China Trip 6/15/2013

Howdy!  Some of this is going to be a repeat.  The following narrations are from Doug's recollections of our trip.  We were so busy we ended up not journaling as we went.  Going to post each day's activities and photos.  I do have to say both Doug and I are disappointed in the quality of our photos.  We apparently need to take some photography lessons and/or take the plunge and buy a nice camera.  Anyways, here we go!

We left the house early at 6:00AM to catch a reasonable flight time of 8:40AM out on Saturday. First we flew to Detroit, and had a short layover for the big flight from Detroit to Shanghai Pudong airport.  This was on a 777, and was packed to the gills as normal on all flights are now-a-days.
This was a 14 hour flight, but we lost a day crossing the
International Date line, so we arived Sunday afternoon at 2:50PM in Shanghai!  Customs was pretty quick and grabbing the bags and getting through was fairly painless. 

Our hotel at Shanghai airport.

We met our guide Jane at the airport, we'll see more of Jane at the end of the trip. She told us that she had already sent several other families to Beijing which we are skipping the first part of, so we can visit Lily's orphanage first.  We can get in more of the rest of site seeing later on in the trip. 

We headed to the Airport hotel at Shanghai Pudong, and it was
decorated like a Chinese version of the Jetsons. The beds were round, the walls were all rounded, with round alcoves, the TV was mounted on a pole with a rounded rectangle cabinet underneath which turned out to be where the mini-bar fridge was! The shower was even curved and had modern "rain-fall" shower head mounted directly overhead. The other weird thing about this hotel is that all rooms start with the number 8, which is "lucky" in Chinese culture. All businesses try to get phone numbers with 8 in them (ie the cell phone # 138-8888-8888 was supposedly sold for RMB50,000).

Very tired girl.

Funky furniture.

Doug really likes the chinese beds, they tend to be pretty firm, and 
tend to be lower to the ground. All bed coverings in China/Asia
are a duvet/quilt instead of seperate sheets/blankets, which is pretty comfortable in all the rooms that all have too cold
air-conditioning. Most times we spent a lot of time adjusting the air so it wasn't soo cold. (Nancy here...there is no such thing as too cold a room :)

We split into two side-by-side rooms, as there are no connected rooms in China (excpet some in the White Swan in Guangzhou) it seems. All rooms also either have a king sized bed, or two double-sized beds. There are no rooms that hae two queens or kinds either. We suspect a family of 4 Chinese family will probably just get on room with a king sized bed and sleep altogether, but for us super-sized Americans, we got two rooms all the time. Sometimes we could have gotten away with one, sometimes not, as even some rooms were a bit cramped with just two of us in one (although Rose tends to spread out to fill up as much space with her stuff at all times). 

After freshening up a bit, we headed out to explore the airport
complex. Jane mentioned the Maglev train, and we decided to take a ride on it. It cost about RMB40 a person for a round trip IIRC. 
It felt a lot more like a subway ride than a train. It has a
display of how fast the train goes. It got up to 304km/h according to the display, (190MPH) and we were just zipping through to get closer to downtown Shanghai, but we still were pretty far out away from the river/downtown area where most of the interesting things are located.

Sleek!

Some smiley passengers.

Wheeeee!  That's fast!

We saw some restaurants, and Rose wanted to eat dumplings in China right-a-way! We chose the Wu Da Niang dumpling store (I think that is Aunty Wu's). Rose helped to order some dumplings and drinks, using her Mandarin language skills. The store looked like some cross of what Chinese think American fast food restaurants are, except after you place your order at the counter and pay, they bring the food out, serve you sauces and clean up after (and during-some of us haven't quite mastered chopstickes, even after all these years!)  when you leave. Self-service is NOT a Chinese expectation. 

Rose got some fried dumplings (ie. potstickers) that she loved, and
some steamed dumpings, and a soup dumplings (the kind cooked in soup, not that are steamed with soup inside). The price was pretty cheap, maybe RMB30-40 for the first round for us to eat.   Nancy here again - the staff at the restaurant were quite intrigued with the girls being with caucasian parents.  They asked of Lily "She one of us?"  It's hard to convey "adoption" to the Chinese.

Hey!  Wait for me! (Just kidding)

Rose admiring the view from the platform.

After dinner, we got back on the Maglev train and zoomed back to the Pudong airport hotel for us to spend the night.   Both girls fell asleep on the train.

Ni Hao!

Having a good trip so far - we left home on Saturday morning and arrived in Shanghai on Sunday afternoon.  With the time difference of China being 13 hours ahead, our long flight was about 15 hours.

The long flight started out a little rough with Lily crying because of stomach pain, and doubling over.  It would come in waves.  She'd sleep from exhaustion in between waves, about every 15 minutes.  The flight staff was helpful, but you can imagine what was going through my mind.  Felt horrible as she would cry "I just want to go home!".  I could tell others were concerned too.  It eventually subsided, and everyone was relieved when she was back to her usual cute happy self.  We think she just had really bad gas...she's been fine since.

