If you’re skimming this post only for the baby news, the big update in the last few weeks is that we’ve started weaning! (If you’re bored of all the baby news, I can only apologise.) So far, the good news is that he’s been more than happy to experiment with food. Sometimes, when we’re feeling chill and modern, this has included strips of carrot, sweet potato, avocado, and so on. Also pancakes and latkes! At other times, after we’ve talked ourselves into paranoia around choking, we’ve retreated to the mashed baby food of yore like porridge, mashed potato and yoghurt.
Either way, he’s definitely into it, and is also methodically working his way through the allergens. (Obviously, you should introduce allergens in priority order based on how sad you would personally feel if your baby couldn’t eat them. Dairy would be tragic. Shellfish less so. I am not a doctor.)
Mainstream clinical advice is that babies should not consume ice cream or beer, but this doesn’t extend to parents. So on a sunny Saturday in March, we celebrated his very first high-chair meal with a trip to the Crystal Palace Food Market. We’d never visited before, but the ice cream flavours included rhubarb, so we will be going back. From there, we moved on to the Gipsy Hill Brewery Taproom. Originally, this was driven by a birthday voucher for a brewery tour from Tash and Cormac, but over email the company had patiently explained that it would be hard for them to deliver a brewery tour now that production has moved to Kent, and perhaps I’d be happy if it was converted into a voucher for drinks at the taproom instead? More than happy, guys!
Another big family outing in March was Randi’s citizenship ceremony at Lewisham Town Hall in Catford! In the interest of protecting his privacy I won’t post the (mandatory) photo of Randi posing with a portrait of the King, but while anything involving the monarchy is always going to feel very odd – especially with an American – my overwhelming feeling was how warm and Londony the ceremony was. Most of the time, you likely just take for granted quite how wide the range of backgrounds in the city is. But having everyone’s home country* announced one-by-one as they collect their naturalisation certificates felt like a peek into the superdiversity engine which, I increasingly suspect, is an essential foundation to sustain liberalism today.
I also found it very funny that the newly-minted citizens were divided into two sections of the chamber based on whether they had chosen to say the religious ‘oath’ or non-religious ‘affirmation’ of allegiance. I understand this was for boring practical reasons of making sure everyone said the right magic words at the same time, but it felt like they were setting things up for a controversial revival of CBBC’s excellent gameshow 50/50 (ask your parents).
I will also note, with my historian hat on, that we were promised a “history of the borough” in the email and very much did not receive one, even though Jay Foreman has produced some great videos on the London Government Act 1963.
But still, I’d taken the day off work for the occasion, so after we finished up at the Civic Suite (which charmingly includes the fancy old Mayor’s chair from the council chamber as a novelty seat in the foyer) we headed over to the Perry Hill pub for an authentically British celebration. It’s taken a while, but at least everybody in this household now shares at least one common passport!
Recently we also had Reema and Esther over for dinner, during which I hope we successfully encouraged Esther to reconnect with her old school pal David Broadband. A few nights later, Randi and I were invited over to kick off the long Easter weekend with NCT friends Jordan and Miska. And speaking of NCT: a week later, we caught up with the rest of the gang at Horniman Market, and it is true that knowing just a few parents with kids the same age and within walking distance (even if those kids are still amusingly different sizes!) is a really nice thing to have.
But getting back to Easter itself: our biggest family adventure in recent weeks was to Bury St Edmunds, which was an exceptionally lovely trip. The sun was shining, our Airbnb came with virtually its own secret entrance to the Abbey Gardens, and both Bubbe and baby got to experience Suffolk for the first time. Shout-out to Randi for remembering to take us all to Nowton Park after she discovered it on a run last time, and to the cheesemonger back in Bury who sold us a wide variety of very tasty cheeses for our Saturday night feast! Then, on Sunday, we took the train to Diss for a very special Sunday roast at Ampersand Brew Tap with my uncle Derek and aunt Ginny and cousins Julie and Daisy.
I don’t get to see this side of the family very often, but we had such a great afternoon catching-up on everything from baby news (massive congratulations to my cousin Kieron!) to the Artemis II space mission, which Derek was following with the same baseline interest and enthusiasm which my dad would have had. I am also grateful to Daisy for agreeing to split a chocolate brownie with me, as otherwise the prospect of dessert would have been dashed. Afterwards we all went for a walk on the fens nearby, before returning to the brewery where Randi – clearly envious of my earlier haul at Gipsy Hill – picked up some craft beers of her own. The perfect Easter outing.
