Last morning in Guilin, YuYu reunites with foster family Day 11

We had a slow day yesterday, all travel, felt like wasting precious
time since we're leaving soon. We rode from Guilin to Nanning on a
deluxe bus because another family who took the train on Tuesday said
that so many people with "platform tickets" were pushing into the
reserved seat car and it was so crowded they had to stand during the
four hour trip. The travel agency diverted us to a bus, and it was
clean and comfortable, but it took five hours and the Chinese are tree
planting fools and the whole length of the freeway has bushes or trees
planted along the road side and you can't see past the trees to see
the countryside. You don't have that problem on the train so I'm
sorry we missed our train ride but glad we didn't have to stand the
whole way.

We took the Li River cruise in Guilin on Wednesday and instead of
staying in Yangshuo, the tourist town at the end of the cruise, and
seeing the spectacular show designed by the same guy who coreographed
the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, we were sent on a bus back to
Guilin even though our deluxe bus to Nanning didn't leave until 1:30pm
the next day. When our local guide came to the Guilin hotel to
retrieve us to take us to the bus station, another family who had
stayed in Yangshuo was already in the van because they had stayed over
and seen the show. Crap. Next time we come back to China, it won't
be as part of a mammoth tour group. Our BLAS guide (government travel
agency co-ordinating the whole shebang for all these families) should
have let us know that we had the option to stay and see the show, but
it wasn't offered. BLAS also left us stranded at the Chengdu tarin
station (forgot) for two hours which resulted in a totally CRAZY PANTS
sprint to the airport in rush hour traffic (sure, pull onto the
sidewalk, it's barely being used by those pedestrians). We keep
saying, "the next time we come to China, we're do . . . differently."

Anyway, YuYu's foster family who lives in Nanning, flew in last night
from Hainan Island, and for awhile I thought it was because they
didn't live here anymore and we had crossed wires and they had to fly
back to Nanning just for the two days we're here and I would have so
much more liked to have met them in Hainan (a Chinese resort
destination) than Nanning (BTDT two times), but turns out, her parents
were helping her brother (who we couldn't see in 2006 because it was
his first year at the Guangzhou military academy, no visitors, even
immediate family) move back to Nanning. We'll find out if his time in
the Army is over or if he is getting transferred to a post in Nanning.
The family came to the hotel from the airport to see us last night
but brother could not come in because he was in his uniform and could
not fraternize with foreigners while in uniform. We'll see him today
after he changes into his civvies.

Time to go meet the foster family in the lobby. I invited them to
stay in the hotel tonight so we could be together, not go anywhere,
swim in the pool and just relax. Our old friend Matthew Xu, who was
our guide in Nanning in 2004 and 2006, just happened to be free to
help us (another mix up with BLAS, I requested Matthew, but was
assigned NO ONE for these two day, as if I could magically speak
Chinese in Nanning but no where else in China) translate with the
foster family. Matthew is such a good translator and he is bringing
his daughter Angela to swim with the girls. Time to go buy swim caps!
I'll have lots of black mail photos for future reference.

Christmas in August

Christmas in August. I invited Nora's foster family, neighbors, friends to dinner (if you're ever in Guilin, hard right out of the Bravo Hotel, hard right in front of the Children's Palace, 50 yards, McFounds, kind of western decor, big D delicious food) where we were showered with gifts, big S showered. Pearls for me, jade-like pendants for the girls, new dress for Nora, and four counted cross stitch pillow tops, two framed cross fruits, a large, e.g. too big to fit in the suitcase, framed sampler, oh good hell, had me in tears and Nora was only with her for six months.

The connection is very slow, I'll have to type more later, too frustrating right now, just wanted to share my good fortune to know such a talented generous woman. It feels like every cent I ever sent to thme just came back to me tonight.

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Xi'an Day 5 and 6

I'm working backwards. We're in Guilin right now with a little down time and I though I would get some photos uploaded quickly without much narration, maybe later.

We left Beijing on Friday, sat on the proverbial tarmac for a torrential rain storm and landed in Xi'an 2.5 hours later than planned and drove straight to the warrior museum, which is huge and only covers a minute portion of the emperor's tomb. He buried a whole city underground for his after life and the army is just the section that was found first. I thought time had wrecked the soldiers, but it was looting right after the Qing dynasty failed that caused the damage. These guys would have been perfect if they hadn't been smashed.

From the museum, we were driven to a dinner show, and because we were off schedule, we ate and saw the late show instead of the reverse and you could just see us all drop off to sleep as the show got long. The dumplings were delicious and numerous, very very numerous.

The next morning, up with the chickens again and bike riding on the ancient city wall and that was a highlight, a real treat for Nora's birthday. On to the airport to Chongqing, flight delayed, 5 hours in the Xi'an airport. That gets old, but what are you going to do.

Must meet Nora's foster family for dinner, got to go.

