April Days in Beijing

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Here are some highlights from my "regular life" on the other side of the world (April 2017)...

Loaf of bread-cake (as we call it) my sister made for my mom's birthday.

Two lemurs my siblings saw on their trip to the Beijing Zoo (an expedition I chose not to attend).

Our PM2.5 smog tester (the number in the middle row (118 here) is the amount of PM2.5).

A delicious dish, one of my favorites.  It consists of nian gao pian (the white stuff), vegetables, and onions.

A magnetic Chinese Chess (a game I do not like to play) board we acquired recently.  There are small magnets on the bottom of the pieces, so the board is easy to use when travelling.  The game is somewhat similar to chess.  You have a general (when he is captured the game is over), two of his shi, two elephants, two horses, two cannons, two cars, and five soldiers.

Our friend gave us this Chilean Rose Hair tarantula a couple weeks ago.  We had some trouble finding food for it (it eats large insects once every 1-2 weeks), but finally, success!  (see below...)

My brother went out at night with my mom, and they came back with two just-dead bugs (right) and several rolly-pollies.  The tarantula enjoyed the bugs, but I don't think it ever even noticed the rolly-pollies.

At the end of April we traveled on the high-speed rail from Beijing to FuZhou.  The shortest route takes eight hours...
Kids under 1.5m (about 5ft) and under sixteen years of age could get half-price tickets (those under 1.2m rode for free).  Thankfully, I was 0.5cm away from the 1.5m mark, so I didn't need an adult ticket.

We are in FuZhou now for the 5/1 (Wu Yi) holiday (China Labor Day).  Goodbye to Beijing for two weeks...

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