September 6, 2025
Jet lag combined with the high number of flights recently continues to wear us down a bit. The boys didn’t get to sleep last night until 11pm ish so making it to breakfast by 9am was a struggle. The hotel had a breakfast buffet with a mix of Chinese foods and typical Western stuff. The boys were happy to see breakfast cereal and milk and demanded to get it themselves so there was, predictably, a path of milk and cereal on the ground in their wake.
Our guide, Vivien, met us in the hotel lobby and we were on our way to the Forbidden City. We toured the palace museum for close to two hours and maybe one hour was pleasant. Since it was a Saturday, it was quite crowded and also hot and sunny outside. The boys had a hard time following Vivien’s historical narration and took to fighting or running down uneven ramps for much of the late morning. Ice cream shaped like parts of the palace provided a brief reprieve but their rambunctious behavior would not be quelled.
The part of the tour that interested the boys the most were the mythical creatures or “ridge beasts” on the crests of the building roofs and also the raised doorways. Vivien explained that there were ~1 foot high steps in many of the doorways because it was believed that because zombies can not bend their knees, they wouldn’t be able to enter the buildings. This led to a debate whether or not zombies could bend their knees and then lots of attempts by the boys to lift their legs by not bending their knees. Vivien also mentioned that it was tradition for men to lift their left legs first when crossing a threshold and women their right. There was a lot of hesitation at doorways for the remainder of our tour. As we exited through the garden and saw some of the 100-200 year old trees being held up by posts and Len goes, “Whaaat how do these trees have canes??”
Next we went to lunch to a spot Vivien recommended as favored by locals. While trying to listen as Vivien translated the menu to me at the counter, Len incessantly tapped my stomach going “mom, mom, mom, mom….” After asking him to stop 5 times, I picked him up and put him over to the side and asked him to wait before interrupting so I could learn what was on the menu. Vivien told me, “Oh don’t worry, I am mean to my sons sometimes too.” The kids ended up loving their “Chinese taco” which was a steam bun filled with shredded beef. They each ordered seconds. I ordered mapo tofu and Sichuan green beans and enough food for probably 3-4 people came out. Unfortunately I’m the only person in our family who enjoys spicy tofu.
Next we went to a local family’s home in the Hutong district in Beijing, just down the street/alley from our hotel. The itinerary said something about learning about crickets as pets but we really didn’t know what we were in for. The family’s home was in the back of a plant and animal filled courtyard– we saw fish tanks and ~15 different caged birds as we walked into the home. Inside we met their dog Tutu, a 7 year old golden retriever. We learned that when he was a puppy, a child accidentally stepped on his front leg and broke it so he was in a puppy cast that made him keep his leg completely straight so it stuck out when he sat down. Mr. Liu said it stuck out like he was holding a gun and in Mandarin the noise they make when talking about gunshots is “tututututututu”. Hence the dog’s name Tutu. We asked him what the names of the courtyard birds were and he laughed and Vivien our translator relayed, “Those are just outside animals, they don’t get names like the home animals.”
Vivien translated as Mr.Liu (in his 70s) shared what life had been like for him and his family under China’s different leaders throughout the 60s and 70s. When he was 16, he was sent to live and work in Mongolia for a decade as he relayed that, “Mao was nervous about the students uprising and having too much power so many of the middle children were sent away from their families.” He said he was working on a horse farm and would often steal some of the horse food to eat since he was given so little. Vivien also shared that as a first born daughter in the 80s, when China still had their one child policy, she and her mother received so much hate from her father’s family as they were disappointed she wasn’t a boy. Her mother went on to have another child (a boy) and the family took out their anger that they had to pay the two child penalty out on Vivien and her mother. Vivien said to this day her brother has never held a job because he continues to be lauded over by her family while she is nearly estranged from them and her father doesn’t even know the names of her own children.
The boys were in and out of the home for much of the conversation as they were checking out the birds and playing with Tutu in the courtyard. Mr. Liu and his wife also put out a tray of snacks so the boys were in and out of the door to grab snacks by the handful to fuel their adventures. Almost immediately on arriving, Len asked to use the bathroom. Vivien had explained earlier than many of these homes don’t have private bathrooms but were relieved when we learned the bathroom was right off of the room we were in. Ollie joined him in the bathroom and both soon ran out to tell me they had seen, “the weirdest thing ever in a bathroom.” I shushed them both, not wanting to be rude but also very curious what it could be! It turned out to be a huge bin of mealworms that Mr.Liu was raising to feed his other pets that we hadn’t met yet.
Mr.Liu soon grabbed a few magazines to show us pages where he was highlighted as one of the best cricket trainers in Beijing. He also starred in a short documentary, Cricket Liu, in 2018 and he shared all the film’s press with us. Mr. Liu then showed us the equipment he used to move and train the crickets including a scale so they would only fight in appropriate weight classes. Vivien clarified that betting on cricket matches is technically illegal in China but the sport and gambling ring is still alive outside of the city closer to the mountains. We then met a bunch of his crickets with their sizes increasing with each gourd-turned-cage he opened. The final creatures we met were huge and were technically katydids. The boys halted their meandering as soon as the cricket talk started and they were captivated with seeing the crickets. Ollie was excited to hold them while Len took to holding the gourd that the katydids stood on. Len did eventually agree to let the katydid sit on his head though.
Next Mr.Liu took us out to his garden to show us his snapping turtle that we had overlooked as it lives in a nondescript blue barrel. Then he showed us that he had trained a bird to recall, “Ni hao” so Len took to saying “Ni hao” on repeat approximately 50 times. When taking another bird out of a cage to show us, the bird flapped directly into Ollie and onto his face leaving the tiniest of cuts on his face. Mr. Liu felt terrible and ran to fetch cream for his face and gifts for the boys to show his remorse. Ollie rebounded quickly and asked to continue meeting the birds.
Soon it was time to leave and Mr.Liu insisted on picking a few fresh Chinese dates to give to us from his garden. Despite getting eaten alive by mosquitos in the garden, we had a lovely visit and the boys asked to get crickets of their own to keep in their gourd gifts from Mr.Liu. They then fought and swung the gourds at one another for most of the walk back to the hotel so they were taken away for safe keeping to be returned at a later time.
After some downtime in our rooms, we went to the hotel restaurant close to 8pm thinking we would just get dinner there. We learned the hotel restaurant was only open for breakfast so we ventured out into our Hutong in search of dinner. We thought we would just get takeaway to eat back in our rooms but the night took a different direction. After getting a few fried spiral potatoes for the boys on the street, Kyle spotted a bar that had video games and served pizza. We decided we could use a taste of home so we spent some time at the bar having a beer and eating pizza while the boys played Street Fighter, a video game from our childhood. We couldn’t see them directly from our seats at the bar, but we could hear their high pitched screams and squeals as they played the game.