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Too much for my heart

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Beijing Three and Four, combo post

The cattle driving continues and holy crap, is it ever hot. I thought the itinerary was ambitious when I read it months ago, and now I am living it,, plus the heat. Oh good hell.

We have to be in the lobby at 6:00 am this morning and I’m so afraid I’m going to over-sleep that I’m not sleeping, so might as well get in some keyboard time.

On the third day, don’t ask me the date; I haven’t known the date since we left SLC. Nora’s birthday is Saturday, but other than that, there’s no reason to know the date because I relinquished control of my right to make choices when the plane landed, so I’m not bothering with dates any more.

But I digress, on the third day, the whole crowd of families was invited to enter the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square for a ceremony marking the 15th anniversary of the China Center of Adoption Affairs (n/k/a CCWelfareAA). My first adoption application was caught in the turf war between the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Civil Affairs for control of the CCAA. The Ministry of Civil Affairs won that battle and is the supervising authority for the CCAA and the (wise) vice chairman of the Ministry of Civil Affairs addressed us at the ceremony. But here’s the thing, it was ho in the Great Hall of the People.

Each of us was issued a greeting card-like invitation that was punched with an Office Max hand held hole puncher at the door. I watch as other non-event related Chinese people entered the other doors and they all had the same card, just, presumably, a different page inside marking the purpose of their visit. Then we were herded up a few flights of stairs into a large, large room, with high high ceilings, where a five tier riser had been set up ahead of time. In our matching t-shirts, parents on the top levels and kids on the bottom, we stood on the risers in the hot and air-less room while each speaker, and there were five, made their remarks which also had to be translated, and if it is true that there are no atheists in foxholes, there were no atheists straddling the crack between two risers on the top tier with no railing in back and sweat running in rivulets down her back praying not to be the first parent to become faint and fall to her certain death on the marble floor 20 feet below. Oh my garden peas. That was some kind of endurance test . I kept thinking that nothing similar would ever be expected of us in the States. We would have been quizzed about our health status in advance along the lines of does anyone have a condition that would not allow them to stand for an extended period of time in oppressive heat, packed next to your neighbor like tissues in a box where you would not be allowed to sit? Yay for our group, no one croaked, fainted, vomited or fell. It was a triumph of the American spirit.
After the ceremony, each child was given a letter from the (wise) vice chairman and a stuffed panda bear embracing (or as YuYu noted, choking) a baby panda bear. Yay, four huge stuffed panda bears that we must say good-bye to this morning because we have no room in the luggage. Ah, it’s the thought that counts.

Our smaller sub-group was scheduled to walk around Tiananmen Square, then lunch at the obligatory lunch for tourists in large dining room over government run jewelry store and then on to the Summer Palace. Ten years ago, we were in Beijing, about the same time of year, seeing the same sights, and I don’t remember the crowds although China was just as over populated back then. It finally occurred to me that now, China and its citizens are more prosperous and these folks have enough disposable income to spend on travel and they are all here seeing the national treasures same as us. The line to get into Mao’s mausoleum was hours long, the long corridor at the Summer Palace was full of people catching the breeze and on the
Fourth Day, at the Forbidden City? The place was teeming with people, teeming I tell you. Inconceivable. The Forbidden City is so large, hard to wrap your head around the wealth and man power it took to build it on that scale, and now it is filled with Chinese people enjoying their own antiquities, just wild. My photos won’t do it justice especially after I kept passing from one more gate into one more huge walled area with an even larger gate, and the sweat was pouring off my head and into my eyes and I was more concerned about trying not to be a sweat spectacle and needed to mop my brow with cheap tissue that kept shredding. I don’t have the words to describe my sweatiness other than damned embarrassing.

After the Forbidden City, we drove to the edge of an older neighborhood that has been spared the wrecking ball called a hutong (narrow alley) but now hutong just means old traditional housing. When we visited in 2001, we told our guide that we wanted to see a hutong neighborhood and he said sure, we walked out of the hotel and he started knocking on doors until someone let us in for a visit. This time, we rode rickshaws supplied by the Beijing Hutong Tour Co. to a home of a couple who is paid by the tourist board to let us in and fix us lunch and it was great, but not the same. And don’t you know I slipped our rickshaw driver an extra ten spot (US) for hauling me all over creation. Hercules. I was so thankful there weren’t any hills in that neighborhood.

In the evening, still sweating, we walked from the hotel to a duck restaurant, and it was fine, not great, not like the Peking Duck memory from 2001, but that was the topper of our four days in Beijing.

I need to take a shower, like that matters, really, one step outside and I’m dripping anyway, and get us fed and in the lobby by 6:00am for our 7:50am flight to Xian where it is even hotter than Beijing. My poor poor children, no one else is sweating like me. No one.

We’re all well, kids are sooper dooper troopers, spoke to YuYu’s foster mom, she is excited to see her girl, all systems go, more from Xian.

13 pictures for you

Photos from the first day. Great Wall, cloisonne factory, hot pot
restaurant, Olympic venues.