The Sight and Sound of Music

We’ve had a very musical weekend so far, starting with last night’s pop/rock concert. Then this morning we headed out to Music Square, a park near the ocean with large rocks etched with the faces of famous composers (when Zoe saw the Music Square sign, she said, “Look, it’s a word puzzle just like Grandpa likes!”). We ended the day at a violin concert at the Art College.

We took the bus up Island Ring Road, going a little beyond Music Square, and then walked back along the Boardwalk. The girls didn’t have any desire to go into the sand – to rocky and full of debris – but we enjoyed the walk and the view. Can you see the smoke stacks and the tanker truck? This small island between Xiamen and Tiawan has much of the heavy industry of Xiamen. There won't be much of a view to enjoy if Xiamen doesn't get a handle on environmental regulation.

We even came upon a film crew shooting what looked to be a commercial for a newspaper – it was interesting to see the cameraman pulled on a railroad track in a semicircle around the actors to get the shot. Later the cameraman was on a small crane to get a bird’s-eye view.

The composers’ faces at Music Square were interesting – look closely, they have something in common. Can you tell what it is? Post your answer in the comments! (I'll give you a hint – you can only really see it in two of the three photos below.)

The composers were not the only musical thing in Music Square – this statue is said to be organ pipes, but I have to say they bring more to mind crossed sabers or 21-gun salutes.

Maybe that impression was reinforced by the brigade of soldiers/policemen we saw in the park (I’m not sure what they are – they’re not wearing the uniform I usually see Xiamen policemen in, and I haven’t seen army people in anything but cammo). But they weren’t too threatening, since they were obviously on some kind of frolic – they were all riding bicycles built for two, obviously rented from the concession on the boardwalk.

After we frolicked in the park for a while, we headed back to the street to find a bus stop. We never quite know whether the return bus stop will be ahead of us or behind us – they don’t usually parallel the stop on the other side of the road – so we just pick a direction and walk. It didn’t take us long to find our stop, and we got to see this terrifically ornate Buddhist temple along the way.

The bus ride home was a little peculiar – there was a very strange man who insisted on communicating with me. But this wasn’t the usual communication problem of not speaking the same language – I don’t think he could speak at all. He only grunted and gestured. It started out friendly, with him “asking” if the girls were mine, and giving me a thumbs-up when I said yes. He then held up 2 fingers – are they both yours? Again, I said yes, and I got another thumb’s up and then he put a finger in front of his lips -- my secret was safe with him! He then gestures in a way that suggests he’s impressed with my zaftig physique – more thumb’s ups. Then he gestures to the bus driver, pointing at him viciously with his middle finger – pointing with the middle finger is considered very rude in China. He then makes gestures suggesting he wants to cut the bus driver’s throat! Yipes, will this ride never end?! He then gestures that he wants me to give him money, and I say no. He gestures again, I say no (in Chinese). He is no longer enamoured of my shape, it seems. And he gestures to show I’m a big-nose (Chinese sometimes call Caucasians big-noses, but this is the first time I’ve gotten that). Then he makes praying-hands gestures and points – he’s going to Nanputuo temple. Then more thumbs-ups for the girls. FINALLY the bus reaches our stop, which is his stop, too. That’s when I decide we’re not heading straight home from the bus stop and we go to a restaurant for an early lunch instead. He did not follow us, and I have no idea if he would have done anything if we'd headed home, but I really think he was not quite right in the head.

We’d gotten an email last week from the waiban’s office saying that there was a violin concert at the Art College, so we decided to check it out. The Art College is not close to us – you have to pass the law school to get there – but it seems a shame to live on a college campus and not take advantage of the things going on here. So after dinner, we headed out. It was a pleasant walk, and with the sun setting the temperature was more bearable. Forty-five minutes of walking, and we passed the lion statues guarding the entrance to the Art College.

The concert was quite good, all Western composers, and there was a student announcer who repeated everything in English which was very helpful. That’s how I know it was a Freshman concert; I would never have guessed it since the students seemed quite polished. About half-way through the concert I noticed something strange – all the students were female. Even the piano accompanists were female. Later there were two accompanists who were male, but it turned out that all the violinists were female. I have no idea why – maybe the male concert is next week?! Some of the pieces lagged, and a few seemed like overreaching for the student’s level, but most of it was excellent. The last piece was a piece for four violins, and it was wonderful. The girls really enjoyed the concert, though it was over-long for them. They behaved beautifully, though.

We walked back through campus, which is still very busy after dark. Despite Friday’s lunch conversation about rampant crime in Xiamen, I feel perfectly safe on campus. Still, it was a little disconcerting to see a police car parked near one of the apartment areas, with men with flashlights seeming to search the bushes. We just stayed with the crowds and walked on by. If men with flashlights had been in the park as we walked through, they wouldn’t have found criminals, they would have found canoodling couples. The park after dark is THE place to get romantic, since most students share dorm rooms with a minimum of three other students and no one has a car for make-out sessions. But as early as we walked through, no one was being very overt and I didn’t feel the need to cover the girls’ eyes!

It didn’t take the girls long to drop off to sleep tonight, and I’m not far behind them. We certainly enjoyed our day of musical "culture" today.

Friday Roundup

We’ve had a pretty quiet week – surprisingly busy, but no blockbuster events.

Monday. I finally managed to buy airline tickets for us to go to Chengdu next week. I promised the kids we’d go to the Wolong Panda Research Center, where they actually have baby pandas you can hold (for a fee – I mean, for a “donation!”). Buying airline tickets shouldn’t be that hard, but it can be complicated here. The easy part – there’s a travel company with an English website, and they deliver tickets for free. The hard part – arranging payment and telling them where to find us to deliver the tickets.

You can pay cash, but that means trips to the bank over consecutive days to pull out 2,000 yuan at a time to amass enough money, or changing money, which entails looong lines at the bank. Or you can pay by credit card – that should be easy, right? Wrong! I decided to try the credit card payment this time. First, it can’t be done on the website, it has to be done over the phone. No problem, a very nice gentleman speaking excellent English took down my information. But it seems you have to physically sign a “Letter of Authorization” to charge the credit card and send it to them. No problem, they faxed it to me and I just needed to fax it back. PROBLEM! The fax number is not toll-free; it’s a long-distance call to Beijing. My office phone/fax doesn’t allow long-distance calls. So I go down the hill to the store to buy a phone card, and then back up the hill to the law school. Now, how hard can it be to figure out the phone card? Yes, it’s all in Chinese, but I can see I’m supposed to dial one number, key in two other numbers, and then put in the phone number. Easy, right? Not so fast – it doesn’t seem to matter what I do, I can’t complete the call. And I certainly can’t understand the recorded voice on the phone. I wander down the hall to find someone to help, and find an English-speaking student. It seems I’m supposed to also key in the number I’m calling from. Where does it say that on the card? It doesn’t! Still, with the student’s help the fax is sent.

They promise to deliver the tickets between 5 and 6 p.m. At 6 p.m., the phone calls start – a Chinese voice saying something incomprehensible, me replying that I don’t speak Chinese. The caller hangs up. A few minutes later, the same caller, more Chinese, hangs up. Last time this happened, I had to take my cell phone downstairs to the porter to have him talk to the caller, but this one keeps hanging up before I can do that! But he found me anyway – the tickets were delivered with only 3 hang-up phone calls and no trips downstairs!

It was good timing for the ticket delivery, because we were meeting an out-of-town colleague for dinner at 6. Trish is a law professor and a Fulbrighter at Wuhan University, and she came to give a speech at the law school here. The law school arranged for her and her husband, Eric, to stay at our guesthouse. (When I told Zoe that Trish and Eric were coming and staying at the guesthouse, she excitedly asked if she and Maya could spend the night with them. This struck me as a trifle odd – they only met Trish and Eric once at orientation in Guangzhou, and I hadn’t thought they’d made such a deep impression on the girls. But later I heard Zoe explain to Maya that Trish and Eric were only staying one night (true) because they had to return to America to take care of our house. Ohhhh, she thought I meant Cousin Aaron and ERICA, who are staying in our house while we’re gone!) We had a nice dinner, and Trish and Eric’s surprise over each dish reminded me of how regional Chinese food is. The food they get in Hubei Province is very different from what is served here (they said just about everything in Wuhan comes swimming in oil).

Tuesday. I taught my class Tuesday morning, so could not attend Trish’s lecture, but the Vice-Dean included me in the lunch afterwards. Class went well; we started talking about the Fourth Amendment limitations on police searches. When we talked about the requirement of warrants before many searches, I asked if the Chinese system required warrants and was a bit surprised when they assured me that it did. But, I learned, warrants are issued by the police or the prosecutor, not a judge. So it seems warrants here are more akin to subpoenas.

Lunch was nice, at the restaurant in the Yifu Building near our apartment. But the most exciting thing about it was that the Vice-Dean actually drove us there from the law school. Ahhh, a ride in an air-conditioned car, instead of a 40-minute walk in the midday heat! Doesn’t take much to make me happy . . . .

Wednesday. I decided to take the bus to Metro, a store akin to Wal-Mart, but German-owned instead of American-owned. Expats rave about it because it has imported food items like cheese, but it is very far from us – about an hour’s ride by bus, so we haven’t bothered to go. I went mostly out of curiosity, but picked up a few items of clothing for the girls and some foodstuffs. Remember I said that if you buy imports it can get expensive? I bought a package of tri-color rotini pasta for 29 yuan – about $4. Not bad, but I can buy a package of Chinese noodles that will provide 8 meals for 3.2 yuan – only 40 cents. I also bought a small jar of spaghetti sauce for 39 yuan ($5) and a small package of grated parmesan cheese for only 10 yuan ($1.30). The girls were excited to have “Italian” food for dinner for a change. And I can get one more meal out of the ingredients. Still, $10.30 for two meals is pretty expensive for us these days!

And after dinner, the girls put on a fashion show with the new purchases – which was when I realized that the shirt I bought Zoe had a broken zipper. Soooooo . . .

Thursday. Another hour trip to Metro to exchange the blouse, and an hour trip home again. Sigh. The exchange was simpler than I thought it would be – I only had to talk to five different people and fill out two different forms!

I’m still teaching English in Zoe’s and Maya’s classes each week, and because of scheduling conflicts I ended up doing them back-to-back on Thursday afternoon. The kids are learning amazingly quickly, and we’ve progressed through greetings, colors, fruits, parts of the body, counting, and now articles of clothing (they giggled like crazy when I held up a dress in front of a boy). We’re also saying “I like to eat” and then adding our fruit words. Our song list includes Twinkle, Twinkle; Head, Shoulders Knees and Toes; I Like to Eat Apples & Bananas; If You’re Happy and You Know It; and then my made-up Hello, Hello, How Are You? song. We added plurals Thursday, but I think that’s beyond Maya’s class. Zoe’s class seemed to get it, though, and I had them all saying, “One shoe, two shoessssssssssssssssssssssssssssss. One girl, two girlsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss. One eye, two eyessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.” I’m having a ball doing it, but it’s exhausting — I don’t know how kindergarten teachers do it all day!

Friday. Remember when I spoke to a History Department class – History of American Intellectual Thought? Well, the professor hosted a luncheon today to thank me, and most of the students from the seminar came. It was great fun talking to them again, and they had great questions again. One student told a sad story of a friend of hers who caused two deaths in a drunk driving incident, and she wondered what would happen in America. More interesting to me was what would happen here – if he pays compensation to the victim’s family, he can avoid a criminal conviction and jail time. They were all incredulous that there are two systems, criminal and civil, in American law, and that both would deal with the accident. They tell me that criminal law is seen very much like tort law, designed to vindicate the injury of the victim not the interests of the state. The professor was very passionate about the legal system, saying that in China there is no justice. He asked me if I had read the Chinese Constitution, and when I told him I had he asked what I thought of it. I told him I thought it was a beautiful document, but completely meaningless since no citizen could sue to enforce it. He agreed, saying again that there’s no justice in China. He also said that crime is rampant in China. I said I was shocked to hear it, since I feel so much safer here than in America, but he insisted that there are murders and stabbings and robberies every day in Xiamen in the areas where the “lower classes” live. I evinced surprise, saying I thought China was a classless society, and everyone laughed.

The restaurant specialized in Sichuan food, which is much spicier than food in Xiamen. I think the professor asked them to tone it down for me, though, because it wasn’t very hot at all. It was very tasty, though. When I arrived at the restaurant, he asked me if there was anything I wouldn’t eat, and I said no. He asked, very surprised, “Rabbit? You’d eat rabbit?” Yes, I said, my mother used to cook rabbit with a very nice wine gravy – a French dish. “Frog? You’d eat frog?” Sure, why not? We get this reaction all the time – Americans have quite the reputation as timid eaters here in China.

I said I was glad to try Sichuan food before going there next week (Chengdu is in Sichuan Province), and we talked travel for a while. He said he had not taken his kids to Beijing to climb the Great Wall yet, that he wanted to wait until his youngest was old enough to walk a mile on his own so he didn’t end up carrying him the whole time. I asked how old his youngest is, and he’s 5 and a half! Amazing! I guarantee Maya would climb every step of the Great Wall on her own.

The professor had one of his students meet me at my apartment and walk me to the restaurant, not far away at all, and she insisted on walking me back even though I said I knew perfectly well the way. She fielded three or four phone calls along the way, and apologized, saying she was the vice president of the Student Union and was in charge of a concert this evening. The girls and I had noticed the stage in the park as we walked to school this morning. The student told me it was a very famous singer who was coming to perform, and that his concert would be broadcast live on Xiamen radio. So the girls and I decided to check it out this evening.

The concert started 40 minutes late – I wonder how that plays out when it’s being broadcast? And after the first song the girls were ready to go! They liked the pre-concert activity, where the stage managers were checking the fog machine, the bubble machine, the flame machine (cheesy, huh?!), but weren’t too excited by the music. I can’t blame them – I thought the singer was pretty bad and the staged stuff was pretty tame. I thought it was funny, though, that this rock concert for college students started off with a speech by a college administrator in shirt and tie!

Well, that’s our week. If you made it this far, remember that I did warn you that nothing exciting had happened this week. Imagine, I can write over 35 inches about nothing!

More About the PX Plant & Protests

Here's an interesting story about the protests in Xiamen over the building of the PX plant. The article says the number of protestors could have been as high as 10,000. Wow!

Despite efforts by local Public Security Bureau technicians to block the
cellphone campaign, thousands of people heeded the alarm during the last days of
May. Despite warnings from city hall and a large turnout of uniformed and
plainclothes police, they marched in hot, muggy weather through the streets of
Xiamen to protest the chemical factory being built on Haicang, an industrial and
residential island across a narrow strait from downtown Xismen.

The demonstrations were largely peaceful, except for pushing against
policemen lined up to stop the march, witnesses said. About 8,000 to 10,000
people participated the first day and half that many the second day.

The whole article is interesting, focusing on how text messaging and blogging spread the word about the protests.

Smoking & Spitting

A.M.B.A. in MI asks: 1) Smoking? What's it like in restaurants, on campus, etc? and 2) Spitting? Is it that prevalent as I have heard?

I’ve been pleasantly surprised to note a reduction in both since I last was in China. In 1991 in Beijing, the clouds of smoke everywhere was completely toxic. I swear, every man, woman and child in China was smoking two cigarettes at a time! And I remember how shocked I was to see people not just spitting, but spitting indoors on the carpet, and then rubbing it in with their shoes! In 2001 there was less smoking and spitting, and in 2005 it seemed even less as well. I think 2007 has brought even more of a reduction. But it might be different in other parts of the country -- I can really only speak about Xiamen.