We very much intend to keep returning to East Anglia as a family, even though we’re now another generation removed, so I hope we did a reasonable job with our first indoctrination attempt. But we also have brainwashing goals back in London too, and perhaps none more important than Hampstead Heath.
Josh and I have been promising each other for literally decades now that we would slowly mind-trick our future children into enjoying long walks by meeting up on the Heath, and last weekend we finally accomplished this for the first time! I mean, sure, not everyone was walking yet. And at one point we actually had to exit the Heath to save the buggy from a dust storm. But we got there, so onwards and upwards.
(Pro-tip: we were looking for a semi-affordable lunch in Belsize Park beforehand and came across Brad & Dills, which is tucked implausibly around what feels like a hospital service road but I promise is real and does excellent bagels. I also accidentally ordered more doughnuts here than I meant to by saying “we’ll take one of each!” and not realising there were more than two kinds, but I regret nothing.)
Finally, we’ve also managed to watch a couple of long-form things recently! The first was Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, i.e. the third installment of the wonderful Benoit Blanc murder mysteries, and honestly I could enjoy these forever. Ideally I’d enjoy them in an actual cinema, but Netflix’s release window is a crime all of its own, so we tried to watch it on Beth’s account as, no, we still don’t have Netflix. This was our intention, at least, but actually we ended up adding a “Beth” to Sam Pow’s Netflix account (look, if you sign into Netflix on our TV, it’s gonna stay there for a while) and triggering a wave of confusion on her side about what on earth was going on. Sorry, Sam!
The other thing we saw – yesterday, in fact! – was Heart Wall at the Bush theatre. This was the other voucher from my birthday last year which was rapidly reaching its expiration date (thanks, Katie and James!) so Randi and I were doubly excited to find one of the Bush’s “relaxed performances” on a weekend matinee. Essentially, this just means there’s an expectation that some members of the audience, for a variety of reasons, may need to make some noise or leave and re-enter the show. It’s a brilliant idea, especially if – like us – you have a baby who is largely willing to sleep through the performance. (He woke up at the end to the sound of clapping all around him, which must have been a little weird.)
Anyway: the play itself was also brilliant! Don’t fool yourself into thinking that we picked something child-friendly for his first theatre outing. This is an emotional family drama about buried grief, set somewhere in the North West of England, and staged mostly in the local pub – the kind of pub where everybody knows each other and the karaoke machine is always available. (Here I’ll pause and voice my respect for the audience members who volunteered to have a go at some karaoke beforehand.)
In the play proper, we start with 23 year old Franky’s surprise visit home from her detached London life. But despite what you might guess, it’s not really a play about class or place. Instead, we see the unravelling of the tragic events which clouded Franky’s childhood, building to an emotional confrontation with dad Dez. Honestly, Heart Wall is just one of those plays where everything just kinda works. Every individual performance is very strong, there’s a good balance of light and dark, and the pace moves well through a single act. Highly recommended.
Finally, and apropos nothing, please enjoy my sad face when I realise I’ve taken the wrong branch of the Windrush line home after a day in the office:
(*P.S. If you’re thinking that ‘home country’ is a confusing term for me to choose here, because of course Britain is now also a home country, the truth is that I originally wrote ‘country-of-origin’ before deciding it sounded too much like a food label.)
Happy new year! As you already know, we spent a week in Chicago in a sneaky attempt to persuade our child that, relatively speaking, London really isn’t that cold. In truth, the Chicago winters are a little overhyped: you just have to dress appropriately for the weather, and snow is generally lovely. The only thing to really worry about is ice. I think it’s fair to say that I’m not a fan of ice. Ice is malicious and dangerous, so it’s inspiring to see the steps which Chicago takes to defeat it.
The flight there was very easy – our baby even received the “baby of the day award” for his lack of crying from a flight attendant who was clearly not a fan of babies in general. Thanks to AJ meeting us at the airport, he also enjoyed his very first journey in a car! (We’re planning on teaching him that cars are a uniquely North American invention, although others have already been sceptical that this will work.)
