Here in Nanchang!

We flew into Nanchang, Jiangxi and got to our hotel at about 9:40PM last night (Saturday night). The Galactic Peace International Hotel of Jiangxi is a 5-star hotel, so we feel a bit out of our league being here, but the staff is nice. Not too many english speakers here though..

The pollution here is a little bad (worse than Beijing), but we can mostly see the sky. Nanchang is more of an industrial town, more like Changsha was, than the more cosmopolitan Beijing is. Going up and down the streets, you can see stores with motorcycle or compressor parts, copier toner, bicycle parts, etc. etc.

Nothing like the street we were on in Beijing with restaurants at every turn, and huge street life of people going up and down.

Coming into town from the airport, we crossed over the Shengmi bridge (we think thats it). The bridge beside it (the Nanchang? bridge) was lit up end to end, and made a light show for us. On one side of the Gan river there is a pair of lions guarding the bridge. On the other side, there is a pair of cats (one black, one white) carved of stone. There's even little mice heads poking out of holes on these huge statues. (aparently echoing a saying by Chairman Deng, "Whether a cat is black or white makes no difference. As long as it catches mice, it is a good cat."
There's a huge ferris wheel down the river some ways contributing to the light show.

The lights in the van were on the whole time, so it was impossible to take pictures. The Bayi park is by our hotel, and was all lit up for a monument to the Bayi revolution. Have to look that one up. Doug got some cool movies/pics of the water fountain show that goes on from time to time here.

After a well needed rest, and a nice continental breakfast, we are pacing around. It is 1:00PM on Sunday now. We meet the babies at 4:00PM today!

Everybody is a bit jittery today, thinking about what is to be with our family. But with 3 hours to go, its hard to know just what is going to happen..