Stayed at hotel right in middle of Pudong Airport Sunday evening, and we went exploring on our own.  They have a magnetic rail system (Maglev) they are testing, and we took it round trip.  Half way we got off and had dinner at a dumpling restaurant - kind of a fast food type place.  We attracted a lot of attention, and Rose did wonderfully translating for us.  This rail system, on our trip on it, peaked out at a speed of 301 km/h or about 189 mp/h.  That was cool but a little scary!  Wikipedia says they test revved it up once to 581 km/h!

Monday morning we flew from Shanghai to Nanchang, Jiangxi.  Met our guide and driver, and drove 2.5 hours to Lily's hometown of Yiyang, Jiangxi (not to be confused with Yiyang, Hunan).  This is one of the fews time Doug and I have gotten to be outside of a major airport city, so we found it interesting.

We passed over a river along the way, and below we could see a huge festival taking place.  We could see dragon boat races on the river!  I wished we could have gone down to it, as the Dragon Boat Festival is a popular event in China.

It is so hard to imagine what someone's city might look like.  When we got to Yiyang, it seemed small and quite poor at first.  But the next day when we drove to the orphanage, we saw a "downtown" area that seemed quite modern, cleaner and much larger than I imagined.  Just like any city, it has it's nicer parts and not so nice parts.

Let me back up a bit.  Before we left the US, our tour agency informed us that they had not been successful in contacting Lily's foster family.  They wanted us to be prepared, so we wouldn't be too disappointed as it looked like we might not meet them.  Monday morning when our guide Tina and ourdriver picked us up at airport hotel to take us to Yiyang, she told us she had good news.  The foster family had been located, and not only would we be meeting them, we would be meeting them in their home!  Needless to say, I was over the moon.  This was the main purpose of this trip, and with Lily's foster parents being elderly, we didn't want to miss the opportunity to thank them in person and for them to see Lily again.

Tuesday morning the Vice Director of the orphanage met us at the hotel, and took us to the orphanage. They welcomed Lily by setting off a huge bunch of firecrackers when we drove up!  Some of you know that Lily is terribly afraid of fireworks...I was worried about how she woud react. I think she was more curious/confused by the whole thing.

Clearly, the people waiting there were very happy to see her, and they welcomed her so warmly.  She clung to mom and dad, but we expected that.  They had printed a HUGE banner welcoming her.  It even says her name on it!

We were brought to a meeting room where they had laid out huge bowls full of fruit - lychee, grapes, bananas and apples.  All grown locally and fresh off the farm.

The people there were:  the director, the vice director, the person who found Lily, and a caregiver.  We got to review her file.  Our guide Tina translated the documents for us, and our questions and comments to between us and the director.  We learned a few new pieces of information, the main one being a photo of her that we believe was the day she was placed to be found (the day of her birth).  I don't think I need to tell you that it set me off crying...there is so little we know about Lily's circumstances.

We exchanged gifts - Lily was given a beautiful silver bracelet.  We had given the director a photo album of Lily through out the years, along with a letter to the director and caregivers, which Tina translated for the director.  He seemed very grateful and happy to have the photos and to hear how we have described having Lily as our daughter.

We then drove to the foster families home.  It is considered "in the country" but was only 20 minutes or so from the orphanage, and among many other homes.  We were so graciously recieved by the family, I gave and got the biggest ever hug from the mother.  They are elderly like I thought - the mother is 80 and the father is 77.  Their daughter and grandson were there, and their daughter prepared many delicious and special foods.  There was fresh watermelon right from the field, two different zongzi (rice and filling tied in a leaf wrapper), cane sugar to dip them in, long wheat noodles locally made, duck eggs boiled in salt water (from their own ducks) and many candies and treats.  They had even boiled and cooled it ahead of time for us, and also offered a peanut milk drink (sweet milky stuff with softened peanuts in it).

We were treated like royalty, and many neighbors came by to greet us.  Lily was unable to uncling from us, and was actually a little frightened because everyone wanted to touch her and look at her.  It was horribly hot and humid, but you just let the perspiration flow.

We were presented with a bag full of the boiled duck eggs - Doug thinks it is very traditional, probably going back to the Red Egg tradition.

Tina our guide read the letter we had written and placed in a photo album for them to have. And the director translated it for the mother and father (they use a different dialect).  We gathered as much information and took as many photos and video that we could so Lily will have some type of recollection of this.

We then said our goodbyes with another long heartfelt hug, and walked to another families home to deliver a photo album and meet the foster mother who cared for our friend Sophie (who was adopted the same time as Lily, and who lives near us in MN).

More to come - we need to pack, eat breakfast, do some shopping for mementos for Lily and then head to the airport for our flight to Beijing!

 Maglev high speed train in Shanghai

 So hot they have to stop and water the piggies in Yiyang

Director (at left) translating to foster mother and father (seated and to the right)