I asked my students about smoking, since I wondered if maybe college students simply couldn’t afford to smoke. They said no, people were learning more about the health dangers of smoking so were choosing not to smoke. And many of the places we go – stores, restaurants, busses – have no-smoking signs. Of course, oftentimes people will blatantly ignore such signs, puffing away directly under them. But I really think smoking is on the decline. You still see more smokers here than in the U.S., and Zoe and Maya will point them out to me and declaim in a loud voice, “He’s smoking! He’s going to get sick and die!” They did the same thing with bike riders with no helmets when we first got here, but they couldn’t keep that up – NONE of them have helmets! We’re lucky that most people don’t understand them when they point out perceived wrong-doing.

Spitting is also on the decline. There is actually a concerted campaign in place to get people to stop spitting in public in preparation for the Olympics. But you’ll still see spitting and nostril clearing onto the ground and nose-picking and people cleaning out their ears with their keys. There seems to be much more openness about bodily functions – no one apologizes for a burp or finds it necessary to cover a cough. Every restaurant has toothpicks on the table, because it is perfectly acceptable to pick your teeth after a meal, so long as you do it behind your hand so no one can see your teeth! And we see kids peeing and pooping all over the place. (I watched a little boy poop on the sidewalk at the bus stop today, and then his father put him over his knee to do a close and thorough cleaning. We all got to see EVERYTHING!)

Like I keep telling Zoe, what’s rude and what’s not depends on where you are. And none of these things is rude in China. They think it equally disgusting that we eat with our hands – you’ll only rarely see a Chinese person touching food with hands. And what’s the idea of sitting down on a toilet that someone else has been sitting on?! Completely disgusting!

One of the great things about being here in China now while the girls are so young is that they are just so accepting of all of these differences. I was a little concerned that they might decide they didn’t like China because of these different habits, different levels of hygiene, the infamous squat potty, etc. But they have been so open to everything. Being this young makes everything an adventure, and when you have so little life experience the unusual just looks like the usual. The interesting part will be how they adjust to going back home. That nose-picking thing just won’t cut it in Fort Worth!

Reflections on Guangxi Province Visit

A few weeks ago I promised a look back at our homecoming trip to Guangxi Province, so here it is. We’re all still processing the trip, and will be for years to come, I suspect. The girls are still talking about the trip practically every day, and it’s been quite a springboard into discussions of their birthparents and how they came to be adopted. I think it was a really positive experience for us all.

Zoe really seems to feel good about her reception at Guiping SWI – she keeps saying wonderingly, “They were so excited to see me!” I’m not sure, though, that she really comprehended what her finding place was about. Since we’ve been back, she’s wanted to play-act several times her being left there and being found, but the play hasn’t really acquired more details since we visited Guiping. She doesn’t want to deal with specifics, it seems – at least, she doesn’t want to since she clarified that she wasn’t buried in her finding spot (I think I’ve figured out where that comes from – pirates “find” things, and those things are always buried. I’m still OK with calling it her finding place, despite this, because I think it’s better than many other alternatives, but be forewarned!). It's OK that she doesn't quite get it yet -- I have pictures and lots to tell her as she gets older. And we'll be back.

Maya seemed to have more difficulty with meeting her foster parents than I thought she would since she's usually so laid back – she’s young enough that the experience was very confusing, I think. But I still think it was on balance positive; she just needed lots of reassurances that she was my daughter forever and that no one could take her away. And it was good she actually saw that in action – here are these other people who seem to have a claim on her, but still she came home with me. And Maya has always been really good about asking for exactly what she wants – even before she could speak English, she would move my arm so I held her precisely as she wanted to be held. And her latest version of that is to put words in my mouth: “Mama, say ‘You’re my daughter forever and no one can take you away.’” So reassuring her has been easy because she tells me exactly what she needs to hear! And the requests for reassurance are getting fewer and fewer now. . . .

So were the girls too young for this return trip to Guangxi Province? Yes and no. I think they would have gotten a lot more out of the visit if they had been older, but it’s not like we can’t go back and visit again when they are older. At different ages, the homecoming trip can be about different things.

In a lot of ways, this was a fact-finding and fact-preserving mission more than anything else. I could talk to Maya’s foster mom while her memories of Maya’s time with her were still fresh, for example. I could see the orphanage file before it was destroyed (who knows what can happen – records burn in fires, get lost, or get destroyed because of changes in policy about record retention). And with all the growth and development in China, with the consequent tearing-down and building-up, we could see things that might not be there in a few years – the old orphanage building in Guiping, for example. And I could get pictures to preserve scenes that might soon be gone or changed. And I just couldn’t see being in China and NOT going back.

Being here in China, it was tempting to arrange everything on our own, and if we had the trip probably would have been cheaper. But I’m really glad we used OCDF, which handles lots of these homeland tours. I needed to be able to give the girls complete attention to deal with the emotional issues, and I had my own emotional fall-out to deal with, too. So it was really good to have someone else arrange everything for us. It was also good to have another family with kids along for parts of the trip. Having other kids to play with made it a real pleasure for Zoe and Maya. But I’m really glad we didn’t have another family with us when we visited Mother’s Love and Guiping SWI. With it being only us, the girls could really revel in the attention they were getting and see that the people there were genuinely interested in them, and only them. So we had the best of all possible worlds – a very small travel group, alone time at the important times, and other kids for the girls to play with when we needed it.

The most surprising thing for me in visiting Guangxi Province was the utter poverty of rural life in China. It’s so easy to forget that when you spend most of your time in urban China, especially here in Xiamen which has really benefited from China’s economic expansion. I think I understand much better the economic devastation the fine for over-quota birth would cause; it’s easier to see the desperation for someone to care for you in your old age when there is no pension to rely on and the family seems barely on the right side of survival.

I can’t know or fully understand what motivated Zoe’s and Maya’s birth families, but being there, more than any books or articles I’ve read, showed the stark reality of rural life in China.

Answers II: Cost of Living and Education

Elizabeth asks: What would an average family make per month in Xiamen?
According to the Xiamen government website, the average income of rural residents of Xiamen is about 520RMB ($68) per month. The average income of city residents is 950RMB ($124) per month. Obviously, that average takes in a lot of people, some of them very, very poor. Remember that my law students would consider a salary of 5000RMB ($625) per month an appropriate salary for them.

Would that $250 include groceries? Yes, the $250 I withdraw from the bank each month includes groceries! Really, it costs so little to live here it’s unbelievable! Now, if we insisted on buying a lot of American foods -- cereal, peanut butter, etc. -- our costs would icrease a lot. But "going Chinese" it is really, really cheap.

China doesn't have a free public school system like in US? No, but it is moving toward such a system. It started by waiving tuition and fees for rural school children, and now it’s doing the same in some urban areas (not yet in Beijing and Shanghai, where I’m told education is VERY expensive). The parents here in Xiamen tell me that the program has come here and school fees for primary and secondary school (the 9 years of compulsory schooling) are only 400RMB a year – about $50! I had to keep asking because I couldn’t quite believe it, since kindergarten is 6,000RMB (about $800) a year! They said they laugh about that all the time, and claim the kindergarten must think they are training college students. But primary and secondary school is much cheaper. High school, not part of the compulsory education system with a tuition break, costs 6,000-10,000RMB a year. College also runs about 5,000-10,000RMB a year. And one of my students told me there is a new government program for loans to pay college fees. If you pay the loans off within a few years of graduating, they are interest-free.

Remember I mentioned a few weeks ago that high school students were taking the national college entrance exams? Well, the scores came out this weekend -- fast, huh? And these are students who are graduating and going to college in the fall, not a year in advance like we tend to take college boards. I'm sure there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth when the scores were reported. The score determines whether you can go to college at all, because there are not enough college seats for everyone who applies. And the score determines which college you can attend. This is much more serious than in the U.S., where just about anyone can get into some college if they want to go, and where colleges look at more than test scores.

I also learned while in Guangxi Province that China has affirmative action! Members of the 52 or so recognized minority groups can be admitted to college with lower scores because of China's concern about their underrepresentation in government and other aspects of civil society.

China has stated a strong interest in reforming its education system, and part of that is to make education available to more and more people. They are rapidly expanding colleges and starting new ones, and I think this tuition waiver program is a wonderful one.

Still, one of the biggest problems is in rural areas, where there are not enough schools and not enough teachers. Many children have to attend boarding schools just because there are no schools close to them. When we were in the farming village in Yangshuo, I saw no children at all, and asked Cristy about it. She said it was likely that the students were in boarding school. But Yangshuo was only a short distance away, I said. But, she said, most farmers wouldn't have any way to get the children to school daily, even at what looks like short distances to us. And at times the roads may be impassable because of rain. So, boarding school it is.

And then another problem for rural children is that oftentimes they have to stay with relatives in their rural village when their parents go to the city to work because the parents can't afford the higher cost of education in the city. Even with tuition waivers available in the city, migrant children are not eligible for them. They're only eligible for tuition waivers where they are registered, and that is the place where they are born. It's almost impossible to change your place of registration (I know one Beijing resident who is married and has lived there for 10 years, but she is still registered in Inner Mongolia, where she was born.) So migrant children who go to the city with their parents either do not attend schools or they attend illegal schools set up by the migrants themselves. Not surprisingly, the quality of these schools is not great and many times the buildings are dangerous.

So China's education system is improving, but there is still a long way to go. But then, the same could be said for American public education, huh?!

3. . . 2 . . . 1. . . CONTACT!

I've had a few requests lately about how to contact me, so I've updated my profile with an email address. Please use responsibly! I'll still try to answer questions in the comments so only email if you have something that you don't want to leave in comments, ok?

Re-Running the Marathon

Today was another scorcher, but I couldn’t see keeping the kids cooped up in the apartment for another day, as tempting as the air-conditioning is! So we headed out early in the hopes of getting a little fun in before it got too warm. We decided to take the bus from Beach Gate to the International Exhibition Center – we could explore a new stretch of waterfront and see the life-size statues of runners from the Xiamen marathon (we watched the marathon back in March, and had seen the statues along the Island Ring Road when we took Mimi to the airport).

My hopes for sea breezes to cool us down were not realized; there was nary a ripple on the water. We saw, though, that there were kiosks renting bicycles, even bicycles built for 3! Despite much pleading from the girls, I resisted. Maybe we'll do it another time . . . .

Still, the girls enjoyed the statues of marathoners and had to re-enact the event.

Running . . . See, they're neck and neck with the leader! Those other runners don't stand a chance -- after all, it's a little hard to compete when you're carrying an umbrella!

Helping out at the water stop . . . After all, they are so far in the lead they can afford to help out (I hope it doesn't turn out to be one of those tortoise-and-the-hare things!)

Even photographing the winners . . . Wait a minute, how will Zoe photograph herself winning the marathon?!

Here's the solution -- Zoe suggested we take one more picture “in front of the flowers for Mimi!” So I guess this is the girls in the “winner’s circle,” having won the Xiamen International Marathon!

That was enough fun in the sun for all of us, so we hopped a bus back to Beach Gate. We stopped at the market for some fruit, went to the store for some baked goods for breakfast tomorrow, and then jiggedy-jigged home to blessed air-conditioning! Ahhhhhh!

Answers

Wow! Y’all sure have a lot of interesting questions. Here are some answers:

Wendy asks: Can Chinese citizens apply to go out of the country and automatically get that request? We were wondering about inviting Madeline's foster mother to America sometime, could she come easily or is the process to get a visa to come to our country difficult or permission to travel a problem? I don’t know if there’s a problem on the China end, but it is pretty hard to get a visa on the American end. I hear from students all the time how difficult it is to get a visa, though the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou says 87% of visa requests are granted (I wonder if they include orphan visas in that?!). That 87% definitely includes all the education visas, and it’s my impression that those are easier to get than tourist visas. I’ll never forget a really heart-wrenching scene I saw at the consulate when waiting in line to get in for Zoe’s visa. An elderly Chinese woman was prostrate on the ground, sobbing, with family members trying to get her up and moving, with a guard standing stony-faced above her. I asked our guide what was going on, and she said the woman’s request for a visa to visit family in America had been turned down again. Oh, I don't know if you ever got my email about the minority outfits? Sorry, Wendy, I didn’t get an email, though I think I remember you posting a comment about it. I’ll be happy to bring one home with us, and we’ll figure out at the end of July how to get it to you, ok?

AmericanFamily asks: 1) What did your kids like best about moving to China? Zoe says, “I like that we’re back where we came from and I like that there are English people [of course she means English-speaking people, but anyone who does -- including Chinese people -- are English!) to talk to whenever we need.” Maya says, “I like going to the new school because we play." (What the heck has she been doing in preschool in American?!) There you have it, from the sources! 2) What was the hardest part? The hardest part for me is actually the loss of independence. I’m used to doing most everything on my own, but now I can barely manage daily life – figuring out what the teacher’s note says, getting a new ink cartridge for my printer from the graduate secretary, calling to make airline reservations – without having someone help me because of the language barrier. There are LOTS of things I can do now that I couldn't do so easily when we first got here, but I'm always running up against new ones, it seems). 3) Have you picked up any easy and delicious Chinese recipes? Any from Guangxi province? I wish! But I’m not really much of a cook. I’ve managed fried rice and fried noodles and I can cook simple veggies, but that’s about it. My two huge discoveries, though, that will definitely help me at home – electric rice cookers are WONDERFUL! and it is way easy to boil or steam frozen dumplings (I know I’ve seen them in the frozen foods section of the Chinese grocery store at home, and now I’ll be eager to buy them). 4) Do the law students you teach know about the huge demand for Chinese "legal consultants" to work at international law firms, even though they would have to give up their Chinese law license? If so, are they interested in those jobs? Do most of your students plan to work for law firms? (My husband is a lawyer and we have been researching how law firms work in China). Hardly any of my students want to work for law firms. First of all, the bar pass rate in China is only 10%. Second, the huge demand for Chinese “legal consultants” is actually being filled by law faculty, not law students! Some of my colleagues here are making a mint doing consulting work – I know one of them drives a brand-spanking-new red Jaguar. Most of my students want to work for the government. Now, this could be because Xiada is not one of the top-rated law schools in China – it’s a good school, but lower on the totem pole than schools in Beijing and Shanghai.

Elizabeth asks: Is there something you really wanted to do or experience in China that you haven't had the chance to do yet? Yes, I had really hoped to volunteer at the local orphanage. But I ended up not making it a priority, and now time is running out and I don’t even have permission to visit much less volunteer. I do hope to visit, though. Is there something that took you by surprise since you've been in China? Like a stereotype or image that we as Americans expect, but really isn't the norm? The stereotype I kept bumping up against is what I’ve termed “Mulan Syndrome” – the tendency to think of Chinese culture as it was rather than what it is. So it always surprised me to hear Chinese hip-hop, see modern dance, etc. I was also warned before coming here that Chinese people are very reserved and uncomfortable talking about sex, which was going to be a problem in teaching Women & American Law, I thought. How could we teach sexual harassment, date rape, etc., without talking about sex?! Well, that just wasn’t the case. Students watch “Sex in the City” and “Desperate Housewives” and are quite eager to talk about ALL kinds of things. I had also been told that that Chinese reserve meant that it was hard to make friends here, and that really hasn’t been the case. Everyone has been very friendly, even inviting us to their homes. And I guess I half-expected everyone to be dourly suffering under an oppressive regime – and I found instead that most everyone is pretty happy and pretty competent at working around that oppressive regime. That’s what strikes me now – I’ll keep thinking about it!

