The weather is finally getting nicer, and I can’t think of anything better than enjoying a relaxing drink in the fresh, spring air. Check out our recommendations for where to go after a long and exhausting day of teaching.

When you want the world at your feet: Migas Mercado. Interesting cocktails and great sangria paired with some of their delicious croquettes will lift your spirits, and the incredible view of the CBD skyline will remind you why you packed everything up and left home to go teach in a strange land. And as a bonus? Gorgeous, envy-inducing photos for your social media accounts!

7/F, China World Mall, 1 Jianguomenwai Dajie, Chaoyang District
朝阳区建国门外大街1号国贸商城7层

When you need quaint and casual: Mosto. This is a great after-dinner option. Happy hour starts at 9pm, so save it for a night when you don’t have to be up early the next morning to teach! Mosto provides solid cocktails at reasonable prices in a quiet and secluded patio where no one is going to ask: “Will this be on the test?”

As an extra perk: Mosto has one of the craziest ladies’ night deals in town. Every Thursday all ladies can get two hours of free flow drinks with the purchase of any main dish on the menu.

3/F, Nali Patio, 81 Sanlitun Lu, Chaoyang District
朝阳区三里屯路81号那里花园3层

When you want to stay for dinner: Athena! I love Mediterranean food…Okay, I just love food. But Athena serves pretty authentic Greek food at a reasonable price, and they have a cute patio where you can get in some  quality people-watching as you dig into roasted lamb and spanakopita.

1 Sanlitun Xiwujie, Chaoyang District
朝阳区三里屯西五街1号

When you want to feel classier than you are: Fresco is all about the ambiance. The marble-tiled patio just opened for the summer, and it’s the perfect place to enjoy a cool, quiet breeze away from the Beijing crowds while catching up with friends. The food is on the pricier side, but it is beautifully presented, and the staff will make you feel like a special guest – even if you’re only stopping by for a sit and sip.

5/F, 27 Dongzhimenwai Dajie, Chaoyang District
朝阳区东直门外大街27号5层

KEEP READING: Degrees for Sale! The Shady World of Black Market Transcripts

Photos: Unsplash, Mosto, The Beijinger, Dianping

Maintaining a healthy friendship at the best of times requires some work and commitment, but when you are living in different cities, countries or even continents, and juggling a career, home, and raising children, it gets tricky very fast. Weeks or months can easily fly by without meaningful interactions with your close friends. However, all is not lost. Here, we’ve gathered some tips about how to maintain friendships abroad, and specifically, from China.

Manage Expectations

As soon as you can, warn your friends that you may not be able to maintain the same frequency or style of contact as you did before. Saying things like “I care a lot about you and still value your friendship, even if you don’t hear from me as much as you used to” can go a long way to easing the transition and preventing friends from feeling abandoned.

If you have friends who have never lived abroad or even in another town, it may not have occurred to them that staying in touch can be hard. Talking to them through challenges like time differences and technological barriers could make a world of difference.

Don’t Force a Square Peg Into a Round Hole

Friendships that were formed around a shared activity like a sport don’t always transition well to ‘one-on-one conversation’ modes, and not everybody enjoys spending hours on the phone. Don’t take it too hard if your hiking buddies and knitting circle friends don’t pick up when you call nor respond to your long emails in a timely fashion. It’s not your friendship that’s awkward, it’s your medium and it will take time for you to find your new friendship groove.

Expect the Unexpected

Making stable long-distance calls from China can be a pain. WeChat is the most reliable app for making calls but rather difficult for foreigners to set up without a Chinese SIM card. Lucky iPhone users are able to FaceTime one another for free, but the rest of us need to find other alternatives. Regardless of the method you use, allow a bit more time to deal with technical issues when scheduling a call than you may usually do to avoid frustration.

Reframe the Conversation

Saying “I miss you” and “it’s been ages” to a friend, even if it’s totally true, might make them feel pressured or even guilty about your lack of contact. We all have busy lives, but a slight change in approach could make it easier to keep the conversation flowing. “I’ve been thinking of you a lot” is a great alternative, as is “so much has been going on, I can’t wait to share my updates with you and hear all of yours.”

Ask Advice

Ask for help, even if you don’t need it. One friend regularly asks her Dad for advice about everything from home repairs, to health insurance, and the best time to buy vegetables. As a grown woman she doesn’t need this advice per se, but she knows that it makes her Dad feel included, and part of her life. For cultures (like Chinese) in which people don’t usually express love and affection with words, this can be a powerful way to show appreciation and keep bonds alive.

