Last night we went out for dinner and a little shopping. We ran into one of the Chinese teachers at the mall. what a little small world it is...even in China.
Up and ready for breakfast fairly early. I have now taken to calling home by Skype when I first get up in the morning (like 6:45) and then over lunch about 1pm. Nice to touch base with my husband back at home.
Today five of us American women had an adventure in Guangzhou, a city hypothetically a and half hours away from where we were, but with Saturday traffic and maybe an accident it was three hours by bus. It is China’s 4th largest city.
We were VERY lucky that Lulu, a 22 year old Chinese man who ahs been helping with our project agreed to be our tour guide for the day. He is from that city (we heard it was his “hometown’…yes, if you can have a home town of 8 million people.
Lulu guided us all day long from bus, to bus to subway to park to museum to temple. He did a wonderful job, although he said he wasn’t prepared to drop out of the University in order to drive Americas around on tours.
Highlights included a lovely park (China saved some amazing land in green space.) We saw a 7000-year-old wall from the Ming Dynasty and the statue of the 5 goats or 5 Rams.
Here is what we learned about it:
The sculpture of five rams is the symbol of Guangzhou. It is located in Yuexiu Park, the largest urban parkland in China. Legend has it that five immortal beings wearing robes of five colours came to Guangzhou on the backs of rams. Each being carried rice and gave it to the people as a sign that Guangzhou would be free of famine. A sculpture was erected in Yuexiu park in 1959 to pay tribute to this story, and to the origins of the name Guangzhou (which means city of goats).
Did I mention it was beastly hot and we were dripping in sweat? That is a refrain often on this trip.
We also went to a lovely Taoist temple:
The open-air Taoist temple offers visitors a quiet retreat from Guangzhou’s busy streets and a chance to see some lovely architecture through the incense smoke.
As so many of these lovely spiritual sites, it was a peaceful pleasure to just be inside.
We got the added bonus of being there when a monk climbed the bell tower and played a huge drum. Yah!
Then we shot a couple of photos in front of the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall. Lulu explained that he was “like George Washington” only Chinese.
Then it was off to Shamian Island which “was Guangzhou’s foreign enclave. The island, translated to Sandspit Island, is home to former British and French warehouses and factories. It’s a quiet area blanketed in the shade of aged trees, is now home to cafes and boutiques.
The former Victorian-era buildings are a stark contrast to the rest of Guangzhou. The riverfront area is a hive of activity in the mornings with locals doing tao chi and fishing in the Pearl River.”
We saw some of the
hive of activity during a rainstorm when people were all gathered under an overpass of the freeway, a man playing the saxophone, playing cards and doing exercises.
An interesting feature of the card game was that if you lost you had to clip a clothespin to your ear. Lulu couldn’t really explain why. It is like playing something where if you drink you have to drink a shot or something. Who knew?
A highlight for me was going to the Swan Hotel:
The White Swan Hotel is the most popular hotel in Guangzhou for adopting families. All families adopting in China must end their trip in Guangzhou because the only American Consulate in China that handles international adoptions is in Guangzhou.
When we walked into the front door there were about ten likely white adoptive families with their adopted baby and toddler Chinese little girls. They all looked as happy and as serious as one could be being at the end of this VERY long process. It brought tears to my eyes. It especially was moving because my husband and I had explored doing a Chinese grille adoption about 16 years ago, and I so could see what a different road this would have mean for our lives. Wow!
I
wish great blessings to all of those families and am so happy that these children will have good homes. I used to have a bumper sticker on my car that read “every child a wanted child”. I still believe that would be the best for the world.
We made a stop to both McDonalds and Starbucks. Sometimes a little taste of home sounds pretty good.
We ended the evening with a very gracious dinner hosted by Lulu’s mother who is an English teacher at South China Normal University.
She has taught English for 30 years, and was so lovely in meeting us and offering us such a wonderful l welcome.
The food was great, and we also enjoyed the stroll across the campus. This university has 40,000 students and is where Lulu is a 4th year student in graphic design.
Then we made a very mad dash across town through the subway to catch the last train back to Shekou. We might have just missed it, but they had told Lulu early the wrong time, so we actually had 20 minutes to spare. Whew! That was exhausting.
I also met a wonderful little Chinese girl on the subway whose name was "Lucky," Although she spoke only a
couple of words of English and her parents not much more, we spent a lovely 30 minutes playing baby games...peek a boo, and grab hands. Some things transcend language and are such a blessing! Yah for babies!
We arrived back home at about midnight havening had only a taste of the city, but a lovely time.
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