Using Catherine and AJ’s home as a warm and cosy base, we did venture out a few times to see other people, starting with a Sunday afternoon at Toggolyn’s. Very excitingly, Ellen – last seen on this blog in 2021! – was able to join us, and together we all had a super interesting conversation about blogging and writing. I think sometimes the idea of a regular person in 2026 sitting on their own and working on a piece of writing for personal reasons can seem so implausible – even though it’s literally what I’m doing right now – that it’s genuinely a bit surprising to learn that other people do it too.
(Side-note: I felt this surprise again today – back in London – when I heard about someone else’s scribbled notes during a pub meetup with our NCT group. Is everyone still still secretly writing? I would find this reassuring.)
A few days later we joined Julie, Colleen and Karol for a delicious cajun brunch at Big Jones, which was extremely tasty. I mean, someday Randi and I have got to find our way back to a Yats, but in the meantime this hit the spot.
Meanwhile, visitors to the apartment included Christian & Erica and kids (a brief stopover and tornado of lovable chaos) and Anna & Ned’s family, with whom we shared an order from Randi’s favourite Thai restaurant. We also made our obligatory and much-anticipated visit to Janik’s for brunch with Mike & Melissa, who were visiting Chicago at the same time from New York, and received Buffalo Bills baby gifts!
But otherwise, we mostly enjoyed a lot of great home cooking (Detroit pizza night being a particular highlight for me) and made various attempts to match all of the kids in the same outfits. This really came to a head on New Year’s Eve, when party hats were briefly thrown into the mix too, and the resulting photos are surely something to treasure and\or grist for anti-parent angst later on during their teenage years.
Oh, and I’m pretty proud of the popularity of my very own children’s stories about creepy Mr. Google and his nosy, data-collecting habits…
Thank you so much to Catherine and AJ for hosting us, as always!
It’s most definitely summer, which in our family also means it’s peak birthday season. For mine, we had a family dinner at Took Took in West Hampstead, followed by a little walk along the path through Fortune Green and behind Hampstead Cemetery which we used to do on my birthday every year growing up.
Randi and I also spent a lovely evening at Angela’s new flat, which – happily – is right around the corner from us. We also spent a wonderful Saturday at Simon and Fleur’s barbecue with a mix of familiar faces and some new people I’d never met before. Not only did I consume a healthy mix of beer and burgers, but I also got to test-drive an empty buggy around the block under the influence of this beer plus burger mix. Apologies to the people of Hassocks if we looked very strange.
On the way home our convoluted train route led to an unplanned stop at Kartuli in East Dulwich for dinner, and therefore some unexpected khachapuri. This was delicious, even though – strictly speaking – it wasn’t really khachapuri weather. Equally delicious was our dinner at Dishoom with Robert a few weeks ago, who was passing through London for a night and spent his evening with us. Coincidentally, I also enjoyed a Zoom-based Groupon catch-up with Todd Webb later that week, who made me even more nostalgic for the days when we were all in an office together.
Recently I also went out for an evening with Jill, although we quickly abandoned our usual haunt thanks to it being live music night at The Island (nothing against it, but not great for talking) and switched to Curry Nights instead. I also swapped stories of product management with Katie’s friend Caitlin over drinks in Southwark, before grabbing food at Mercato Metropolitano and accidentally taking home one of their food buzzers. But our big social achievement was finding a weekend for Josh, Anna and Cora to visit our place for a sleepover! Together we made tacos, invented new games to play with Dominion cards, danced to the Mosquito song (the Minidisco playlist of the classic Spanish holiday resort having been updated since my day) and, in the morning, ate loads of pancakes before exploring the Horniman Gardens.
Randi was in Scotland last weekend, so I took a couple of days off work and made a slightly impromptu trip to Chicago. My short stay was clearly a bit suspicious to the immigration officers (“you’re here for two days?” “well, three days if you count today!”), but the double round of questioning at customs was more than made up for by the shortest queues I’ve ever enjoyed at O’Hare. Then I was nerdishly delighted to get one of the newer Blue line trains for the journey into town – spick and span and filled with suburbanites travelling into Chicago for 4th July the next day. That train from the airport is how Randi and I always take the temperature of how Chicago is doing, and this time the omens were very good.