Dee asks: I heard there were movies for sale everywhere in China, dirt cheap. Have you seen this? Absolutely! DVDs can be had for about $1. But buying them definitely has the pig-in-a-poke problem – since it is all boot-leg, you have no idea the actual quality of the image and you have no idea what language it will be in. Some of the folks from the consulate in Guangzhou were laughing about that, while disclaiming any personal experience since as consular officials they shouldn’t be condoning the buying of bootlegs. But one said he ended up buying 4 different DVDs of a current American movie before he got one in English – and the problem wasn’t that they were in Chinese, one version he got was in Russian!

A.M.B.A. in MI asks: The family (DH and two kids ages 5 and 4) and I will be moving to Kunming China in August. Will you please do an entry on money - how much daily stuff costs, travel costs, unexpected costs, etc.? We'll be making very little money (teaching university level English) and everyone says we'll do just fine, but I'm a bit skeptical. I'd really like to stay within our Chinese salaries and not raid our home account too much, if possible. We will have a housing allowance. Thanks for your input. Wow, you’re in for an adventure! How wonderful! I hope you plan to keep a blog – if you do, give us the link to follow your “Kunming Adventure!” Things really are cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap. I basically go to the ATM machine at the beginning of the month and get 2,000 RMB (about $250) and that takes care of all our usual expenses for the month. And we’re not trying to do it on the cheap – we eat out 3-4 times a week and it seems every time I got to Trust-Mart I come home with new shoes or a new outfit for the girls.

We have free housing, including utilities, so I can’t give you much guidance on those. I’d think you can get a comfortable middle-class two-bedroom apartment here for 1500-2000 yuan per month ($200-250). Our single largest expense was the girls’ school tuition – around 3600 yuan each for the semester – but that’s about $100 per month for each of them, and that sure beats the heck out of what I was paying at home! I really haven’t paid any systematic attention to prices, but here’s a sampling of things we’ve bought recently to give you kind of an idea:

Dinner at Lin Duck House (fried rice, clams, scrambled eggs with mushrooms, Chinese cabbage, 2 cans of Sprite) – 48 yuan ($6)
2 popsicles – 2 yuan (25 cents)
2 600 ml Cokes – 5 yuan (65 cents)
1 620 ml Chinese beer – 5 yuan
1 just-add-water cup of ramen noodles – 3.3 yuan (45 cents)
Package of spring onion saltine crackers – 2.3 yuan (30 cents)
1 package cheese (like the “Laughing Cow” variety) – 12.5 yuan ($1.65 – cheese is hard to find and relatively expensive here)
Baby bok choy (enough for 2-3 meals) – 3.5 yuan (45 cents – veggies are VERY cheap)
Plums (about 10) – 6 yuan (50 cents)
Grapes (about 5 pounds) 31 yuan ($4 – fruit is expensive, comparatively speaking)
New Disney Princess backpack (Zoe’s was destroyed by overpacking!) – 79 yuan ($10)
Pastries for breakfast – 6 yuan (50 cents)

Daily travel is also cheap – 1 yuan for unairconditioned bus, 2 yuan if it has airconditioning; taxis rarely run me more than 18 yuan ($2) wherever I go in Xiamen (except for the airport, which is about as far from Xiada as any place can be, and then that’s about a $10 ride). Train travel is very cheap – it was less than $60 for all three of us from Nanning to Guilin. Plane travel is a bit more – for 3 round-trip tickets from Xiamen to Shanghai, it was around $400.If you’re interested in looking at in-China flight prices, I suggest eLong.com (they have an English website).

You didn’t ask, but let me mention two things you’ll find it nigh-on impossible to find in China, based on my experience and what I’ve heard from other expats – deodorant and sunscreen. So bring as much as you’ll need!

The only unexpected expense so far has been replacing the 2 fillings that fell out of my teeth – a $75 dentist visit. Hope this helps!

Mimi asks: Did you have time to go look for musical instruments for the girls? And did you have time to go see a ballet class? No, and no! We still have time, though . . . .

Keep on asking, and I'll keep on answering!

A GOOD Job

When my class visited the courthouse in Xiamen, we were on the bus for about one hour there and one hour back. It was interesting talking to the students during that time. I was asking one student what she wanted to do when she graduated, and she said, "I just want a good job." Of course I had to ask -- what makes a job a good job? Her immediate reply, "Making 5,000 RMB per month." (That's about $650.00) . What about job satisfaction? It isn't important, she said.

I thought that was a curious response since the student told me she disliked the job she had between college and law school. She worked for the government as kind of an "Internal Affairs" investigator, or as she put it, "We looked for people to discipline who had made mistakes in their work or personal lives." And she added, in what I took to be understatement, "People did not like us very much."

But if it's a good job, she said -- that is, one earning 5,000 RMB per month -- "it doesn't matter."

Q & A

We did absolutely nothing today, so I have absolutely nothing to post about! (And I mean we did "absolutely nothing" -- we never left the apartment, wallowing in the airconditioning. It was a brutally hot day, and there just didn't seem to be anything sufficiently intriguing to lure us outside. Not to mention we didn't get much sleep last night. It seems that drunken revels to celebrate graduation are universal; last night there was a huge group of young men celebrating in front of the restaurant that shares our concrete courtyard. The celebration included lots of yelling, drunken singing, and lots and lots and lots of posing shirtless for the camera while doing body-building poses. This went on for HOURS!).

So how about y'all tell me what to post about. Are there any burning questions you want to ask? Leave them in the comments, and I'll try to post answers. I can't always post to the comments -- part of that net nanny thing -- so if you've asked something in the past and I haven't answered, ask again and I'll answer on the blog this time.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch . . .

Now that I’ve finally posted all of our vacation pictures (not ALL of them, though I know it seems that way to y’all! I’m worse than those people who invite you over and then force you to view thousands of vacation slides (“There are the kids in front of a rice field. . . . There they are in a truck . . . . There we are on a bike!”)), it feels like our vacation is truly over.

Back here in Xiamen, we’re settling into our daily routines again. The girls are back in school, though the hot weather has intensified the “measles check” as we enter the front door (that's what the teacher is doing to Maya in the picture above, while Zoe waits her turn). Remember the trouble I had getting the school to agree that the girls didn’t need a measles booster? They were insistent that come summer there was grave danger of a measles epidemic? Well, they’re pretty serious about it. Before summer, we just had a teacher checking their faces and hands to make sure they were clean, and trimming their fingernails if they thought them too long. Now, the school nurse or a teacher probes their necks for swollen glands, lays her hand on their foreheads to check for fever, has them open their mouths and peers down their throats, and scrutinizes any visible bumps. Today the bug bite on Zoe’s face got close attention from the teacher, who passed her on to the nurse, who promptly said “no problem!”

The short summer term has started and I’ve already taught my first of 5 classes. I’m teaching American Criminal Procedure, and again my class is small – only 8 students. We’ve just covered introductory material so far, but I’m hoping to learn a lot from them about Chinese criminal procedure. I’m not sure how much I can teach about American criminal procedure – I have a grand total of 11.5 hours of instruction time for the term and now only 9 hours left.

As usual, I spent quite a long time answering student questions at the beginning. I hope it allows us to establish rapport, it gives me a chance to see their level of English competency, and it gives them a chance to get used to my English (every English speaker is different, after all) before we get to the important stuff. I tell them they can ask me anything they want, and it doesn’t have to be about law. They asked me the usual things – did I like Xiamen, why did I come to teach in China, where did I get my education. But one asked me what I thought of John Grisham’s novels, since he’d just finished reading one (translated into Chinese). I had to confess I’d never read one – I don’t read law stuff for pleasure or watch movies or TV about law because it tends to drive me crazy – I want to correct all the mistakes (I remember watching an episode of L.A. Law once where they called a “motion to quash” a “motion to squash!” That pretty much ended popular law entertainment for me!).

They also wanted to know what I thought about the PX plant. Remember the environmental protest I mentioned a few weeks back? Well, students are still really interested in the subject. I’ve learned a bit more about it from my students now. It seems that a Xiada professor of chemistry first alerted the government to the danger of the chemical, PX. She presented a report at the annual meeting of a political party other than the Communist Party of China (did you know there were other political parties in China? I didn’t. There are hundreds of other parties, but they do not exist in opposition to the Communist Party, but instead help them – or that’s how it’s been explained to me). Someone passed on her report to the CCCP, and somehow the public became aware of the potential health risks from this chemical plant. A student told me that the Xiada scientist would not get in any kind of trouble out of all of this because she is too well-known, being a leading member of the China Academy of Science, but also that she didn’t have anything to do with the protests, anyway.

People from the neighborhood where the plant is being built arranged the protest by sending out text messages to a million cell phone numbers in Xiamen (I might even have gotten one – I get tons of spam text messages each week, but it’s all in Chinese so I just delete it on the assumption that anyone who is really trying to reach me knows to write in English! I saw the text message on someone else’s phone, and the only English were the letters “PX.”). They arranged the protest for June 1, Children’s Day, saying that everyone needed to protest to protect the health of Xiamen’s children (clever, huh?).

When the government got wind of the protest, they sent out rival text messages telling people not to come to City Hall to protest, but instead to lodge their complaints with the government via a telephone hotline they set up. People showed up for the protest anyway, though students disagree about how many people were there and no one would admit to having been there so I don’t know if I’m getting eyewitness accounts – there were either 200-300 or 1,000 people (pretty small in a city the size of Xiamen, but a pretty big protest by China standards). I was also told that the protest made the government extremely nervous because it fell so close to the June 4 Tianenmen Square anniversary (someone told me that at his university (not Xiada) on June 4, students who were party members would wander the campus at night with armbands and flashlights looking for signs of any commemorations of Tianenmen Square and would quickly remove any they found).

After the June 1 protest, the government sent out another text message saying that building the plant had been suspended pending more study. I said to my students that it sounded like the protest had worked, and was everyone satisfied? Definitely not, was the answer. Students say they think the government will allow the chemical plant, because “it’s all about GDP,” as one student put it.

A student not in this class told me that she had written about the plant and the protest on her blog, and that it was deleted by the blog administrators. Around the same time, my access to “Blogger” was blocked again (China allows blogging, but only on blogs it can control, so Blogger is frequently – but not always – blocked in China). I had been able to reach it for a couple of months before I posted about the protest, but couldn’t thereafter. I don’t take it personally – I don’t think it was my actual blog post. I think they just tightened up the Great Firewall of China because of the June 4 anniversary. It’s pretty funny to be able to post to my blog but not read it (usually I can get there via a proxy server, but that hasn’t been completely reliable, either).

Anyway, I think it will be a fun class, judging from the questions and comments on the first day.

Xiada is a busy place right now. Graduation is June 24, but for the past few weeks we’ve seen students flitting around in academic regalia. They show up in bunches in front of the library, in front of the dorms, in the park, all posing for pictures. Students are packing up their belongings, and there are temporary weigh stations set up in front of the dorms by China Railway Express. The groundskeepers are working feverishly to beautify an already beautiful campus before the graduation ceremony. And parents are already in town, being toured around the campus by their graduates. Add to that the short, intense summer term, which I’m told most students attend, and we haven’t reached the hazy, lazy days of summer yet.

Still, people are looking ahead to the new school year, too. Zoe's kindergarten class went to visit the local primary school where most will attend, and Maya's class has been taken on a tour of the upstairs classrooms to where her "Class 2" students will graduate as they become "Class 3" in the fall. I’m astonished to think we have less than six weeks left in China, and that soon we'll be shipping our stuff and ourselves back home to prepare for our fall term there. It will be a busy six weeks for us, as we try to squeeze every drop of enjoyment from our time here.

More Photos From Yangshuo

More Photos From Guilin

Acckkk! Unforeseen Consequences. . .

OK, I knew that going back to Guangxi meant there would be tons of questions from Zoe especially – about her birthparents, about her finding place, about the orphanage, about adoption. And sure enough we’ve had those (last night she asked if she was buried in the ground at her finding place, and I was able to reassure her that she was just on top of the ground. Thank goodness she asked – who knew she was worrying about that). But I didn’t expect it to spur the where-do-babies-come-from talk!

I’m not even sure how it happened – we were talking about how she might have gotten to her finding place and she suddenly asked, “How do babies get in the birthmother’s tummy?” And my answer, “They grow there,” just wasn’t going to cut it this time!

Yet another child-rearing moment when I wanted to say, “Wait a minute – let me do a little research on how best to explain it to you. Can you wait a few weeks?!” But they never can wait, can they? So we had to do the whole seed-egg, insert Tab A into Slot B thing, and then she wants to know how Aunt Kim and Uncle Phillip and I got in Mimi’s tummy. Ewwwwww, I really don’t want to think about that! It doesn’t seem to matter how old you are, you still don’t want to think of your parents having S-E-X!

Anyway, we both got through this rite of passage, and I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. All her questions were answered, and I figured I wouldn’t have to go through THAT again for a while! And then on the way to school this morning she starts again, “Does it hurt when the man does that to the lady to make a baby?” Sigh. Here we go again.

Random Photos from Guiping

An Evening Spent With Liu Sanjie

Saturday was our last evening in Yangshuo, and we spent it at an outdoor performance that combined minority folk songs and glitzy movie effects. The production, called Impressions: the Story of Liu Sanjie, was conceived and directed by Zhang Yimou, a famous Chinese movie director. It is a “cast of thousands” show (ok, only 600 performers!) with lights and music. Most of it is performed on bamboo rafts in the river. The action was set too far from the audience for me to take any pictures (other than the one of Zoe and Maya saying plainly, “Start the show, already!”), but you can see some here and here and here. The most amazing scene was when dozens of boatmen on bamboo rafts pulled themselves along on long swaths of red cloth rising from the river. It was really impressive, with the music setting a furious pace for the action.

The setting for the performance was stunning – the stage was the Li River and the backdrop was strategically lit karst mountains. I don’t think anyone could have designed a more beautiful stage set. As a Guilin travel website says fulsomely, “Unlike the traditional artificial stage performance, the performance on the natural stage is a great work of man and god. No one knows how long this picturesque scenery has been waiting in rain and mists. Is its graceful image made for us?” Unfortunately, nature stopped cooperating after offering the stage set – the weather was terrible. It was incredibly hot and humid, and then it started to rain!

The show goes on, regardless of the weather, and they hand out “raincoats” at the entrance to the amphitheater. The raincoats were more like Saran wrap, and created quite a sauna-like effect in the heat! I decided I’d rather be wet from the rain rather than my own sweat, so I didn’t bother with the raincoat and only got a little wet. The girls chose to wear the raincoats and did fine with the heat.

The story for the hour-long show was a variation on the story of Liu Sanjie, a legendary figure in Zhuang tales (that’s why Zoe and Maya are wearing their Zhuang outfits – we’ve been looking for an excuse to wear them and a performance celebrating a Zhuang maiden seemed the perfect opportunity! They got quite a few compliments as we walked to our seats).

The stories place the year of Liu Sanjie’s birth at 703 A.D., and there are lots of different versions of her story. They all focus on her beautiful singing, though. In some she is a musical prodigy or called the Song Fairy and she leaves her fiancé and elopes with her lover. In others a wealthy landowner tries to make her his concubine because of her beautiful voice and she elopes with her fiancé; but most of them end with her becoming some kind of celestial being and ascending into heaven on a white crane or a carp. Some have her and her fiancé/lover turning into larks. None seem to have a particularly happy ending since Liu Sanjie ends up dead!

