China

Itinerary

Sophie has the week of Nov 1 off school so the timing was right for our first homeland visit to China since we arrived here in Manila in early July. Nov 1 is also a national holiday.

Here's our itinerary for our first homeland visit:

Oct 30: Leave Manila at 13:30 p.m. for Shanghai on PAL Airlines. Arrive 16:20 p.m. at Pudong Airport in Shanghai and transfer to HongQiao Airport for 19:30 p.m. flight on Nanchang Airlines. Arrive at ChangBei International Airport in Nanchang at 20:30 p.m. Meet Bruce Yu, our guide in Jiangxi Province. Stay at Gloria Plaza Hotel in Nanchang.

Oct 31: Local sightseeing in Nanchang (Tengwang Pagoda, Youming Temple, Bayi Park). Stay at Gloria Plaza Hotel

Nov 1 and Nov 2: Travel to Gao'An (50 km sw of Nanchang). Visit Gao'An SWI to meet the directors and nannies, view Sophie's original adoption file and abandonment site, local sightseeing in Gao'An. Stay overnight at Gao'An Hotel on Nov 1 and return to Nanchang on the afternoon of Nov 2. Stay at Gloria Plaza Hotel on Nov 2.

Nov 3 and Nov 4: Travel to Fuzhou (75(?) km se of Nanchang). Visit Fuzhou SWI to meet the directors and nannies, view Lucy's original adoption file and abandonment site, local sightseeing in Fuzhou. Stay overnight at Fuzhou Hotel on Nov 3 and return to Nanchang on the afternoon of Nov 4. Stay at Gloria Plaza Hotel on Nov 4.

Nov 5: Local sightseeing in Nanchang in the morning. Fly to Shanghai in the afternoon. Meet Uncle Li Ping, our guide in Shanghai. Stay at Shanghai Hotel.

Nov 6: Local sightseeing in Shanghai. Stay at Shanghai Hotel.

Nov 7: Flight back to Manila on PAL at 10:30 a.m.

Nov 8: Back to school for Sophie and Lucy and back to work for me.

But first you need a visa

Before going to China, one must first obtain a 30 day visitor visa. In an adoption journey, one simple fills out a form and sends it, along with a photo and a passport, to the adoption agency who handles the rest. In Manila, it works a bit differently. The Chinese embassy in Manila is in Dasmarinas Village – one of the upper scale gated communities here, mostly inhabited by expatriates, rich Filipinos and embassies. It’s also about a 10 minute taxi ride from my office so I figured I could just hop in a cab on my lunch break and head over and drop off the passports –all very civilized.

But after phoning, just to check the hours of operation, I was informed that, in fact, the visa section was on the 10th floor of a building down in old Manila and it was open each day only from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Oh. Ok, no problem, will just hire a car and head down early one morning, have the car wait for me, probably half an hour or so and then drop me off at work. The building turned out to be some horrible office building, almost empty judging by the look of the 9th floor (as it turns out, the elevators only go to the 9th floor and you have to walk up the fire escape to get to the 10th floor).

Upon arriving, it was total chaos and wall to wall people with no signs indicating much of anything and only the security guard at the top of the stairs guiding traffic. After an hour of standing in line and inching along, I somehow figured out that I was in fact standing in the line for people who had come last week to drop of their visa applications and they were now here to pay and pick up the visa. Bad scene. But some nice folks in the application line let me into their line which was snaking around the room and moving very slowly. Total of three hours in line to just drop off the application with strict instructions to return the following Thursday precisely to pick up the visa.

So the following Thursday I think I’m a little smarter and have this all figured out – I arrive at 8:30, ½ hour before the doors open. Problem though, is that everyone else has it “figured out” too – there had to be 200 people in the line in front of me already waiting to get into the building. So I stood in line for more than an hour outside, snaking around. They could only let one elevator-full of people in the building at a time. Fortunately, only ½ hour more wait inside to get the visas and off I went. Interesting thing was the fees for the visas: 900 pesos for Filipinos (about $22 Canadian) and 1,250 pesos for foreigners BUT a whopping 2,500 for Americans. I asked one of the folks in line behind me regarding this and the response was a simple “well, Americans have a lot of money”.

Day One - Saturday October 30

We're in China - in Nanchang - at the Gloria Plaza Hotel to be precise.

We got here about 9:30 this evening and the kids are just getting to sleep. I thought I'd bring my company laptop along, if for no other reason than to download pictures once my compact flash cards get filled up (which I’m sure they will). But they have complimentary high speed internet here and I simply plugged it the computer and there it was. Didn't even follow the instructions that they provided - the computer just figured it out.

The flights were horrible so we haven't had a good start to the trip - Lucy is just so volatile, stubborn, independent, willful (can I think of any more adjectives?) and she doesn't pay attention to anyone. Hated the seat belts. Kept squiggling and kicking the seat in front of us. Spilled part of her lunch. Wanted things I couldn't give her (macaroni and cheese, apple juice, her grandpa, rice crackers etc and wasn't very negotiable about the answer "no"). Fell asleep finally, three hours into the three hour and 20 minute flight so had to carry her to clear customs half asleep.

But before all that started, she got all wired up at the Manila airport - there was a strange boy in line behind us - a Filipino boy who was 6 and who was returning to Shanghai with his parents who work for the Philippine consulatate or something like that. He was a little too friendly - at first I actually thought was a beggar since he came up out of nowhere and stood very close to me and was touching my shoulder purse with both hands. Turns out that's just his style - he was touching Sophie and wanted to hold her hand or hug her and just wouldn't leave her alone - and Sophie doesn’t react well to these types of things so at first she just clung to me and was circling around me as this kid was following her. Then the three of them started running around in circles in the crowd. He kept wanting to chase Lucy, who was totally game but was also getting totally wired up and of course, bumped into people and fell flat on her face a couple of times. My attempts to get Sophie to rein her in were futile since Sophie kept saying "I don't want him touching me". The parents should have stepped in immediately but instead I had to and tell him a few times not to chase Lucy and not to touch Sophie. But too late - Lucy was so wired up as to be out of control. Standing in line for 45 minutes to check in didn't really help the situation.

So, when we finally get through check-in, customs, immigration, security, we headed for the bathroom and coming out, Lucy's nose started to bleed, pretty profusly. We were immediately surrounded by hoards of airport personnel, cleaning staff (blood on the floor at this point plus on her dress and blanket). Lucy was freaking out even more because blood was on her precious blanket. One of the airport personnel was a nurse, who was actually on the lookout for agricultural violations - she notified the medical clinic at the airport and they insisted that we come down to the clinic – that she couldn’t get on the plane like this. In the end, that worked out ok since we washed the blood out of Lucy's blanket and also washed her dress clean too (and used an iron as a clothes dryer). She also got a nice souvenir in the form of a surgical glove filled with ice for her nose, which she proudly carried, holding it to her forehead like a badge of honour. So all was well, or so I thought. By this time she was really tired. I hoped she'd fall asleep on the flight to Shanghai, but noooooo, she had other plans (see top of post).

But now we've arrived in Nanchang and it’s now 10 p.m. and they're asleep in bed, where I hope to be soon too. From our one walk-through of the hotel lobby seems this hotel is crawling with adopted babies. The gift shop seems to have adapted well and is selling strollers and other baby items. There were also a couple of new families walking the hallway on our floor. No doubt, there will be a bunch more tomorrow morning at breakfast

Day 2 - Sunday October 31, 2004

It’s Halloween tonight in most places in North America but we’re missing it all. China doesn’t celebrate Halloween. But that’s not to say that Sophie and Lucy went without the celebration. Back in Manila, last Friday, my office had their annual kid’s Halloween party and then there was another party at our apartment building. They were both fairy princesses at my work and then they decided to change costume for the next party so Sophie was a witch and Lucy was Snow White. So, don’t feel bad for them – they got more than their fair share of candy.

It was a bit of a hazy, overcast, humid day here in Nanchang – the weather report was for 32 degrees C and it sure felt like it. We met a couple of adoptive families at breakfast – they were leaving for Guangzhou today so this must mark the end of one adoptive cycle for the hotel and a new one will begin.

We visited Tengwang Pavilion today. Although this was my third visit, it’s one of the “must sees” of Nanchang (possibly the only one). And who did we run into there but a group of Chinese men from Shandong province who we had met last night at the airport in Shanghai while waiting for our flight to Nanchang. They had all made a big fuss over Lucy and Sophie at the airport and had picked up Lucy to hold her. So when we saw them today, they remembered both Sophie and Lucy’s names. After getting the official explanations from Bruce as to who we were, I got the “thumbs up” from them all. We climbed up to the top of the pavilion and got a nice view of the city and the Gan River. Bruce explained that the Gan is a tributary of the Yangtzee and is over 1,000 km in length and heads into Fujian province towards the ocean. On the other side of the Gan River, there is a “new Nanchang” cropping up – the government offices have moved over there and there is a lot of new apartment construction happening. After buying a few souvenirs in the gift shops, we wandered around some of the gardens and ponds surrounding the Pavillion. And Sophie and Lucy got their first taste of Chinese toilets – they were less than impressed.

