to enjoy something, anything that reminds us of the lifestyle we left behind. Something as simple as finding a jar of Skipy sends shivers of excitement down our spine. It is not easy embracing a totally different culture, in fact I would suggest impossible. I have discovered a new found respect and understanding for people who have the courage to immigrate to a new life in a new world. I can now understand their need to retain a bit of their old life style and culture. Nonie and I get to go home when we have had enough, our life in Canada was just put on hold or a while. Makes it so much easier to live as we do, knowing we always have a safe haven to return to.

December has flown by. This is the first opportunity I have had to access our blog in a while. The Great Wall continues to make it difficult to get to it on a regular basis and when I do, it is so sloooooooow. Downloading a picture can take an eternity. Well actually, about 2 minutes, but when you are used to instantaneous access to everything, 2 minutes can seem like forever.

The "Second All Most Annual Christmas Ornament Making for the Cornell's Cheap Christmas Tree Party" was a success. We managed once again, to con all our friends and colleagues into creating wonderful and inventive ornaments for our Christmas tree. All for free. Well Nonie did provide some of her fabulous desserts as an incentive for their artistry. It took her the better part of a weekend to prepare.

She was joined by Janie and Eiko for the baking part and Justin for the Gingerbread cooking decorating part. Justin is from Inner Mongolia so the Gingerbread Men started to look more like Gingerbread Mongols especially when they started attacking and subjugating the Shortbread Santa cookies.

We have spent the last week listening to our students complete their final exams. The exams consist of a 6 minute unscripted conversation between two students followed by a few questions to test their comprehension. I have listened to over 50 conversations this week, perhaps one was unscripted. Another 50 or so conversations to be heard next week. Peking Opera is starting to sound like a much better option.

We have a winner from our most recent reader contest. Once again the Warners have come from nowhere and guessed that there are three Canadians in the picture. Please note the decorative tattoos on two of the Canadians. The rest of you should have looked much closer at the picture. For thier trouble the Warners have won a brand new Ford ????. Drive safely Warners.

Stay tuned for the rogue goats.

Living Chinese

I have been using this term quite a bit lately, so I thought you might be interested in what it means to us. I am sure you have all put your own definition to what you think we mean but perhaps a little clarity to elucidate your fuzzification on what we mean when we say "Living Chinese". I believe it can be best defined through a series of small vignettes (stories for you Americans) that will demonstrate the act of "living Chinese". The term defies a single definition, but is more of a condition of life in China. It is not bad or good but always arrives unexpected, yet in the back or your mind it is always expected.
Our China Part Deux has been exceedingly easier for us but it is not been with out it's challenges and our biggest challenge, not being able to read the language. We can be looking for something or some place and one day find it right down the street by accident. It has always been there, plain as the signage it is written on. We however cannot understand the signage so it is easily overlooked in the hurly burly of life. We miss opportunities on a daily basis because we lack the ability to read the darn signs. Since we first arrived in Harbin, we have been walking over 20 blocks to buy peanut butter only to discover last week that it is available and has always been available in a market just off campus. Thankfully Skippy cannot be written in Chinese characters and so was written in pinyin on the sale sign. Pinyin is the Chinese characters translated into sounds using our recognizable alphabet and was done to assist poor Laowai (Pinyin for foreigners) to read Chinese phonetically. Our eyes
were drawn to the sign with the pinyin Skipy on it and voila, a new source of peanut butter.


This year Thanksgiving was arranged by a Newfie laowai ( East Coast Canadian) and was held at the local Holiday Inn. We were promised turkey, mashed potatoes and a bunch of other stuff nobody cared about. Not sure why a Canadian was organizing an American holiday but hey, that's what makes us Canadians. I digress. We arrived early at the hotel and were greeted by the delicious aroma of freshly cooked turkey. There sitting on the counter of the bar was a small (12-15 lbs) beautifully cooked tom ready for carving. Salivating, we impatiently waited for the carving to begin. At the appointed time we rushed the turkey guy who proceed to cut the most miserly portions. No matter how sadly you gazed into his steely eyes and begged for more, he denied every request and continued to mete out tablespoon size portions of turkey. Okay, no problem, we are wise in the ways of the Buffet, we will just go back for seconds, thirds, fourths, fifths and so on and so on. I did not put my Buffet pants on for nothing. The miserly portions were our clue that the hotel had only cooked one turkey. Thankfully we figured it our early and after five or so trips managed to put a little turkey away in a plastic bag for what must have been the smallest turkey sandwich ever seen on a Canadians dinner table. There were over 50 guests for dinner that night and if you arrived a little late, you were forced to choke down some Thanksgiving barbecued chicken brought in from a restaurant around the corner. Of course there was plenty of pork and fried rice so no one went home hungry. Living Chinese.


