12 Days in China-- Day Two

DAY TWO

                Our first morning in China, and I still had no way to contact my family back at home. My stress level was slowly rising, like mercury in a thermometer. We headed down to our first breakfast buffet. An amazing assortment of Asian and Western breakfast choices. I noticed one of the women from our tour, Joanna, a hygienist, typing on her smart phone. She graciously let me send my husband a text. I told him we had survived the plane ride (contrary to his dire predictions before I left) and I asked him to try to get in touch with the phone company and see if there was a possibility my phone would work like they had said it would.

                Back in the room, Des and I tried to figure out how to work around the Chinese electrical grid to use our hair styling tools and charge my ipad and her ipod. The camera battery was easy, its charger was rated for high or low voltage, so we could plug it in directly. Finally between an adapter, a converter, a small extension cord borrowed from my dad, and a surge protector that included USB ports, we had an arrangement that seemed to work for everything else.

View from our hotel in Shanghai

                 We met the tour group in the lobby of the hotel, Joanna found me and showed me my husband’s reply: “kay." Only one word, but it was contact, and I felt much better. I was also able to email my mother from my Uncle Delmar’s ipad. So having wirelessly connected East and West, I could concentrate on being an American tourist.

                 More time on the bus, and intriguing daytime views of Shanghai. The people of the city were dressed très chic, with black being the most common wardrobe basic. I noticed many trees, more than I have seen in most US cities I have been in. The throngs of motorcycles and scooters often carried couples or a small, one-child family. Some of the motorcycles had been enclosed and functioned as mini taxis. All of them wove in and out of traffic precariously. Pedestrians crossed streets at their own peril. Buses were the ultimate kings of the road, with the bulk to back up whatever move they made. Our bus driver was the first of several who would all prove to be absolutely amazing drivers, blowing past people and things with only inches to spare and squeezing into tight places with pinpoint precision.

                The tour guide Emily told us some things about life in China, including a very recent change in the one-child policy. Apparently for a while now, if both parents were each the only child in their family, they could have two children. But the government just decided that if one parent was an only child, they can have two children without paying the huge fine. Just from what we saw in our touring, children seem to be greatly outnumbered by adults, but the reality may have been distorted by other factors, perhaps they were in school or they don’t go out on the town as much as adults. We didn’t notice groups of children playing together anywhere we went. Usually we saw the one child being doted on by parents and/or grandparents, although Emily explained that traditionally most Chinese do not express a lot of affection to their children; she does tell her young daughter that she loves her once in a while, but she felt this was as a result of her exposure to Western habits. She explained that most often both parents work, and so the grandparents have been left with a lot of the responsibility of raising the children. But it is getting to be less common for multiple generations to live together. The new generation wants to live in more modern housing, including a personal bathroom, not one shared by several families.

The price of housing is another issue, since it is so expensive and keeps climbing. We saw some six story apartment buildings, these were the older ones with stairs, no elevators. The newer and more numerous modern apartment buildings were much taller, and included the convenience of an elevator. In the cities, the traditional preference for a son has changed since the parents of the son are expected to provide housing to the new couple, while the parents of the bride only have to provide a much less expensive car. So a daughter is a good thing.

The greatest thing I learned about Shanghai—the men do the cooking!

Our tour group was taken to a medical center where a woman named Naomi founded a program for poor children needing medical treatment, The Children's Garden. She had originally come to China to help a friend who ran an orphanage and who had developed cancer. Naomi had stayed on to run the orphanage when the friend passed away, but then the government took over orphanages. Her energy was put into this other program, and she met us with a tiny baby strapped to her front. It turned out he was eight months old but much more petite than my three-month-old nephew! He was going through surgeries for a cleft, and his procedures would continue over the better part of a year. 

I got to hold the tiny 8-month-old.

                Inside we met the other children, including a girl who had been born without ears. One of the young boys was extremely gregarious and was thrilled to see himself when one of the women on the tour, Holly, turned on the camera on her phone. Then he wandered over to Des and nearly destroyed her ipod as he bashed it gleefully onto the ground.