We had a great lunch at a local restaurant – the house specialty was steamed pork covered in glutinous rice – it arrived in a steamer basket and the pork riblets were arranged on the bottom in a star shape and the rice was arranged on top. Very nice looking and very tasty. Bruce kept apologizing for how busy and noisy the restaurant was, but there was no need – it was great food and it wasn’t that crowded. When they were ordering, I could see that Bruce was getting into heated discussions with the waitress, who was somewhat rude. He was asking for certain dishes (niu rou and ji – beef and chicken) and she kept pushing back, complaining about how busy it was today. Then all of a sudden, we heard firecrackers going on outside – seemed like they went on for several minutes and it was very loud – Bruce explained that it was a wedding and the wedding banquet was probably at a nearby restaurant and it was traditional to let off all these firecrackers. Sophie ate her meal with chopsticks – I’m totally impressed with how well she did with them – don’t know where or how she figured out how to use them but was quite adept. Lucy, on the other hand, was enjoying herself in other ways – had a cup of tea, class of apple juice and various food items in a bowl and was moving bits and pieces of all three back and forth between plate, bowl and cup until a total mess was created – seemed as usual, totally oblivious to my protestations.

We then returned to the hotel for a much needed nap in the early afternoon – all three of us – before heading out for a bit more sightseeing. But the beds at this hotel are rock hard – don’t think I’ve slept on anything so uncomfortable since sleeping on a futon years ago.

We first visited the Yao Ming Temple – it’s right at the entrance to Ba Yi Park (August First Park) so wonder how we missed it last time we were here. There was a big Buddhist celebration going on, complete with a parade of all the followers around the temple area, chanting and praying. We didn’t get to see inside the main temple area because of the celebration but there was a huge bronze or copper Buddha in one of the front buildings. Lucy was not exactly interested in “the big statue” but instead started playing a bit with a young Chinese girl about the same age as her. Bruce and the mother had a long discussion, explaining us, but also it turns out that this young girl was an abandoned baby and was adopted by the mother. Not sure the circumstance of the abandonment or what procedures were gone through to adopt the child, if any, but Bruce did indicate that the the child wasn’t a relative of the woman’s, but was a foundling.

Then we wandered through Ba Yi Park for a while. Climbed some big rocks, watched some Chinese music being performed, watched some badminton players and visited the white pigeons. Got lots of complaints by the park goers about lack of suitably warm clothing on Sophie and especially on Lucy – it was still pretty warm out, but ok, it was maybe starting to be dusk and there was a bit of drizzle. People were feeling Lucy and Sophie’s bare arms (both were wearing sleeveless dresses and had left their jackets in the van) – feeling for how cold they must certainly be. For Lucy, I wrapped her blanket around her shoulders and that seemed to alleviate the concerns.

We had dinner at another local restaurant – not nearly as good food as lunch, but much quieter. Lucy had another enjoyable meal putting tea and apple juice in her noodles, squeezing the liquid out the noodles and then stuffing them into a drinking glass before finally attempting to eat them with chopsticks.
Back at the hotel, we went swimming – nice swimming pool with a view of the Tengwang pavilion all lit up. Then we went for a short walk around the neighbourhood but many of the shops were closed up by then, so we headed home for sleep. Tomorrow we head down to Gao’An.

Aside

Interesting how many web sites you can’t access here – not even from a hotel that would generally be frequented only by westerners.

I tried to get onto a couple of sites that were mentioned in emails I’d received recently. One was the Canadian site adoptionhelper. Came up “cannot access this site”. Couldn’t get onto my blogs. And another adoption site that someone recommended to me. Was told by someone that sites permitting individual web sites are problematic too. But Ebay is available and so is Amazon.

Day 3 - Monday, November 1

In the morning we headed out to Gao’An, crossing the Gan river and getting a better look at all the new development on the other side of the river – the new Nanchang. An interesting ride to Gao’An since the road was being worked on in various places so we crossed over to the opposite side and shared the road with the traffic going the other direction. Passed through first lots of industry and factories, then lots of brick making factories – the soil is a rich red colour that would make Prince Edward Island jealous – it must produce wonderful clay bricks. Then past lots of rice fields – there are two rice harvests a year, the last harvest being about a month ago. But there were lots of farmers with water buffalo working the soil in preparation for the next planting.

Entering into Gao’An, lots of new apartment buildings and shops. About 250,000 people live in the city.

We arrived at the Gao An Bin Guan hotel, a nice sized but pretty much empty hotel on a street with lots of little shops. We got a “suite” – a one bedroom suite, sparsely furnished but large, and with two televisions and a mah jong table but pretty short on anything else (like towels). Guests don’t have keys – there is a concierge on each floor to open the door for you (if you can find her).

After unpacking, we headed out to the orphanage right away.

Orphanage details (no particular order)

• The current Director has been there for 5 years, is 40 years old, married with one 14 year old daughter who goes to Gao’An No. 2 High School, the high school that Sophie was found at when she was one day old
• Assistant director is a much younger female (didn’t get her name)
• 60 or 70 babies at once in the orphanage (but didn’t seem like that many to me)
• we saw two babies that were identified as going to be adopted – their new families were not yet identified but they had been recommended for adoption
• The previous director, Madame Jia, has retired
• The current Director studied at administrative college for 3 years and then got appointment as orphanage director – he says he’ll be there for 20 more years then will retire
• Only 3 babies have been found at No. 2 High School: Sophie and a set of twins (how he remembers this, I don’t know)
• There is a new orphanage building under construction – will be finished next year and decorated the following year – large area outside town in the northern suburbs – will have a children’s play area, a medical clinic, a swimming pool, apartments for the seniors etc – so far, just the orphanage building is being built so far; government funding for part and private donations for the rest (mostly from the $3,000 orphanage donations but could also have been from other donations from families)
• Beside the current orphanage, there is an older 2 or 3 story building – this was the original orphanage building but is not safe for people to live in now – there were a lot of clothes hanging outside and they said they just used it for drying clothes.
• Orphanage is in a rural like village “in the suburbs” but it was close to the Gao An Bin Guan Hotel which seemed to me to be in the city proper, if not right in the heart. Out of the hotel, turn right, at the end of the road, turn right and pass by a new Chinese watchtower – built in the last 2 years on the riverbank. A bit further down is a bridge going over the river (the Jin Jiang river, if I caught the name correctly). On the other side of the river, take a quick left/right into the rural village and down several roads a right turn (I think) and then a left into the orphanage. Maybe a 10 minute drive from the hotel.
• Across the street from the orphanage, there were long rice noodles drying on racks – in the summer they dry for 2 days; in the winter, 4 days; then they are packaged up and sold.
• Orphanage started international adoptions in 1994; 600 babies have been adopted to the United States, Canada, Spain, England, Netherlands, Norway, Finland, which is interesting since I only know of 3 others in Canada (including Adyn, Sophie’s buddy who was adopted on the same day)
• Only about 10 or 12 school girls living in the orphanage; we met the school girl I’ve been sponsoring; she is in the third grade of middle school; she was very shy and didn’t like the attention (not unlike Sophie, being shy and not liking the attention).
• The second floor we visited three different baby rooms. Each had room for 3 cribs, most were occupied. Each was set up like an apartment with the baby rooms with a bed for the caregiver, a playroom with foam tiles, another room with old wooden potty that had been used for 20 or more years, a walker or two, a TV, a refrigerator, a couple of chairs, a kitchen and a bathroom with a hole in the ground toilet and a couple of water basins for bathing the children.
• In one of the rooms, they showed us a crib, saying that was the crib that Sophie was in; but I had thought that Sophie was in foster care but Sophie seemed pleased to know that was her crib (who knows the truth and how can they remember after all these years); I later clarified that Sophie’s foster mother has now moved away with her husband who has gotten work somewhere else; Bruce had inquired with the Director about the foster mother and says that they tried to find her; I have no reason to disbelieve, but yet no reason to believe.
• Lots of photos all around the walls of western families who have adopted.
• Nothing new found in Sophie’s orphanage file except a form that noted the name of the person who was the person who confirmed that Yu Ping was the person who found Sophie; Yu Ping was from out of the province and it’s not known where she is now; but the other person (can’t remember name) works at No. 2 High School in the cafeteria; when we were at the school’s front gates, the security guard wondered why we were hanging around; Bruce explained and then a teacher who happened to be there said he knew this person and would find him for us – he took us inside the school grounds and found him – the man claimed to have no knowledge of finding Sophie – he was working at the front gate back 6 years ago but doesn’t remember anyone finding a baby; long discussions ensued between Bruce, the teacher and a few other bystanders and in the end, the man just said no; but later the orphanage director said he’s sure the man DID remember but was saying no just to not get involved, that he was old and was distrusting due to the Cultural Revolution; but who knows

We dropped off two boxes of strollers at the orphanage (100 Y for each stroller – 8 in total for Gao’An, the other 12 being for Fuzhou). After visiting the orphanage, we went to see the site of the new orphanage which seems to be on the other side of town and well into the outskirts (actually, in the northern suburbs) – it’s a huge piece of property out in the countryside of rolling hills.