Schedule Emails

Another friend has found a way to make emailing feel more like old-fashioned letter writing. Every two weeks, he writes an email to a friend who lives in another time zone, then uses email software to schedule it to send at a time that he knows his friend will be on a boring commute. A week later, his friend does the same thing. These regular emails give them both something to look forward to reading, and also takes the pressure off feeling that they need to reply immediately.

Avoid the Dreaded “So How’s Life?”

Remember when you talked to your friends one month after moving to Beijing, and they asked you “so how’s China?”. Um… big? Huge, open-ended questions like this are easy to ask but hard to answer. If it’s been a while since you were last in contact with someone, pause before you reach out and try to think of a few specific, pointed questions you can ask to get the ball rolling. “What are you reading right now?”, “Is the baby eating solids?”, “Have you found a good lunch spot in your new neighborhood?”. As they answer these questions, you’ll both build the momentum to cover the rest of the ‘life’ stuff.

Get Meme-ing

My oldest friend and I can go months without a proper conversation, but we stay connected and in each other’s hearts by sending ridiculous memes back and forth over Instagram. Whether it’s sending memes, sharing articles you think they’ll like, or tagging them in funny tweets, there are a myriad of ways to easily ‘nudge’ your friends and remind them of your shared interests and history, no matter how busy you both are.

Bait the Lurkers

If you are struggling to get news from that quiet friend in a group chat who reads messages but never responds, set low-commitment mini-challenges that everybody can do, regardless of their mood. For example, post a funny, unflattering selfie and tell everybody to reply with their own, immediately! Or take a picture of their lunch, or their view, or their shoes, or whatever. Little challenges like this are easy to do no matter how busy you are and help everybody feel connected.

Send Voice Messages

Depending on the context, unsolicited voice messages can be a pain in the butt. But there is something really lovely about hearing the voice of a good friend instead of the usual block of text. Many different apps support sending VM’s, and you can fit so much more feeling, warmth, and, well, information into a ten-second voice message. Your children can record special messages for friends and relatives too, and it literally only takes a few seconds.

Finally… Accept That Friendships Change

Friendships come in all shapes and sizes, and they change over time too. If despite all your efforts, you find yourself drifting away from a friend, don’t sweat it too much. It’s natural for long-term friendships to go through seasons and you may come very close together again in the future.

KEEP READING: The Romantic World of Beijing Teens and Their Love Lives 

Photos: Unsplash

This article appeared in the beijingkids 2020 September issue

With recent travel restrictions, almost everyone is staying at home this summer which means it’s the perfect time to implement more sustainable measures in your home.

What is sustainability and why is it important?

Our survival, both directly and indirectly, depends on our natural environment, the Earth. Sustainability refers to the formation and preservation of an environment in which humans and nature coexist to support present and future generations. The United Nations’ Brundtland Report also defines the term as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

The term ‘sustainability’ has become very popular in conjunction with an increased awareness of climate change. These days, many companies aim to gain advantages in the global market by practicing and promoting sustainability, and it has become alarmingly clear that sustainability is something we must achieve to preserve our quality of life. Thankfully, this increased interest has improved our way of living and our perception of previously popular actions. For example, plastic packaging is now frowned upon, and resource wastage is condemned.

We live in a world with infinite possibilities, however, we have finite resources. If we don’t make a change, eventually we will run out of resources such as fossil fuels and damage our climate beyond repair. Past and present human actions have hurt our environment and if nothing is done to repair it, there will be no home for our future generations.

Protester spreading awareness of climate change and promoting sustainability

What can you do to become more sustainable at home?

Food and Drink

According to Forbes, humans purchase an average of 1,000,000 plastic bottles per minute. By 2050, it is estimated that the ocean will contain more plastic by weight than fish. This creates plastic ingestion risks to sea animals and humans who consume seafood. You can help by installing a water filter at home in order to have a continuous supply. Furthermore, you can purchase water bottles and use reusable cups as an alternative. Additionally, avoid using plastic straws, opt for metal or paper straws instead.

When it comes to food it is very easy to take it for granted. Take only what you can eat to prevent wastage and keep your leftovers in the fridge. To store food, purchase reusable containers (i.e. aluminum) or reuse plastic containers. You can find containers at a local store or purchase them online. This reusable container on Taobao, is not only foldable but also microwavable! Additionally, you can choose to grow your own food at home, if you live in a compound you could try starting a community garden. It will improve your health and make you feel more connected to nature.