This version, according to Cristy, went like this: Liu Sanjie (Sanjie means “third daughter” – she was the third daughter of the family Liu) worked in the fields picking tea and always sang beautiful songs while she worked. She was in love with a local boy, and was happy all the time because he returned her love. An evil landowner was imposing cruel taxes on the people, and she organized them all against the landowner by singing beautiful songs. The landowner decided that the only way to stop her was to marry her as a concubine. She did not want to marry him, and the village people helped her and her fiancé to escape from him, and then overthrew the cruel landowner. Everyone lived happily ever after (except the cruel landowner who got what he deserved, the bourgeoisie pig!) I just loved the Communist Party spin on an old folk tale!

The show was pretty impressive, except for one weird scene – the shower scene. Liu Sanjie was being prepared to marry the evil landowner, which included taking a shower, and so to confuse him all the girls in the village also showered in the same waterfall and all of them claimed to be Liu Sanjie (kind of the Chinese version of “I am Sparticus. . . . No, I am Sparticus!”). This required much flitting around by apparently naked girls (they all had on body stockings). So much for the modesty of Chinese girls that I’ve been telling you about! It struck me as true kowtowing to the tourists.

We all enjoyed the performance, but it was nice to get back to our air-conditioned and dry room at the Yangshuo Mountain Retreat. The other family in our group had to get up at the crack of dawn to leave for the airport – they were going on to Xian and Beijing. It was great fun traveling with them, and we were sad to say goodbye before heading to our room.

Our flight left later, so we didn’t have to leave the hotel until 10 a.m. Sunday. We had a car and driver, and the girls actually slept most of the 90 minute drive back to Guilin (remember that it took twice that long by boat!). We left the Guilin Airport at 1:30, bound for Xiamen.

We had a wonderful time in Guangxi Province. I know we will go back when the girls are older. I’ll also try to post more pictures, and some reflections after all of this has sunk in. I do know the trip was really good for Zoe and Maya, and really good for me, too. We have no regrets, except, perhaps, at having to leave Guangxi Province after such a short time!

Bicycle Built For Three

I frequently make a fool of myself for my kids. I sing in public, though I have the world’s worst singing voice (think Tiny Tim tip-toeing through the tulips and you’ve got a bead on my voice (though I think he kept in tune better than I do!)). I tell silly jokes. I make funny faces. I publish pictures of me looking ridiculous on this blog (see above). I just generally act the clown if it makes them happy.

Well, Saturday afternoon in Yangshuo I topped all my previous foolish escapades. I rode a bike!

I haven’t been on a bike in 30 years, not since I went down Beverly Hill on the way to Lisa Honey’s house and discovered I had no brakes. A concussion and the loss of a few yards of skin pretty much convinced me that biking wasn’t for me. And it’s not like I was all that good at it to begin with. I was 7 before I lost my training wheels and 10 before I could actually turn in a full circle (I had to get off and turn the bike around just to go back the way I came!).

So how in @#%$ did I end up on a bicycle built for two in Yangshuo, China?! And yes, I only drove the bicycle for two, not three. Tom, the dad of the other family in our group offered to take Maya so I didn’t have to handle her 30 pounds and my worries about crashing and burning with BOTH my kids on the bike. The picture above is posed just so we could have the whole family in the picture! But note, both my feet are OFF the ground -- I really am riding the bike!

I have to say it was the most terrifying experience I’ve had since we came to China. When I saw on the itinerary that we were to ride bikes in Yangshuo I envisioned sleepy country roads surrounded by karst mountains, lazy parks with wide swaths of concrete, sun-dappled glades and peaceful forest trails. . . .

Nope. We rented bicycles in the center of town – crowded with cars and trucks and buses and scooters and motorcycles and walkers and about a million other bicycles. After a few practice runs in the small parking lot of the bike rental place, we were off! Cristy set a brisk pace, and zipped us in and out of traffic and around a traffic circle, and all I could do was follow blindly. I certainly couldn’t look around me – the bike had a tendency to go wherever my eyes happened to look, so I could only focus on Cristy’s umbrella ahead of me.

Speaking of umbrellas, Zoe had hers up, shading herself from the sun, and of course it poked me in the back about a million times! I bought a hat for 5 yuan from a seller near the bike rental place, so I had shade. But that didn’t stop the sweating. It was hotter than hades, as humid as a swamp, and then throw in physical exertion and pure nerves and I was sweating like CRAZY! Sweat was dripping in my eyes, but I was too scared to let go of the handlebars to wipe it away! And every time I loosened by grip, my worst fears were confirmed and the bike wobbled like crazy.

We pedaled out from the center of town for about 30 minutes, going downhill most of the way. But all I could think was “what goes down must go up!” I was actually getting the point of feeling kind of comfortable on the bike, jauntily ringing my bell when I passed a walker or another bicycle, when it was time to turn around. It wasn’t long before we hit the uphill portion of the ride, and jauntiness and comfort deserted me! All I could do was huff and puff and exhort Zoe to PEDAL!

We finally made it back, and all in one piece. The girls LOVED it! Zoe only had one request – “next time, can we all three ride the same bike?” That was easy. “Sure,” I said. “The very next time I get on a bike (read “NEVER”!) it will be a bicycle built for three!”

River Rafting, Yangshuo Style

After our hike through Yangshuo farm country, we rested and cooled off by taking a bamboo raft down the Yulong River. But we didn’t take just any old piddling bamboo raft like those pictured above – those are for the hoi polloi. Cristy arranged the DELUXE double raft with a cloth-covered gazebo, table and benches, and, of course, tea! (I think she was worried that our group of hefty Americans would sink the little rafts!) She even arranged food for us – locally grown peanuts and water chestnuts. Wow, fresh water chestnuts really beat those tasteless things that come in a can!

We had to wait a few minutes for them to ferry our ride to the launch site, so we turned our trip into the “Princess Cruise” by buying all the girls flower wreaths – made from real flowers, no less.

We waited in a shaded tent where young Zhuang women were making “love balls” – embroidered balls used by the Zhuang minority peoples as part of the courtship ritual. When a young Zhuang woman finds a man she wants to marry, she tosses the embroidered ball to him. If he catches it, he has to marry her.

These are more elaborate than the ones we’re used to seeing – the tassels and beads are not usually there. I suspect these are gussied up for the tourists.

Finally our boat arrived, and we started our leisurely cruise. I was surprised that we had only one boatman, the same as for the two-person rafts. This poor man had to shove 10 people up and down the river! (Not only is the raft bamboo, but so is the pole the boatman uses to propel the craft.)

Ten people on our raft? Yes, my clan (Zoe, Maya, me), Chris, Tom, Olivia, Elaine (the other family in our group), Lili & Cristy (our guides), and a Zhuang maiden who came along to serenade us with Zhuang folk songs! Zhuang folk songs are kind of nasally, so the sound was not really improved by being sung through a low-quality loudspeaker! But at least everyone else on the river got to enjoy the same music we did.

As we neared the Yangshou Mountain Retreat, we saw a fisherman on a bamboo raft and he was using cormorants to fish for him! I had heard of this practice, but this is the first time I’ve seen it. Fishermen train cormorants to catch fish and bring them to the boat. They tie a string around the bird’s neck so that it can’t enlarge its throat to eat the fish. Instead the bird disgorges it, still alive, into the fisherman’s hands.

I’ve heard that one trained cormorant can catch enough fish to comfortably feed an entire family. This fisherman had four cormorants on his boat – either he has a very large family or his is a commercial operation. In the few minutes we watched, we saw the birds catch five fish.

Shortly after passing the cormorant fisherman, we reached our hotel. The boat pulled up to the shore, and we were deposited neatly at our destination. What service! And we made it just in time for lunch (which included river fish, of course – do you think the nearby fisherman had anything to do with that?!).

The Yangshuo Countryside

We left the Yangshou Mountain Retreat at 10 a.m. on Saturday to get a taste of the countryside. We walked through farmers’ fields and visited a local farm house. (Zoe and Maya actually had fun, though in the picture above they seem to have that "how did I get here?!" look of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie down on the farm in "The Simple Life!")

As we walked down the dusty road from the hotel, the first point of interest was the village graveyard. Chinese are traditionally cremated, and the urns sealed in above-ground mausoleums. I saw these mausoleums set into the mountains from the train as we approached Guilin, but I didn’t know what they were. This one looks pretty plush; most were unadorned concrete. A few still had flowers and decorations (like this one) from Grave Sweeping Day (April 5 – also called Ghost Day (that’s an obvious one, right?) and Cold Food Day (because you aren’t supposed to light fires on this day to commemorate some ancient figure who was burned to death on this day) and Mountain Climbing Day (because you climb the mountain up to mausoleums)).

Most of the fields we saw were rice fields, the plants two months old and one month shy of harvest time. In the warm climate of Guangxi Province the growing season allows for two rice plantings. All of our guides have called the rice “paddy rice,” which was a new usage for me. I’ve heard of rice paddies – the wet fields where rice is grown. But “paddy rice?” Apparently that is what rice is called – really, I looked it up on the internet! – when the grains are still covered by the hull.

You can tell the rice is ready to be harvested when the hulls turn from green to golden yellow. They were still green when we passed by.

We also walked through fields of pomolo – a kind of grapefruit, but more pear-shaped. Cristy told us that pomolo is a required wedding gift from the bride’s family; they give four bags of pomolo and one is tied at each corner of the bed on the wedding night to ensure fertility. Apparently pomolos are a prized commodity – we saw the farmer just squatting in the orchard and Cristy said she was there to make sure no one took the fruit. In another pomolo field we saw a little lean-to, and Cristy said that someone from the family probably slept there at night to prevent thieves from stealing the fruit. We also saw pumpkin, tomato, and strawberries growing.

In the distance we could see a small farming village nestled at the foot of a mountain and partially obscured by the lush foliage surrounding it. Too storybook, isn’t it?

As we approached, I started taking pictures of what I thought must be the houses the farmers lived in – it turns out I was snapping pictures of the pig sty, which was made abundantly clear by the smell as we passed by!

But then I didn’t find that the actual houses were a great improvement over the pig house (they didn't smell, though!) – but note the satellite dish at this home!

I didn’t see a satellite dish at the farmhouse we visited, though there was a television set and an electric rice cooker in the front sitting room (I’m assuming the rice cooker was with the TV because that was the only place with electricity). Still, to say it was rustic is an understatement. Directly to the left of the door was the stall for the family water buffalo, and the tied bundles of sticks are firewood. The Chinese New Year decorations are still up, and Lili says people just leave them up until they fall to pieces – they never last quite to the next New Year.

Immediately inside the door was the sitting room, with the family altar high among the eaves directly across from the door.

Below the altar was a wall of posters – posters of movie stars (so maybe they had satellite TV after all!). One poster even half-covered a portrait of Mao (you can't mistake that high forehead!)! I bet you wouldn’t have seen that 20 years ago, no one would have dared.

To the right of the living room was the farmer’s bedroom, behind a curtain. We didn’t go in there, though. Then behind the sitting room was another room, whose function was a little mysterious to me. It had a ladder to the second floor, and it housed a rice thresher.

Next was some kind of utility room, reached via an open-air passage decorated with a lovely spider web. I definitely need to know who their interior decorator is!

The utility room had a fireplace (you can see it on the right in this photo), but you can see by the soot-blackened walls that the smoke didn’t really have anywhere to go. I’d guess that the room is basically a laundry room.

And next to the utility room was the kitchen. Here’s the cook stove – it, and the fireplace, explain the need for all that firewood.

Opposite the cook stove was the kitchen table, and a kiddie chair – Cristy explained that the farmer was taking care of a grandchild while the parents were working in another province.

The family’s water buffalo was out in the fields, but we did catch site of a neighbor’s in the shade of a patch of bamboo, to the delight of the girls. I couldn’t coax them close enough for a group portrait, though!

Cristy was careful to tell us that, though the farmers make no more than 400 yuan a month (less than $50), they are happy with their lives. When a journalist visited the village recently, the farmers told him in glowing detail how happy they were that they could enjoy the beautiful mountain views and grow just about everything they needed to live. Ah, yes, living close to the land, the nobility of labor, yada yada yada. . . .

All I can say is it looked like a miserable way to live. It made me ever so grateful for the life I lead, and I don’t think I’ll complain again about the headaches of urban living.

Cruising the Li River

We left Guilin by boat on Friday, heading for Yangshuo. So far on this trip we’ve traveled in a taxi, an airplane, a van, a train, a bus, and now a boat. The scenery on the cruise was wonderful; our local guide, Cristy, told us to look for four things:



1) phoenix tail bamboo (that’s what all the curly-cue stuff on shore is). It seems we have Chou En Lai to thank for the bamboo – it was his suggestion that it be planted near the Li River. And since, according to Cristy, Chou En Lai was so beloved by the people (he was always kind to the people, it seems, when Mao was imposing hardships on them), the provincial government leaped on the idea.

2) waterfalls. There were small waterfalls, and only a few, seemingly runoff from the land rather than another river or stream. But they were lovely.

3) water buffalos (OK, so these weren’t real eager to pose for us!). On this trip we’ve learned that water buffalo are highly prized by the farmers in Guangxi Province. They are costly, running about 2,000 yuan (or was that a motor scooter that cost 2,000 yuan? I've forgotten!), and families build a stall for the water buffalo near their front door so that they won’t be stolen.

4) Chinese painting rock. We were told that the elements had “painted” nine horses on this rock, and if you could see all nine you were very clever. Well, I’m not at all clever – I couldn’t see even one! (I THINK I see one in the photo, but that still doesn’t make me very clever!).

The clever one was Cristy, our local guide, who had a wonderful plan for keeping the girls occupied during the 4-hour boat ride – the traditional Chinese craft of paper cutting. She showed us some very intricate ones – she can make twin cats, double happiness characters, and much, much more. But the ones she showed the girls were simpler, or so she claimed! They were still pretty complicated for Zoe and Maya, though they gamely gave it a try. Cristy said that the style of paper cuts she was showing the girls (you can see one in the saucer between the teacups) were often found decorating shop windows in small villages.

Zoe preferred “free-style” cutting over the intricate Chinese patterns!

The cruise ended up lasting only three hours – as Cristy says, “We’re so lucky! The flood made the river faster!” We disembarked in Yangshuo, and walked down Western Street, the touristy-shopping area of Yangshuo. We didn’t stay there long since it was thronged with tourists and aggressive salespersons. We soon headed for our hotel outside of town, the Yangshuo Mountain Retreat.

It looks more like a pivate villa than a hotel, doesn’t it? It’s larger than it looks, but it is very cosy. It’s right on the Yulong River – Jade Dragon River, sometimes called the Lesser Li River – and surrounded by those awesome limestone karst mountains. Our room had a perfect view of mountains and river, and we were lulled to sleep at night by the sounds of the river. And if you're used to Chinese mattresses, the 2 inches of cotton batting on top of a board which constituted our mattresses here presented no difficulties!

The first afternoon here, we sat in rockers near the river, and enjoyed watching bamboo rafts full of tourists shaded by colorful beach umbrellas cruising down the river. I could have happily sat there all day. Even the girls, not known for their ability to sit still, happily spent 45 minutes rocking on the banks of the river.

