February 20, 2016

We woke up in Hangzhou, where we'd be for the next week. The first thing that we did was Skype with the boys back home. It was past their bedtime in the States, so we made an effort to talk to them as early as possible in the morning. They were doing well, and acting like themselves. That done, we went downstairs for breakfast and then we headed outside. The next day, we’d meet Luna (!) but, for today, we were going to make like tourists.

One of the most frustrating things about being in a foreign place and being tied to the city that you’re in, is that you can’t visit other places. One of the most wonderful things about being in a foreign place and being tied to the city that you’re in, is that you are tied to the city and can't visit other places. It makes you find things to do that you’d otherwise miss. In fact, it forces you to make more like natives than tourists. Across the street (and not a horribly long walk) from our hotel was West Lake. Native or tourist, West Lake was not something that we’d want to miss, anyway.

Skyping with boys, back in Alabama.

Outside, in Hangzhou, the sky was the same as it was in Shanghai. I was hoping that the smog would lift, but other than the day before, when I’d seen a blue tint, it was the same. I could see the sun, but it looked as though it had a wad of Vaseline smeared across it. I remember telling K-Man that if I lived there I believed that I’d paint everything inside of my apartment blue- walls, ceiling, everything would be painted sky blue. I missed the color. Blue, I felt hungry for blue.

I was also looking forward to hearing Mandarin spoken in China. We’d spent the last few months taking Mandarin and had ended up knowing “get through the day” Mandarin. We could understand and speak enough to get through the day with Luna and to allow us to trust our digital translators when needed, but we were in no means even close to being able to really navigate within the language. Shanghai was a swirl of activity, but today we’d be able to take our time and really listen.

We headed down the sidewalk and soon found ourselves entering the area around West Lake. The freshwater lake, itself, covers over 8,000 acres and “it is divided into five sections by three causeways. There are numerous temples, pagodas, gardens, and artificial islands within the lake.It was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2011, described as having 'influenced garden design in the rest of China as well as Japan and Korea over the centuries 'and reflecting ‘an idealized fusion between humans and nature’ (Wikipedia)” According to TopChinaTravel.com, West Lake “is one of the top ten scenic areas in China” and “Marco Polo called Hangzhou the most enchanting city in the entire world.” (Yeah, THAT Marco Polo.) 

At the entrance to the public space around West Lake.

West Lake

We came around a turn in the sidewalk and look what we found! I wanted to go in and have some coffee, but it was more like a cigarette bar. Yep, China -everything had been something else, it was a hodge-podge of languages and uses for the buildings. In the places where things were still written in traditional characters, the locals couldn't even read them. (Right after we'd discussed the difference between "traditional" and "simplified" Mandarin, one of our guides walked into a building and pointed to a row of traditional characters on the side of it. In my mind, I can still hear him say, "We can't even read that.")

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We ended up stopping in here,at Costa Coffee, instead.

Yes, those are Year of the Monkey monkey heads on top of the cappuccinos.

As was typical in every public green space that I’ve been in, in China, West Lake was crowded and full of people doing social things – dancing, playing instruments, taking pictures for special occasions, playing games, making art, etc. (See the videos, below: a man painting Chinese characters with water on the sidewalk, a man playing the Erhu, and a video of people dancing- you might recognize a couple of people in that one.) Long before this moment, I’d stopped being surprised at what we’d see.

As was also typical, we quickly became one of the things “to see” in the park. People stared at us everywhere that we went, they filmed us, they talked about us -I am sure that I heard someone ask his friend as they walked by, “Lǐngyǎng, ma?” “ Adopted?”- and sometimes, they’d walk up to us and point expectantly at Q-Boo, at which point we’d launch into one of the only sentences in Chinese that we really felt comfortable with at the time, “Wǒmen lǐngyǎng.” “We have adopted.” Yes, yes, they almost always smiled.

We were buying cotton candy from a street vendor when yet another lady walked up to me, "What's this?” She pointed at the cotton candy in my hand. “Cotton Candy,” I enunciated. I was always very mindful of my southern accent and so I tried hard to crisply pronounce the words. I’d been trying to learn Mandarin for a while at that point, and I knew how hard it is to hear another language, much less if the speaker has an accent that you aren’t used to.

“Cot….can….?”
“Cot-ton Can-dy.”
Her husband joined in, “Cot-ton Can-dy.”

We said it to one another until they could say it correctly. It reminded me of a ping-pong game -back and forth, back forth, “Cot-ton Can-dy.” I didn’t know how much English she really understood, so I launched into a very simple explanation,

“Yes, it looks like the cotton plant.” I pulled on K-Man’s shirt and made a small circle with my fingers. She nodded like she understood but I do this too, when I completely do not understand, so who knows if she did. “So, we call it cotton candy.”

She nodded, “Cotton Candy. Sweet.”
“Yes, sweet. Tián, sweet?”
Ah, she nodded, “Tián, sweet.”
“Thank you” her husband said
“Xièxie” I replied. We smiled and nodded to each other.

