Cheryl Petty

Cheryl Petty, writer and artist, lives in Northern California and works in Beijing, PR China.
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  • Home
  • About
    • MM
    • CAFIC
    • Video Gallery
    • Penjing Bonsai Video
    • Books Videos
    • Art & Entertainment Video
    • Shanghai bonsai treasures
    • Tianjin Lu Tian Pen Jing November 2011
    • Penjing Master Jia Ji 2014
    • Penjing Qing Wan Garden
    • Beijing Botanical Garden October 2011
    • Chinese Penjing, Styles and Culture
    • Chen Zhi Jiu
    • Travel
    • Golden Statements
    • Clubs
    • Book Reviews
    • Trees - Azaleas
    • Trees - Conifers
    • Japan Trip - Kimura
    • Japan Trip - Morimae
    • Kyoto Excursion
    • Gardens and Little Trucks
    • An American in Beijing Series
  • Publications
    • Vortex Art
    • 1985 Art
    • Downtown Los Angeles 1985 Art Sept. 12, 2015
    • Sha Li
    • Sha Li video
    • An American in Beijing Series
    • Origin Series
    • Beijing Abduction snapshots
    • Wounds of Attraction snapshots
    • Escape from Here snapshots
    • Locations and Settings
    • The Players at the PLA
    • Redding Party
    • CWP Publishing
    • Announcements
    • New Book Release
    • Screenplay Release
    • DPRK
    • Trans Pacific Friendship Group
    • China Voyage
    • DPR Korea Video
    • Slide Show
  • E-Car
  • Breakfast Letter
    • HFAT
    • HFAT News
    • Views at the top Mt Bradley
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Breakfast Letter

What is the Breakfast Letter?  It began in 2011 when Cheryl Petty traveled to Beijing, PR China, to work at Tsinghua University.  She has been back and forth, sharing her passion for adventure in picture and story.

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fun with Chen

Beijing 2011 Toon Tree

Sha Li April 16, 2011
Qing Hua Xue Tang  1916
Qing Hua Xue Tang 1916

Crews are out picking up rubbish all over campus, cleaning up their work sites, even sweeping the sides of the canal and skimming debris out of the water.  I rode my bike near the old German (1909) building they finished refurbishing.  Two gaunt cercis chinensis Chinese redbud bushes were retained on either side of the front door, the school flower just now blooming.

Where there used to be construction materials stored, stacks of pavers and tools and equipment, is now being prepped for a large landscape installation.  It's a big square or rectangular area, lending itself to a geometric design with privet parterres infilled with hundreds of miniature roses.  The plants in 1-gallon (or liter equivalent) are stacked in a mountainous pie on not one but at least two flatbed trucks.  Another truck was arriving as I finished photographing and threaded my way out of the scene.

Park installation.1
Park installation.1

Crews of peasant workers did the installing.  On the other side away from me it looked like a sunken garden was being engineering and young trees were poled and staked up between the two sections.

Park installation.2
Park installation.2

Food:  I have two meal cards, one for staff restaurants and one for student canteens.  There are about twenty restaurants on campus.  The prices are very reasonable.  The Chinese love to eat-- who doesn't?   So there is a tremendous variety to choose from.  Lots of things stir fried with a sauce served with rice on the side, or noodles.  At the largest dining hall I've been to, maybe 80-100 different entrees everyday.

There's a good variety of tofu, the likes of which I have not seen.  Some shredded and stringy, some pressed flat, or textured like fabric.  I especially like the silky soft type served in a block on a small plate drizzled with a sauce and sprinkled with chopped green onions.  When I eat lunch out with my co-workers, I will get extra dishes and take home some to use as a base for my dinner.

I was overjoyed to find canned tuna and kewpie mayonnaise at the store.  I can now make a very delicious tuna sandwich with sliced tomato on a toasted bun and a pickled sour cucumber on the side.  Their tuna comes plain in spring water, flavored 5-spice, curry, other flavors I'm not familiar with, black bean and guangdong-- excellent

My apartment's small kitchenette is equipped with a big cooking unit on one end with two big gas burners that go from fast (low) to incinerate (high).  I've added to that my rice cooker (fan guo) and electric wok (wok!).  A microwave and electric tea kettle came with the apartment.

There are wonderful varieties of mushroom (mogu).  They come tightly wrapped in saran on styro trays about a pound:  thin thread like ones that are attached at the base in clumps with small white caps; medium sized portobello type with brown caps and scales on the stems; morel type creamy beige with wavy caps.