Todd and Carolyn very kindly hosted me on this trip, and that afternoon I enjoyed a few beers in the sun with Todd and Dolly Dietz – Robert’s very adorable dog, who they were looking after – before ordering Antique Taco for dinner. I also playtested Todd’s murder mystery (albeit sadly not in its ultimate setting of the Bahamas) and enjoyed a can of Salted Lemonade courtesy of Benno and Shelby’s Five Corners beverage company. While I haven’t seen these guys in years, the fact that they are running an independent husband-and-wife business surprises me not at all, and made me smile.
The next day was 4th July (or July 4th?) so we headed over to Robert and Julie’s, both to return custody of Dolly and to celebrate freedom and independence etc. etc. I was inordinately proud of not being the first to be eliminated from Bernie’s drawing-based game, although he was probably just being kind, while Grant (accurately) labelled me a weirdo when I was being weird. The only thing I was less thrilled about was the start of all the random neighbourhood fireworks, which – at least when you’re at ground level – feel less like fireworks and more like a coordinated attack of the well-regulated militia. But I’m aware that I’m in a deep minority here – only Dolly felt the same way! – and at least once we joined the neighbours’ rooftop we could appreciate the spectacle from a safer height.
Since Robert had told a very long story about watching Landman on a plane, Todd and I resolved to watch the first episode before going to bed that night. It was excellent, in the sense that it was terrible, and so there was a lot to enjoy. I did also get some genuine satisfaction at hearing ‘advertisement’ being spoken in a Southern accent with the same pronunciation as my British accent.
The next morning, we brought Carolyn up to speed with the culture she had missed over breakfast at Bang Bang Pie & Biscuits, where I had some very tasty biscuits and gravy. Then, I attempted to introduce Toggolyn to Jet Lag! I’m not sure if I fully converted them, but we all agreed that chasing your friends around Switzerland by train is much more fun than getting blown up together at a malfunctioning oil well. And finally, Todd allowed me to wander around ancient Athens for a bit within Assassin’s Creed. The original intent was to find Socrates so that we could have a nice argument, but in the end I just took to the random murder of innocent bystanders, surprising both Todd and myself with my ability to run away quickly enough from any retribution.
I had one more stop to make before flying home that night. This was a very special afternoon at Catherine and AJ’s, who are only one week into welcoming the newest member of the family. I felt incredibly lucky to be able to hang out with them all together, and at this point in my life it’s also deeply reassuring to see everybody doing so well too.
The journey home was all very smooth, and the week afterwards we did some transatlantic hosting in reverse when Melissa came to stay for a few days! Along with a decent sampling of our local pubs, on Tuesday night we all went out to see Nye together at the National Theatre. This play is a tribute to the life of Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the NHS, and its existence alone does something to capture the peculiar relationship between Britain and its healthcare system. As you’d expect, Michael Sheen gives an amazing performance, and the play does an excellent job of zooming around Bevan’s life and career. I particularly enjoyed the staging of the climactic showdown with the BMA in 1948.
This week we also went to Kirsty’s summer party (where I hit my quota of strangers to talk to) and enjoyed a relaxed Friday night with my mum. Finally, shortly after hitting publish on this blog we’ll be off to Sidcup to spend the afternoon with Tomas and Roberta, which I’m very excited about! [Update: we did indeed have a wonderful afternoon hanging out together with their family in their sunny garden, eating delicious salmon, sharing Randi’s lemon & blackberry cake and making out like bandits with a giant pile of baby things. Thanks guys!]
The final section!
Day 12: Chunxi Road
Chunxi Road is the main shopping street in Chengdu, and after a lazy morning we walked there along the river where I feasted on a (very tasty) chicken burger from homegrown fast-food chain Dicos. Most days took us along the river at least a little bit, in fact, and it’s a lovely one. Some stretches are quiet, others are filled with people, and at some points there are bags full of fish and buckets of turtles all over the place. I regret to inform you that we did not cross the road to investigate the ‘Chicago street food’ joint. But talking of food: that night provided another rare break from Chinese when we discovered a Thai/Vietnamese place inside the anime mall, and I savoured the beef brisket curry!