And it helped that there was plenty to look at – we even saw a hot air balloon skimming through the mountains.

As afternoon drifted into evening, we could see the mountains and bamboo reflected in the water.

Yangshuo Mountain Retreat lives up to its name – a restful refuge from the world.

Morning Constitutional

Our last morning in Guilin (Friday, June 15), and we woke up a little early. We had time after breakfast and before we met our group to head for the boat to Yangshuo, so we decided to have our morning constitutional in the park in front of the Bravo Hotel. There’s a small lake in the middle of the park, so we thought we’d walk around the park and see what we could see. The views were lovely.

The girls loved these benches in the shape of pigs. (I don't know if they reside in the park only because this is the year of the pig or if they are permanent residents.)

The park was packed with morning exercisers, most doing exercises we’ve seen before – martial arts with swords, dances with fans or scarves or ribbons, etc. But there was one new one for us – the exercisers did their moves holding a racquet with a ball balanced on it. They would spin about, trying to keep the ball from falling off, and at times they would hit the ball upward and catch it on the racquet. Pretty cool!

The only drawback to all the exercise groups is that each comes equipped with its own tape player blaring out scratchy, tinny tunes. And of course they can't be the same tune. So you walk from one musical selection to the other. I much prefer my parks to be quiet!

We walked along, enjoying the day, and came upon a little slice of Paris and San Francisco:

We were setting a pretty lazy pace (that’s Maya’s natural pace!) because we could see our hotel and knew how close we were to it. We expected to circle the lake and reach the hotel in plenty of time to meet our party. But the sidewalk suddenly dead-ended! It seems it isn’t possible to go all the way around the lake. That meant a mad dash back around the way we came. We reached the lobby ten minutes past our set time, but our guides said no worries, we still had plenty of time to reach the boat. I guess they build in extra time just for silly tourists like us!

Despite the harried finish, we did enjoy our morning constitutional.

Back in Xiamen!

We're back home after a wonderful vacation in Guangxi Province. We didn't have internet access in our last hotel, so I'm a bit behind in letting you know what we've been up to. I'll try to remedy that as soon as possible!

Playing Tourist in Guilin

We had a ball today playing tourist in Guilin. It was a beautiful sunshiny day, and we took full advantage of it.

For our first stop, though, sunshine didn’t matter. It was Reed Flute Cave. The rock formations are truly amazing, their appearance enhanced by multi-colored lights. Each highlighted formation had a name of some kind – Fragrant Flowers and Singing Birds, Autumn Harvest of Bitter Melon, Mushroom Rocks, and the like. By far the most impressive was Crystal Palace. Not only were the rock formations amazing, but there was a pool of water in front of them that reflected them perfectly.

You’d never guess that the pool is only 2 centimeters deep! Crystal Palace was the largest part of the cave, and we were told that local farmers holed up there during the Japanese invasion in 1938 and survived to bravely fight the Japanese.

Can you guess the name of this rock? It’s one of the ones I mentioned above (yes, this is a test of your imagination!).

It’s Mushroom Rock. Maybe it’s a trick question – the Chinese use many more types of mushroom than we do. These don’t look much like those button mushrooms we’re used to, but they sure look like Chinese mushrooms.

After Reed Flute Cave we went to Daxu, an ancient town. Some of the buildings there are over 1,000 years old.

It was a fascinating place, though the highlight for us was not the history of the town, but current events. Painted on the wall of one home was a string of Chinese characters. I asked our guide what it meant, and she said it was a reminder to obey the one child policy or suffer a fine.

When we first got off the bus in Daxu, we saw a woman raking kernels of corn across the concrete. She was drying it to feed to pigs.

A little further along, there were piles of chicken feathers and goose feathers. Farmers dry them and then sell them to manufacturers of quilted clothing.

A few steps further, a group of women were sorting chili peppers. We could actually smell them before we could see them, and the watering of my eyes preceded the smell.

The houses in the oldest part of town were all two-story, but none of them have staircases. They use a ladder to get to the second floor.

But as ancient as the town is, they definitely had modern conveniences. You may have noticed the poles and wires in the picture of the town. I don’t know if they are phone or electricity wires. But the place definitely had electricity, as evidenced by all the electrical conveniences in this home:

We visited the shop of a Chinese traditional medicine doctor. The medicines included these bottles of liquor with snakes and baby mice in them. (Across the street was a liquor plant, and its smell was even more pungent than the chilis!)

When we entered the store, the doctor was rolling candles filled with herbs. He told us that it was a remedy for headaches. Well, given my addiction to Vitamin I – Ibuprofen – I figured I’d give it a try. The doctor burned the end of the candle and then covered the burnt end with a red cloth. He then told me to hold the candle to my forehead. It was slightly warm, and as soon as it cooled down, he’d take it back and burn it again, and tell me to reapply it. I confess I didn’t have a headache at the time, so I can’t tell you if it will cure headaches. And I guess it’s possible that the guy wasn’t a doctor but a practical joker instead – I think I look pretty silly! Wouldn't that be a funny trick to play on the ignorant foreigner?!

It was a beautiful town, and it was right on the river. I loved this view under Longevity Bridge (of course we walked across the bridge to ensure a long life):

Our last stop of the day was Yao Mountain, the tallest in Guilin. We were told that we’d take a cable car up the mountain, which suited me just fine having painfully climbed some of the finest mountains in Fujian Province (see here and here)! It turned out, though, that it was not some large staid cable car – it was actually a ski lift, a new experience for me. Zoe rode with one of our guides, and managed to mount the thing like a pro. One of the attendants picked Maya up and set her in the chair, while I just had to stand there and be dumbly scooped up by the chair. Here’s Zoe in the gondola ahead of us.

It was a fun ride, and the views were amazing. At one point we were joined by a flock? – herd? – gaggle? – of dragonflies flitting about us. We could hear birds singing and look down on the tops of pine trees with new green pine cones. It was quite an experience. Maya loved it and kept saying “piaoliang,” which means pretty in Chinese. When we got to the top she said she wanted to do it again. It was easy to say yes to that, since we’d have to get down the same way we got up! And when it comes to climbing mountains in China, I say this is definitely the way to go!

The view at the top of the mountain was beautiful, though pictures hardly do justice to it (that didn't stop me from taking dozens of pictures!). The mist-shrouded mountains seemed to go on forever.

The kids loved wandering around the top of the mountain because there were many fun props for photo ops – each requiring a fee, of course! But I dutifully paid one yuan to photograph the girls in a swing with the mountains behind them . . .

. . . and using a huge hammer to bang a gong.

Then we took the cable car back down the mountain and headed back to the hotel. We hit the pool shortly after arriving, and it felt really good after a hot day of oh-so-strenuous mountain-climbing!

Tomorrow we cruise the Li River to Yangshuo. The views along the river are supposed to be even more gorgeous than anything we saw today. The day’s sights set a very high standard, so I’m looking forward to what the river has to show us.

Maya's File!

I got it! Our guide got them to fax it to him, and he faxed it to me at the hotel here in Guilin (I didn't know anyone still used that roll fax paper!). I'm so happy to have it, since it has just the information I wanted -- Maya's measurements at the time she was checked into Guiping SWI.

She was tiny -- only 4.2 pounds at 17.7 inches. Her head and chest circumference seem impossibly small -- 11.8 and 10.4 inches respectively. They report her overall health condition as good, so it's hard to know if she was a preemie or not. But there's no doubt she was an itty-bitty baby.

The file also had six-week measurements. She gained almost one pound and about 3/4th inch. Her head and chest circumference increased 2/10ths of an inch. I have no idea if that is normal growth or not -- any pediatricians out there (hint, hint, Lisa!).

I am so happy to have this piece of the puzzle! Our guide has my eternal gratitude (you've surmised correctly -- I'm deliberately NOT giving you the name of the guide at the guide's request!).

This journey has been a definite series of highs and lows. Getting the fax today was definitely a high!

Trip to Guilin

Our day started early today – we had to leave the hotel in Nanning at 7:30 to catch our train. And since I basically had to repack everything to squeeze in all of the presents the girls have acquired over the last few days, I had a VERY early start! Still, we made it to the train station in plenty of time. It’s a good thing that we were there early, though, since we carried all our luggage with us. Our guide explained that if we checked any of our bags there was no telling when we’d get them. They might even be sent to Guilin on a later train. And we took over just about all of the overhead shelves in our train car. If we’d arrived later, we would never have found room for it all. (We’ve packed (relatively) light, but the other family traveling with us came from the States and will continue on to Xian and Beijing after we return home to Xiamen, so they have more luggage).

We were in a hard seat compartment. Trains in China don’t have first class and economy – they have soft and hard. I thought our hard seats were pretty comfortable, and didn’t fit my expectations of hard seat. I thought we’d be on wooden benches! Our guide says that was what hard seat looked like years ago, but not now. The train was also double decker, with a duplicate compartment above us. There was a bathroom in our car, and of course it was a squat potty. It’s a bit more challenging to use a squat potty when it’s a moving target!

The ride was a little over 4 hours, which was a bit challenging for the girls. We managed to keep them cheerful by eating our way to Guiling – after all, we had tons of peanuts, lychees and bananas with us! The scenery outside the window was much like the landscape on the way to Guiping. But as we got closer to Guilin we started to see signs of the flooding that has been reported in Guangxi Province. We saw fields completely under water, and houses that peeped no more than two feet above the water line. We’d periodically see people poling small bamboo rafts in the flood water.

As we approached Guilin, we started to see the famous karst mountains. The girls started to perk up as we saw more and more water buffalo along the way. And soon we started to see high-rise buildings and we pulled into the station at Guilin.

A local guide met us on the platform, and she brought a porter from the hotel with her. He came on the train to help with all our luggage, and then piled it all on his two-wheeler to roll it about 10 feet to the down staircase. He then unloaded it all and carried it down stairs. Again, it gets piled on the cart. He wheels it about 150 feet to the exit gate, which is too narrow for the cart to fit through with the luggage on it. So again he unloads the cart and carries the luggage through the gate. Then the bags were loaded back on the cart for the trip through the parking lot to the bus. Whew! I’m glad I didn’t have his job today!

We checked into the Bravo Hotel, which is very nice. We have a corner room with wonderful views of the mountains. We ate lunch at the hotel, and then headed out for our first sightseeing excursion to see Elephant Rock. (OK, use your imagination – that’s the elephant’s trunk drinking from the river water!)

Our guide tells us we were really lucky to be able to get into the park to see Elephant Rock – it was closed due to the flooding yesterday. (Elephant Rock is at the junction of two rivers – the Peach Blossom River and the Li River. That’s why the Chinese say the elephant is male – rivers in China are female, and this handsome fellow has two females following him.) Even if you're not convinced it's an elephant, it's still pretty amazing to think of how the action of the river water can make such a formation.

Our local guide is a real hoot -- she keeps telling us how lucky we are to be in Guilin during the floods because it is so beautiful here when in floods! We definitely saw evidence of the flooding today:

After visiting Elephant Rock, we were taken to the ubiquitous silk factory to learn about silkworms and silk making. It was very interesting, and even the hard sell to buy, buy, buy was pretty amusing. We didn’t buy, buy, buy, and when they directed us to the exit, it turned out to be another shop with enticing items on display! We finally made our way to a real exit, and headed back to the hotel.

It’s been a little rainy and cool in Guilin today, but the girls really wanted to go swimming. So we took a quick dip before dinner, and I ended up with two teeth-chattering ice cubes to defrost before dinner! Our group ate dinner at the hotel, and blessedly we’re having an early night.

We’ll do more sight-seeing tomorrow. So far Guilin is proving as beautiful as promised. We can’t wait to see more.

Guiping SWI

We arrived at Guiping Social Welfare Institute mid-morning on Tuesday. They have two large modern buildings facing each other across a parking lot. One houses the elderly, and the other houses children. The one below is the orphanage.

When we arrived, we were greeted by Director Wei and taken to the reception room. We were delighted to see Mr. Gan, the retired director, who handed Zoe to me in Nanning on October 8, 2001. He was equally happy to see Zoe and Maya, and he really seemed to remember them both.

Zoe warmed up to him very quickly, which is unusual for her. She happily showed him the pictures she had drawn for the baby room – she wanted to hang them in the baby room, and told Mr. Gan all about them. The drawing they are looking at is a boat, and since it's a big boat, Zoe wrote the Chinese character for "big" on the sail. Mr. Gan was very impressed that she could write Chinese characters. But I couldn't get her or Maya to say anything other than xie-xie (thank you) in Chinese the whole time we were there. Naturally, in the van on the way back to Nanning, they immediately started to sing every Chinese song they know!

The reception room had flowers and fruit, and we were served tea, lychees and bananas – Mr. Gan actually peeled the lychees and hand-fed Maya!

There was a large board in the reception room with tons of pictures of Guiping babies who had been adopted and whose parents had sent pictures back to the SWI. There was even 3 pictures of Zoe – I was so glad to see that they had gotten the pictures I had sent via another Guiping family.

I gave them an album of photos of Zoe and Maya, and also the photos of babies from Maya’s travel group – they were all Guiping babies transferred to Mother’s Love. They were really happy to have them, and I’m sure they will soon be added to the board!

Two families who recently received Guiping referrals asked me if I could take pictures of their babies while at Guiping, so I asked the director. She said I couldn’t take pictures, but they would give me pictures to give to the parents – wow, how exciting to get those photos for those anxiously waiting parents! (I’m still working on getting them scanned, so I can email them to their families).

We had a chance to see Zoe’s file and were able to have photocopies of parts of it. That will be such a treasure for Zoe as she grows up.

But I was so disappointed that we could not see Maya’s file for the two months she was at Guiping before being transferred to Mother’s Love. That was a HUGE part of why I wanted us to go to Guiping. But we were told that they had not known Maya was coming as a Guiping baby because she was only listed on Zoe’s request-to-visit form as “accompanying.” So they hadn’t pulled Maya’s file. And the only person with a key to the file room was in Nanning. I admit I don’t really buy that story – that no one else has the key. I think it’s true they didn’t expect to show anyone Maya’s file, and I think it’s possible they wanted to sanitize the file before showing it to me. But they were intractable on that point. They would not show us the file for whatever reason.

I was so bitterly disappointed I cried. I so wanted to know more about those 2 months because I don’t know WHY she was transferred to Mother’s Love except that she was very small – less than 7 pounds at 2 months old. But is it because she was a preemie and really tiny when she got to Guiping SWI? Or was she a failure-to-thrive baby who lost weight after getting to Guiping SWI? I KNOW that information is in her file, and to be so close and not be able to see it was horrible. Our guide has promised to call them and try to get them to fax the information to us. But without someone there to make sure they do it, I’m not sure I’ll ever see what’s in the file. So that piece of the puzzle is still missing, despite all of our efforts.

After the reception room, we were given a tour of the facility. We were requested not to take pictures. The first room we entered was a play room for the babies. The room is really large, with one entire wall of mirrors with two low bars. The bars are for the babies to hold onto when they are learning to stand and to pull themselves up. And the floor was covered with a bright rubberized mat. When we got there, there were 3 nannies in the room and probably about 9 babies. All the nannies were on the floor playing with some of the babies – a few were sleeping on the floor. There were some small toys around the babies.

