Voyage to the Antiquities Market

Because there was no organized touring today, this afternoon we took taxis to the Antiquities Market. Or at least that's where we thought we were going. To make things easier for foreigners, the hotel provides cards with "please take me to..." and a list of checkboxes of interesting places, which one can show to taxi drivers. Our drivers certainly delivered us to Zhangshan road, but it turned out that we landed a couple of blocks away from the antiquities market, instead starting in some sort of modern jade exchange. We wandered the jade exchange for a while, then negotiated in broken English and fubared Chinese for directions to the antiquities market (as far as I could tell from the very patient policeman with whom I spoke, we needed to walk north to the "5", although whether this was 5 minutes, 5 buildings, 5 blocks, a statue of a 5 on the street, I couldn't tell).

On the taxi ride, we saw this apartment complex, which reminds me of some of Gaudi's apartment buildings in Barcelona. I don't think that the Chinese architect even knew of Gaudi, but I'm intrigued by the similarity of style.



At the antiquities market, I couldn't handle the cigarette-fouled, uncirculated air and ended up waiting outside. Joyce and Linda and I decided to make for an area that the hotel staff had referred to as the "eyeglasses market" on Renmin Zhong Lu (People's Middle Road). I rather enjoyed this walk, as it involved navigating a map with Chinese street names on it (not impossible, as one can match characters on the map and on the street signs). We eventually found the eyeglass area, which is a clump of eyeglass shops, some facing the street, but most housed within two buildings. It's rather like the diamond district in New York, or many of the other such specialized blocks in NYC, where some nifty network economic effect makes it better for all of the suppliers of a particular good to be within yelling distance of each other. I wish we had such a street in New York, instead of having (a) Lenscrafters, (b) Morgenthal-Friedrichs and (c) wierd, overpriced boutiques. Joyce and Linda bought matched sets of reading glasses. I saw a couple of fun frames; maybe I'll go back tomorrow after I've read my prescription off my contact lens cases.

While we were waiting for our glasses to be ground, we went to the "Kung Fu" fast food restaurant. It has Bruce Lee for its spokesperson. The rice was yummy, the soup had large chunks of unknown meat in it but had great broth, the broccoli was tasty, and the eel and pork that I ordered were quite good. Everything was of course greasy.

The last of the forms?

This morning's excursion took us to Minhua's windowless fifth-floor hotel room. The fifth floor is where guides, nurses, and facilitators stay. I suspect that it's windowless because the hotel facilities extend to the fourth floor, and there's probably physical plant like AC equipment on the roof of the fourth floor, blocking any usable view on the fifth. We were in Minhua's hotel room to fill out the US-side adoption forms. It took us two hours to fill out the forms and walk through our checklist for the packet to be submitted to the US Consulate, which Minhua will do for us tomorrow. No pictures, which is probably a mercy.

Cantonese food

We went across the street to a Cantonese restaurant named something like "D. K. Company" today. I got to introduce Linda to Chrysanthemum tea, which she liked so much that she started interrogating me about other good flavors of Eastern tea (er, um, Oolong, and, er, um, Lapsang Souchong--that tastes like cigarettes. No really, it's good!). Linda selected the Golden Chrysanthemum tea, which came with continuous tea delivery service. Rather than just bringing us a pot of tea, the waitstaff kept a small "gravy boat" of tea on the table, vigilantly refilling our cups and the gravy boat. We never saw any chrysanthemum petals, so I have to believe that they kept a pot and a filter in some back room.

Here's a picture of our meal, which I voted best meal of the trip so far (Linda agreed on quality, but thought that Maeve's birthday party back in Nanning was better for the variety afforded by seven adults worth of food). On the left are the Cantonese boiled peanuts (including, I think, sugar, vinegar, and a clove). Front and center is the sliced spiced goose. Back center is the broccoli in garlic. On the right there's Macau style roast pig, with a plum dipping sauce and a crispy, fried-fat skin.


Most of the clientelle of the restaurant was Chinese, rather than adoptive families, despite its location across the street from the White Swan. I have to believe that the display of yummy live seafood at the entrance serves as a bok gwai deterrent. Here's a sample of my favorites.

"Young Fish" and "Silkworm":


"Pearl Oyster" and some sort of squid:


"Sandworm" and "Water Beetle":


A really big lobster (Joyce's hand is above the tank, about a foot above the lobster, and the camera is only three feet from the tank):


Turtles:


Eels:


Water snails:


Geoduck clams:


Some unknown thing (sea cucumber?) and sea urchin (uni):


Flounder:


and lastly, Conch shells:


Now we know where all the protein is--it's in storage tanks in restaurants!

