Running, Flying (kites), Walking

I bought shoes yesterday for my track meet next Thursday/Friday (pictured). I went with Yangyang/Desiree to buy special running shoes, but quickly realized that these all-purpose shoes were the most minimal and flexible, and therefore the best. 40 yuan, about 6 dollars, and "very Chinese." Photographed all of their Chinese-ness for you. Post shoe purchase we walked a couple blocks to a market for foreigners to buy souvenirs in. Luckily there was a kite booth that reminded me that I wanted to buy kites. Fun Chinese kites (the booth did not have excellent kites). So we quickly left and got on the subway to seek out a tiny kite shop that she remembered as having a tremendous bounty of kites. No. They were remodeling I think? I only saw a few kites. Though they included a tremendous paper phoenix. Purchased one small cicada kite. I will return there in a month when the whole shop will be open again.

And to back track in time. Last Friday I finally made dinner for Ms. Liang, her husband, and Yangyang. Stressful to cook for so many when I had originally just expected to cook for Ms. Liang. Open-faced sandwiches on a good wheaty baguette and some pesto pasta. Kept it boring because of the lack of ingredients. Received well enough. Don't want to talk about it. But the rest of the night was interesting. I advised them to go with the modern interior plan, rather than the Italian plan, for their new villa's interior. They had some very detailed 3D interiors on their computer modeled out.

Then they wanted me to explain my paintings. Did not do this in Chinese, certainly. Yangyang translated. Don't know how much was lost in translation. Then talked about a calligraphy painting (purchased for 50,000 dollars) they have from the 70s, post Cultural Revolution. And then looked at a couple more calligrapher's works. And then after a long conversation that I didn't catch any of, they decided that they needed to buy one of my paintings as an investment. Don't know how I feel about this.

And tomorrow is another event in eastern Beijing where they live. There is some sort of big walk around Chaoyang park spring celebration that we'll be participating in. If her husband isn't back from Hong Kong tomorrow, it sounds like Yangyang and the driver? will also come. I think it will be fun. And I'll pick up another baguette while I'm in that part of town. Green is starting to come out in Beijing.