One of the nannies was at Guiping when Zoe was there, and motioned her down to the floor to play with the babies. Zoe was in her element! I got to hold one of the babies, too – the baby whose family asked me to get photos! We only played with the babies for a few minutes before Director Wei said it was time for the babies to have their bottles, and we were shooed off to another room. This room had younger babies in cribs, some that looked less than 3 months old. I’d say there were only 10 babies here as well. Later Director Wei was telling me about the old orphanage, and the fact that they had less space and more children then. Now they are in this big new building with very few babies. Part of the reason is that so many more Guiping children are in foster care.

Though we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the orphanage, we were able to take a picture outside of Zoe and Maya with the nanny. The purses the girls are holding were gifts from Guiping SWI – the inscription on the bottom says “Guiping Social Welfare Institute” and the inscription going up and down on the right side says “Jin Tian Cum,” the name of the town the Guiping girls are named after. Even I could recognize the character for “Jin” at the top (it looks like a little house, which is how I always remember it). BTW, our guide tells us that CCAA regulations now require the orphanages to give children basic Chinese surnames. Some orphanages would give all the children surnames that too clearly identified them as orphans named by the state, and CCAA was concerned about how that would affect them as they grew up and got jobs when everyone would know their orphan status. “Jin,” however, is a typical Chinese surname, so it’s likely that Guiping will continue to name its babies Jin.
Guiping SWI was bright and clean and cheery. There were colorful decorations in the hallways and stairways, but none on the walls of the baby room. They promised, faithfully, to hang up Zoe’s drawings there – I hope they do. In the lobby was this cheery declaration:

The babies we saw certainly looked healthy and well cared for.

After the tour, we took the director, assistant director, former director, and two nannies (including the one who cared for Zoe as a baby) to lunch. As we were leaving, the director went back to the reception room and filled a bag with the uneaten lychees and bananas! So on top of the ones Maya’s foster family gave us, we have enough lychees for 15 kids!

Lunch was in a private banquet room in a nearby restaurant. Mr. Gan sat the girls next to him on a settee and started shelling peanuts and feeding them!

The lunch was really good – much better than the dinner we’d had in Guiping the night before. Proves it takes a local to find the really good restaurants – out-of-towners driving around looking for a fancy restaurant just can’t compete!

During lunch, everyone was so impressed with the way Zoe took care of Maya. She made sure she had food before Zoe served herself, took her to the bathroom, wiped the table when Maya spilled her tea. They all complimented me on teaching the children responsibility and good manners. (Little do they know that Zoe does all these things because she loves to play with the lazy susan in the middle of the table and pick things up with chopsticks!).

The director said that the orphanage’s biggest need was donations to its fund to build a retaining wall. Their new building sits lower than the surrounding land and they are having flooding problems. So we donated to that fund rather than taking them shopping for something the orphanage didn’t need as badly.

Before we left, the assistant director disappeared for a while and returned with two plastic bags stuffed with peanuts for the girls. And then, the director and the nannies started scooping up some of the uneaten food – dumplings, fried shrimp (fried with the famous local tea!), pumpkin cakes – into plastic bags. I thought that it was great, they were taking food back for the other nannies or something. Then they handed all that food to us for the trip back to Nanning! (We ended up having it for dinner when we got back to the Majestic – we didn’t feel like going out anyway, and I didn’t want to see all that food go to waste!).

Our last stop on the way out of Guiping was the old orphanage. Zoe and Maya were at Guiping before the new building was built, so I was really eager to see the actual place they stayed. The neighborhood was really interesting, lots of tiny streets and alleyways. The road leading up to the orphanage was mostly shops, one selling fruit, one with swimsuits on display, another with umbrellas. The one nearest the orphanage was selling mostly cigarettes and soft drinks. Directly across the street from the orphanage were two older people working with strips of wood. It turns out they were making sticks of incense from bamboo.

Director Wei was with us, and she said I could take pictures of the outside of the building but we could not go in.

And as I was standing there taking pictures, who should drive up but Mr. Gan on his motorcycle!

It turns out he still lives at the old orphanage even though he is retired and even though it is no longer an orphanage! Director Wei suddenly leaped out of the van, and was speaking rapidly to Mr. Gan in Chinese, and our guide told us she said we could go into the building after all – just no pictures! I was thrilled! I immediately recognized the place from the photos I’d gotten from the SWI from the disposable camera I had sent with Zoe’s care package so many years ago. Mr. Gan showed us the interior courtyard, and pointed out the room where Zoe stayed. I was so happy to be able to put into perspective what I had seen in those earlier photos. I can now show Zoe exactly where she lived for her first 11 months.

We then headed out of Guiping on the same road Zoe took almost six years ago on her way to Nanning to meet me, and the same road Maya took to Mother’s Love as a tiny baby. It was a whirlwind trip we took to Guiping; there was so much meaning packed into less than 24 hours. I am so glad we were able to visit Guiping SWI and thank those who cared for my babies at such critical stages in their lives. And we were able to uncover many, many puzzle pieces that make up the stories of their lives.

Lost and Found

Today was an extraordinary day. It was amazing to go “back to the very beginning,” as Zoe puts it – or at least to the beginning of the story that we know. Everything that comes before is speculation – where was I born? who gave birth to me? why did they decide not to raise me? who brought me to this place? why here? was I alone? was I crying? did they watch until I was found? what were their dreams for me? do they think of me now? All the answers are guesswork. But this we know – a baby was found HERE, here on the ground where we are standing. Six years, seven months, and six days ago, a baby was found HERE, where a six-year-old picks flowers and finds pretty stones for her treasure box. HERE, on this sidewalk, three years, eight months, and 24 days ago, a baby was found HERE, where a three-year-old holds my hand and says, “Mama, say it again: ‘You’re my daughter forever. No one can ever take you away.’”

I already had pictures of Zoe’s finding place. We call it that, her finding place, instead of her abandonment spot. That’s what makes it a beginning rather than an end. She was found. I didn’t expect to have an emotional reaction; after all, I had already seen the pictures. But being there showed so much more – how many people were around who could be relied upon the find a baby quickly and how easy it would have been to end it all in the nearby river. But her birth parents made another choice, a choice to make sure that she had a life.

Maya’s finding place, too, was teeming with people. There seems little doubt that the site was selected with care to ensure that she would be found, would be well taken care of. No one can see the place and think the birth parents were indifferent. We talked to people at this place; babies are often found here. This was a thoughtful choice, a choice to guarantee that she had a life.

We visited another finding spot, for a friend. Again, there were people everywhere. A baby would be found here, and found quickly.

I don’t romanticize my children’s birth parents. I can’t know if they are noble or venal, selfish or giving, heartless or loving. But standing at these places, I can believe that they did the best they could to make sure that these little lives they brought into the world had a chance to survive. And I am thankful.

The Road to Guiping & the GongDe Villa

After leaving Maya’s foster family at the Majestic, we hit the road to Guiping. It was about a 3.5 hour drive, mostly on expressway. The last hour was on a two-lane road, where we tested the efficacy of my blood pressure medication by passing busses, trucks and tractors with only inches to spare from on-coming traffic.

As we headed for the expressway, we passed through a new part of Nanning. Our guide told us it was called the Manhattan of Nanning because of all the tall buildings. It was definitely newer and more modern than other parts of the city. We also passed an immense convention center – I don’t think I’ve ever seen one so large, even in Manhattan! It was constructed because Nanning hosts the annual meeting of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – which also explained the 10 neon flags on the road into Nanning from the airport.

The expressway took us past manufacturing plants, including a number of cement plants and a plant that makes paper out of bamboo. The factories soon gave way to farm land, with some rice but more corn. Then came field after field of a spiky plant our guide said was sisal. The girls were excited to see water buffalo, who apparently get in the water not to cool off but to get covered with mud which protects them from biting flies.

We passed by Guigang, which is the next largest city to Guiping, at a distance. We could see tall buildings, so it seems a much larger city than I had thought. Apparently Guiping used to be under Guigang in terms of governance, and has not been its own city with its own city government for very long.

We would drive through acres and acres of farmland without seeing a single building, and then suddenly there would be a small gathering of homes. Our guide told us that the government assigns farmers a tract of land to farm, and then assigns them a separate tract on which to build a home. So people live in little villages, and then walk to the fields, taking their lunch since it is too far to go home for lunch (remember, everyone in China who can possibly do it goes home for lunch!). We saw quite a few single-story homes with staircases continuing through the roof. It seems that everyone expects to expand their house – oftentimes to accommodate the son’s family when he has one – so they put in a staircase with the initial construction.

The approach to Guiping was lined with farmland. As we started to see city buildings, the area seemed much poorer than anything I’ve seen in Nanning (which itself seems poorer and less developed than Xiamen). It does not seem that much economic development has trickled down to Guiping yet. The houses and shops we first saw were in considerable disrepair and were really dirty, even for China standards. Then we came closer to the city center and things started to look better. There were shops selling Western toilets (!) and air conditioners and furniture. And there was new construction as well. Still, it did not have the building vibe of Xiamen or even Nanning. But of course it is a much smaller city. Still, it seemed to me to be evidence of what I’ve heard – the divide between the haves and the have-nots is wider in China than even in America, and those in rural China are overwhelmingly the have-nots.

We drove through the city to Xishan – West Mountain – which was beautiful. The mountain was covered with lush foliage in variegated greens, and the top was shrouded in mist. We drove up the mountain because we were staying at GongDe Villa, a hotel near the top of the mountain.

The Lonely Planet Guide to Southwest China describes the hotel as “nearly posh,” and our guide told us that the Chinese president stayed there when he visited the area to inspect serious flooding in Guangxi Province. Well, I can guarantee the president didn’t stay in our room! It was pretty utilitarian, with barely functioning air conditioning. Still, the public parts of the hotel were nearly posh and quite beautiful.

The grounds were gorgeous, with wonderful flowering plants and this great statue of a mythic beast – a turtle-ish creature known as the son of the dragon.

After resting in our room for a while, we headed out for dinner and a tour of the city. When I asked our guide where we were going for dinner, he said we’d just drive around the city looking for a fancy restaurant! LOL! We ended up at the Guiping Hotel, and had quite a nice dinner. Maya was happy because we had duck.

When we drove down the mountain for dinner, we saw tons of people walking up the mountain. These were not tourists, but local people who come every day to get their exercise by climbing the mountain. Many of them were carrying empty bottles – their destination was a mineral spring at the top of the mountain. People come to fill bottles with the water because it is believed to be good for whatever ails you. Some folks were carrying multiple bottles, balanced on poles over their shoulders.

The pictures here I actually took Tuesday morning before we headed out for Zoe’s and Maya’s finding spots and the Guiping SWI (I was way too tired to do much beyond eat and sleep when we got to Guiping late Monday afternoon). We wandered around the grounds and had breakfast at the hotel. I was pretty amused at breakfast when a cup of coffee appeared at my plate. I thought the waitress brought it to me in error, and that our guide or our driver ordered coffee. Well, our guide actually ordered it for me, without consulting me. He thought ALL Westerners drank coffee! He was quite proud of himself for having secured me coffee; he had taken a group of Italian tourists to a remote part of Guangxi Province and they were horrified to discover they couldn’t get coffee and refused to eat any breakfast without coffee to drink. So he figured the only way to get me to eat breakfast was to secure coffee for me! Even for him, I couldn’t pretend to like coffee. I’ve spent 3 months in China faking my way through liking tea, but coffee is just too much for me.

Mother's Love

We woke up Monday morning to familiar surroundings at the Majestic. We had breakfast at the Garden Restaurant, as we did every morning when we were here for Maya’s adoption. The buffet was the same, but you might notice that Zoe’s plate isn’t the typical American breakfast – she has noodles and an egg roll! As I did for Maya’s adoption trip, I had far too many of the chocolate croissants.

Since we wait around a lot on adoption trips, I have a million pictures of Zoe and Maya on the white marble steps in the Majestic lobby. And here we are again, recreating that experience. Such sweet sisters, huh? But you tell me, does it look like they’re hugging or trying to choke each other?!

Then we headed out for Mother’s Love. I remembered the road leading there, and the park with an elaborate gate just before the road to Mother’s Love. But this time I noticed kiosks selling the sorts of things we see outside Nanputuo – incense, flowers, hell money. When I asked our guide if there was a temple nearby, he said no. So I was puzzled. But he explained that what I thought was a park was actually a cemetery, like Arlington National Cemetery. I guess I missed that tidbit of information on our first trip here.

We drove up the hill to Mother’s Love, which was an improvement over walking there like last time. The same unfriendly dogs were guarding the same farm houses that lined the road. I was glad that this time there was a barrier between us and them! We pulled up to the same building we visited last time – the one with the statue in the interior courtyard.

But then came the first surprise of the morning – Mother’s Love is no longer Mother’s Love! The original building, with the statue, is now a school for autistic children. It seems that the Department of Civil Affairs simply reassigned the building to the new school, and Mother’s Love had to move out. (Maybe this was karma – it seems that there was a home for disabled veterans there when Civil Affairs reassigned it to Mother’s Love). Mother’s Love had another building near this one, so now all of its facilities are in that one building. Since most of their kids are in foster care, it seems the one building is adequate for them now. I wonder, though, whether they are able to take in as many new children. We weren’t able to tour the new (other) building, but I understand there isn’t a baby room and it houses only special needs kids who aren’t in foster care.

Our second surprise, as we walked toward that other building, was that Maya’s entire foster family – MaMa, BaBa, JeiJei, and new MeiMei were waiting outside for us! This was the first time I had a chance to meet BaBa, and MeiMei is the family’s latest foster child (Maya was the first, their second was adopted to America, and their third was adopted domestically by a family in Guangzhou). They were all so excited to see Maya!

We all sat outside on the patio and talked and exchanged gifts. They brought both Maya and Zoe presents, including tiny rattan dolls, small satin purses that the foster mom made herself, and wall hangings with images of girls in Chinese dress. And she brought them a huge bag of lychee fruit, and said it was one of Maya’s favorites when she was a baby. It’s still one of Maya’s favorite fruits! Maya and Zoe were very well-behaved and said thank you in both English and Chinese.

We gave the foster mom the photo albums with pictures of Maya, and she was delighted. She kept saying how tall and how beautiful Maya was.

Maya did pretty well at being fussed over, but it wasn’t long before she said, “I want to be with Mama,” and came over to sit on my lap. Foster mom was actually delighted by that. I had a chance to ask her some questions about Maya’s time with her – she said Maya’s favorite foods were strawberries and CHOCOLATE! And what a mess she made when she ate chocolate. She said Maya started walking very early – at 10 months. And she didn’t remember when she got her first teeth, but she remembered it as early. And it seems in addition to MaMa, BaBa, and JeiJei, the family also had NaiNai and PoPo (maternal and paternal grandmothers) living with them when Maya was there. But when Maya said nai-nai to us, she meant “drink,” which was abundantly obvious to us. Her foster mom laughed and said that Maya drove her crazy always wanting a drink. She heard “nai-nai, nai-nai” all day!

Maya’s foster mom asked me if Maya cried when she came to me, because she had been worrying about how the transition went. I was happy to be able to ease her mind about that. And she told me about Maya’s first day with her.

Soon Zoe and Maya and the baby (who is 13 months, fostered from Nanning SWI rather than Mother’s Love, and has recently had her file sent to CCAA) were playing with the bikes and other riding toys on the patio.

BaBa spent most of his time taking care of the baby while MaMa and I talked and she held Maya. BaBa did tell me that he used to give Maya rides around the neighborhood on his motorcycle and that she loved it. Everyone in the neighborhood fussed over her because she was so beautiful. And he said that Maya loved playing with the dogs in the neighborhood (it’s funny, because Maya has always been good with pets, while Zoe is terrified of them).