Medical checkup

This morning we walked across the street to get a passport photo of Juliet, then we walked across Shamian Island (about 10 minutes) to the medical clinic to get her checked out. Mercifully, I only have photos of the walk to the clinic:




The clinic itself was full of babies and parents. There were three stations for us to visit: one doctor examined her skin for marks and whatnot; a second tested her reactions (primarily by squeaking a ball and seeing if Juliet tracked its sound); at the third station, some orderlies weighed Juliet and measured her height. The second doctor was blind in one eye and wore a 60s-style focusing mirror over the other, giving her a peculiar Brothers Grimm scary-but-nice-witch look. We also suspect that Juliet's worriesome 4-month head circumference measurements come from the shape of her head, which has its maximum circumference about 1/3 of the way from the top rather than 1/2 way down.

The White Swan in Day and Night

Here are a pair of shots of our hotel, one in daytime (sorry, no sun yet in Guangzhou), and one at night. No Swan Lake jokes, please.

Embroidery for Nana

Joyce asked me to snap pictures of this embroidered screen for her mom, Audrey. The dragons achieve a three-dimensional effect (maybe like embossing for paper) through means unknown to me.

Shanghai food

On our return from the folk arts center, I discovered that Juliet and I share a preference in soft drinks.

Juliet made her delighted squealing noise after resting her gums on the fridge-cold bottom of the can. I'm guessing that the cool helps soothe her teething pains in a way that the plastic toys, even chilled in the fridge, don't.


For dinner, we headed to a Shanghai restaurant that Linda and Joyce had found while wandering Shamian island. Juliet continued to taste everything, including the umbrella shaft and the tip of its curving cane. Yum!

Auntie Celeste, is this enough immunological challenge, or shall we roll her around in the dirt a bit?


At dinner, one of the waitresses turned out to be Juliet's kindred spirit, clapping her hands and squealing "Baby!", and eliciting laughter and delighted squeals from Juliet while we waited in front of the restaurant. Here's a shot of Sandy (the waitress) with Joyce and Juliet. I note with amusement that Sandy's supervisor's name tag had the title of "Caption".



The Shanghainese food was quite good. We had a yummy fried eggplant (kind of crusty coating, with garlic), some xiao lum bao-like pork dumplings that came in a paper holder with broth and a can of sterno, chicken with special spicy sauce, and fried rice (the weakest entree, probably because we couldn't get the seafood version due to Linda's allergy). The chicken with special spicy sauce was served cold, with a wonderful combination of spices that added a bit of tang to the boiled chicken meat. I believe I remember my maternal grandma (Hobu) and her friend (Nabubu) making this chicken for us when we were children. Mom and Aunt Jean, do you know the recipe?

Guandong Folk Arts Museum

For our second excursion on Sunday, we went to the Guandong Folk Arts Museum, which was once the private household of the Chen family, and has been variously called the Chen Clan Academy and the Chen Ancestral Hall. I found its architecture to be comforting, peaceful, and beautiful within the constraints of stone-and-wood architecture; the only thing I could imagine its inhabitants wanting more of was climate control. Here's a shot of one courtyard and part of a roof.


The museum contains a variety of artwork, including paper cutting,


ivory carving,


embroidery (Joyce liked this one for its resemblance to a Dutch Renaissance still-life),


and porcelain (yes, Dad, I know you think it's all Johnny-come-lately junk).



I was particularly taken by the display of how to make a set of concentric ivory spheres (one example at the museum had 43 layers!). Start with a chunk of tusk, make it a sphere, drill conical ports, then scrape sideways out of the ports to free each sphere. Once a sphere is free, one can detail it into an elaborate grillwork. I wonder how much time one of these takes. And I wish I'd thought of this when idling away time at summer camp--the soapstone on Catalina Island would have been perfect for this.


Oh yeah, almost forgot: gratuitous elephants!

Six Banyan Temple

This temple site apparently dates back to the sixteenth century. It's got a pagoda, and this line-up of three Buddhas (my angle only captured two of them), and a bunch of incense burning stations.