We then stopped for lunch at a restaurant at the top of the road that the new orphanage is located on. It was one of those types of Chinese restaurants that consists of individual rooms. From what I could see, we were the only patrons there. We had three different types of bean curd dishes – seems to be a specialty of the Gao’An area, in addition to the spicy cuisine of Jiangxi. The orphanage director seems like a well-informed individual – he knew the names of several Canadian cities and both the current and the former Canadian prime ministers (which, with apologies in advance to any Americans reading this, is a current events test that many of the residents of our neighbour to the south would not be able to pass, I’m afraid) and warned me of the terrorist threats in the Philippines.

After lunch we went to buy the air conditioner – 4200 yuan – I have the receipt and it is supposed to be delivered to the orphanage tomorrow. I also have a brochure describing the unit with photos. It’s the type that goes on the wall up high and there is a separate compressor like the ones at my apartment in Manila. Bruce says it can also act as a room heater in the winter, as well. That’s the best I can do to ensure that it actually is purchased and will be used at the orphanage but I have my suspicions as to whether anything bought for the orphanage is actually used there – I didn’t see anything new or fancy like toys or strollers or anything – the only toys were the foam blocks on the ground and the strollers looked like old painted wicker ones. There were lots of walkers but very old plastic ones. I don’t know if any other orphanage groups recently have taken gifts, but there is no evidence of anything “new”.

After buying the air conditioner, we went to No. 2 High School. The school is on the other side of the bridge near the Gao’An SWI “village”. Perhaps 10 minute drive beyond that. Sophie was left at the gate to this school. We were standing at the gate when the security guard wanted to move us away but Bruce intervened and explained what we were doing there – a that point, we met a teacher who said he knew the man named on one of the forms as the person who confirmed that Yu Ping had found an abandoned baby back in 1998 and took us inside the school grounds. It is a very large, nice looking school – 3,000 students we were told – a track area and lots of students were out in the track area playing soccer and other games on the grass inside the track; plus lots more students doing outdoor activities in a large paved area beyond that – “exercise” machines, badminton, maybe basketball, bicycles etc. We got lots of stares and “hellos”. Across the street from the school were rice fields being ploughed by farmers and their water buffalos. But it isn’t really rural – to the left and right was rows of shops etc.

There were not many cars in Gao’An – lots of motorcycles and many, many bicycles, but not many cars. In Gao’An, there was a spot we wanted to make a left turn but you could only turn right at that point since there was a median blocking us from making a propere left turn. No problem, according to the director, just turn left, be careful going against the traffic and cross back over into your own lane when you can. So we did that and the driver joked that the director would have to pay any traffic fine that he might get.

We then said our goodbye’s to the orphanage director, who said to please come back another time. ( I later found out that both Bruce and the director misunderstood the donation situation for the strollers and the air conditioner and Bruce thought that the entire donation was coming from me – perhaps that explains the extremely friendly welcome. I clarified immediately and the Director will figure it out once he reads the letter put together by one of the other Gao’An parents who collected the funds and created a photo album that was presented to the Director).

We went back to the hotel for a rest and for Lucy to have a nap – it was now about 3 p.m. and she was starting to “go” on us. She had had a great trip in the van on the way to Gao’An, bouncing around in the back seats, climbing on and off the boxes of strollers, had had a fun visit to the orphanage, playing with the foam floor blocks, touching the babies and playing with the walkers and was now starting to fade rapidly.

I asked Sophie what her favorite part of the orphanage visit was and she said touching the tiny hands of the babies and seeing her crib. Both she and Lucy were really taken by the babies and spent a lot of time looking at them. She doesn’t seem to have been impacted at all by the experience and seems extremely matter of fact about it – it does not seem to have had any emotional impact on her at all.

Before dinner, we went for a walk up and down the street outside the hotel, looking in the shops (looking for a map, some egg drop cookies and a Twelve Girls Band CD). We also saw another high school, some new apartment buildings, a couple of factories and lots of shops selling all sorts of things from women’s clothes to sports lottery tickets. One interesting shop was a small place with four Chinese harpsichords (zithers?). Students rent out the harpsichords for 4 yuan per hour in order to practice. There was one young teenage girl who was playing beautifully and we listened for a while. I wanted to find a street map of Gao’An but was not able to do so – we went into a number of bookshops and it doesn’t appear to exist unfortunately. People just ask where a certain street is, from the sounds of it. Only the big cities like Shanghai, Beijing have proper street maps.

We had dinner at a restaurant in behind the hotel – again, the type with individual rooms. More bean curd dishes and some spicy beef dishes plus vegetables and fried rice noodles. For two kids who don’t like Chinese toilets, Sophie and Lucy have now visited enough of them that they are starting to get used to them. At this meal alone, it must have been three trips with Lucy!

So How's My Mandarin Doing?

As some of you know, I’ve been working on studying Mandarin on and off for quite a while and really feel that I have achieved no level of competence whatsoever. So I always like these opportunities to see how much I actually understand. In a nutshell, all I can understand is words and phrases. I can pick out bits and pieces of a conversation but usually not enough to actually figure out what’s going on: Da de Gao’An de (the big one is from Gao’An), Fuzhou de (from Fuzhou), Jianadaren (Canadian), liang ge (two children), piaoliang (beautiful), shouyangde (adopted), you mian (over there), yi er liang jiu (1209), cha dan (tea egg), dui bu chi (sorry), mei you (don’t have), dui bu dui (do you understand?); hen bu gui (not obedient – guess who that’s referring to?), hen gao xin (happy) etc

But when left alone and someone accosts me with an entire sentence, such as would happen in a little corner store, I suddenly understand none of it and revert back to my unilingual state.

But the longer we’re here, the better it gets so it’s not a lost cause. I really think that in an immersion situation, it might not take too long to develop a level of competence. But reading would be another matter.

Lucy, on the other hand, is so verbal that she’s yelling out “good-bye zai jian” “thank you xie xie” and “ni hao” to whoever will listen to her.

Day 4 - Tuesday, November 2

Ok – so the hotel is really spartan – no hot water for the morning shower and ran out of toilet paper last night – only one somewhat ratty towel.   Bruce says this is the nicest hotel in town.

We have money left over from the air conditioner so we decide to buy 2 more boxes of strollers – i.e. 8 more strollers at Y100 each.  Bruce misunderstood and didn’t realize that it was a group donation but finally that’s clear. 

We decided to sight see a bit in Gao’An before our return to Nanchang.

We went down to the river area (Jin Jiang River) where there is a new watchtower built in the Qin Dynasty style – the name is Rui Yong Men (“beautiful sunset gates”).  On the outside are diagrams of the new construction ongoing in the area that will result in a big fancy hotel and lots of new apartments, shop areas, an artificial lake (Phoenix Pond) etc.  As a result, the entire area slightly to the west of the bridge will be demolished – this is the area where the orphanage is located – the orphanage will therefore be gone in 1-2 more years (and the new one is moving to the northern suburbs).  This downtown reconstruction project is one that will be ongoing until 2015. 

We crossed the river on a floating bridge – wooden planks held up by wooden rowboats – parts can be removed to allow river traffic which is otherwise blocked by the bridge.  A second bridge was under construction a few hundred feet from this one.  The river is the Jin Jiang – a branch of the Gan River.  People plant vegetable gardens along the banks – fine for now since the water is low, but in the high water season, the river would be much higher up and would flood the gardens.  People were also washing their clothes in the river – the river is relatively clean since there is no heavy industry in the area.  There was a wonderful old guy in a Mao suit asking a lot of questions about us – thought we were Russian since there was a Russian entertainment group that was to be performing in Gao’An that night – Bruce briefed him on who we were and why were there and then he took it upon himself to explain to everyone else who came by asking questions.

Across the street from the watchtower is a government building – equivalent to Gao’An City Hall.

Our driver (Mr Jiang) is 45 – his mother was sent down to Gao’An during the Cultural Revolution and he went with her – she worked in a factory that was close to the area where the orphanage is located – they were there for three years – so Gao’An doesn’t have good memories for him.  Ironically, Gao’An means “happy place” – Gao can mean tall, but also means happy.