                We ate a Chinese meal for lunch, and I discovered that I absolutely LOVE real Chinese food, which is not exactly like the Americanized version. (In fact, while writing this, I got an intense craving for good Chinese food and had to take a break and search out some Chinese recipes.) There was rice, of course, and then several other vegetable and chicken dishes placed on a rotating turntable at the center of the table. Des showed off her skills with chopsticks, but I was more intent on filling up on all the good food and stayed with a fork.

                Fully satiated, we were off to the Bund, a waterfront walkway along the Huangpu River that is a popular gathering place with fabulous views of the Shanghai high-rise skyline. We had our first experience with Chinese people asking us to pose with them in pictures, including with a wedding couple. Just about everyone is plugged in to their smart phone, and they seem to collect pictures of themselves with light-haired, blue-eyed Westerners. It kinda felt like being a celebrity, and of course Des got the record number of requests, and would continue to do so for the remainder of our trip. 

Des seated with Liam at the Bund. Look at that skyline!

We were asked to pose with this couple.

                Next we were dropped off at the train station for our ride on the bullet train to Beijing, reaching speeds of over 150 miles per hour. Our stay in Shanghai had been short but left an impression of a modernized city with a predominantly young adult population. Notwithstanding its modernity, we had encountered our first squatters (Eastern-style toilets, which do not seem to have an odor killing trap designed into them) and learned the value of bottled water.

An Eastern toilet, not too bad if you've been camping before.

A well-dressed Shanghai dog.

Views from the bus in Shanghai

                The five hour train ride showed us a view of many populated areas before it got too dark to see much more than lights. Our hotel room, even more beautiful than the last, overlooked a large area that had been a parking lot during the Olympics. We would see many people flying kites from there during our stay in Beijing. The wi-fi seemed to be trying to work on my ipad, but not quite succeeding; however, being from a rural area, this wasn't entirely uncommon, and I knew that sometimes you just have to give electronics some time to adjust to their new surroundings (touchy, emotional little things).
                We turned in for the night, our alarms set for an early rise. My world clock on my ipad said that it was eight o'clock in the morning at home-- my family would just be starting the day that I was about to leave behind.

12 Days in China--Day One

Recently my daughter and I joined my dad on a trip to China. We were part of a tour group that had been arranged around a group of dentists who would be doing some voluntary dental work at a clinic in Xi'an. It was a amazing opportunity, especially since my sister-in-law and I write the Timekeepers series, a historical adventure series that includes a character set in ancient China. So, overcoming my trepidation about leaving my husband with our three youngest (with the help of my amazing mother), I set out on my longest journey to date. Over the next several posts I will blog about our experiences in this unique country, as we visited four of its most well known locations.

DAY ONE

                Even though I had been working long hours to prep my household for this day for a long time, I still had an enormous amount of work left. The pile of paperwork was shrinking, but I kept glancing at the clock as it got later and later in the day. At one point I realized that there was no way I would be able to sleep if I wanted to finish the paperwork and the final bit of laundry I had left, gather up two weeks’ worth of schoolwork for my children, take a shower (it would be over 24 hours before I would get another chance), and pack before my deadline of 2 AM. I’ll sleep on the airplane, I told myself. I quickly checked the time in Shanghai, China, my travel destination. At 2AM here it would be 5PM the next day there. Perfect! I shouldn’t be asleep then anyway. I would sleep at the airport a few hours later and maybe my internal clock would be switched to China time when we arrived. My daughter called from college, she had finished finals and was trying to clean up her apartment for the end-of-semester check-out before she started packing. She wouldn’t be sleeping that night, either.

