Alternate Routes--Updated

10/15 Update The column is up on the Beijing Kids website.  I had to laugh when the editor commented on my "snappy style." Umm, it was because I dropped all the adverbs and conjunctions to get the word count down! Before I made it sound more twitterific, it was a lot more like the paragraph I edited before sending it to my editor.

This month my column at the locally published Beijing Kids debuts. Titled Alternate Routes, it will appear every other month. This publication is like other free entertainment magazines except its target audience is specifically for families. Unlike some of the free magazines I've seen in Beijing and Shenzhen, though, this one has a gorgeous look and feel to it. It feels less like ephemera than some of the others.

I applied for it at the encouragement of departing columnist Donna Gorman (who now has gone on to Jordan, now taking her kids to exciting places like where Jesus was baptized and and an Indiana Jones set, I mean the rock city at Petra). I was a little intimidated, though. Donna is a real free-lance writer; Christian Science Monitor is among those on her CV. A tough act to follow, but I hope that two months is enough time for the English-reading community to forget her excellence (just kidding, Donna!).

I had to come up with a title for the column, and Donna's ("Learning Curve") was simply great that I half-wished I would just inherit it. The first impulse I had for a title, "In this Our Exile" didn't fit the publication. I came up with "Alternate Routes", thinking specifically about our insane trip out of Hebei this spring. With minimal assistance from our GPS we fought our way back to Beijing on barely-there country rodes when all the major and minor direct routes were blocked off with insane truck traffic. It seemed an extended metaphor for our experience moving to Beijing (and maybe Shenzhen, too). We've entered a lifestyle that should be easy and breezy, and yet, we keep encountering weird roadblocks that few can help us negotiate. We find ourselves winging it so often to overcome our obstacles. I feel like most days we are looking for alternate routes to somewhere.

On accepting me, the editor of the magazine laid out some of the conditions. While after publication the rights of the content revert to me, they cannot appear in any of the competitors'. It was a good thing she listed them out for me, because I hadn't even heard of a single one of them. I don't know if it is the utterly crushing dominance of Beijing Kids in the local market, or (more likely) that I live outside all the distribution areas for these types of magazines. Even the Starbucks I go to after Mass does not usually carry any of them. October's issue I picked up by luck. Last Saturday we stopped at an import grocery store after soccer and there it was next to the check-out.

I'll post a link when the column goes live on the Beijing Kids website. Here's a picture of what the page looks like. They do a fantastic job with the design and the overall look of the magazine.