Other orphanage details:

• Sophie had a foster mother who now doesn’t live in the area – there was nothing in her orphanage file about the foster mother, though, but I’m told that they had details, but frankly I’m suspicious – but she’s apparently now moved away with her husband -  I was told they tried to find her and that’s how they know she’s gone; the crib that she was shown in was simply the one she was in for a few days before moving to the foster home
• most babies are in foster care outside the orphanage – but fairly far away locations
• fewer babies coming in now than previous because of informal adoptions
• at lunch back in Nanchang, the woman who owned the restaurant where we ate, showed us photos of her 5 year old adopted girl – adopted informally – was an abandoned baby – I asked Bruce how that all works – if adopting formally through the orphanage, it costs $2,000 U.S. for locals to adopt – too expensive for most people so instead they find an abandoned child and keep her – then maybe they bribe the officials to get the certificate of registration that allows the child to live/work in Nanchang.  If no certificate, the child can still go to school, but it costs more.  So poor people who take in abandoned children – probably the children don’t go to school because it costs too much - there must be a lot of the informal adoptions happening – just wandering around for a couple of days, we have met two families who identified to us that they took in an abandoned baby: this woman and another woman we met at the Yao Ming temple on Sunday in Nanchang
• The local government is probably more lenient on adoptions over past 10 years but no further details on what this means. 

We then drove back to Nanchang and checked into the Gloria Plaza Hotel once again.  Looks like a new crop of families have arrived to meet their new daughters.  Bruce said that there are over 100 families per month that stay at the Gloria Plaza Hotel.  I haven’t stopped to think whether that makes sense overall – but that would mean that 1200 babies per year are adopted from Jiangxi orphanages alone, not including the number of families who stay at the Lakeview or Jin Feng hotels. I know that a lot of babies come from Jiangxi, but still, this seems too high.  Hmmmm.

In the afternoon, we when for a walk to the pedestrian mall that is about 10 minutes from the Gloria – go out of the hotel and turn right and walk for a while and you’ll see it – nice and pleasant for a walk – I bought some high quality jasmine tea and a nice tea canister.  Bought Sophie a watch.  Otherwise, not too interesting.  On the way back, stopped at a place called Tiffanie’s Place – it’s just outside the Gloria – turn right and then turn right on the first street – it’s on the left side of the street, about 5 shops in.  They seem to be catering to the “adoptive family in a rush” since they have a few bits and pieces of everything – jade, porcelain, tea sets etc.  But what we were interested in was that they make cheongsam dresses in a day or two – bought two for Sophie in two different sizes – I let Sophie pick out her own fabric – (180Y each) plus one for Lucy (150Y) plus a couple of pairs of matching shoes and a couple of other things.

Then went to Sissi’s apartment for dinner.  Sissi was our guide almost exactly two years ago when we were here adopting Lucy.  She has a nice apartment.  Big screen TV – two bedrooms, kitchen, one bathroom. She bought it five years ago new and it was unfinished – like a loft, so she designed the layout – including the positioning of the walls etc.  It’s a sixth floor walk-up unfortunately – no elevator!  Sissi put some music on with a microphone, karaoke style, and sang a few songs.  Then Lucy took up the microphone and took to it like a lounge singer to a bad suit.  It was actually quite funny.  Sissi’s father-in-law and mother-in-law were visiting from the southern part of the province – he is a high government official, she says.  Her husband is a computer engineer.  Her parents also live in Nanchang but are traveling in Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand right now for 20 days.  Her daughter Xuan Xuan has just turned 5 so she, Sophie and Lucy played together while the mother-in-law cooked us dinner.  A lovely meal, but interrupted by various children issues!

After dinner, Sissi took us to new Nanchang across the river to a musical fountain – the largest in Asia.  It’s actually a beautiful area all along the river bank, just a bit south of the August 1^st Bridge (could be north instead – I’ve lost sense of direction) – lots of fountains, statues, a beautiful new children’s playground and every 20 minutes, there is music and one fountain spews water, geyser like, 120 meters into the sky.  It’s all lit up at night as well – a very beautiful place. 

Nanchang is slowly moving across the river – there is so much new construction going on – most of the government offices have or will be moving there in the next year or two.  Sissi has actually bought a new apartment near the musical fountain but it won’t be ready until next year.  Over time, they will probably demolish the older parts of Nanchang and will replace some of them with public gardens.  In 10 years time, the place will probably be unrecognizable.

Day 5 - Wednesday, November 3, 2004

Today we headed off to Fuzhou and to Lucy’s orphanage.  Fuzhou is about 2 hours south east of Nanchang– the countryside is a bit more mountainous than the road to Gao’An.  On the way we passed many new looking factories and buildings but also lots of peasant villages where peasants were out in the fields tending to vegetables or preparing the ground for the next rice crop.  There also seems to be a lot of wheat grown in the area as there were lots of stacked up bundles of wheat (although, I guess it could have been rice before harvesting the rice grains).  We also passed Jin Shan Temple up on a hillside (ok – higher than a hill, but lower than a mountain).  Plus, we passed two extremely nice looking private schools – one was even called an International School although Bruce said that was just for marketing.  Most of the students would come from Jiangxi province and both schools would be residential.  The schools are not cheap – Bruce estimates $3,000 U.S.per year but I’m not sure if this includes residence or is just for the tuition.

We arrived at the orphanage around 3:30.  After driving to the city (about 2 hours), checking into the Fuzhou Bin Guan Hotel and having lunch, I wanted Lucy to have a nap.  She initially had other ideas than sleeping and wanted to play with the complimentary small packages of soap and shampoo.  In order to get her to lay down, I let her hold onto the shampoo and lotion bottles – bad idea – I fell asleep briefly and awoke after about 15 minutes to find that she had opened up the shampoo bottle had put it all over her head.  We quickly had to give her a bath (no hot water) to get the shampoo out of her hair.  Eventually she fell asleep for about an hour and a half.

We finally headed out to the orphanage at about 3:30.  Sophie and Lucy started to play at the outdoor playground while we met with Mr. Zhou and other people from the orphanage, including the woman who had brought Lucy to Nanchang two years ago – I had sent a camera ahead when I adopted Lucy – so she was in some of those photos but of course on the actual adoption day two years ago I could barely remember my own name so I didn’t realize I had photos of her already.  Mr. Zhou seemed to recognize my by his initial reaction, which was very warm and friendly.  Maybe he did, not sure.  They unloaded the four boxes of strollers (16 in all); another box of strollers (4) was left in Nanchang at the civil affairs office (?) so that when babies come to Nanchang there will be strollers available for them so the nannies don’t have to always carry the babies.  Mr Zhou has taken a box of these stollers and put them in the “apartment” that the civil affairs has set up – each of the directors of the orphanages has a room on the second (or third?) floor of the offices so that when they come to Nanchang on orphanage business, they have somewhere to stay.  Mr. Zhou comes to Nanchang at least twice per month. 

Outside the main building, we were shown a couple of brand new vehicles, one being an Honda Odessey van, the other being a station wagon, I think.  They seemed quite proud of the new vehicles and given the amount of travel that happens between Fuzhou and Nanchang, both Mr. Zhou and the babies, they will be well used.

We passed over the photo album that we put together for Lucy and also the letters from Muriel Oikle, Sue Mladenik’s photo album to be given to one of the foster mothers identified in the photos and Joan Dawson’s photo album, hopefully to be given to the foster mother – initially the reaction was that the photo of the Lilli Dawson’s foster mother isn’t good enough to be able to figure out who she is, but they said they’d try.  We also looked at Lucy’s orphanage file.  The only additional information was the Fuzhou local abandonment certificate and they gave me the original of that – Bruce will translate it for me. (It says essentially what is on the official provincial abandonment certificate).  The information on the foster mothers is apparently kept in different files than the individual orphanage files. 

We started our visit by going to the children’s building.  There are several buildings – the main tall building with the green glass is the administrative building, another is the seniors building, another is where the children live. (can’t remember the other buildings).  There are two Mr. Zhou’s – the Director Mr Zhou is in charge of all aspects of the SWI but the second Mr.Zhou is in charge of the adoption section and this is the individual that most westerners adopting meet – he’s the “boss” when it comes to the international adoptions.

In the children’s building we saw a big picture frame full of photos of families who have adopted from Fuzhou – mostly from the United States, but some from Canada and some from Spain.  On the main floor we saw the two rooms that had been created by Half the Sky earlier this year.  The main “pre-school” room is cheery, full of toys, books etc with small desks and chairs and small doll strollers lined up.  One wall is full of shelves hidden behind floor to ceiling doors.  On the opposite wall, it was full of drawings by the children – the entire wall had pictures and drawings.

The other Half the Sky room was full of young school age children listening to music.  They have learned a bit of English and they were saying “hello”.  Most of these children looked to be boys.  By this point, Sophie and Lucy had rejoined us and Lucy was a bit overwhelmed by the children crowding up to her and touching her on the face and her body.

