February 18, 2016

We were going to China. This fact was often accompanied by other people saying, “Oh, a vacation, to China!” No. An adoption trip is not a vacation. Not on any planet is this a vacation. Imagine an exhausting trip to a place where you do not know the language/food/customs, important legal things must take place, you must WAIT on them to happen and be available at all times to fix/show up/change plans due to screw ups in the schedule AND do all of this with a child whom you do not know and may not like you a bit. But, you are GOING TO CHINA. If possible, we did want to see some stuff, around the edges, of this big thing we were trying to do. Last time, we flew into Beijing and played tourist for a couple of days before flying south to Q-Boo’s province. This time, Luna’s home town is near Shanghai, so we decided to fly there for a couple of days before time to meet her.

There are problems with reconstructing a trip like this, a few years after it happens. One, is that China is about 13 hours ahead of Central Time US, so the dates on my pictures aren’t always accurate. Another, is that in my personal notes I wasn't consistent with which time I was using - American or Chinese. Also, I packed a minimum number of clothes, so we often wore the same clothes on multiple days. I’m going to do the best I can to get our timeline accurate. Oh, also, the sheer number of pictures that we have is overwhelming. I’m making this blog for our family, so I’m going to be trying to put in enough to accurately capture the essence of what happened. It may be a bit much. In fact, as I’m working on this, the memories and the emotions are flooding back and it’s a bit much in a lot of ways.

February 18, 2016

Early in the morning, local time, we finally landed in Shanghai. We were three very exhausted people and so, headed straight to our hotel. Our first glimpses and photos of Shanghai were from the taxi. Shanghai is known as the “City of Lights” and I knew this but didn’t know if we’d get to see Shanghai at night, again, other than this one time.

Finally, feet on the ground in Shanghai.

Shanghai: City of Lights

 

A few hours later, we got up, had breakfast and headed downstairs to meet Iris, our guide for the next couple of days. We arrived in China at the tail end of Chinese New Year 2016, Year of the Monkey.  This was evident everywhere. In fact, Lantern Festival marks the end of Chinese New Year and we’d soon see evidence of this, as well.

Breakfast in our hotel.

Then, downstairs to the lobby, past the Year of the Monkey decorations...

...to meet Iris, our guide for the day.

First stop, Jade Buddha Temple (Founded in 1882 with two jade Buddha statues imported to Shanghai from Burma -Wikipedia) Due to the holidays, the temple was full of people offering prayers and incense.

Then back into the van for a short trip across the city to Yu Garden. The sky was low and grey and cloudy, there was no sun. It felt claustrophobic, like it was hard to catch my breath.  Last time we'd come in July and the sky was blue even in  Beijing, the most polluted city.  This time it was just one long, smoggy, grey cover. I'd known that this was possible, but it's hard to prepare for.  I've spoken to many Chinese adoptive parents who'll say some version of "You know, I never really even got the purpose of the US EPA until we went to China.  Now, I appreciate them, we need them."  I agree.

Shanghai

Next stop, Yu Garden. But, first, this is the market area outside of Yu Garden. In two days would be the Lantern Festival which marks the end of Chinese New Year, therefore, everything was even more crowded than usual (and China, in my experience, is always crowded.)  There would be multiple public lantern festivals and Iris suggested that we find a public spot and go watch but, as it'll be the night after we get Luna and VERY crowded, I have my doubts that this will happen.

Yu Garden is nearly 500 years old and covers five acres. It was first built in 1559 during the Ming Dynasty by Pan Yunduan as a comfort for his father, the minister Pan En (Wikipedia)

Headed into Yu Garden from the market.

Cherry trees.

Cherry blossoms

Poor Q-Boo. She was exhausted and therefore very not brave.

The tattoo artist who inked my tattoo was given this picture for reference.
"This is cool," he said, "you have a Chinese dragon tattoo modeled after one that you actually saw in China."
Yep, I do.

Basically, this says that this Ginkgo Biloba tree is over 400 years old.

In the center of the Garden was this outdoor theater.
Many live productions were preformed, here, during the Ming Dynasty.

The red building above is a tea house and we were taken inside for a tea ceremony.

This was the view from inside of the tea house and is very "China" -the very old, superimposed against the very new.

Q-Boo had been EXHAUSTED but perked up a bit, she enjoyed this tea ceremony.

And, back into the van for the next thing on the agenda. As you can imagine there is a lot of walking on a trip such as this, and there is a lot of talking which is one of my favorite parts. One of the great things about having a guide is that you have access to a person who is a native, who lives and works in the area. We talked about many things including the use of the native dialect Shanghai-ese and how every city has its own dialect. It’s a misnomer that Chinese people speak Mandarin.  Mandarin is their official language and most people have a functioning understanding of it. It’s the language of business and their public lives but there are hundreds of languages spoken in China.  Most cities have a local dialect that the natives speak –that is one of the things that denotes you as “outsider,” the use of Mandarin instead of the use of the local dialect -and when I say dialect I don’t mean the difference between American English and British English, I mean the difference between Cherokee and English. Both of them may be spoken within the US but they are vastly different languages. Mandarin may be the common language in China but the native dialect is how insiders know one another and experience life, together. We also discussed the ridiculous cost of living in Shanghai, how it's becoming too expensive to even get married, how many parents now prefer daughters to sons (a flip from just a few years ago) because of the expense of marriage carried by a son and the very high expectations of mothers-in-laws.

And, finally, we arrived at The Bund. The Bund is a famous waterfront and regarded as the symbol of Shanghai. Shanghai was once a British settlement and this is evidenced in the architecture along the Bund. That, added to the very modern architecture is, again, what defines China the most. There are buildings, centuries old, right next to the newest and most cutting edge architecture in the world. Travel China Guide has a great write up if you want more information.

(Yes, the white in the background is -and has been, and will be, in our pictures- smog.  China, in winter, is polluted.)

Iris left us here as it was a short walk back to our hotel. “Come back after dark,” she told us, “the lights are amazing.” I knew even when she said it that it’d be something that I’d always wish that we’d had the energy to do. It’d been a long day and with one child still battling pneumonia and two jet-lagged adults barely still walking, we were done. After this, we went back to the hotel and Q-Boo slept for about 14 hours

        Shanghai is a place that I want to return to.