Day 13: Chongqing
Chongqing! I have to be honest and say that this city made it into our itinerary thanks entirely to the YouTube recommendation algorithm, which threw me so much of a totally crazy, multi-dimensional urban futurescape that I had to see it for myself. Chongqing is unusual in that it’s a directly-administered municipality, so not part of any province, and has a total population of over 30 million although the city itself is ‘only’ around 23 million. It’s also between 1 and 1½ hours away from Chengdu by high-speed train, of which there are many each day, so apparently it’s quite common to commute between the two.
Unfortunately Randi wasn’t feeling well on the morning of our day trip, so I left her to rest and recuperate in Chengdu while I joined our private guide, Chris, for a whistlestop tour of the sites. I had booked a tour with Chris before we left and he was exceptionally helpful in listing all of the possible things which we might want to see around the city and then crafting a bespoke itinerary – highly recommended if you’re looking for someone to take you around!
In our planning we had jokingly referred to Chongqing as the ‘dystopian megacity’, so I was surprised to find that it was actually very green. We started at the famous Kuixinglou Square, which feels like it should be on the ground floor until you walk over to the edge, look down and discover that you’re actually 22 storeys high. I’ve never been brave enough to hold my phone out over a sheer drop, so my video is much less compelling than all of the other ones you can find on YouTube and TikTok, but rest assured it is a very strange and cool experience.
Our next stop was the equally-famous Liziba monorail station, where the train passes through – and makes a stop in the middle of – a residential apartment building. For convenience, this would surely put all other homes to shame!
The rest of our tour included the tranquil E’ling Park, the central Jiefangbei Square, the remains of the ancient city walls and the retro socialist dormitory buildings of Minzhucun. According to Chris, this is a favourite spot on the tour for Eastern European tourists who feel nostalgia – at least on behalf of their parents – for a ‘labour village’ constructed to house workers for the state-owned motorcycle factory next door.
During the economic reforms of the 80s, the factory was closed and has since been demolished and replaced by a luxury shopping mall. The residential buildings survived, however, and the neighbourhood has since been revived with plenty of people milling about when we were there. It’s a fascinating historical contrast to the implosion of the USSR, which we know was studied very closely by China’s CCP as a ‘what not to do’ guide to their own survival.
Once the tour was over, I wandered by along the ‘Mountain City Alley’ – which sits high up alongside the Yangtze River – until I came to the ruins of an old French hospital, where the basement has recently been rediscovered and evacuated. In Chongqing, even their archeological ruins exist over multiple levels!
Then I headed back to Chengdu with lots of stories from Chris to share with Randi, who was thankfully feeling better enough to join me for dinner before walking home beside Chengdu’s own beautiful river.
Day 14: Tianfu Greenway & Livehouse
I’ve already talked about the Tianfu Greenway last time, so the short version is that we went back and rode some more! We almost didn’t: it was very hot outside, but cycling turned out to be way more cooling than walking. This section started at the ‘Global Center’ [sic] on a section of Metro where all of the stops have names like Hi-Tech Zone, Financial City and Incubation Park. The scenery was lovely.
That night we also wanted to visit another live music venue again before leaving China, so we did so after eating dinner at a trendier-than-usual fusion restaurant which somehow offered mango beer! It was a lively Friday night and a few live musicians were playing outside along the river, which we enjoyed before heading to another indoor livehouse venue. This was less cutesy than the area we discovered in Beijing – and for the first time we actually noticed a few other Western tourists floating around – but the vibe of the music was chill and relaxed. It was a great sorta-final night of our holiday… ‘sorta’ because our flight wasn’t actually leaving until 1.45am on Sunday morning, so we still had one more day in Chengdu…
Day 15: Last Day in China
After checking-out of our hotel, we headed to the Wenshu Monastery area for lunch for a noodle place which Randi had been wanting to try. Sadly, some mystery ingredient in a few of our meals in China had occasionally been giving her a mild allergic reaction and today this struck again – nothing serious, but requiring an emergency second lunch!
Afterwards we returned to Tianfu Square and stumbled half by accident into the (free!) Chengdu Museum, albeit sadly too late for the special exhibition on Sherlock Holmes which had recently ended. I didn’t find the main exhibits particularly enthralling – and did not even consider trying the new special exhibition on flutes – but as we sat in the café, we did have the lovely experience of two Tibetan teenagers approaching us and asking if it was OK to chat for a while. We agreed, of course, albeit through the medium of translation apps on each side.