Upstairs, we saw three baby rooms (rooms 2, 3 and 4), each with about 10 cribs in them, all lined up in rows.  There was a young disabled girl (teenager or early adult) and the director said that she remembered Lucy being there.  Lucy was in room two and they pointed out which crib would have been the crib that she was in.  Lucy was in foster care for the first six months of her life, then spent the other four here at the orphanage until November 18, 2002 when we met.

We peeked into rooms 3 and 4 but all the action was down the hall in the playroom and outside the playroom door.  The playroom is painted in the same nice colours as the Half the Sky rooms but I’m not sure whether Half the Sky had anything to do with these rooms.  All the babies where there, either in walkers or on the floor on mats.  Lucy started playing with some of their toys and it was hard to break her away from them.  In a rare showing of sharing, she offered up a couple of toys to some of the children.

We then headed out with Mr. Zhou to an air conditioner store where we bought an air conditioner for 3,850 Yuan. 

We then went to the rural village where Lucy’s foster mother lives.  When we arrived at her home, there were many people about; Lucy was not scared but was unsure about all the people surrounding her.   The older lady finally emerged from the house – she is about 60 and has had several babies as foster babies.  She brought out some gifts for Lucy, including a silver cross necklace.  Later on inside her house, I realized that she must be Christian – there was a cross on the wall in the main room and she pointed to two pictures of Jesus in the bedroom.  She also gave a couple of bags of small oranges (the same ones we’ve been enjoying so much the past couple of days), four small bottles of yogurt drink and some brand new clothes – a snow suit consisting of black pants and a red coat.  I had put together a bag with 100Y plus some mangoes and other snacks from the Philippines but quickly realized I should be giving a bit more, considering the gifts that the foster mother had put together so I snuck 300 more Yuan into her hand – as much as I didn’t like to give the money, Bruce had earlier suggested doing this as she is very poor.   And when she put something into a small red pouch and tried to find a pocket in Lucy’s clothes in which to quietly stuff the red pouch, eventually giving it to me to keep (and out of Lucy’s hands).  It turns out that she was giving me her address on a piece of paper, written in English and Chinese.  Clearly, they were well advised of our visit.  She tried many times to get Lucy to come into her hands but Lucy pulled away, uncertain about all of this.  The woman then began to cry and Lucy, while not being able to take her eyes off the woman, still wouldn’t go to her.  There was also an old man who kept saying “yeye” to Lucy, meaning grandfather.

After some photos together, we left, with the woman following us all the way out to the main road and to the van, weeping.  Lucy thawed somewhat and did smile at her and wave to her but still wouldn’t go to her.   Once we were in the van and leaving, Lucy was at the window, saying “zaijian, goodbye, I’ll be back later” but not sure she heard this.  I don’t know what to make out of all of this to be honest.  Don’t know the motivation of the woman and I guess I’ll take it at face value when she asked us to send photos.  Lucy’s reaction was a bit unusual too since she so freely goes to most people but I suspect she was quite overwhelmed.  Later in the van, several times we had a conversation along the lines of: “the lady”, “what about the lady?”, “the lady was crying”, “why was she crying?”, “she’s sad”, “why is she sad?”, “she wants to pick me up”, so on some level, Lucy was impacted.  And when we got home after dinner, she insisted on putting on the clothes that she was given, a coat and snow pants – and she wore them to bed despite my protestations.  They are actually quite cute but won’t get used a lot in the heat of Manila! I later confirmed with Bruce that Mr. Zhou had indicated that Lucy had lived with this woman from a couple of days after being found for about six months, which is consistent with the information I was previously given verbally by Mr. Zhou two years ago.

On the way back into town, we stopped at the Ban Shan Market where Lucy was found.  It was dark by then and it was also somewhat dark in the store – maybe some power trouble.  All the little children’s rides out front weren’t working because there was no power, much to Lucy’s disappointment.

We then went stopped back at the orphanage for Mr. Zhou to pick up five copies of a booklet on the orphanage to give to other Fuzhou families.  It’s an amazing booklet – it tells a bit about the orphanage and there is an uncut sheet of stamps commemorating the orphanage at the back, printed by China Philatelic Association.  Mr. Zhou explained that the stamps were not in circulation but were commemorative only.  The double knot type symbol on each stamp is a symbol of the orphanage and there are pictures of the orphanage in between the stamps themselves.  Not sure what I’ll do with all these copies – I’m sure some other families would like to have one, but I only have four of them (I’ll keep one for myself).

We then went for dinner at a very funky, techno restaurant – stainless steel and glass – the main floor is all open but we ate in a private room upstairs.  Mr.Zhou ordered some wonderful food – the best being the first dish which was some local mushrooms stir fried.  We also had duck, sweet and sour fish (carp – and yes, I tried it and it was actually quite nice), a beef dish, fried noodles, corn and vegetables, onion pancakes and some glutinous rice sweets that were in the shape of small donuts, dipped in sugar.  Bruce later said that the restaurant was on the premises of the Sports Bureau, a provincial government office (or maybe a local office).

At dinner, I asked about the foster child that I have been sponsoring for a while through Peggy Gurrad/Altrusa/Amity and showed the photo – Mr. Zhou remembers her and seems to know her well – he asked whether I knew a family that was willing to adopt her – she is a hepatitis B carrier.  The only answer I could give was to put her up for the waiting child program. 

I also asked about the technology school student but didn’t get an answer since I didn’t make my question heard properly enough for Bruce to understand so didn’t find out.

I also asked about returning families and how many there had been – not all that many was the answer – the oldest girl returning was 12 years old – born in 1992.  When I said that there will probably be lots of families returning in future, he said something about individual families are always welcome – so far this year, there have been about a dozen individual families who have come to visit.

After dinner, we said our goodbyes, Mr. Zhou said thank you so much and that we were welcome back anytime.  Later Bruce said that Mr. Zhou was going to Nanchang

himself the next day to deliver orphanage files for a dozen or so babies for them to be sent to CCAA for adoption.  The way it seems to work is that the individual orphanages submit to the provincial adoption authority, who then decides which babies’ files get sent to Beijing

.  But, as noted before, Mr. Zhou seems to have a more personal relationship with CCAA and more babies’ files get sent.  It’s all about personal relationships in this country, notes Bruce.  Plus my sense is that the directors want desparately for as many files to be sent to CCAA as possible since it reduces the number of babies remaining in their care (and I’m sure the hope of more orphanage donations is appealing too).

Orphange details

• Mr Zhou has been the director for 15 years; has two daughters himself ages 25 and 18; since the one child policy has been in effect since 1980, the older daughter may have been born just before the one child policy but the younger daughter was certainly born while it was in effect; Bruce suspects that he may have had to pay a fine to have the second daughter.
• He and his family life a couple of blocks away from Ban Shan Market, where Lucy was found; he pointed out his apartment building on our way.
• There are 60 or 70 babies in the orphanage right now, but in total, there are about 400 children under his care; the remainder are in foster care and supervisors regularly visit the villages where the families live; some families have two children living with them to make extra money; the foster families are paid about
• Over 1,000 babies have been adopted from the orphanage; about 100 to 150 are adopted each year from Fuzhou; according to Bruce, Mr Zhou has a pretty good relationship with CCAA so he is able to get more babies into families than perhaps some other orphanages; however, the number of babies coming into the orphanage each year is far outstripping the number that are adopted and this is becoming a growing problem; so far there are only a dozen or so “older kids” – i.e. ages 10 or older – the orphanage for the most part is supporting these children; there are also others, I think, that are fostered out and some of these children will be at the orphanage their whole lives, especially the disabled ones; Bruce has said that the orphanage will look after the children until they finish school and get jobs; for the older kids, there are nannies to ensure that they do their homework.
• Mr Zhou says that the number of babies is increasing over the past years
• Lao Gan Dei means old stepfather and that’s an affectionate name for Mr Zhou who feels this way about the children
• He visited Ottawa and Montreal in 1999 as part of a Jiangxi province orphanage delegation
• Orphanage located in the south part of the city in the Linchuan district of the city.  Previously the city was called Linchuan but there were several districts within the area – Linchuan being one, Fuzhou being another.  At some point, the city was renamed after the Fuzhou district as Fuzhou city but the Linchuan district still exists.
• The name of the river on which the city is located is the Fu He river, a branch of the Gan river.
• All the babies at Lucy’s foster mother’s village are babies from Fuzhou.