My mom will accuse me of being too keqi, but I decided to bow and light some incense in honor of my maternal grandmother (whose 100th birthday would have been a couple of weeks ago) and my Cantonese ancestors, some of whom I suspect would have visited this temple at one point or another. I'm a little bummed that I have no idea who they were, unless Tai Popo came here as a child.



Then we went into the temple and the monk sang a prayer and blessed the three babies. There was a small amount of sprinkling each of us with water from a leaf dipped in a pot, so I'm not entirely sure whether or not we're now Buddhists. Nah, it's only that deivore religion that does the baptism thing.



Then Joyce decided to light some incense in honor of Juliet's biological parents. I cannot imagine what horrible choices they must have faced in giving up such a wonderful child (who they could not even have gotten to know--the report states that Juliet appeared to have been born the day she was found at the Xingye Woman and Children's Hospital). I hope they wanted the best for their child, and trusted that she would somehow end up cared for and loved.

They hunt in pairs

I love this photo of Tara and Maeve, who are way more animated and interested than when we first met them a week ago. IIRC, we shot this just before loading the kids up to go to the six Banyuan temple and the Guandong folk museum on Sunday.

Chronovore!

We now know what category of eater Juliet is: she's clearly a chronovore! Unlike you wafer-thin deivores, or her adoptive paternal line of carnivores, Juliet's favorite food appears to be watches. This morning she exhibited a new skill by taking Joyce's blue watch off of Joyce's wrist. Impressive.

Speaking of new skills, Juliet seems to be developing quite rapidly. She has figured out how to clap in the last few days. She's on deck to be able to crawl--she gets up on hands and knees and shifts front-to-back, but hasn't quite figured out how to move her legs independently, instead she belly flops forward on the bed. I already mentioned the frog kicking (btw, Joyce reports that Juliet is now much more enthusiastic about bathing, perhaps because she enjoyed the pool in Nanning so much). And she's got a new expression of happiness, which is a kind of high-pitched continuous squeal (I originally thought that this was a pre-crying sound, but the circumstances and the smile on her face suggest that it's more an expression of glee). On the way to the Shanghainese restaurant for dinner tonight, she squealed happily most of the way (in between attempts to eat the umbrella, cane first). I can only surmise that the stimuli of new situations and people are having a positive effect on the pathways in her little head. And now I get to watch what the next thing will be. It's like being on the small-miracle-a-day plan.

Daddies are like Daleks

I have to admit that I thought my friend Brannon was a nutter when he described to me the sterilization regime that he uses on his son Ollie's bottle and feeding paraphernalia. He talked about using boiling hot water, and he had all sorts of concerns about sufficiently sterilizing the various things.

So here I am, in my high-end hotel room in Guangzhou, pouring scalding-hot water out of the hotel-supplied hot pot over a sink full of baby bottle parts. And wondering if shampoo has enough soap content and low enough perfume content. Or whether I actually need to scour each surface or whether it's sufficient to kinda mush things around in the hot water from the tap, since I'm going to chase with the aforementioned scalding water afterwards.

In my defense, there isn't a dishwasher built into our hotel room. If there were, believe me, I'd be using it.

The White Swan Hotel

When photos are back on again, I'll upload a couple of photos, first of the liquor and glassware cabinet in our room at the White Swan Hotel, and second of Linda, smiling ear -to-ear across the street from "Linda's E-Gallery", one of the many shops in front of the hotel.

We managed to have the worst meal of our trip so far, at "Lucy's" bar and grill, which serves American food (mostly). Linda had a hamburger; I had "Lucy's special fried noodles", and Joyce ordered a fried rice. 180Y (about US$25) later, we decided to stick with Chinese food for the rest of the trip.

The White Swan is quite a nice hotel, even by US standards. I'd put it on rank with the Ritz Carltons I've seen--vigilantly clean, high-end shopping in the lobby, lots of services, professional and helpful staff. Paul and Christine rented a suite and sound quite impressed with it; I haven't yet been to see it, but they report that the room comes with silk robes to wear. On the other hand, we're also paying US prices--room service with a bowl of congee for Juliet and a plate of French Fries for the adults came to 168Y, which is about US$20.

There seem to be large numbers of adoptive families at the White Swan. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that 80% of the people eating at the breakfast buffet were adoptive families. I wonder whether that's because the adoptive family deal includes breakfast coupons, or whether in fact most of the hotel guests are adoptive families.