With the kids off playing, I had a chance to talk to JeiJei. She’s 22 years old, and works as a sales clerk in a department store. She likes it because she gets to sell jewelry. Meanwhile, Maya’s foster mom started pushing Maya around on one of the bikes, which delighted Maya. And then the baby got into the act, too!

I also brought a small album of photos for the director at Mother’s Love. I included some updated photos from our travel group – the group of babies adopted when Maya was. She loved having the pictures and thanked me profusely. She was delighted to look at each one, and compare them to their baby pictures. She seemed to remember each child. She gave both Maya and Zoe a gift from Mother’s Love – porcelain dolls in Chinese garb.

After we all chatted on the patio for a while, we took the foster family to lunch. I was so glad they were able to join us. We went to the restaurant next to the Majestic (a restaurant we ate at LOTS of times while we were here, and which has acquired an English name since we were here last – “Baby Face!”). We had a lovely lunch, and foster mom finally managed to coax a real laugh out of Maya.

My favorite part of the meal was watching them feed the baby, because I could readily see them feeding Maya in just this way.

I am so glad that we were able to see Maya’s foster family again. And they were genuinely delighted to see Maya. Foster mom kept thanking me for bringing her back to see them, and I kept thanking her for taking such good care of Maya, and we were all near tears by the time lunch was over.

I don’t think Maya will remember this day, but I hope the pictures we took can show her how much she was loved by these wonderful folks who took care of her so well.

We're in Nanning!

We're at the Majestic Hotel in Nanning! Not quite as exciting as the last two times I was in Nanning -- for Zoe's and Maya's adoptions -- but it's pretty exciting nonetheless.

Our flight left Xiamen around 4:30 this afternoon; we got to the airport really early because it was raining and I wasn't sure what traffic would be like. So we had a 2-hour wait for our flight. Luckily, there's a play place at the Xiamen airport and the girls had a ball in the ball pit. The time really passed quickly for them.

When we got to our gate, I realized for the first time that our flight to Nanning was not nonstop -- we'd be stopping in Shenzhen (we flew on an e-ticket, and all I knew was the departure time!). It wasn't much of a lay-over -- maybe 20 minutes. And we left Xiamen a little late so it was 8 p.m. before we made it to Nanning, and 9 p.m. before we hit the lobby of the Majestic.

The ride into the city center from the airport is just as I remember it -- miles and miles of a virtually empty 4-lane expressway. And then we hit the city center. The first thing that struck me was the bikes and motor bikes. They are EVERYWHERE! I'd forgotten the infestation of 2-wheel vehicles in Nanning, since we don't see anywhere near that many in Xiamen. Our guide, Dennis, who picked us up from the airport, tells me that there are 500,000 licensed motor bikes in Nanning, with a population of 2 million. He says that 5 years ago the city government stopped issuing permits for motor bikes, but it'll be years before the number really starts to drop.

It struck me as we were flying here that the "Nan" in Nanning must mean "south" -- after all, we live near Da'nan, the university's south gate. And that's next to Nanputuo, which means south temple. And the road outside the gate is Siming Nan Lu, which is South Siming Street. Dennis confirmed it -- Nan means south and ning means peace. Nanning was the emperors' wish for a peaceful border land in the south.

The Majestic is just as we remembered it -- the marbled foyer and the fountain, and the staircase where we posed for many a picture. We'll have to recreate those moments later. Our first priority was getting to our room and COLLAPSING! It's not like traveling around the world to get here, but travel is tiring even when it's a short hop.

The girls were thrilled to see a bathtub in our hotel room. It's been 3 months since they've had a bath -- all we have in Xiamen is a shower. The first thing we did this evening was take a bubble bath.

The real adventure starts tomorrow. We meet our guide at 9:30 a.m. to go to Mother's Love. We need to check out of the Majestic, but leave our big suitcase here and just take enough for one night, because we leave for Guiping as soon as we finish at Mother's Love. Then Tuesday in Guiping, and back to the Majestic in Nanning. And on Wednesday we take the train to Guilin -- I'm really looking forward to going on the train!

It's almost 11 p.m., and the girls have conked out. Ah, peace in the south! I'm not far behind them. I'll post more when I can.

Playacting

Zoe and Maya are big-time into playacting these days. I’m always hearing one say to the other, “Pretend that I’m . . . ,” and then the game is off and running.

Well, we had a surreal game of pretend this evening. I was on the computer reading one of my favorite adoption poems – I bet you can guess why:

Your Chinese Mama

I kiss your pudgy cheek every night when
you sleep.

I smell you and breathe you.

My heart and soul ache for her.
I know I am not as courageous as she.
So much love and hope for you,
she swaddled you and placed you in a box.

A manger to me.

I talk to her every night when I kiss your cheek.
I breathe your smell, and her soul.

Lynne Curran

I didn’t realize that Zoe was reading over my shoulder until I heard her say, “That’s a pretty poem. Why a box?” (It’s hard having a reader – you can’t spell things over her head any more and she can freely snoop into things she shouldn’t!).

I figured this was my opening to talk more about going to Guiping SWI, and going to her finding place. (I know most people advise that you consider going alone and not taking the child since you’re not quite sure what the finding place will look like. I don’t have that option since we’re not traveling with anyone I can leave the kids with. And from what I do know about their finding places it should be OK.)

We talked about the one child policy (which she’s heard me talk about before), and I told her a little bit more about the “grown-up rules,” including the fact that birthparents can’t just take the baby to the orphanage and hand her to Mr. Gan (all orphanage directors are Mr. Gan to Zoe) because they might get in trouble. So most birthparents try to put the baby somewhere where she will be found quickly and taken to the police station. (Zoe really likes police officers these days, and waves at the guards at the university gate each time we pass. And I wanted to mention the police station in case we get a chance to go there in Guiping.) The police officer then takes the baby to the orphanage, where the nannies take care of her until her forever family comes for her.

Now, we’ve talked about parts of this many times before, but I hadn’t really emphasized the finding part. I wondered what Zoe’s reaction would be, and then she said spritely, “I know, pretend I’m the birthmother . . .” and she was off and running to wrap one of her baby dolls in three layers of clothing and a little hat (this is part of her story we know) and put her in a cardboard shoebox. Maya got to play the part of the finder AND the police officer, and Zoe was also Mr. Gan, who took the baby and said, in a solemn voice, “I will name you Jin Yi Ling.” They were also the nannies who took care of the baby. I was instructed to write a letter to China, so I wrote, “Dear China, May I please adopt one of the babies who lives in the baby room? I promise to love her and take care of her forever.” Zoe, a.k.a. Mr. Gan, then answered the letter (we haven’t covered the CCAA part of this yet!), “OK, only if you take good care of her.” Then Mr. Gan knocked on my hotel room door (Maya was the door!) and handed me the baby. Big-girl Zoe then acted out the part of baby Zoe, by climbing in my lap and putting her head on my chest and falling asleep, as she knows she did on Gotcha Day.

And then we had to do it all over again, with each of us assigned different roles this time. I got to be the birthmother. Zoe was Mr. Gan again (I really hope we get to see him in Guiping, I think Zoe will be very disappointed if we don’t). Maya refused to be the door because she didn’t like being knocked on!

I’ve found that the hardest thing about being a parent is always questioning whether you’re doing the right things. I never expected to be so uncertain – I feel completely competent in my professional life, so why would I feel like such a dope when it came to child-rearing?! Well, this was definitely one of those moments. I’ve probably scarred them both for life. But it felt right, especially since Zoe was directing all of the action. But who knows. . . .

So after all this theatre, I asked Zoe what she thought about going back to Guiping. She answered, “It’ll be like going back to the very beginning.” Indeed.

Going home . . . to Guangxi Province!

When we came to China, it was really tempting to travel all the time and try to see as much as possible of the vastness of China. But I decided that I wanted us to LIVE in China rather than be tourists in China. So we've stayed in Xiamen, doing like the Chinese people – going to work, going to school, shopping, riding the bus, walking, eating, sleeping.

But we're making an exception to spend a week in Guangxi Province, where Zoe and Maya were born. We leave on Sunday for Nanning. We'll stay at the Majestic Hotel (where we stayed when we adopted Maya – for Zoe’s adoption, we stayed at the YongJiang Hotel in Nanning). On Monday morning, we'll go to Mother's Love Orphanage, where Maya lived from the time she was 2 months old until she went into foster care at age 10 months. We hope that her foster family will be meeting us at Mother's Love on Monday morning.

Then on Monday afternoon we will head for Guiping, where both Zoe and Maya are originally from (Maya was transferred to Mother's Love Orphanage from the Guiping Social Welfare Institute (that's an orphanage for the uninitiated!) when she was 2 months old because she was very small and very sick). Tuesday morning we will visit Guiping SWI and then take the orphanage director and staff to lunch. I also want to take them shopping to buy something that the orphanage needs. We're hoping that Mr. Gan, the retired director of the orphanage, can also join us for lunch – he's the one who handed Zoe to me on October 8, 2001.

In the afternoon, we will be able to visit the girls' finding sites, and I want to see the old orphanage building, too, if it is still standing. (Neither of the girls lived in the new orphanage building.) I want also to visit the nearby town of Jintiancum, which is the site of a famous peasant rebellion in China. Mr. Gan told me that all the children from Guiping are given the surname of Jin because they are named after this town.

On Wednesday morning we go to Guilin, the site of the beautiful Li River and the famous karst mountains pictured frequently in old Chinese paintings. We'll play tourist for two days, and then on Friday we take a cruise on the Li River to the town of Yangshuo. We will stay in Yangshuo until Sunday, and we're promised an opportunity to plant rice with local farmers and take a bamboo raft on the river. Saturday night we will attend a musical performance of some of the local ethnic minority groups. Sunday we fly back to Xiamen.

The girls are very excited about going to Guangxi Province. We've been looking at the blogs of their adoption trips (click on Journey to Zoe or Journey to Maya to the right), and they are looking forward to seeing the sights again.

We'll try to blog while we're gone, but I don't know what our internet access will be, especially in Guiping and Yangshuo. We'll definitely fill you in on all the doings after we get back if we can't post while we're gone!

Visiting the Courthouse in Xiamen

I had the opportunity, together with my American Constitutional Law students, to visit the courts in Xiamen, listen in on a case, and talk to some of the judges of the district afterwards. (Not all of my students were able to attend – some have a class in Marxist Philosophy right after my class (!) and the courthouse field trip took all morning). All of this happened courtesy of Touro Law School, which has a summer program in Xiamen. They have been very kind, and have included me and my law students in several of their activities. Today was a real highlight for me.

The courthouse is brand-new, having been completed only in November. It was a beautiful facility, with the courtroom we visited having flat-screen computer monitors at counsel tables and at the bench. Although it was a small room, the judge and the attorneys spoke through microphones. The judge’s bench had three chairs, though only one judge presided for the case we watched. We were later told that the case was tried under a simplified procedure that allowed for only one judge because the amount in controversy was so low – only 47,000 yuan (about $6200). The people in the photo above are the court reporter (seated) and the attorney for the defendant (yes, "courtroom attire" is more casual in China).

The proceeding was all in Chinese, naturally, but my students explained it all to me afterwards. It was a contract dispute having to do with the defendant’s alleged failure to pay for goods ordered from the plaintiff. The defendant claimed there was no contract, and that the goods were not actually delivered. The plaintiff produced documentary proof, including delivery receipts signed by an employee of the defendant. But the defendant claimed that the employee and the plaintiff had colluded, and that the goods were never delivered.

The procedure seemed very odd – there were no witnesses called, and it seemed the case was to be decided only on documentary evidence (with no sponsoring witnesses for the exhibits!). There was one familiar element – everyone stood when the judge walked in. And the judge was wearing a black robe – but there was a red placket with gold buttons down the front. The judge started the proceeding with some kind of explanatory statement, and then each side made opening arguments. The plaintiff’s attorney then handed a thick sheaf of stapled paper to the bailiff who then handed it to the judge. After the judge looked it over, the bailiff handed the packet to the defendant’s attorney. She then made objections to the evidence, flipping through each page and making sometimes lengthy comments. After she spoke, the plaintiff’s attorney responded, and then it kept going back and forth until I began to wonder whether it would ever end! (I asked my students if there was any limitation on the number of rebuttal opportunities and they said there wasn’t). Finally the arguments concluded, and the judge said he would announce his ruling at a later time.

The way the courtroom was set up was with counsel’s table facing each other rather than facing the judge, so it often seemed that the attorneys were talking to each other rather than to the judge – which would merit an immediate reprimand in an American court. So that seemed pretty peculiar to me.

It seemed the whole thing was a media event, too – not because of the case, but because American law students and professors were attending court. There was a reporter from the local television news with two cameramen filming the judge and the audience. And afterwards the reporter interviewed several of the American students as well as yours truly. So who knows, I may end up on the Xiamen news (but since I have no idea what channel is the local one, I doubt I’ll be able to see myself!).

After the courtroom visit, we got a tour of the courthouse. The lobby was pretty impressive – that’s where we took the picture of me and my students. I thought it was interesting to see the “scales of justice.” I had not thought of it as a universal symbol for the courts, so it was a surprise to see it in a Chinese courthouse. I don’t know if you can see the Chinese touch – there is a dragon engraved in the center balancing the scales. There was also a very traditional “Lady Justice” engraving at the entrance to the courthouse.

And is that the Roman Coliseum?! (Roman law = civil law? China as a civil law country? Marco Polo brought Chinese noodles to the Italians?!) My students couldn’t tell me who the 8 men are (they're not the 8 Immortals, maybe some law-givers?) – but isn’t it interesting that one seems to have a halo?! All in all a very Western façade for a Chinese courthouse, I thought

The lobby made up for the Western façade, though. The wall was covered in Chinese characters, and my students tell me they are all characters for “law.”

After the tour, we met with a group of judges. There were judges from the district courts and from the intermediate court. The intermediate court has both appellate and original jurisdiction, though we didn’t get a very good explanation of which cases get sent in the first instance to the intermediate court. (The man in the orange shirt is the chief judge for the district). (Do you notice anything odd about the picture? How about the fact that all the Americans have big cheesy grins while the Chinese are as sober as, well, judges? I find this a fairly typical cultural difference – the Chinese will smile only in the most casual of photos. Look again at the photo of me and my students . . . . )

The judges were kind enough to spend an hour answering questions from the students. (We were told beforehand not to ask them any questions about the recent demonstration about the chemical plant since it was considered an illegal demonstration and was a very sensitive subject).

The judges told us that the hardest part of their job is the caseload – there has been a big increase in lawsuits in China in recent years. They also explained the role of case law in the Chinese system, which is basically a civil law rather than a common law system. Even cases from the People’s Court (the Supreme Court in China) are considered only persuasive authority, not mandatory authority. Judges are responsible only for applying statutory law. They admitted, however, that sometimes it was difficult to know what law applied or how to apply that law because cases came up that did not seem to be squarely addressed by the statutes. They said then they relied on case law and legal theory.

I had heard that there was no requirement in China that judges be trained in the law. But these judges said that judges were required to pass both the national bar exam (which has only about a 10% pass rate) and the national civil service exam. (Speaking of exams, as we were riding in the bus to the courthouse, one of my students told me that today was the day for the national college entrance exam. She said that the exam used to be in July, and students therefore used to call the month “Black July!”)