Gao’An vs Fuzhou

The two cities are quite different in feel and level of prosperity.  Gao’An is a much smaller city – about 250,000 people versus probably half a million in Fuzhou.  Fuzhou

The two orphanages were like night and day – Fuzhou is clearly much bigger, better equipped, has nice and spacious grounds and play structures for the toddlers and older children and with the help of Half the Sky, has lots of stimulation for the children.  I know that many families seem to feel luckier if their child has been in foster care, but I actually wonder whether a child would actually thrive better living in the orphanage under these conditions.  The caregivers who were playing with the babies in the playroom on the second floor were giving the children lots of contact and individual attention (to the extent possible).  Gao’An is a much poorer orphanage and the conditions not that great.  There were hardly any toys anywhere for the children and there was not a lot of room for the children to play and no play structures at all.  However, they were also getting fairly close individual care with a three-to-one child to caregiver ratio.  Plus, with the new orphanage building being built, conditions should improve enormously.  Of course, neither orphanage is ideal conditions for any child, but Fuzhou would be the preferred over the two right now.

brims with lots of fancier, more modern glass fronted shops and more taller buildings.  Both hotels we stayed in were pretty rustic – the Gao’An hotel appeared to be one of the only in town whereas there seemed to be quite a few hotels in Fuzhou, including a couple of fancier, newer ones (the Linchuan Hotel, for one). A nice apartment in a good part of Gao’An would cost about $10,000 or $15,000 U.S.and possibly double this in Fuzhou.

Communicating in Chinese

There’s only one English language TV station here in Fuzhou– CCTV 9, English version.  In the brief time that we had the TV on, we caught a 15 minute show called Communicating in Chinese – it’s for learning Chinese and was really well laid out.  They showed a number of small scenes with various sentences – the subject for today’s lesson was saying hello and other small talk.  They then took these sentences, examined each one, slowly repeated the words in Chinese and added some contextual background, such as to say “Ni hao, ma?” (How are you?) or “Chi fan, ma?” (have you eaten?) or “Ni mang, ma?” (Are you busy?) are really just conversation starters and don’t necessarily require a actual answer.  Also gave some background regarding the use of “zai nar” versus “zai nali” – both really mean the same thing, “where”, but “zai nar” is more common in the north where “r” sounds are more prevalent, especially in the Beijing area.  They then repeated the vocabulary used and then had a section showing how to construct additional sentences with this vocabulary. Very well done and I wish we had this show at home – maybe we do.

Most interesting was the narrator of the series – it was Mark Roswell, better known in China as Da Shan, or Big Mountain.  He’s a Canadian and may well be the Canadian who is known by more people in the world than anyone else – just not known in Canada.  He is a cross talk expert who has made a name for himself throughout Chinaand has lived there for a long time and speaks impeccable mandarin.

Day 6 - Thursday, November 4

Oops – today is my sister’s birthday.  If she’s reading this, Happy Birthday, Hallie!

We visited Fuzhou a bit before heading back to Nanchang.  We first went to visit a catholic church that is down the street from the market where Lucy was found.  It’s supposed to be the second largest church in China (don’t know where the largest is) – it wasn’t open so we couldn’t go inside but we looked around the outside.

Then a bit further down the street was the Ban Shan market where Lucy was found by a policeman.  It’s a fairly large market, well stocked.  At the entranceways were various small children’s rides – Lucy took to the rabbit and probably rode it 4 or 5 times, going around and around.  It played the “Pull the Carrot” song.

We then went to the Wan An Shi museum.  Wan An Shi was the prime minister during the Song Dynasy about 1,000 years ago and is from Fuzhou – Bruce explained that every school child knows about Wan An Shi and the people of Fuzhou are very proud of him.  It was an interesting museum located in a house where his home would have been.  There were also nice gardens, pond and rocks, the fundamental elements of Chinese horticultural design.  There were testimonials about Wan An Shi from Zhang Zemin, Mao and Lenin.

I asked Bruce a bit more about our driver, Mr. Zhang.  He’s married and has one son who is a teenager.  He would have liked to have a daughter but his wife works for the government so it would have been a bigger problem to have a second child than to simply pay a fine – she would likely have lost her job had they broken the one child policy.  Bruce says that the cities, even ones as small as Nanchang, still adhere for the most part to one child only – but in the countryside, families could have one boy or two children.  If you have more than one child in the city you could lose your job.  If you have no job, you could be fined.  If you have no money to pay the fine, you could lose some property such as a pig or a cow.  Bruce seems to think they are as strict as ever with the one child policy.  What some families are doing, he says, is to move away temporarily to the countryside to have the second child – this will at least prevent a forced abortion.  You don’t need permission to move to the countryside the way you do if you want to move to another city – i.e. you don’t need a permanent residence card.  But if a family were to do this, they would still be faced with problems later since the new child wouldn’t have a permanent residence card for Nanchang.  But this problem can always be solved by paying off someone or if you know someone in high enough circles.

On the route back, all three of us had a much needed short cat nap in the car.   The rest of the time, I watched out the window – I love driving in the countryside – there is so much to watch – people in the fields, the small shops, rice or grains drying by the roadside, water buffalo and on and on.

In Nanchang, we stopped for lunch at yet another wonderful restaurant with our usual private room.  Afterwards, we then visited a gardening exhibit alongside the Fu He lake – to me, though, it looks like a river but I think it is a continuation of the Fu He river in Fuzhou that connects up with the Gan river, but at this point, it’s a bit wider and has concrete walls and barriers – hence it’s called Fu He lake.  At any rate, the exhibit was sort of a chrysanthemum festival – so there were yellow, crimson and orange flowers everywhere and they were put together in some pretty fantastical ways – two elephants, a sailing ship, a peacock, dolphins, pandas, a flower basket. 

Meals

We’ve had some great meals at local restaurants in Nanchang and also in Gao’An and Fuzhou.  The area specializes in spicy food but we’ve mostly had not too spicy stuff because of the kids.  Most memorable have been various bean curd dishes and a fantastic stir fried mushroom dish in Fuzhou (at the techno restaurant). Also a couple of steamed meat dishes and most of the stir-fried greens have been quite tasty.  Most of the time, we’ve had private rooms for these meals – these rooms are always the same – there is a TV set used for karaoke or simply for watching TV during dining (what a concept!), a refrigerator to hold drinks, a round table with a lazy susan – Lucy has found it irresistible to put things on the lazy susan and spin them around.  Lucy was game to try quite a few dishes but has picked up some nasty behavioural habits such as playing with her food, mixing up tea and her juices, sticking toothpicks into whatever they can be stuck into, all the while tasting bits and pieces of the food.  Sophie wasn’t very adventurous and has sustained herself on rice, fried noodles, corn and the odd bit of meat here and there, but she has become quite adept with chopsticks somehow and seems to be able to use them with ease.

Maps

Most cities in China don’t have street maps. The larger cities like Nanchang may, but not the smaller cities. I’m a bit of a map junkie so in each of Gao’An and Fuzhou, we tried to find a map to no avail. So, it makes you wonder how people find where they want to go. Well, they just ask people. Many times we arrived somewhere, and kind of globally zeroed in on where we wanted to be and then when we were close, the driver and/or Bruce would simply ask people on the street where a particular hotel or building is. This process seems to work quite well and almost everyone who was asked seemed to be able to help. But I still really like having a map.

Day 7 - Friday, November 5

Today we are leaving Nanchang for a couple of days in Shanghai before heading back to Manila.  Our flight isn’t until the afternoon so we had a bit of time to sightsee some more in Nanchang.

On our way to Fuzhou, we had passed by a nice looking park so we headed back there today.  I’m not sure exactly where it is, but it’s on still on the same side of the Gan River and it’s beyond the park we visited yesterday that had all the floral displays. It’s called Elephant Lake (Xiang Hu).  It’s actually a wonderful spot with pathways, rock displays, nice buildings and bridges.  At the very back, up and down over a bridge, there was a gateway that you had to pay to enter – beyond this it looked like more gardens but it turned out to be a huge Daoist temple that had just recently been completed.  It was a beautiful site with several buildings, each dedicated to one of the Daoist “gods” (not sure if this is the right description).  In each of the buildings there were also Daoist followers in traditional dress playing musical instruments – in one, an erhu player, in others singers and wooden flute players.  Out front there was a huge rock monument with a small long pond in front – there was also a stepping stone pathway leading across the pond.  Curious, we stepped across, only to find out that it was sort of a cave with fake stalactites and stalagmites, housing, of all things, toilets.  We quickly retraced our path, not particularly enjoying the odour. We spent quite a bit of time just wandering around the temple buildings and feeding the pigeons and the fish in the pond in front of the rock monument – there was hardly anyone in the place so it was quite peaceful and it was a beautiful, sunny day. 

We then had lunch at another restaurant – this one was around the corner from the Gloria Plaza Hotel.  We had several dim sum type dishes as well as the usual fried noodles and beef dishes.

After that, we headed out towards the airport, but first stopped at the musical fountain park again for Sophie and Lucy to play at the playground.  The water fountains weren’t running – they are only active in the evening – but it was a beautiful view back over to old Nanchang, the Tengwang pavilion and the August 1^st Bridge.  The water level in the Gan River is very low right now so there wasn’t a lot of river traffic and there were a lot of exposed sand areas.