Shopping

Try visiting a local farmers market, as the fresh produce sold there are typically organic and non-GMO. Additionally, stores also tend to provide plastic bags, but try to bring your own reusable bag instead. Not only are reusable shopping bags more durable, but they are also easier to use for multiple purposes.

You should also become more cautious when purchasing certain goods. The products you buy and use either contribute or detract from a sustainable lifestyle. For example, when purchasing clothing think about the material and durability of it. Consider the conditions a product was made under if the company uses unethical forms of labor such as child labor you probably don’t want to be giving them your money.

In Beijing, the Bulk House is an online store that has committed sustainability through measures such as zero waste. Simply search their name on Taobao or Weidian to check out their products.

A reusable shopping bag

Home Electrical Appliances

During the day, optimize a natural light source rather than wasting electricity. You can use lighting from the sun to complete various daily tasks such as line drying your clothes rather than using a dryer machine.

Use energy-saving lightbulbs such as LED lighting, they are far more efficient and durable. When a small amount of light is needed avoid using the main light and opt for a lamp light instead.  You can also purchase a central power strip to plug your devices into. This allows you to save electricity by switching them on only when needed.

Awareness

Spread awareness about sustainability to friends or family and remind them to be conscious of their actions. Teach them about simple rules such as reduce, reuse, and recycle.

The bottom line is that together we must strive to achieve sustainability in our homes, our ecosystem, and our world to maintain our current lifestyle.  To learn more about sustainability, start by taking a look at your carbon footprint, and research the Sustainable Development Goals.

KEEP READING: How to Use Beijing’s First Zero-Waste Online Stores

Images: Nikola Jovanovic, Markus Spiske & Priscilla Du Preez (via Unsplash)

Beijingkids has been an essential family resource for Beijing international families since 2006. And just as kids grow up in the blink of an eye, Beijing has grown and changed almost beyond recognition in that time. In Throwback Thursday we jump in the time machine, traveling through our 14 year-strong blog archives to dig out the most entertaining, fascinating, and thought-provoking stories for your reading pleasure. Ready? Let’s go…

How long have you been living in Beijing? A year? A month? A decade? Your entire life? Despite all the upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, there are still newcomers arriving in China or planning to do so as soon as borders open up, thus bringing a fresh wave of newcomers to the city: bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and possibly quite unaware of how things work around here.

I moved here almost two years ago, and looking back over that time it’s astonishing how much I have learned and changed. At the urging of my then-editor, I recorded my China progress with two articles, at the one-month mark, and after one full year. Now, I look back on those with wonder: I really didn’t have a clue. While I’m no China expert, many of the things that totally confounded me are now as easy as breathing. I wonder where I’ll be in another 12 months.

It’s always a lot of fun to look back and see how far we have come, and in the spirit of reflection and also helping out some newcomers to this weird and wonderful city, this week we are throwing back to July 2018, when we published the article “What I Wish I’d Known Before I Moved to Beijing, Part 1: “You Aren’t Supposed to Flush Toilet Paper!”

Enjoy!

“I wish I’d taken the time to learn more Chinese.”

To this, we’d also add: Mandarin is hard for English speakers, especially if you’ve not been learning it from a young age, so don’t beat yourself up if you’re not fluent overnight. But while there are plenty of English-language signs and a big community, there’s no doubt you’ll get a lot more out of your time here if you can chat with the locals and read a few hanzi (characters). Find a good teacher, learn words and characters, and take HSK tests so you can measure your progress.

“If you’re shipping stuff over, make sure you fill out the customs forms!”

This can seem like an irritating minor task when you have a hundred other things to think about preparing for your move. But if you don’t, expect to have your possessions held up at Customs, to have to make a trip out to the airport to sort the problem out, and to end up paying huge sums of money on import duties (often more than the goods are worth.) Any reputable shipping company should supply you with the forms. As so often in China, just do the paperwork, no matter how pointless and tedious it seems.

“Download WeChat and connect with parenting groups in advance. They are priceless for activity info and advice/help,” and “Try to have a bank card as soon as possible (if you want to join a big group in WeChat) in order to have access to expat groups very soon.”

See our WeChat Guide about how to do this. WeChat limits access to the bigger groups unless you have a bank card linked to your account, so it’s worth setting up a local bank account even if you don’t expect to use it much.

To continue reading the full article, click here.

KEEP READING: How to Post and Promote Your Event on beijingkids – For Free!

Images: Unsplash