We held our 2nd All Most Annual HIT Foreign Teachers Ping Pong Tournament this past week. 13 contestants representing over half of the populated world. Winning countries included Russia, America, Japan, and of course no ping pong podium would be complete with out a Chinese member. Congratulations to Abbas, the Powerful Persian. The Iranian powerhouse dominated the American branson in a match that went the distance in the A Division.


Another contest for our regular readers. "Find the Canadians" in the picture above. Name them all, send us an email with all their names and win a chance for some fabulous prizes. I have attached a picture of our previous winners enjoying a prize winning day on the beaches of Hawaii. Congratulations Warners. Who will be next.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

November 11, 2010. Woke up to -17 Celsius this morning. Winter has come way to early this year. Two days previously, we had a high of +10, cloudy and wet. The perfect combination and the next day we awoke to 6" of beautiful white stuff. Snow tires were the hot sellers on campus with traffic brought to a standstill.

The snowplows were out. I am always astounded that a city of 4,500,000 uses very little heavy equipment and the snow is moved off the streets and sidewalks into trucks by hand. Only in China could this happen. Thousands of people with plastic snow shovels. Canadian Tire could make a killing here.

A little snow doesn't seem to slow down the Chinese desire to play basketball. The snow had barely stopped and they were out clearing a court. Basketball, seems a funny game for the Chinese to be fixated on. They are not exactly a country known for their large stature. The Yao Mings are few and far between.

The buses were busy. Oddly, traffic seems to move better after a snow fall. The private cars stay home and only taxis and buses dare to venture out on the roads. The buses are great, for about $0.15 you can go any where in Harbin. The buses don't run on set schedules, the just drive the route over and over till their shift ends. You will often see two buses from the same route arriving at the same time. Of course they are never the bus you are waiting for. The two buses will pass each other taking turns stopping at alternate bus stops. Some buses are shiny and new, and others would be considered death traps in most 3rd world countries. They are not heated but at this time of year, it is actually a pleasure to be travel in an over crowded bus. You can share the other riders body heat.

The week ended with a special treat. One of my students invited me to attend a student Peking Opera group that meets every Sunday to practice. At the practice they let me play in the band where I was in charge of cymbally type of instrument. The conductor would raise his magnificently thick eyebrows in my direction if he wanted me to ching ching. I was pretty good I thought. They invited Nonie and I to attend a traditional Chinese talent show the next weekend. We were were greeted at the door by one of the actors/actresses. In the old days, the opera was the domain of men and all the parts including the female roles were played by men. The young fellow in the picture had a lovely voice but perhaps a tad to much makeup for my taste. Beside opera, the show also included Chinese cross talk which was very funny and I found myself laughing with the audience even when I didn't know what they were saying. The two and one half hours seem to ZZZzzzz by. Listening to Peking Opera is a lot like listening to the bagpipes. It's fun for the first 10 minutes but you want to poke your ears out after 150 minutes.

Nonie and I are hosting the 2nd Almost Annual HIT Foreign Teachers Open Ping Pong tournament and attending a concert. More on that in our next blog.

New Pool, Crazy Ideas

Since we were last at HIT they have had the wisdom to build an lovely eight lane 50 metre swimming pool. There are actually two pools. The pools are built over each other and both are above the ground. One pool is located on the fourth floor and the other on the second floor. Changerooms are located on the third and the first floors. No elevator so you must walk up three flights of stairs to the changerooms and then up another flight to the pool deck. The other pool is for ????? At first I assumed it was for the HIT swim team to train but they seem to use our pool. The door is always locked so I have not been able to confirm that a second pool even exists but I have been assured it does. Interesting construction technique as it would have been significantly cheaper to build them both on the ground with the pools below grade as the structural requirements to support not one but two pools has got to be huge. I would love to talk to the architect. But that's just the facility guy in me coming out. But it it a nice addition and I have been taking advantage of it. There is no chloriney smell around the building, so I am not sure what disinfectant process they are using for the water but sometimes it is better if you don't know.

Our 60th birthdays are fast approaching and Nonie and I are both looking at ways to mark the occasions. Nonie is still pondering what hers will be but I would like to announce that I am going to take a stab at Ironman Canada in 2012. I have sucked one niece as well as one of our colleagues here at HIT to join me in my quest/stupidity. This precipitous announcement will make it more difficult for me to weenie out of training for the next 20 months and it would be a shame not to put the new pool to good use.

Are trip plans are gelling for our return to the west (flying east) on the winter break. More on the trip at a later date. The trip will involve traveling around the world once more, this time in only 48 days. We will depart Harbin on January 4th, 2011 and arriving back in Harbin on February 18th,2011 travelling east the whole way. This will be the second time we have circumnavigated the world. We traveled west the last time and felt a change was in order. Don't want to get into a rut. Stay tuned.