Mary's Trip to China
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There are thousands of shops in space about the size of a one car garage. All along the streets you see signs for Marlboro and Pepsi. Thursday Feb 26--Iris was feeling too sick to go out today so I took the baby out with the other families on the tour this morning. Everyone was so helpful helping me lift the stroller on and off the bus and giving me an extra hand when I needed it. Visited the National Museum and saw old iron pots, arrowheads and exquisite pottery in all different colors and shapes. I always thought of the pottery being blue and white but there were hand painted pieces of roses, and all kinds of shades of red, green and yellow. We saw a performance of people dressed in authentic costumes performing with flutes, drums and chimes. Mandy had been fussy just before then but she quieted down while the music was playing. It seemed to have a soothing effect on all the babies. We ate lunch at Mc Donald's today...
Friday February 27th--I've come down with Iris and the baby's cold today. On the tour today we went to see a Buddhist temple. Across the doorways in the temple there are barriers. They are designed this way to keep the evil spirits
from entering the building. They also believe it is unlucky to step on these as you might in some way break down the barrier. So I had to lift the stroller over the barrier and then walk over it myself. Inside the Buddhist temple there were over 500 golden statues of famous buddhist monks. Some of the statues were
for males and some were for females and were related to specific ages, so for example if you were a 30 year old female there was a specific statue that you would visit and pray. There was a giant incense burner that people were trying to attach coins to like magnets to a refrigerator. If the coin stuck it meant you would have good luck. One of the grandmothers in our group succeeded. Afterwords there was speculation that she might have used bubble gum since none of the rest of us succeeded. There was one large Buddha statue that people were leaving offerings of food in front of. One member of our group asked what happened to the food and we were told it was given to the Monks at the Temple since they had no money. Across the street from the temple was a garden with Bonsai and interesting rock carvings. Then we went to a real Chinese restauarant in a local hotel. They had a huge lazy susan in the middle of the table and kept setting down big bowls of food. We weren't really sure what much of what we were eating
was so you would wait until some one else more daring tried a dish and pronounced it edible. None of the restaurants are smoke free and I find that even a single smoker is irritating. I noticed at the Musuem, Department store and the Temple that none
of the buildings appeared to be heated. In the afternoon while I rested, Iris took the baby to get her passport.
Saturday Feb. 28th--Today is a free day. I am feeling lousy and keep remembering that darn health certificate that we had to complete when we entered the country. I have visions of the 3 of us being quarantined and not being able to leave the country. I am hanging in for tomorrow when we are scheduled to leave and fly to Guangzho. We will be going there to do the adoption work for the American government to bring Mandy into the States. At least I will be in a city with an American embassee in case we get worse. At lunch time a professor and his wife from England who teach at the local university asked if they could join us. They were utterly fascinated with all the babies. I told the wife about eating at the restauant yesterday. She said she was a vegetarian and was very glad of that when confronted with some
Chinese foods such as snakes and insects. I asked them about the fact that there was no central heating int he buildings. They said the same was true of the Universities. When it was really cold in the winter she would wear 7 layers of clothing. Now we know why Mandy was wearing 5 layers of clothes when we got her.
(to be continued)
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