Charming China

Well, everyone!   I can finally blog so I have a lot of catching up to do!

Mike and I arrived in China after a 14 hour flight from Detroit to Beijing.  We arrived and went straight to our hotel and called it a night without dinner and were asleep by 5:30 PM.  The next morning we were up early and got our exercise in.   I only say that for families who are thinking of adopting.  Self care on your trip is super important.  We did very little on our last trip and we are being really good about it this time and it is definitely making a difference.  After a great breakfast we headed out into the streets of Beijing and promptly got lost.  We were blessed to run into a local art teacher who showed us the way to our desired destination and also gave us the heads up about his art school’s art sale.  We dropped by and bought three beautiful prints!

The forbidden city was really cool and also really crazy.  It would be cool of me to go into the history of that place right now but I’m not going to.  If you really want to know, you’ve got google!  This ain’t no history lesson, lazy bones!

The part I will tell you is that it’s insanely huge and insanely crowded.  And there is no order there so if you’d like to see a throne or anything you’re gonna have to get super comfortable with being crushed to death by crowds.  Chinese people are amazing at a lot of things but being polite isn’t one of them. My first attempt at getting to the front failed to yield results but I did laugh uncontrollably trying!

The second time I made it to the front and I truly laughed giddily like I’d won the lottery.  Behold the lackluster photo from that moment.

Since we didn’t realize the immensity of that place and that there’s only one way out and that is by going through the whole place, we were short on time.  In our desire to get back to the hotel as quickly as possible, we decided to hire a motorized rickshaw to take us the mile back to the hotel.  Hindsight is 20/20 and we now realize we should haggled from a price before we got on.  In the end, the driver realized our brains weren’t converting currency very well and charged a $100 U.S. dollars for that 5 minute ride. 

Naive Bliss!

I hope you’re happy, Mister.  I hope you had Peking Duck for dinner with your family.  Jerk!

After we got back we went straight to the airport and Mike and I headed our separate ways.  He went up north to the Laioning province to get Daniel and I went south to the Hubei province to get Eve.  We chose to do it this way to shorten our trip from a month to three weeks even though we weren’t excited to be apart.  Mike and I both arrived in our respective cities of Shenyang and Wuhan that evening and waited anxiously to meet the kids the following morning.  For both of us, being in China this time around is a completely different experience.  We were stressed and overwhelmed and strapped for cash last time but this time we were actually a little nostalgic and sentimental.

***For the next part of my trip I’ll only be able to describe my experience in Wuhan.  Mike will have to jump on and write a post of his own!***

The morning before getting Eve I went out for a walk in the park across from my hotel.  The park is over a dozen miles long on the shoreline of the Yangtze river.  It was super great to stroll along and see so many people out enjoying themselves.  

At any given time in that park you will find people dancing, singing, practicing an instrument, painting, flying a kite, exercising, riding a bike, gambling over poker or mahjong, or just out for a pleasant stroll with their family.  It was really charming and is one of my favorite traits of the Chinese people.  They are outside!  They aren’t all living disconnectedly in their homes but out together having a joint experience.  I don’t really have the words to express it yet but I love being a part of it.  I totally don’t mind all of the staring this time.  I just smile and say, “Ni hao!” and most people smile right on back and say, “Hello!”

Breakfast on the corner.  So cute.

Loved these guys even if they are gambling away their wife's inheritance.

Tai Chi!

Painting!

Working out in the park!

Flying a kite!

Checkers!  

Wuhan was full of pretty trees and greenery but because of the pollution everything is covered in a thick layer of "dust".

This particular morning I made one of my favorite memories.  There was a group of women being led in dance by a very expressive Chinese man in sparkly clothes.  After I watched them dance for a little he seemed particulfly proud and wanted to impress me so he went over to his boom-box and switched the song from traditional chinese music to “Gangam Style”.  Now, if you know me, dancing in public is a weakness of mine that I very often regret and so my knees started bouncing and hips starting swaying and quickly some of the grannies invited me to join them.    So, I kicked off my shoes and tried following their expressive instructor.  After about thirty seconds I couldn’t take it any longer and did the actual gangam moves and the ladies went nuts.  It was awesome and their cackles and screams lifted me up to cloud nine.   Which is good because I would very quickly need any happy thoughts.

Yes, that’s right.  After my walk in the park, I was picked up by my guide to go and meet Eve XinLi at the government office.  I was so excited to see her again but I was keeping my excitement slightly curtailed because I knew she had given me the cold shoulder for the first 10 days eh was in the US this past summer.  I knew there was a chance she wouldn’t be would have a hard time with gotcha day but honestly in my mind I was still fantasizing her running into my arms happily shouting, “Mama! Mama!”

When we got there she was already there and the moment she saw me she cried and screamed and wanted NOTHING to do with me.  Seriouly folks, it felt awesome.  Really awesome when all of the Chinese people are like, “That’s so strange!  Didn’t she live with you this summer?  She’s usually so happy to see people, why is she so scared of you!?”  Umm, I have no answer for that!  I’m just trying not to show how monumentally bummed out I am so please don’t point out AGAIN how strange her behavior is.  So, yeah.  Eve was panicked and terrified of the change.  She kicked and screamed and wriggled and cried but I picked her up and forced her to leave with me.  That’s the real gotcha day for a lot of us, peeps.  We wish it were magical but it just isn’t.  It’s hard.  These kids are going such intense trauma and we are the only ones that they know to blame.  They kinda hate us at first.

And man, I want to say I was super cool and understanding about it but I wasn’t.  I cried my eyes out that afternoon.  And then again the next day too.  Being alone in a hotel room in China with a little girl who doesn’t even want to look at you while your husband is meeting your super happy sweet son and doing all og these cool things…that’s hard.  I know it's not as hard as what Eve was going through but it's hard for moms too.

Eve after being forced to leave with me.  This is pretty much how she looked for a couple of days.

But after praying, hearing from other adoptive mommas, drinking some caffeine and taking a bath…I felt better.  And so did Eve.  I got her on Thursday and by Saturday we were doing OK.  By Sunday, we were brilliant.  Actually, that whole experience reminds me of another dark Friday followed by a triumphant Sunday summed up in one of my favorite quotes:

“Each of us will have our own Fridays—those days when the universe itself seems shattered and the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. We all will experience those broken times when it seems we can never be put together again. We will all have our Fridays. But I testify to you in the name of the One who conquered death—Sunday will come. In the darkness of our sorrow, Sunday will come. No matter our desperation, no matter our grief, Sunday will come. In this life or the next, Sunday will come.”
― Joseph B. Wirthlin

Eve on Sunday!  Hooray!

Sunday afternoon we took the bullet train to meet Mike and Daniel in Zhengzhou where we would also pick up Jude the following day.

But wait, I forgot!  On Saturday I got to go visit Chairman Mao's villa!  It was actually pretty cool except that it was randomly closed and I couldn't go inside.  But you know what I did do?  I climbed through Mao's backyard and peeked through his bedroom window.  How crazy is that?  Also, who knew Mao was actually a fan of the mid-century modern movement?  I didn't get any good photos of it but his place was a super hip modern house built in the 1950's full of super dreamy furniture.  All of the original stuff is still in it!  It's a 1950's mid century GOLD MINE! Too bad he was a thug.

Mao's car.  A gift from Mao's buddy Stalin.  #thuglife

Front entry way.  Bad photo - get over it!

Extra pretty driveway to his villa.

To be continued…