#49 Sidecar Joyride

My friend Jerry, as well as several other folks in the neighborhood, own these restored BMW sidecar motorcycles. The cycles were built in China for the Army starting in the 1940s or 50s (or something like that).

Apparently there is a guy in Suzhou who buys up old derelict bikes of this model and rebuilds them into family wagons for expats. They look like new when he is done and run as smooth as any 50 year old design can be expected to. I know one guy from Caterpillar Wuxi who had his machine crated up and shipped back to his next job location in the Midwest.

Jerry took me for a spin to gas up the bike up before storing it for the short, hard winter here in central China. The bike is very cool. Anyone remember George Burns as the wisecracking almighty in the movie "Oh God! Book II"? In the scene above, Jerry would be God and I the little girl with a big grin and bugs in my teeth !

#48 The Great Wall

I had a business meeting in Beijing this week and was given permission from home to stay over on Saturday to visit the Great Wall. Bright and early on Saturday morning (after a very late night out with a Beijing colleague), I met my new boss and his wife for a guided tour of the Wall.

Dan and Margarite arranged a driver and a tour guide through the hotel. The Badaling section of the wall is close to Beijing - only an hour drive from downtown. Our tour guide was a very enthusiastic narrator and so good at his job, that he was asked to give a tour to Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, during the general's visit to China in 2004.

I was a beautiful, sunny, blue sky day - a rarity in Beijing we hear. There was, however, a fierce wind in the mountains where we walked on the wall. Dan bargained for a Beijing 2008 stocking cap from a vendor on the wall

Walking on the wall is extremely strenuous! The terrain is incredible hilly and the wall follows some very steep inclines. They say several milliion people worked to build the wall over 200 years, at least a million people died during its construction, and at its peak during the Ming Dynasty it was guarded by over one milliion soldiers.

I checked snopes.com for the veracity of the claim that the wall is the only man-made object visible from the moon. Status = False. Not visible from the moon and debatably visible from low earth orbit. Nonetheless, it is the longest and largest structure ever made by humans.

On the way back to Beijing, we stopped along the freeway to take a picture of the Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium. Very cool building. It will hold 100,000 spectators and was constructed with 45,000 tons of steel. Credit to Wikipedia for the intriguing facts and figures.

#47 Snow in Suzhou

We are experiencing a snow storm today in Suzhou - apparently a very rare event. We have been told that most winters never see temperatures below freezing at all. An interesting observation - the Chinese use umbrellas when it snows.

After church, we went to lunch at an English pub called "The Drunken Chef" named after an ancestor of the owner who was beheaded after he got drunk and spilled food on the Duke who employed him. After waiting 45 minutes for a D-grade grilled cheese sandwich, I would have beheaded this chef as well.

After lunch, I dragged a unenthusiastic family to see a Suzhou garden called "Master of the Nets". I figured it was a rare opportunity to photograph a snow-covered Suzhou garden. Marco and Maria were enthusiastic, but the rest of the family, including Kathleen, would have rather been playing Wii in the floor-heated TV room at home.

I have posted some additional pictures from this day and the Great Wall at Snapfish.com

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#46 Wedding

Today at Our Lady of Seven Sorrows there was a wedding between two parishoners who met at Church. Chuck and Lilly are their names. Chuck's parents traveled all the way from Wisconsin to be present for the ceremony. I talked to the mother of the groom during cake-and-coffee time after the service and she said she had paitiently waited a long time for this day !

The cake looked fantastic but tasted lousy. The Chinese just do not do desserts like the west. The bride and groom looked very happy and blessed.

#45 On Jinji Lake

Joseph, Marco, and I got the assignment this Sunday afternoon to get out of the house and out of Kathleen's hair. We decided to ride our bikes to Rainbow Walk in SIP and rent a powerboat. The boat was battery powered and extremely tame, but the boys had a lot of fun tooling around a small corner of Jinji Lake. The area is roped in and the boats must stay pretty close to the dock. In fact, the guys managing the boats initally seemed to say that Joseph and Marco were too small for this boat. I kept insisting in severely broken Chinese that we wanted to go and they relented before long.

#44 Don & Margie Visit

Kathleen's parents, Don & Margie, came to China on Jan-3rd and stayed for two weeks. We had a great time seeing them and the kids loved spending time with Grandma and Grandpa.

They saw some of the sights in Suzhou and did a lot of shopping in Suzhou and Shanghai. They visited Marco and Maria's Newton Preschool and spent a morning at Dulwich in Juliana and Joseph's classrooms. Margie accompanied Kathleen on some grocery shopping trips and errands around town. She takes a great interest in seeing Kathleen's daily life activities in China.

A highlight for Don was a trip to the Dragonfly Massage Parlor. Kathleen, Margie, Don, and I all went one weekday afternoon. Margie had a head and foot massage and the rest of us had Chinese body massages. Don bonded with his masseuse and went back to see her for an oil massage the next week.

Don and Margie also got to participate in some events surrounding my work at Caterpillar. They visited the Cat office, met my colleagues, and reviewed the layout of the new manufacturing facility. On Monday, they attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the Cat factory, and on Tuesday we had my new boss and his boss over the house for dinner.

Above are a couple pictures from the visit. I have posted some additional pictures at snapfish.

#43 Trip to Hangzhou

We took our first Chinese road trip shortly after Christmas to a small town (6.4 million people) about two hours from here called Hangzhou (pronounced "Hong-Joe"). Hangzhou is a modern city with a 1000 year history and scenic gardens around a body of water called West Lake.

We unfortunately had a couple of very cold and rainy days in Hangzhou, but it was still a very beautiful place with an enjoyable bit of sightseeing. Pictured above are the Lingyin Buddist Temple, a laughing budda carved directly into the rock hillside and Kathleen and Tony on one of the West Lake Islands.

In Chinese cities such as Hangzhou, it is quite hard to find cuisine to please the young American children so we found our best meal of the trip at the Hangzhou Hooters. The food was mamahuhu (Chinese for "so-so"), as were the Hooters. More pictures of Hangzhou can be found at the following snapfish link.

#42 Christmas Day

Christmas morning in China was much like Christmas in Peoria. The kids were told not to wake Mom and Dad prior to 6AM. They were very patient, but the house exploded with voices when the clock struck six.

Among the many exciting gifts the kids received, the Nitendo Wii was the biggest crowd-pleaser. Shown is the pictures are also Maria in her Chinese silk nightgown and Joseph with his embroidered picture of the Great Wall.

Later in the afternoon, we were graciously hosted by my colleague Bill and his wife Tamara. Our dinner party is shown as well as shot of Bill leading us on a house tour of his expat Chinese villa. Kathleen looks stunning in a custom made Chinese silk shirt of her own.

#41 Tree Trimming

China notwithstanding, we had our traditional Cazzato family Christmas Eve this year - minus our typical dinner with the Tomlins family (sadness). Attached our a few pictures from our tree trimming and assigned Christmas Eve tasks.

Each child has an assignment to perform every year during the Christmas Eve tree trimming. We got this idea from a graduate school friend Nancy in Chicago who is one of four girls. Juliana puts the star on the tree; Joseph sets up the train; Marco hangs the stockings; and Maria puts out the treats and milk for Santa Claus.

As you will see in the next blog entry, Santa was able to locate the fabulous four despite their expatriate status in the far east.