Whirlwind Tour of Beijing

For our last full day in China, it was a very full day :).  We started by going to Tiananmen Square.  I know I'm dating myself, but I vividly remember the protests that happened there when I was about 18 years old.  It was an interesting experience to stand there all these years later with the place filled with tourists taking pictures.

 

Literally right across the street from Tiananmen Square is the Forbidden City.  This is where the Chinese emperor and other royalty lived.  Common folks were not allowed in - hence the name.  The city was built in the 1400s and according to our guide it took 14 years to finish constructing it.

 

After that, we went to lunch at a restaurant located in jade factory (um, yeah it sure was).  Honestly, it was probably the most bland meal we've had since we've been in China (and that includes the food on the airplanes - which incidently isn't bad on the Chinese airlines we've flown).  We also had a short educational tour about how to tell the difference between real jade and fake jade and also the differences in jade quality.  Very interesting (to me anyway).

 

After the jade factory, we went to the Great Wall.  Where we accessed the wall, you could go left - which was relatively flat, or right - which was an almost a vertical climb (imagine a slightly inclined ladder).  Holy cow some of those stairs are steep - definitely doesn't meet current building code for risers (or treads) either - sorry, I've worked in engineering my whole professional career, these things occur to me.  Guess which way our group decided to go...

 

At 4:30 PM we left the Great Wall and drove by the 2008 Beijing Olympic Village.  We saw the 'bird nest' and the 'water cube'.  Very cool architecture.

 

We're getting ready to head out for dinner tonight and we leave for the airport tomorrow at 1:00 PM.  We'll see you at home :).

Pictures

I had meant to post these pictures with the last post, but I couldn't get them to upload so here they are in a separate post.  They are all from our trip to Shamian.  One just to give you an idea of the look of the place, another of the boys goofing off for the camera and one of our new son who obviously has a soft spot for the babies just like his older brother :).

Heading to Beijing (again)

We had our consulate appointment yesterday at 8:30 AM.  It's really no big deal - take an oath on behalf of your adopted child, give the person at the little window some stuff for the file and get your older child fingerprinted (electronically).  Badda-bing done.  Our guide picked up SongSong's visa today and we fly out of Guangzhou to Beijing for some sight-seeing at 10:30 AM tomorrow.  I really like the city of Guangzhou, but I'm ready to leave.  It's been nearly a week of about 100 degree heat with almost 100% humidity.  We're absolutely drenched with sweat every time we walk anywhere (it was actually almost the exact same weather in Chengdu - maybe a few degrees cooler). Tim won't ever just sit in the hotel, so we're always walking somewhere.  The underground mall is about 1/2 a block from our hotel, so I suggested going there today.  He can walk and it's much cooler there than it is on the streets.  I'm just ready to be dry again - although I saw on Yahoo weather that the Beijing forecast is for rain while we're there :-p.  I may have enjoyed both Chengdu and Guangzhou a little more in - say - November to March :-).

 

Just as a side note, the day we left Beijing on our way to Chengdu (July 21st) they got a major rain storm and there was flooding in (I believe) the Fushan District.  We just missed it (literally by a few hours). The official death toll was 77, but there is speculation that it was much higher and the gov't is not reporting the true numbers.  Please remember the people affected by this tragedy in your prayers.

 

I'm attaching pictures from right outside our hotel (Hotel Elan) and of the "Tunnel of Guangzhou" aka the entrance to the underground mall.

 

Shamian Island - Guangzhou

Before I write about Shamian Island (which isn't really an island at all, it's just surrounded by the Pearl River and a moat), I have to tell you about the other shopping we did after the Chen Family Temple.  I have never in my life seen anything like it.  There was a mall that was AT LEAST 5 stories tall and everywhere you went, there were bead stores.  Not the plastic junk, these were strings and strings of semi-precious stones like turquoise and tiger eye.  It was an incredible thing to behold (says the girl who collects jewelry as her travel momento of choice).

 

Now on to Shamian.  We, of course, went shopping here too.  Shamian is an area in Guangzhou that has western, colonial/victorian style architecture - and up until 2005 the US Consulate was also located here.  It is also home of the famous (at least in the Chinese adoption community) White Swan Hotel.  We saw Lucy's (an American style food restaurant that is also popular with adoptive families), but we didn't eat there.  Instead we ate at a place that was supposed to have Thai food - but it wasn't that spicy in my opinion.  Good, but not spicy.  I think SongSong is missing the spicy Sichuan food already.  Since the Consulate moved and the White Swan is closed for renovation, the shopping at Shamian was not very crowded.  The owners were very willing to make deals with you.  You could tell that the lack of adoptive families patronizing the shops there was having a big impact on the shopkeepers bottom line.