The new part of Nanchang is quite spectacular – this water park seems to frame a large city square that has a fancy new hotel on the left hand side of a very broad avenue separated by parkland/city square and the new Nanchang city government offices on the right hand side.  Bruce said that the apartments on this side were very expensive by Nanchang standards - $50,000 U.S. and upwards.  I asked who would likely be able to afford these apartments since they were so expensive and there were so many being built – Bruce speculated that it would be people from out of town who wanted to move into Nanchang.  There is a special residency provision that if you buy a place to live in a city, then your whole family automatically gets residency certificates in that city instead of having to apply and be accepted, which is what you would have to do if you were renting instead of buying.  (This is not a universally applied policy however nor is it permanent – for example, in Shanghai, this policy was temporarily in place many years ago when they were trying to “grow” the city but there are two many people now – about 13 million with official residency certificates and probably another 5 million who are unofficially living there.  So Nanchang is applying this policy to help the city grow on a temporary basis only). 

We said our goodbyes to Bruce and Mr. Zhang, the driver and exchanged some small gifts – they bought me a 12 Girls Band CD and a Chinese zither music CD and some paper cuts and for Sophie and Lucy, a children’s singing and dancing VCD and an umbrella and a porcelain musical instrument.

We were sitting waiting for our flight when we heard from a bit of a distance a voice saying “hello”.  It was a man who was traveling with a group of what looked like his work colleagues – he pointed to Sophie and said “China?” and I responded yes so he gave us the thumbs up.  Lucy at this point was fast asleep in her stroller but I pointed at her and said “China”.  They hadn’t noticed Lucy and the whole gang came over to meet Sophie and Lucy and to ask questions.  One of the younger ones spoke reasonable English so we had an interesting chat and lots of “lucky babies”, “good mother” things.  They were a nice bunch of men, all from Shanghai (“Shanghai ren”), in the real estate business and the one who initially spoke to us was identified as “the boss”.  They insisted on helping us onto the plane with all our stuff and again helped us off at the other end.  It was actually much appreciated help because we were burdened with the stroller on this flight plus we bought a few things at the airport (flying UFO toys and a porcelain tea mug).

Of course, the worst time to arrive at the Shanghai International Airport (ironically still called the International Airport, but it now handles only domestic flights) would be around 5 p.m. on a Friday night, which is what happened – it took close to an hour to get into the city to our hotel, the Hengshan Hotel, which appears to be in a lovely, quiet neighbourhood with lots of trees.  After checking in, we took a short walk outside in the dark to get some milk and some noodles for supper.   

Shanghai feels immediately different from Nanchang – full of energy and action.  The hotel here, not one of the fanciest, is nicer than the Gloria – there’s a TV in the bathroom, for heaven’s sake, plus bigger, softer beds <g> – the shops nearby the hotel are fancy boutiques and restaurants and bars, but one is reminded that it’s still China when a man on a bicycle rides past with a full load of live chickens on the back of his bike. 

Bathroom Notes

Of course, other than the hotels, we haven’t seen any western style toilets – just porcelain in the ground, of varying degrees of cleanliness and odour.  I noticed in a lot of spots that they have incense burning in the water closets which helps enormously.   As expected, Sophie immediately pronounced that she didn’t like the toilets, but was resigned to using them anyhow.  Lucy actually started to become somewhat adept at using them.  But, if only they stopped at the floor toilets. Unfortunately, more times than I’d like to count they had bathroom emergencies out in the middle of nowhere and ended up peeing on the grass here and there (at the Wan An Shi museum in Fuzhou for one, at various parks and wherever there was a patch of grass for other times).  They didn’t necessarily stop at just peeing either, if you know what I mean.  Lucy has gotten to the point where she’ll start to pull down her pants wherever she happens to be when the urge strikes, even if it’s in the middle of a crowd on the street.  I’ll have to retrain them on proper etiquette once we return to Manila. 

Travelling with Two Kids

Of course, it’s not necessarily a smart thing to do to travel like this with two kids, one being not quite three years old yet – especially since we were essentially changing hotels almost every night.  But you can’t really have a roots visit without having them both there, can you?  Sophie is fine as a traveler and always has been but Lucy is always a bit more of a challenge with everything.  For the most part, she too has been ok as long as we make sure she gets a nap every afternoon.  The air flights and the travel back and forth to Fuzhou and Gao’An were the worst of it – and the worst was pretty bad.  Lucy hasn’t been in a proper car seat since we left Canada for Manila and is quite happy crawling around in the back of the car – she won’t sit still for a minute and the only time she’s not moving is when she’s asleep and unfortunately, she rarely slept in the van.  She prefers to climb from one row of seats to the other over the top of the seats rather than around them.  This doesn’t make for very safe travel in a van with three rows of seats and stop and start traffic conditions.  So any road travel wasn’t quite as relaxing as much as it might otherwise have been with her moving around so much. The air flights were a bit tough too with her strongly resisting the seat belt and no amount of bribing or cajoling on my part would change this.

(Ok – I’m updating this after a couple of hours shopping in Old Shanghai – I’d like to tear my hair out at this point – I’m exhausted chasing after Lucy, stopping her from touching things, trying to reason with her about why she shouldn’t be allowed to push the stroller across the busy street on her own and why she has to hold my hand, why she can’t pick up every item in a shop and claim it as hers and essentially arguing with her about something every step of the way.)

But otherwise, both of them were pretty good troupers.  But I can see that they are getting tired after a long and busy week.  Lucy probably attracted more attention than Sophie, simply because she’s younger and so much more outgoing so she kind of invites comments and touches by people. At Elephant Lake Park in Nanchang, she made friends with another young girl who was there with her father on a bicycle.  Lucy became quick buddies and referred to the girl as “my friend” and didn’t want to leave her.  Sophie, being quieter and less outgoing, still attracted attention, again, mostly with people wanting to touch her hair, which is straight, black, shiny and very healthy looking. 

The clothing police were after us many times – even if Sophie and Lucy had jackets on, but had some bare legs, the locals would tsk tsk me even though I insisted “bu leng” (not cold).  They’d touch their arms, legs and cheeks to check for themselves.  A few of them commented that stocky little Lucy was “healthy” looking and was drinking lots of Canadian milk – this seemed to be a compliment rather than a criticism.

So How’s my Mandarin doing – Part 2?

Actually, I’m much better now at communicating now – I can ask for a bottle of water and ask how much it costs and understand the answer, I can tell people how old Sophie and Lucy are when they ask, can tell them where they are from and where I’m from, explain that they are not cold after they have been checked out to see if their exposed skin is cold.  I can nicely eavesdrop on conversations and pick up a lot more of what’s going on and can almost understand overhead announcements in places like airports.  I can even read some of the characters, but my aural comprehension is much better.  So all is not lost – I really wish I could find more time at home to study more intensively.

Potato Chips and Other Snacks

Ok, anyone who has wandered into the Chinatown in their city knows that the Chinese love their snacks and sweets – any number of interesting looking candies, pastries and other snack foods.  But Shanghai (and maybe other places for all I know) takes the prize for weird potato chip flavours, made by Lays no less.  We saw lemon, cucumber, Beijing Duck flavours and other flavours, judging by the picture on the bag, that looked like some flavour of fish, a pork flavour and a noodle soup flavour.  I tried the cucumber flavour and it was actually quite tasty.  I also bought a bag of the Beijing Duck flavour since that just sounds too good to resist, but haven’t tried it yet.  But I do have one major complaint about potato chips in Asia in general (Manila included) – it’s almost impossible to open the bag at the top – you end up having to tear a strip off the side of the bag, ripping off a part of the bag in the process.

Day 8 - Saturday, November 6

Last night on HBO, I managed to catch two movies I hadn’t seen before: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and, believe it or not, Jaws (Ok – turns out it was Jaws 2).  Lucy woke up part way through Jaws and watched the rest of it with me – her synopsis was “The shark bit the boat”.  Couldn’t have said it better myself.

This is our last day in China before heading home to Manila.  The internet hasn’t been working at the hotel we’re staying in, the Hengshan Hotel– well, it might be working for other people but doesn’t seem to work for me and whenever I’m in the room for someone to check, the tech people are off work, so it ain’t going to happen.  Besides, they charge for internet access – 0.5Y per minute, whereas at the Gloria it was complimentary.

Our guide in Shanghai, Sandra, took us to the Jade Buddha temple where there are two large carved jade buddhas, one cross-kneeded and the other reclining.  The buddhas were carved in Burma about 100 years ago and some monks in Shanghai went to Burma to find them and bring them to this temple.  There are lots of other buildings and buddhas besides the two jade ones.  I bought some Chinese Buddhist music at the temple.