The White Swan hotel is located on Shamian Island, literally next door to the American Consulate (convenient, eh?). I'm not yet sure what to make of Shamian Island. On the one hand, everyone speaks English. On the other hand, it seems rather like an American Enclave and Tourist Trap(TM), like Cancun in Mexico, which is more of an outpost of Die Homeland than a part of the country in which it occurs. There are piles of street vendors, and there are many store fronts with various "Chinese" wares inside--silk, paper cuttings, clothing, luggage of unknown provenance, scrollwork, and little fired pottery things. On the gripping hand, I have no doubt that the enclave follows from the consulate and the hotel--it springs from their business activities.

I think I might have preferred to have stayed in a hotel in the working part of Guangzhou and commuted to the consulate, to get more of a sense of how people actually live and work. The Majestic hotel in Nanning had this sort of feel. Even if I didn't understand how the department store could afford such a large staff, I could see people going to work, moving things (on bicycles sometimes), and carrying on as if a real economy were in action. Here I feel like the economy is very artificial and tourist-driven.

!@#$%^&* Networking

My networking problems are now worse: my VPN can't reach the DESCO server, and I can't ping the VPN server address. For that matter, I can't even seem to connect to Yahoo! Messenger. And my IMAP server doesn't seem to be visible. Is this all the Great Firewall of China?

There was a network outage at work on Thursday night, and there's scheduled maintenance now, so it's possible that I've just got bad timing between my free time for posting and middle-of-the-night standard maintenance.

Arrived Guangzhou

We reached Guangzhou and the White Swan Hotel safely today. I'm going to beg off a full post once again (sorry), as I'm sick (cold and conjunctivitis). More tomorrow.

Travel from Nanning to Guangzhou

I'm having trouble uploading images just now (timeouts, probably due to reduced bandwidth or something), so I'll write the text and hopefully get to add images later. Maybe I've used up my upload quota for today. Grrrr.

On the way to the airport, I snapped a picture of a "Sinopec" gas station. I find the name very interesting--clearly there's some sort of contractual collaboration between China and the OPEC countries. I wonder what it is, and whether there's some negotiated monopoly or special rights associated with it.


Maeve broke into a wonderful smile today, the first that I've seen. I'm guessing that she's getting healthy and simultaneously getting used to having two loving, constant parents around her. In any case, I've got a great photo of her smiling wide with her Debra Harry lips at the Nanning aiport.


I've also got a great shot of Paul and Christine cooing over Tara.



From the airport shops, I snagged a couple of photos, one of blue and white (for my dad, Lowell, who will no doubt write all this stuff off as junk), and one of a pair of sculpted elephants.



And from the plane itself, the headliners on the seats have a logo with some wonderful Chinglish: "Derby the world in my finger". I wonder what the authors meant. Also, the Derby logo, if viewed at a 45 degree angle, is exactly that of Star Fleet.

This'll all look better with the actual photos, I assure you.


Heidi had a strange conversation with the Chinese man who sat next to her on the plane. He wins the award for most cluelessly blunt on this trip. First, he asked her: "So, you came to China to buy a baby?" Yikes! What a stunningly horrid question to ask a new mother!

With a little bit of thought, I have concluded that adopting a baby is like buying a baby in exactly the same way that marriage is like prostitution. From a certain misanthropic viewpoint, yes, they are similar economic transations. And anyone who holds such a position has missed out on a core portion of their humanity. I don't think that Heidi's seatmate is a heartless unromantic, however; he's probably just not good at English.

Second, when Juliet looked around the seat and Heidi cooed at her, her seatmate remarked, "Now that's a pretty baby!" I didn't hear the comment, and I'm inclined to agree with the absolute form of the sentiment, and yet Mr. Seatmate would have done better to have said "another cute baby!" A pity I can't smack him upside the head for failing to be a gentleman.

Joyce's and my social worker had a fun story to tell us about adoptive parents: on the adoption trips that she has taken to China, more than 50% of parents pull her aside and say that they love their own child, but they feel sorry for the other couples whose children aren't as cute as their own. I love this story for its presentation of biology working at its best.

Return to the Park in Nanning

Saturday morning, I slept in, and Joyce and Linda took Juliet back to Peoples' Park in Nanning. It turns out that the admission fee was 4 Yuan for all three of them, which is about 50 cents. Maybe we should start charging that much to get into Central Park. There were both a tai chi group and a group practicing with wooden swords. I wonder how much the wooden sword exercise resembles the Forza class offered by our Reebok club back home in NY.