In fact, they were not particularly interested in our lives (totally reasonable!) but were clearly experiencing their own form of culture shock in Chengdu and mostly wanted to show us lots of photos and videos of their homeland. They did ask us if we found things in China to be expensive, so the costs in Chengdu were also clearly on their mind. It was an unexpected reminder of how vast and diverse China itself is.
We had a final dinner at the Thai/Vietnamese place – they remembered us, so we clearly stand out. Then we collected our bags, said goodbye to the view from our hotel and rode the metro to the airport. An airport procedure I’ve never seen before: after checking in your bags, wait for 3 minutes in a separate area in case your name appears on a screen for some sort of additional security check. After 3 minutes have elapsed with no activity, you’re free to go.
If you’ve made it all this way, thanks for joining us on our China explorations. We’re so lucky that we were able to go, and it has ticked off a huge item on my travels wishlist. Although I am going to have to restrain myself from purchasing a scratch-off map of Chinese provinces and trying to visit them all… 😉
Continuing where I left off with our two weeks in China…
Day 6: Train to Chengdu, Tianfu Square & Kuanzhai Alley
On Thursday morning, we had a very early start and made our way to Beijing West station for the 7am to Chengdu East. The process of buying tickets was a little strange: they technically go on sale only two weeks beforehand, but Trip.com will take your money and try to snag it once it’s available, with multiple fallbacks in case your first choice is unavailable. Fortunately, we got 1st class tickets on one of the fastest of the five daily high-speed trains, which range between 7½ – 11½ hours to cover the roughly 1850km (1150 miles) distance.
Incidentally, Amtrak’s meandering route from New York to Chicago is actually about the same distance. Riding one of its three trains a week will take about 27½ hours, if it runs to schedule.
Like every other station we travelled through, Beijing West was large and well-organised. For breakfast we discovered that ‘tea eggs’ are a thing – think a hard-boiled egg, but boiled in tea – which is something we should absolutely do. But even more impressive is the fact that Chinese trains allow you to order food delivery to your seat! This was implemented a few years ago after complaints about the railway’s onboard monopoly. So now, in addition to ordering from the train itself, the official railway app – which, like everything else, is actually just a mini program within AliPay – allows you to order from a long list of participating restaurants as well. At your chosen stop, your meal is brought onboard and delivered to your seat by the train staff.
Honestly, I expected that the train itself would be infuriatingly fast and smooth, which it was. I expected that I’d be able to look out the window and see intensive road or apartment construction rather than stagnant land, which I did. But I wasn’t quite ready for the fact that China has the world’s best, fully-integrated system for market-based food delivery on a bullet train moving at 250km/h. It’s a perfect example of where China chooses to put its layer of commercial competition: at the perfect place to fully leverage its fantastic public infrastructure.
So then: Chengdu! This city is the capital of the Sichuan province in Southwest China, with warmer temperatures than Beijing, and is known for having a relaxed and laidback vibe. This is certainly true in general, although my immediate impression when getting off at the busy station (perfectly on time) was that this was more like the China I had been imagining: more people, more bustle. We took the Metro (which didn’t exist until 2010, and now has 15 lines) to a stop 10 minutes from our hotel, and the contrasts with Beijing only got bigger. The urban landscape is just massive, with tall buildings not just clustered in a central business district but stretching as far as the eye can see, although that’s not as far as the eye might be able to see without the pollution, mind. We’d also picked a very different hotel from Beijing, opting for the 5* luxury vibe with magnificent views over the city.
Our hotel was in a perfect spot by the river and only a short walk from Tianfu Square, another giant public plaza with a shopping centre/metro station cut into the ground beneath, and all carefully guarded by a giant Chairman Mao statue looking on. We returned here a lot for meals over the next week, but on our first night we ventured a bit further out to the famous Kuanzhai Alley, enjoying dinner on little tables outside.
Day 7: People’s Park & Food Tour
The next day we headed to People’s Park, a large park in the centre of Chengdu with lots for the people to see and do including boating on the lake, food stalls, public music and dancing, or sharing tea and playing mahjong together. (In general, everywhere you look in Chengdu you’ll see serene-looking retired people sitting in the sun and playing cards.)