Then we went to the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium, which, despite the name, is not located on the ocean but right next to the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, the futuristic tower that has become a symbol of Shanghai.  The tower was started to be built in 1991 and completed in 1994.  Most of the Pudong area was built in the mid nineties and there are some amazing looking buildings.  There is still a lot of construction going on in the area.

The Aquarium has probably only been open a couple of years – there is lots to see there and the displays are laid out quite nicely.  There are several of the walk-through type tunnels where the fish are floating on either side of you plus overhead.  One of these is an escalator to a lower level where you appear to go down through the water.  Very cool.  The last of the tunnels is very long – apparently the longest such walk way in Asia, but I’d venture that perhaps the longest in the world.  Lots of interesting fish including sharks, jellyfish, electric eels, sea dragons etc plus alligators, penguins and seals. 

After that, we headed out to Old Shanghai Street which is a big shopping area mostly full of touristy things – I wanted to look at the porcelain, which is kind of ironic since porcelain comes from Jiangxi province but we didn’t really have much time to look around while in Nanchang.  Bought a nice tall vase plus a couple of jade items, some chopsticks, a teacup with the twelve beauties and lots of silk items such as cell phone bags, eye glass cases and little purses and other tchatchkes for Sophie and Lucy.  A successful expedition but note to self for future that one could spend an entire day shopping around in this area if one didn’t have two little shadows following behind (see comments under Travelling with Two Kids earlier).  I’d certainly love to return to Shanghai and spend a bit more time just wandering the streets – around every corner is something interesting to watch or do.

That evening, we took a taxi to see Shanghai Circus World – as usual, it was highly entertaining and Sophie loved it – Lucy was interested but not as enthusiastic as Sophie.  Lots of crazy and unbelievable acts, including a big steel mesh ball where eventually 7 motorcyclists ended up driving around and around inside, upside down, sideways every which way.

Tomorrow we’re headed off home first thing in the morning.

Day 9 - Sunday, November 7

In order to get on a plane, you need a ticket.  Unless, of course, you have an e-ticket, which turns out to be a very important distinction because I somehow “misplaced” (i.e. lost) our return home tickets.  Last night, I went through everything we had after the kids went to sleep and couldn’t find the tickets.  Maybe they were there somewhere but I couldn’t locate them.  Maybe I’ll still find them in among all the bits and pieces of paper and notes that I’ve accumulated.

But, I didn’t have the tickets at the most important time: when we got to the airport.  Sandra, our Shanghai guide, helped us out.  I figured at worst, they would have to reissue the tickets at the ticket counter.  But it was worse than that: they said I had to pay for three new tickets and then I could get reimbursed for the old tickets back home.   I sure hope they’re right.  The dumb thing, at least to me, is that they can see on the computer that we have seats, so why couldn’t they reissue the tickets?  In the end, I’m pretty sure we ended up in the same seats as we had already paid for.  Seems crazy but I wasn’t equipped from a language point of view to argue about it in Mandarin so I paid for new tickets and hope that they’re right, that I can get reimbursed for the other ones.  I’ll still be out some money since it cost me 7,900 Yuan for the three tickets (or about $965 U.S.) whereas the original tickets cost only $1,175 U.S. return.  I was told that I’d get reimbursed for the original tickets (so only half of $1,175 U.S.) so let that be a lesson to me – only e-tickets for me in the future.

It seemed to take forever to process the three new tickets, check in the luggage and go to the police station to get a police report of the loss (which may help out in claiming the tickets).   We still had to clear security and immigration.  The immigration line was very long and very slow.  Twice I asked to move ahead of people, with me getting more and more panicky as the flight time approached.  Once we got through all the lines, we literally had about 5 minutes to get to the gate so we had to run, with me dragging poor crying Lucy by the arm – I was also carrying a knapsack and a laptop so I couldn’t carry her too).  Of course we were at a gate that was way down the terminal so we were totally out of breath by the time we got there.  The man at the gate said “no boarding” and I initially panicked and thought that he meant it was too late, so I sort of freaked out.  But what he meant, and I would have realized it if I looked around for a moment and seen all the people still waiting, was that nobody had boarded yet – the plane was late.   Phew.  So we had about 10 minutes to calm down and catch the flight home.  What a way to end the trip!

Rambling Afterthoughts

Now that we’re home, I can reflect on the trip as a whole.  I know that many of the adoption professionals say that the orphanage trip shouldn’t be too soon or when the children are too young, that it should be combined with a cultural trip to first acclimatize the children before visiting the orphanage and that the kids should be well prepared for what they might see.  For this trip, I essentially ignored all this advice, mostly because we’re living so close to China for only a two year period and I want to take advantage of being so close to be able to make a couple of trips there, even though Sophie (age 6.5) and Lucy (age 2.75)  may not be “the right age”.  I did try to prepare Sophie for what we were going to do and see but she has never had a lot of questions about her beginnings so I didn’t have to “prepare” her much.

Now, after having made the trip, I think I have to take a bit of a contrarian view from the experts.  I think that even though Lucy was too young to understand much of what we saw, it was somehow a more rewarding visit than to Sophie’s orphanage.  Lucy was adopted 2 years ago (exactly) and the people at Fuzhou still remembered her, the director remembered me, there hadn’t been much staff turnover etc.  However, at Sophie’s orphanage, the director was not the same one as when she was there, her foster mother had moved away, the woman who found her had moved away and nobody there really remembered her – too much time had passed: almost 6 years.  If we were to have waited another year, the orphanage building itself would be gone – they are soon going to be moving to a new building on the outskirts of town and the old building will be torn down.  We did find Sophie’s abandonment site – it was a school so the school was still there - but we looked for the abandonment site of another family and we couldn’t find it since the area had changed.  So for me, the experience at Gao’An was somewhat more “remote” given the passage of time.   In another four years, who knows what changes will have occurred in Fuzhou to change the landscape of what the city was like when Lucy was there.  Even if we had worked hard at keeping up a relationship with the orphanages by sending letters and photos (which I have done only sporadically), that would not prevent the memories and the bricks and mortar from disappearing.

But, I know also that the trip was not really for or about me.  It was for and about Sophie and Lucy.

Sophie, who is generally a fairly stoic individual, didn’t seem impacted on any kind of emotional level to what she was seeing.  She said she like seeing the babies in the orphanage and holding their tiny hands but was, frankly, more interested in the rice noodles drying outside across the street from the orphanage.  We wandered around the schoolyard at the school she was found at (a very large middle/high school) and seemed totally disinterested that we were looking for the man who may have seen her on the day she was abandoned.   She enjoyed her visit to China, without a doubt, but didn’t really like the attention she and Lucy attracted – people would touch her hair and skin and speak to her in Mandarin not realizing that she didn’t understand them and she would just revert into her shy state, not responding, not looking at them and hugging in to me.  So the “adoption” part of the trip is not what she’ll remember.  Interest in that may come later or it may not come at all, but I was glad that I could take her now while China is not that far off the China of her birth.

Lucy is too young to know what she was there for, but she also enjoyed herself, seeing the babies at the orphanage and playing with their toys.  For her, the most stressful part was probably meeting her foster mother and having all the attention focused on her by so many people in such close quarters.  She’s normally very outgoing and will easily go up to or talk to people, but she was overwhelmed by all the people at the foster mother’s village.  But afterwards, she was impacted by foster mother wanting to hold her and certainly understood that the gifts were hers (that night she slept in the snow suit that her foster mother gave her).

What was good, however, was to be able to build a bit of a relationship with the two directors, to meet with them and through the translator, ask questions about the orphanages and the babies.  It’s always good to put a name to a face and I hope they will remember us when we next send photos or letters.

It’s next to impossible to make a trip like this unescorted.  The guide that we used came well recommended to me and I’d be more than happy to recommend him to others.  He lives in Nanchang and knows most of the orphanage directors personally and I think that connection helps tremendously.  He also took care of ensuring that we had proper permission from the provincial adoption authority to visit Gao’An and Fuzhou.  I liked that we were not traveling with a group of families since we could then decide what we wanted to do on our own timeframe and we could visit both orphanages and stay overnight in the two cities whereas that may not have been so easily accommodated with a group.  Since we’re living in the Philippines, is wasn’t a problem to come for only an 8 day visit but if we were still living in Canada, I’d have to think twice about making such a long journey for just over a week and would probably have combined it with a longer stay in some other cities like Shanghai or Beijing.  But, by the end of the 8 days, we were all getting tired and looking forward to going home, so the length of the trip was just right for us.

So, the big questions are: will we return to Gao’an and Fuzhou and when.  I certainly don’t think we’re going to get any additional information about Sophie or Lucy’s early days that we haven’t already obtained.  At this point, I haven’t decided whether we will return in the near future.  Again, because we’re living so close, it would be great to make one more trip to both orphanages before returning to Canada, maybe this time combining it with a longer stay in another part of China.  What I am sure of is that we will return to somewhere in China at least once more, maybe a few times, in the next couple of years.