I can also get fresh peeled, sliced lotus root in a package.  They are delicious in salads, but a little funky cooked.  I need to learn how to prepare them!

On Thursday spring was flaunting herself, high of 86 degrees F.  In the morning cottonwood floss was drifting everywhere, but by afternoon had spent itself.  The grass is greening up, and it is sweet to take a cat nap on a little hill near my office at lunch under blooming double cherry blossoms, Prunus serrulata 'Kanzan' native to central China, and ginkgo biloba just coming out with their bright yellow-green fan shaped leafs.

Sweet Nakai Quince
Sweet Nakai Quince

I couldn't help myself, I just had to take the long way to work next to the ancient canal lined with marble carved posts and weeping willows reflected in the water.  Hard to remember only a few weeks ago it was frozen ice.

portrait of bicycle
portrait of bicycle

The pink and white flowering almond, prunus glandulosa plena, is still blooming its head off, orange quince, chaenomeles speciosa (sweet) Nakai, and lighter orange single kerria japonica.  Suddenly bare sticks are now sprouting little Japanese maple leaves, acer palmatum.

Young artiste
Young artiste

So warm tonight, I took a long walk around the block.  Fun getting down on the ground and mingling with my neighbors, out leisurely strolling:  families with baby toddlers, young couples, pushing grandma in her wheel chair.  A police car unobtrusively parked in a side street, the officer solemnly greeted my smile and nod, friendly faces, quiet greetings, happy tonight.

I learned a few things from the DYGS last night.  I can buy in the frozen food case steamed rice buns filled with red bean paste.  The rack with holes that came with the rice steamer (fan guo) fits over the cooking rice and that's where and how you steam foods like the buns, at the same time.

Ms Chen invited me to see a dress rehearsal for an outdoor dance routine extravaganza involving hundreds of students in a big stadium setting-- fan dancers, flags of all sizes and colors, swords, primary school roller blade teams, young girls in long dresses with colorful ruffles-- all moving with precision and enthusiasm, practicing for a centennial performance later this week.

Red flag
Red flag

She told me I could bring my video cameras, so later this spring I'll be able to share this with you all.  At one point they unfurled a gigantic red China flag, the young people underneath squatting and standing up and down rhythmically creating the effect of a waving flag!

On the way back to my apartment we passed a man on my street with a long pole breaking new leafy sprigs off the ends of branches way up in the top of the tree.  Chen explained Beijingers ate these fresh sprigs this time of year, quickly boiled and salted or chopped in an omelet.  She pulled over and we had fun trying to get a sprig or two.  The man graciously and generously gave me a big bunch.  She told me later that she had bought some from a street vender later today and that they are nine times the price of other vegetables at market.

Cedrela sinensis
Cedrela sinensis

The tree is called Cedrela sinensis, tender leaves of Chinese Toon tree, used in traditional Chinese medicine, it can successfully treat several kinds of cancer and diabetes, and SARS virus as well as improving learning and memory.  In literature it stands metaphorically for a father and day lily for mother as in "wishing your Toona sinensis and day lily are strong and happy."

Hui tou jian 

Americano tang nai
Americano tang nai
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sci - bi series

 

June 10, 2017

Sha Li excavated drawing pens from art storage, bought a new bottle of Higgins ink and is creating illustrations for the new book series   Origin of the Human Hybrids  .

Sha Li excavated drawing pens from art storage, bought a new bottle of Higgins ink and is creating illustrations for the new book series Origin of the Human Hybrids.


From the first pages of Origin of the Human Hybrids, the character, Mai Martin, is pregnant and struggles for control of her body after a dramatic collapse and revivication involving manufactured blood carrying miniature nano bots developed by the American government. This Sci bi – Science fiction bio sub genre – illustrated story about high technology in the near future, when humanity attempts to save itself with advances in nanotechnology and the creation of augmented humans, is 113 pages, 27,800 words, and 13 illustrations.


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"You play well for a dead man, ZHAO," says GAO. "Tell us about your ordeal?" "The man, DONG, was in our cabin with a knife. He jumped onto the next ship when I fell into the space between." "They looked for you for weeks. Martin Taitai was distraught."
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Cheryl Petty

Cheryl Petty, writer and artist, lives in Northern California and works in Beijing, PR China.

Welcome to Cheryl Petty's site.  Find info about her publishing company, her books,her bonsai, her art and her Breakfast Letter blog posts from Beijing.

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