I posed a hypothetical for the judges (what can I say? I’m a law professor – it’s what I do!): What if I were to file a case in your court saying that the law which requires women to retire at age 55 and men to retire at age 60 violated the Chinese Constitution, which guarantees equality between the sexes. How would you rule? They all laughed, and seemed truly amused by the question. And they answered as I knew they would – the case would be dismissed. The courts do not have jurisdiction to consider whether statutes are constitutional. I would have to go to Beijing to petition the legislature to change the law, that’s all. I thought this would be an important point for the American students to understand – our concept of judicial review, with a judiciary empowered to strike down legislation as unconstitutional, is not that common in the rest of the world.

I’m really glad I got to see a case in Chinese court – not a typical tourist activity, but a lawyer’s dream destination! And having the opportunity to interact with Chinese judges was hugely interesting.

Mimi's Home!

Mimi left for the States yesterday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. (our time) and just emailed me (at 10 p.m. today our time) that she's safely home. She'll post about her long trip back at a later time, but I just wanted everyone to know she made it.

The girls are missing her already, but are handling her absence well so far. They both had minor meltdowns over the weekend when they saw Mimi packing her bags and realized that she was leaving so soon. But Mimi gave them each a kiss on the hand and told them they just had to put that hand to their cheek each time they thought of her and they'd feel her kiss. In the taxi on the way home from the airport yesterday, Maya kept looking at her hand and saying,"I can still see it!"

The strongest evidence that Mimi has left is that, according to the girls, I can't seem to do anything right. That is, I can't seem to do anything like Mimi does it. Why can't I give them separate showers like Mimi does, instead of making them both take showers at the same time? Why don't I walk them home from school the way Mimi did (a way I call THE LONG WAY!)? Why can't I wash their faces the way Mimi does it? Why do I want Maya to sit quietly to listen to a bedtime story -- Mimi didn't mind if she stood on her head in the bed while Mimi read!

Ah, well, this continual shower of criticism is probably good for me. At least it's good training for when the girls are teenagers!

Xiamen in the news

I ran across this article about environmental protests in Xiamen on June 1:

Several hundred people staged a peaceful demonstration Friday against a
planned chemical plant in southern China on which work was suspended after
protests circulated by mobile phone over possible health dangers.

Protesters gathered for several hours near city hall in Xiamen, where
the facility was to be built, witnesses said. Police were present but there were
no reports of violence or arrests.

What a lovely counterpoint to the tragedy in Tiananmen Square -- June 4 marked the 18th anniversary of that protest, which led to much violence (including deaths) at the hands of army and police and many arrests.

It's tempting to see this as evidence of how far China has opened up in the past 18 years. But of course a small protest in Xiamen is very different from a large one in the midst of central government power. And China's government has embraced environmental protection as a goal, unlike the government's position on democratization in 1989.

Still, given the response to some recent protests in China, it makes me hopeful to read, "Police were present but there were no reports of violence or arrests."

Personal Observations About China

I am leaving today and wanted to post some personal observations of what I saw while I have been in Xiamen. Of course, not everyone will agree with my interpretations of what I saw, but that’s what makes them personal observations! Some were surprising, others were good for a chuckle.

There seems to be as many girls as boys in the kindergarten our girls attend.

People are very friendly and eager to practice their various levels of English.

The pollution is not as bad in Xiamen as I expected. It was a lot worse in Nanning and Guangzhou two years ago.

There does not seem to be as many people who smoke as we saw on our previous trips to China.

The housekeeper has a vacuum cleaner that looks like a small shop vac. It is just as loud as the one we have in our garden shed at home and she attacks the floor with determination.

The sidewalks are incredibly dirty, even though they seem to wash them often.

An umbrella does shield you from too much sun.

Flowers are everywhere. I love to see the beautiful and plentiful blooms.

Fruit taste better than the ones we buy in our supermarkets. It must be because they are picked close by when they are ripe.

This city is very noisy and busy all the time.

A taxi ride is not for the faint of heart! I am used to French drivers but this beats almost all that I have seen of taxi drivers. (The worst was in Lima, Peru when I saw, several times, cars on the left hand lane of a 5 lane avenue make a RIGHT hand turn in front of many cars.)

People love to stare. I assume they stare at Westerners, but seem to do a double-take when they realize we have not one but two little Chinese girls.

The most frustrating thing I had to deal with was that I could not read signs, nor communicate verbally with anyone. Sign language works most of the time.

I always liked to learn new languages but I do not think that I would ever learn Chinese.

I was disappointed in the behavior of the parents in the audience at the kindergarten recital. When their child was dancing they stood in front of anyone and took pictures. When their child finished dancing they talked so loudly to their neighbors or on the phone that it was difficult to hear the music. It seemed to me to be very rude.

Orthodontists must starve here. I did not see anyone with braces and saw many who would greatly benefit from orthodontic work. I saw a lot of people with overbite especially.

I did not get tired of Chinese food. It is quite different from American Chinese food. It is much lighter, less sweet, and very tasty. I especially enjoyed seafood.

It seems that the Chinese only have two kinds of bread/cake batter dough. They come in many shapes but all taste just about the same. Bread is a little sweet and cake is not very sweet at all.

When going to the bakery, it was a bit like buying a pig-in-a-poke. You don’t have any idea of what you are getting since you can’t read Chinese….so you might buy fish buns when you meant to get a sweet bun.

Chinese TV seems to be geared to children. There are many shows with garish colors and seemingly silly adults talking loudly to children. Many of the children (on TV) are performing, singing and/or dancing. From what we saw of the kindergarten performance it goes for real life performers too. Children are encouraged to perform often and everywhere.

Young adults seem to dress very childishly. We have seen a gazillion T-shirts with weird English sayings and lots of Mickey Mouse stuff.

City bus drivers are not friendly and wait for no one. We observed a few times that the driver was unwilling to open the door he was closing while one person was ready to board.

I am so glad I came to see my girls. I will be glad when they get back home and we can see them almost everyday.

On the Beach

Mimi’s time here is winding down (she leaves Monday), so we are trying to squeeze in her must-sees this weekend and the beach was high on the list. Mimi is a beach bunny from way back (she met my dad on the beach – she explains that she and her girlfriends merely wanted to practice their English on the American airmen!). [Our children like to tease me saying I just picked up Daddy on the beach – at age seventeen I was not very practiced at picking up anyone!] [Ha! We’ve seen pictures of that innocent 17-year-old in a bikini – she could have picked up ANYONE she wanted!]

Walking toward Beach Gate, in front of the old dorms, we were distracted by this gorgeous flowering tree.

With the switch from spring into summer we’re getting new flora, even more tropical and showy than when the temperatures were cooler.

At Beach Gate we often see an itinerant cobbler with a hand-cranked sewing machine. You’ll see them throughout Xiamen, and I’ve been told that most of them actually come from Sichuan Province. Whenever I see them, they are always busy with people bringing shoes to repair. I don’t have shoes in need of fixing, but the padded strap on my backpack has been busily unraveling. I asked the cobbler if he could fix it, and he did!

It’s not the prettiest repair job I’ve ever seen, but then he didn’t have much to work with since the cloth was rapidly disintegrating. But it looks much better than it did with the strings of scraggly cloth hanging down, and the price was certainly right – 2 yuan! The girls were fascinated to watch the cobbler at work (and admittedly, so was I!).

It was a hot, hot, hot day at the beach, but we found a spot of shade for the girls to play in. Maya was content to sit in the shade to dig in the sand . . .

. . . but Zoe and Mimi had to venture to the water’s edge to find shells and other detritus tossed up by the tide. (Mimi found sea glass and pottery shards and porcelain pieces to take home for use in a mosaic plant stand. Won't it be fun to point to the mosaic in a few years and say, "I picked up this sea glass on the beach in China . . . .").

I absolutely wanted to put my feet in this side of the Pacific Ocean. I did the same thing with the Atlantic Ocean in Florida and France, and the other side of the Pacific in San Diego.

The palm trees reminded me of the many days I spent on the beach of the Indian Ocean while living in Madagascar as a child. The palm trees were taller than these and I have fond memories of native boys climbing the trees to bring back tasty and refreshing coconuts.

We finished our beach trip with a walk on the boardwalk to a wonderful restaurant. We had a private room with an entire wall of glass that allowed us to look out on the ocean. How nice to enjoy that view while still having the pleasures of air conditioning!

We took a taxi home to avoid the heat of the day, standing in front of this sculpture (said to be the longest sculpture in the world at 247 meters long, the musical notes depict the "Song of Gulangyu.") on the Island Ring Road to flag a cab. Avoiding a hot walk home made that $1 cab ride the best investment of the day!

So we managed to check off another adventure on Mimi’s to-do list, letting her paddle her feet in the far east Pacific Ocean. Next up – the Arctic Ocean?! [No, not the Arctic -- I hate cold!]

At Nanputuo

As Malinda already mentioned in a previous post, yesterday we went to feed the fish in the gardens of Nanputuo Buddhist Temple (fish food is dry, crumbled up ramen noodles).

But more interesting than the fish were the birds. One in particular landed on a lily pad in the water fairly close to where we were – I’m pretty sure he was a fish-eater drawn by the schools of fish scrambling for our fish food. (In fact, Maya decided to leave because she didn’t want to see it eat a fish – though it never did). Any ornithologists out there who can identify the bird?

In spite of the warm temperatures, we were enjoying the peaceful gardens of Nanputuo….

. . . when a great big boom shattered the peace of the temple grounds and startled many, many birds into flight.

Almost every day we hear explosions rattling the air. I thought it was because several tunnels are being built around here, and some of the explosions are probably just that. But a lady told me that what we hear is also the implosion of many buildings being torn down to make room to build newer and better ones.

I have been surprised to see so much new construction around here. Everywhere you look you see new buildings going up, streets or sidewalks being widened or repaired. What a busy city! It is a good thing you can get away from all this noise and enter (usually!) peaceful gardens.

Children's Day

June 1 is Children’s Day in China, and my students tell me it is like Christmas for children. Your relatives buy you presents and your parents are to take you to fun activities. And of course you don’t go to school! The schools have activities for kids, though. Zoe’s and Maya’s kindergarten had a huge musical performance. The older kids and teachers (yes, the teachers!) were the performers and the younger kids were the audience. The thing was held at Jiannan Auditorium at Xiada, and there must have been at least 1,000 people in the (unairconditioned!) hall.

Zoe had to be at the kindergarten at 7:30 a.m., in costume, for makeup. I admit to being a little surprised by her costume (denim skirt and pink t-shirt) – silly me, I expected it to be some Chinese-esque outfit or something dance-recitally. (It’s really silly of me to keep expecting dance performances in China to be some kind of “culturally Chinese” experience. It’s not like every dance performance in the U.S. is square dancing or clogging or something else “typically American.” It’s part of my tendency to exoticize China, I think. Somehow it’s more natural to think of China as it was centuries ago (maybe we should call it “Mulan Syndrome!”) rather than as it is today).

They sure piled on the makeup, including a pancake base that bore no resemblance to the children’s actual skin tones (remember, paler is always considered better in China).

And then sparkly eye-shadow, blusher and lipstick . . .

. . . even for the boys!

I worked hard to make Zoe’s hair pretty, but the teacher had her own idea, and all the girls with long hair (not that many) got the “I Dream of Jeannie” treatment, with tall ponytails (with embedded wire – I’m glad Zoe didn’t put someone’s eye out with her sharp pony!) wrapped in ribbon.

While Zoe and her classmates were getting all gussied up, Mimi and Maya were making their way to the auditorium to wait and wait and wait . . . . Still, Maya had fun because she found some of her classmates to sit with.

But even after the show started, they still had to wait for Zoe’s performance – her class went dead last. We sweltered through 12 other performances first!

Some performances and costumes were what I expected – Chinese silk pajamas and ethnic Chinese costumes, for example.

One class included a cute comic performance by one boy as a pompous provincial official.

Some of the performances were typical of dance recitals, like this class of flowers blooming in spring.

Other dances had a more modern aesthetic, like the kids in cheerleader costumes and track suits acting out Olympic sports with Beijing 2008 banners prominently displayed. And then there was this patriotic military number:

The teachers also got into the act with two dance numbers, and they were quite good! I was really surprised when we got to Xiada kindergarten that there was a piano in each classroom and all the teachers could play. I’ve since learned that part of your college degree in Early Childhood Education includes training in dance and music, and ALL Early Childhood Education majors graduate having learned to play the piano!

(Again, one number that met my expectations of “Exotic China,” and one that ran firmly counter to what I expected!)

FINALLY, it was time for Zoe’s class to perform . . . to the tune of “Hey Mickey!” (Hey Mickey, you’re so fine you blow my mind, hey Mickey!).

Too funny! The kids did a great job, and obviously had tons of fun. Zoe was really delighted, since she regretted missing her ballet recital at home this May. It might not have been ballet, but at least it was a recital!

Since Zoe’s class performed last, they became part of the closing montage, where everyone waved and sang a good-bye song. And there was a parade of middle-aged men who came on stage to shake everyone’s hands – I’d guess they were local education ministry officials. One of the teachers grabbed Zoe and put her stage center – because she’s so cute, of course!

After the performance, we followed Children’s Day tradition and gave Zoe and Maya presents (they each got two dolls in Chinese costumes that I had found at the infamous “Arts & Grafts” shopping center (but not at that shop since it was closed!)). We also did the obligatory fun activities by going to feed the fish at Nanputuo and then to dinner at Lin Duck House.

I bet the girls are going to expect to celebrate Children’s Day every June 1 from now on!

Blind Body Massage

Yesterday I decided to go have a massage. We had read several times that the blind excel in this field, so we picked the “Blind Body Massage” place.

A taxi brought us to the address, and the security guard said to go to the 4th floor. The elevator did not look very safe to me but we did get to the 4th floor. The corridor was very dim, with no decorations that would indicate this was an elevator lobby. After we got off the elevator we saw a bunch of Chinese characters and two arrows, one pointing left and one pointing right; of course we took the wrong one first. We did arrive at the right place, though it wasn’t clear at first that it was a massage facility. It looked like someone’s living room with a TV and clothes hanging to dry on the balcony. The room looked somewhat run down and none too clean. There were several people in the waiting area/living room, and they looked none too clean, either! (I was surprised to find a western style toilet in the restroom, but it was none too clean either, so no sitting! Thank God for strong thigh muscles.)

Somehow they understood what I wanted and showed me the massage room. That room was very clean so I decided to go ahead and have the massage. (Malinda went shopping for the one hour I was on the massage table – that’s where she found the “Arts and Grafts” shop).

The young blind man was brought in by a lady who, I assume, told him there was an old white devil lady on the table. He looked so young and frail that I wondered if he would have the strength to do a massage. Oh boy! That was the hardest massage I have ever had (not the best, this is reserved for a massage therapist in Fort Worth who is outstanding).

He spent about 20 minutes on my face and scalp, so I’m pretty sure he now knows exactly what I look like! I then indicated to him that I wanted him to work on my upper back and shoulder, and he really worked it. He could feel exactly where I have knots that needed kneading. He even found some sore spots I didn’t know I had! He also worked my shoulder more like a physical therapist, circling my arm over my head and to my back again and again, rather than just massaging it.

All in all it was a very good massage and more than worth the price – 30 yuan (about $3.50) for one hour! Even with a 20 yuan tip it was incredibly cheap. Even counting the two taxi rides it was really inexpensive. (Sorry I didn’t think to take a picture.)