Because we’re weird, our favourite feature of the park on our first visit was the series of security-themed sculptures (data security, biosecurity, security in space, etc.). Elsewhere there are war memorials to commemorate resistance against the “Japanese devils” (not my language) and a series of historical displays explaining that national security is “entering a new era” and that “if our party wants to consolidate its ruling position and unite and lead the people to uphold and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics, ensuring national security is the top priority”. It’s not only teatime in the People’s Park.
That evening we had our second Lost Plate food tour, this time led by Fiona and travelling between spots via tuk tuk. We were lucky to get a very interesting group of travellers, including a couple of Americans, and I was pleased to discover that actually I can perfectly handle the ‘normal’ level of Sichuan spice for which this region is known for. Overall, though, we preferred the diversity of food in Beijing to Chengdu, although Chengdu absolutely came out the winner for real gelato ice creams.
Day 8: Qingcheng Mountain
We had clearly started to imbibe some of the relaxed Chengdu way of life and took our time getting to Mount Qingcheng the next day, which required a subway to a train to a taxi for the hiking-friendly ‘Back Mountain’ area. (A scrolling message on the train requested passengers to “promote traditional values and advocate civilised values”, which I found a little too vague to know if I was complying with.)
So it was already lunchtime when we arrived at the Taian Ancient Village at the base of the mountain, and while eating at one of the many, many, many food spots I kept staring at Google Translate to appreciate the bizarre posters on the wall, which included “No matter how many times my customers abuse me, I will treat them like my first love” and a long list of deeply confusing prohibitions (?) including “wearing a bikini in winter”, “being even more arrogant than Bin Laden” and “driving an Alto and insisting that an Audi is ugly”.
If you’re planning on doing a proper hike you should absolutely leave more time than us, not least because the cablecars stop running. But we enjoyed our scenic walk along the mountain paths until turning back, although we didn’t love the incredibly slow cablecar itself, which took over 20 minutes on the ride up. A small observation, but one which speaks to a wider pattern, was passing a guy employed to pick up litter and empty the bins along this nature trek. This was a common theme in China (e.g. someone polishing surfaces on the metro, or the train attendant who tucked in the dangling straps on all the overhead bags) and I often associate this type of careful labour with a society which is big on people but low on automation. But China’s extremely high on automation! It’s a combination of efficiency with high personal standards, and it’s just nice to be around.
Final cultural encounter for the day: back in town, we ate dinner in another shopping centre where it slowly dawned on me that all of the non-food shops were anime-themed, and there was an absolute explosion of cosplay.
Day 9: Jinli Street & Marriage Market
After a lazy morning of reading (I had to finish the Cromwell trilogy somehow) we had lunch at Jinli Street, Chengdu’s other famous market of alleys, before Randi was extremely excited to relive her childhood by enjoying some Dairy Queen Blizzards. Apparently it’s a tradition for the server to turn these upside down before handing them to you, and Randi was also thrilled to confirm that China has retained this tradition, so Dairy Queen wins a lot more points from us for cultural authenticity than Pizza Hut.
Then we headed back to People’s Park because I realised we had missed one of the most fascinating aspects of Chinese society: the dating corner, or ‘marriage market’. These are rows upon rows of sheets (blue for boys, pink for girls) with people looking for partners, albeit apparently it’s often more likely that it’s their parents who have lost patience and posted on their behalf. The form is standardised (name, date of birth, height, unmarried/divorced/widowed, a personal section and the “mate selection criteria”) and only very rarely includes photos.
You could spend hours and hours here, just to get an insight into what ordinary people value and need. Men often want “emotionally simple” women, while being from a “native” family is a criterion for many . (It was later explained to me that being “native” to the city or province often brings privileged access to public services such as education or housing.) Insurance, healthcare, owning a car or house feature prominently, as you might expect. Many specify “no bad habits” in a partner, which seems very ambitious. One ambitious-sounded woman specified that she was a member of the Party. All of life is here, basically, and on this sunny Sunday the place was packed.
