The Fog Sure Is Dense...

Tikvah, of course, was wide awake by the time we got to our hotel room at 3:30am, so I was worried she wouldn't sleep anymore after our crazy long day. She did wake up several times, but mercifully she slept pretty well till about 7am. As light filled our room on the 9th floor, I pulled back the filmy curtains to take a look at this country. The sun was big and red, but I could look straight at it without flinching. I could see a few streets away, but most of the vast city was hidden in what looked like a dense fog. The cold winter weather was evident from the barren trees. But still, John and I were not quite prepared for the arctic blast that greeted us when we ventured toward the hotel doors. We quickly retreated and decided that we needed some "down time" rather than freezing to death to try some sightseeing.

Having come straight from PNG the morning before, we had left our extra layers in our suitcases - which of course were now lost somewhere in the mysterious hinterlands of some airport. Fortunately, we soon got word that our things would be arriving in Beijing around 2pm that afternoon. So we did finally venture out of our cozy hotel room and shivered our way to the airport to collect our things.

Now, when we had left PNG, I had expected to more or less leave behind the attention that Tikvah gathered wherever we went. Of course a little white girl gets a lot of attention in a place like PNG, from women and men alike. And as a mother I sometimes also got attention if someone observed that I wasn't doing my job appropriately. Especially noticeable were the times I didn't protect her sufficiently from sun or rain. Any PNG mother would feel it her duty to tell me Tikvah needed a hat, or would shake her head and click her tongue if Tikvah was getting even drizzled on (which happened fairly often in tropical PNG). But going to a country where our skin color wasn't so distinct, I expected the attention would be non-existent. I had a lot to learn!

Tikvah is quite the social creature, and she wasted no time in smiling and waving at everyone she saw. Before we had left the hotel she had charmed 3 young ladies in their hotel uniforms, an older gentleman in a business suit (who shamelessly hopped around in an effort to make her smile), and a whole table of young Chinese people in the hotel restaurant. And yes, that was to be indicative of the attention she would get constantly through our few days in China. And I wasn't off the hook either. It seemed that many older Chinese women were very concerned with Tikvah's health, and were quick to inform us that we needed to pull her pant legs down better or put a coat on her or socks to make sure she stayed warm. Never mind that they couldn't speak a word of my language nor I a word of theirs - they got their point across quite effectively, and I tried to respond graciously.

At long last, just as the airport worker had promised, our three suitcases came sliding down to the baggage carousel. We gratefully snatched them up and quickly added a few more layers of clothing before heading out to find a bus. About three hours later our bus arrived in Tianjin, where we were to meet my college friend who I hadn't seen in 3 or 4 years. She was waiting near the road with her back turned to us as we got off one of the many busses coming in, but a tall white girl with long dark hair is a pretty distinct figure on a busy sidewalk in China and I caught sight of her quickly. A short taxi ride later we were up in her apartment building (which has an elevator, she exclaimed!) and settling in to her cozy little home.

We tossed our baggage on the floor of the spare bedroom and plopped down on the bed. But the bed wasn't as amenable to plopping as I had expected. In fact, to my pampered American body, the mattress felt more like a box-spring, it was so stiff beneath my tired muscles. Apparently, I thought, soft mattresses are not the ideal here!

Here in Tianjin, the 'fog' that had pervaded Beijing sat heavy in the sky and blocked the scenery. While we had been in the Beijing hotel we had the TV tuned into the one English channel and were watching a news show of some kind. A man was asking people on the street what they felt was the most important issue in Beijing, and they kept saying 'air pollution'. I had laughed to myself, thinking that it was a funny thing for people to be concerned about. I wondered what kind of propaganda they'd been fed to believe that it could be such a big deal. But looking out the apartment in Tianjin, it became very clear that there was a very sensible reason for these concerns. That heavy 'fog' that was limiting my view to only a few city blocks? That's right - it was air pollution. I had never dreamed that such a thing could exist! It hung over the sky like a cloud cover all day and blocked the sunlight. It was heavy and oppressive, and it weighed on your mind to think that you were breathing that white muck into your lungs. Suddenly the not-so-fashionable face masks that lots of people were wearing didn't seem like such a ridiculous idea.