                Packing is always a last minute thing for me. I make the list ahead of time, and since this was the farthest I had ever traveled, I began the list a couple of weeks ahead so I could add to it as I thought of things. My uncle had made the trip about ten times, so he sent tips for everyone, which helped. I pulled out the suitcase in the afternoon, but I didn’t really start packing seriously until everything else on the To Do list was finished, about a half hour before time to go. At about 1:45 AM, while I was in the middle of dividing things between my carry-on bag and check-in suitcase, my dad called to make sure I had awakened. I laughed and told him I hadn’t slept yet. I made sure I stuffed in a pack of toilet paper and a couple of boxes of Wheat Thins and Cheez-its, and bags of Snickers and Twix. Just in case. It was a few minutes after 2 when I shoved the final item into my suitcase. The only living being awake with me was the dog, and he kept whimpering as he recognized luggage as a sign that I would be leaving for a while. At that point I realized I had forgotten to eat dinner, so I grabbed a couple of pieces of toast for the road, kissed my sleeping family good-bye (only a couple of them mumbled something to me, no one opened their eyes), threw my bags into the car, and away I went.

                Dad and I drove to the nearest airport, a tiny little thing with a single gate. We flew into Seattle, where we had a lay-over for several hours. After a nap on some fairly comfortable sets of double seats we found, we made our way to the tram that took us to the gate where my daughter, Deseret, was flying in with another college girl named Kaylee. The rest of our tour group trickled in from their various destinations, including the American tour guide, Alicia, and her 9 year-old son, Liam. We talked to her briefly and found out that she lives in Salt Lake City, and besides leading tours, she owns a business called Chic on a Shoestring. Which explained the fabulous outfit she was wearing and the well-put-together wardrobe we would see over the next days.

                The flight was over twelve hours long. Deseret was in heaven, enjoying the break from her hectic college schedule, the next few hours of her life in this small space boiled down to the things that really matter to a young adult: sleep, food, entertainment. We were served a dinner, lunch, and breakfast, and between those we slept and watched a couple of movies and tv episodes on the amazing monitors fitted in each seat-back, from which you can choose from a long list of titles. I started feeling restless and cramped, but Des seemed to be perfectly comfortable.
                As the airplane approached the runway, Des and I looked eagerly out the little window, waiting to descend below the smog and get our first view of China. Suddenly there it was, a glimpse of rice paddies before the wheels shuddered onto the asphalt. We looked at each other with wide eyes. "We're in CHINA!!"

                At the airport in Shanghai we met our first Chinese guide, Emily. Obviously this was not her given name, but we soon discovered that all of the Chinese people who knew English had chosen or been given an English name. She led us to our bus, and then as we wove through traffic, she introduced us to the Chinese “International Flag,” what they call the laundry that hangs outside of every apartment, since no one uses a dryer. I wasn’t sure if that was just the culture, or if it was encouraged/mandatory. Whatever the reason, it made sense—in a city of around 28 million it would save a lot of electricity. Tall high-rise apartments were the most notable feature of the city, they were everywhere. The city was beautifully lit at night, and Emily pointed out the most famous buildings. The other thing we noticed right off were the hundreds of motorcycles, bicycles, and electric scooters. They were said to help the pollution, but we wouldn’t see much of the sky the entire time we were in China, and sometimes the haze blurred nearby buildings. One guide suggested that the pollution was mainly industrial, much of it from areas outside the city.

                That first night we got our first taste of a Chinese market street. It was somewhat like what I had seen in Mexico or Hawaii. I was familiar with the most popular items in each stall as souvenirs my dad had brought home from his previous trips to China, so Des and I spent our time looking at the lighted koi pond and Chinese buildings, which would have been very peaceful and serene away from the hustle of the market with its roving vendors on lighted wheels flashing assorted laser toys for sale.

                Des and I shared a room at our hotel, the Radisson Blu. I was happy to find out that the hotel provided two complimentary bottles of water. Bottled water would become a prized commodity over the next few days, since our Western stomachs couldn’t handle Chinese water; there was even a sign at each hotel warning us not to drink the water from the faucet unless it was boiled. I was stressed by the fact that I had no way to contact my family since I couldn’t get the wi-fi to work on my ipad, but I was so tired that I fell into a deep sleep in no time at all.