By the time we got home I was collapsing, so after skipping through many Chinese TV channels we watched a bit of Homestead Rescue on the Discovery channel, which is about as perfect an encapsulation of the opposite to the Chinese worldview as you could imagine. Later I roused myself for a late dinner, on the way to which we accidentally turned down a street filled from start to finish with pet shops. Now this is China: never just one of something when there could be 50. The same philosophy was clearly operating at the bakery after dinner where I wasn’t allowed to buy just one honey cake – no, it had to be six. (Total cost was still under a pound, and we ate them all.)
Day 10: Cycling the Tianfu Greenway
One of Randi’s discoveries when researching Chengdu was the Tianfu Greenway: a 100km long circular cycle route which makes a loop around the city and is entirely segregated from cars. During our time in Chengdu we rode on two small sections, and on our first outing we started in the east to finish in a surprisingly rural southeast corner. (It was a bit of a transport desert for the Metro, actually, but fear not: Line 13 is already under construction!)
Renting bikes is easy enough, assuming you have Alipay already linked to your mobile number. We chose the blue-coloured option, as apparently they have the smoothest process for foreign tourists. As ever, everything just kinda worked and was very inexpensive. And as ever, there were plentiful public toilets (plus water vending machines) all along the route.
Since we finished in the middle of nowhere, our route home was a bit haphazard – we jumped on a bus, but I didn’t want to swelter the whole time, so we jumped back off nearish a metro – which had the benefit of taking us through a truly ‘suburban’ feeling area. ‘Suburban’ in the sense that it’s clearly a ‘live here, raise a family commute into the centre if needed’ kinda place. Except the housing is still on a massive scale: a vast landscape of apartment buildings, built to a height which would induce heart attacks if you tried anything like this back at home.
Talking of raising a family: one of the bizarre things we walked past was an information display to promote the new ‘Family Education Promotion Law’ from 2022. The law itself, which I looked up later, is written in such broad-sweeping language as to be utterly alien to me as law. One subsection obliges parents to be:
Teaching minors to love the Party, nation, people, and socialism; setting up a conception of preserving national unity, solidifying awareness of the community of Chinese people, and cultivating sentiment for the homeland.
Also mandatory are to raise children to “admire virtue and be inclined to goodness”, “to be diligent and thrifty”, to “cultivate their positive social mores” and on and on. The information boards promote this law with a series of hypothetical (I assume!) case studies, including domestic violence, for which husband Hu may be reported to organisations in order to be “criticised and educated” with divorce following as an option later. On a lighter note, 8 year old Xiao Ming may dream of visiting the dance hall with his older cousins to dance, but “the purpose of prohibiting minors from entering entertainment venues is to protect their physical and mental health” and breaching these terms is a serious offence.
The final board outlines the legal obligations of adult children towards their parents, which in China are considerable. Courts are empowered to order children to pay maintenance or make mandatory visits to their ageing parents, which is a mind-bending exercise of state authority.
That evening, I cracked. Pizza Hut in Beijing had been a disappointment, but I wanted pizza, so we dined at Dominio’s. (Fun fact: everybody gets a pair of disposable plastic gloves to eat their pizzas with, and everybody uses them.) Then Randi successfully found somewhere selling regular playing cards (after a lot of failed attempts in anime-themed stores) and we played a few games of 7 Card Rummy and Speed from the fancy bar at the top of our fancy hotel.
Day 11: Pandas!
Pandas are everywhere in China, but in particular pandas are everywhere in Chengdu, which is world-famous for being home to a number of panda conservation sites. We opted for the ‘Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding’ which is the easiest to get to (metro plus shuttle bus) and is a giant panda zoo with both indoor and outdoor sections.
It’s all very nicely done, with a natural walking route between the different zones, although it is quite funny how intense the crowds are around the first panda enclosure. Everybody (including us) is desperate to get a picture (top tip: stand behind the school groups!) but if you just walk a little further on you’ll find equally adorable pandas with no crowds.
Somewhat oddly, the zoo is also home to a collection of ‘red pandas’, which are a completely separate species (similar to raccoons) and only linked to panda bears by name, as well as being native to China. Sadly, these areas were closed on our visit, so we missed out on the red pandas and will have to go back.
This post is already massively long, so I’m going to cut it before concluding with the third and final part of our trip!
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