I felt much more comfortable just knowing the few Chinese words that I knew. We walked up to a vendor and said, “shuǐ ” or water, she pointed at what she had and I said “hóngsè,” -the red bottle. When street vendors told us how much something cost, I recognized the numbers. The sounds of the language no longer sounded so alien and even our guides, (up till that point and in the days to come were) able to help us to say words correctly, including correcting our tones. Instead of a wall of noise, the sounds of the language became almost recognizable words. It was like we finally had the key to understanding Mandarin. We didn’t really understand it yet, but we were so much closer.

 

Q-Boo was feeling much better, her antibiotic was beginning to conquer the pneumonia in large ways, but she was exhausted, everyday, right around lunch time. We decided to grab some food and meander back to the hotel.

Due to its history and its position, Hangzhou is also home to a whole lot of wealth.
This was in one of the shopping centers adjacent to West Lake. K-Man is a car guy, so we visited.

After lunch, she's done. Time to go back to the hotel.

We were nearly back to the hotel, when it occurred to me that I was much less shocked by the large crowds and the insane traffic this time, compared to the last time that we were in China. It hadn’t changed, we’d adjusted. We were in the middle of the road when I remarked to K-man: 

"You know, it really is like what they say about being chased by zombies -you only need to be faster than the guy beside you. As long as there are enough people between you and the oncoming vehicle, you're okay."
K-Man: "Yeah, all you need are enough blockers."

I'm pretty sure that you've spent too much time in China when you begin to cross the road with abandon.

Back at the hotel, Q-Boo got comfy on her sofa-bed and watched old school Chinese dramas-with the gowns and the hair and the beautiful everything- while she fell back to sleep for her afternoon nap. I let the TV show continue to play while she slept.  She had been really quiet since we'd arrived in China and I imagined that it was because her brain was rearranging itself with Mandarin and English. Q-Boo's native language had been Cantonese, but Mandarin was a language that she'd have heard spoken every time that they'd gone into public and I wondered if some part of her remembered. I also wondered what other memories were being triggered in the process.

And, then I let my mind turn itself to Luna. The next morning, we'd meet her. The next morning our family would grow by one. Luna would finally have a family and I'd birth another daughter.


“A(girl)you are in China today, but I sat outside, tonight, and saw the moon rising. "That looks like a full moon." I thought. So, I looked it up. It WILL BE A FULL MOON ON MONDAY. That's so amazing. It's called a "Snow Moon". <sigh> Cannot wait to hear your amazing story...but we will see a Snow Moon (on the day that you meet Luna.) “ -Bea

February 19, 2016

Well, I’m glad that we visited Shanghai, but we have a timeline and have to be moving on. This morning, we left the hotel early and rode over to Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station, where Iris walked us inside, helped us buy tickets, and left us at our gate. This railway station is the largest railway station in Asia and home to a high-speed bullet train that we’d be taking from Shanghai down to the capital of Luna’s providence, Hangzhou, Zhejiang. Hangzhou, as a place, first appears in records about 5,000 years ago and has been of some importance for most of that time. K-Man has been endlessly excited about doing this and I don’t think that I really appreciated it. In September 2010, a test train on the Shanghai-Hangzhou high-speed line achieved a speed of 416.6 km/h (259 mph) setting a Chinese train speed record. You can check out Wikipedia for more information.

Shanghai Hongqia Railway Station

It's not even lunch but Q-Boo is exhausted and I am trying to take everything in.

I loved to travel by air or rail, inside of China. I always felt like, any other time, that we were kind of being shown what they wanted us to see.  On the train, my eyes barely left the window because it felt like I was getting a small, behind the scenes, look at the "real" China.

“300 kilometers per hour! That’s 186 miles per hour! This is the fastest I’ve ever gone, I mean, on land. Is this the fastest that you’ve ever gone on land?” - I mean, really, part of what I love about K-Man is his endless enthusiasm and sense of adventure. 

"No, babe. I was once part of a camel race…." -I mean, really, part of what he loves about me is my endless sense of sarcasm. 

In Hangzhou the sky was the same as it was in Shanghai- low, grey, and smoggy- except that I worked really hard to believe that I did see a slight blue tint.

We were met by another guide in Hangzhou and, on the way to the hotel from the train station,  she mentioned to us that we were passing over a canal that was dug 1500 years ago. The canal took 3 million people to dig and was stretched from Beijing to Hangzhou, a distance of over 800 miles. To me, this was comparable to the Great Wall, but I’d never heard of it. This is China- the old, the new, the modern, the ancient, all thrown together and existing side by side. The canal joined other local canals that were dug about 500 years before that. I remember thinking, “At home I am impressed with something that is 100 years old. With a flick of her wrist she says ‘1500 years old.’ “

We are such a young country and culture.

Our home while in Hangzhou.

Our view.