 

Unlike Chengdu, there are many people in Guangzhou who speak English - and a lot fewer people stare at the weird white people here.  We've pretty much done all of our souvenier shopping in Guangzhou.  We found an incredible underground shopping mall near our hotel (Hotel Elan).  In Chinese cities, you don't typically cross the street above ground, you use underground tunnels - safer for you and the cars don't have to deal with so many pedestrians.  Anyway, we thought we were at one of those underground crossings, but it turned out to be the entrance to a huge underground mall.  Clothes as far as you could see in front of you and behind you (I'm SO not kidding about the emincity of this).  Mens clothes on one level and womens clothes on the next level.  There was also a food court in the basement.  Now I've been to Oklahoma City and seen their underground shopping... not even close to what this is.  I understand Minneapolis has one too, but I haven't been there to compare.  You just have to see this to believe it.  Canyons of buildings all around you above ground and more levels of shopping underground - the best part about the underground shopping is that is is actually cool down there :).  They will try to tell you that the cost of the clothes are fixed, but if you start to walk away, usually the price will suddenly take a dive.  And if it doesn't, there are literally hundreds of shops selling practically the same thing.

 

Right before we went to Shamian, we went to have SongSong's TB test poke read at the clinic.  He got a 9/9.  If he had gotten a 10, we would have had to get chest X-rays because that would have been considered a positive for TB.  We're so thankful that we didn't have to do that.  I knew it was going to be close because where they poked him was very red and still a raised bump.  I've had the TB skin test before and knew mine didn't look like his did after a day or so.

Chen Family Temple

The day after we did the TB test and medical exam we visited the Chen Family Temple.  I wish I could attach more pictures to these posts, but it is what it is.  The temple is very ornate with lots of carvings an paintings everywhere.  Inside the temple are many gift shops.  We bought our Colombian kids cards with their names in Chinese characters and bought SongSong a wall hanging with his name on it and a brass ancient Chinese warrior figure (his part of his bedroom is pretty lacking in decoration right now - but we planned to buy things for him here to fill it in a bit).  I got a jade pendant with the symbol for happiness on it.  Tim got a brass Chinese dragon figure.

 

I'm attaching a picture of the man who did the Chinese calligraphy and of the outside of the temple.

Civil Affairs/ Shopping at Carrefour (July 24th - Chengdu)

In the afternoon on Tuesday we went to the Civil Affairs office and then to a Notary (which I don't think is quite the same as one here in the US). At Civil Affairs we took pictures (Tim and I with SongSong) and signed the final adoption papers. We had to promise to never abuse or abandon SongSong - which of course we did. Signed our names several times and that was it - it's a done deal now. Next we drove to the Notary's office where they looked at our passports and read through the circumstances of our son's abandonment while our guide translated. I think we signed something there too, but I forget now what it was if we did.  We've signed so much stuff these past few days, it's all a blur.

Mandy from the orphanage was at Civil Affairs (Debbie, I gave her your box to give to Jaxon - she delivered it). I got her picture with SongSong while we were there too.
 
On Monday, so as not to intrusively rifle through our new son's bag of belongings, we had Oscar help him unpack and report back to us what he was missing. When we were finished with "official" stuff we went to Carrefour (a department store) to pick up some things that SongSong was lacking and really couldn't do without before we get home.  I must say that Carrefour has the weirdest store layout I've ever seen in my life. They had cosmetics, jewelry and hygiene items on the main floor, then you took an inclined conveyor belt thingy so you can take your shopping cart with you up it (which I've actually seen before at a grocery store in Mexico) to the 2nd floor where they have clothing and household goods, then you take the conveyor thingy up to the 3rd floor where they have groceries. Very odd, but we got what we needed (and Stacey we bought Seth's chicken feet there!).

Later we met up with the other family at Tianfu Square (the main city square) and went to a noodle place called Chef Kong's. The boys loved it! They all got the spicy bowl of noodles. I got some noodles that had some spice in it that made my mouth numb - I couldn't finish it :). I got it because the picture showed it had cilantro in it (one of my faves). Couldn't taste the cilantro due to the numbing effect of the other spice that was in it.  Very disappointing, but we got ice cream after dinner which made up for it :).  If anyone knows what that spice is, let me know so I can avoid it in the future!

 

Tianfu Square is incredible looking at night.  I'll post a pic of one of the buildings.  There are tons of people there after dark.  Almost all the kids are playing with glow in the dark flying toys and people will walk right up to you and strike up a conversation in order to try to practice their English skills.  All this happens under the watchful gaze of a giant statue of Chairman Mao.  Just can't help but wonder what he would think of how much things have changed in China is such a short amount of time...

Happy Valley (July 26th - Chengdu)

When we skyped with SongSong about two weeks prior to coming to China, one of the questions Tim asked him was what he would like to do if he could do anything in Chengdu while we were there. He told us he wanted to go to the amusement park. So, I found the amusement park online before our trip and we made plans to go. It's called Happy Valley and it's a franchise within China - kinda like Six Flags is in the United States. The kids enjoyed it a lot more than they did the People's Park (which we did on our own the day before).

 

Attached are a couple of pictures from that day.