3 days with Zhen Zhen So Far.
We have had Zhen Zhen for 3 days now. It’s gone fairly well so far, she still gets sad sometimes but much less so than the first day we got her. Communication has been our biggest challenge. Right now I think we are in a war of wills. We want Zhen Zhen to learn English (and keep her Mandarin of course), and she wants us to just learn Mandarin. We have managed to teach her a couple of dozen words so far so we are making some progress. She can’t wait to go to America and see her brother and sister. We video chat with them every day on iChat and she gets very excited every time we do it. She is a little underweight so we have been feeding her a lot (lots of ice cream). She is a really good eater though. However, she is also an extremely messy eater. That’s fairly common with older kids from orphanages in China. Most of their interaction is with other children there, not adults. Thus they are not really taught proper table manners, and they are typically not overly self aware when it comes to those kinds of things. For example, when Zhen Zhen eats ice cream it gets all over her, yet she doesn’t realize that the reason it gets all over her is that she is not watching what she is doing while she is eating it. She just seems to think that it just happens. Needless to say it is something we will definitely have to work on before she starts school this fall.
It is very hot and humid here right now. The official temperature during the day is around 95 to 98 degrees with very oppressive humidity. However, the actual temperature in the summer is always a few degrees hotter than the official temperature because there is a law in China that any time the temperature rises above 40 degrees Celsius (104 F) you get the day off. Thus, the official temperature is almost never 40 degrees Celsius as they always shave a few degrees off the actual temperature when posting the official temperature. Anyway, during the middle of the day, its just flippin hot here. So we always just go to the indoor pool in the hotel during the middle of the day and only get out in the mornings and evenings.
This is Zhen Zhen’s first time in a large city and she does not know to look out for traffic so we have to really watch her when we go outside. Usually I just pick her up and carry her when we are dodging cars, mopeds, and busses as we cross streets. China notoriously has the worst drivers on earth. Their accident rates per capita are exponentially higher than ours are. We passed by a traffic police office and I took a picture of what looks to be the Chinese version of Drivers Ed:
Drivers Education for Chinese Nationals
Around a block or so away from where I took this picture we came upon a large crowd. They were surrounding a woman that had evidently been hit by a passing vehicle. She looked to be quite seriously injured (if not dead), and while the police were there, they were just taking statements from witnesses in the crowd rather than administering first aid to the victim. I probably should have tried to do something myself, but to be honest, I was worried that if we tried to do something we might get arrested or something (and made a show out of investigating our camera) and the headlines in the China Daily would have read “Foreigner Strangles Chinese Woman – Officials are Investigating”. At any rate, we could hear an ambulance coming, and I am sure they got to the scene within another couple of minutes to take the woman to the hospital that was literally less than 100 feet away. Needless to say, you do not want to be seriously injured in China and need first aid or any kind of immediate attention.
Zhen Zhen loves to go out and do stuff. I am sure its all a really big adventure for her. In the mornings we go down for breakfast in the hotel, then go to a supermarket a few blocks away to get snacks for the day. In the evenings our guide meets us and we go out until around 8 or 9 before coming back to the hotel. Despite having some paralysis on her right side and a significant limp, Zhen Zhen has walked 2 miles or more with us every evening. On Tuesday evening we all went to People’s Park which is a beautiful park about a mile and a half or so from the hotel. They have a playground there, lots of Chinese Gardens, rides, and a lake with paddle boats. It was the first time ever for Zhen Zhen to get to ride any kind of amusement park rides, but she has no fear at all of them. She should, as these rides look like rides look just like the kind of rides that carnies would be running in a nation with no personal injury attorneys. We let her ride a couple of them though and she really enjoyed it.
Zhen Zhen on her first Ride
Afterwards we took her out on in a paddle boat in the park’s lake (it was her first time in a boat):
Our Guide Echo, Zhen Zhen, and Me in the Paddle Boat
Later on, we walked about a mile from the park to a nice restaurant for dinner. We ordered:
Roast Suckling Pig – Excellent
A Beef and Chili Pepper Dish – Very, Very, hot – Zhen Zhen loved it.
Kai-lan (Chinese Kale) – was very good. It was sautéed with garlic cloves, chilies, and some kind of small fish.
And a desert that was like a fried pastry filled with condensed coconut milk.
It was served in huge portions family style. We had all of that, plus beers, for around 30 dollars American with the tip.
The next day we went to the Nanchang Zoo. Zhen Zhen had a good time (they have amusement rides in the zoo too), and she saw a lot of animals that she had never seen before. The Zoo is a total dump compared to American zoos. Most of the animals are kept in small dirty cages. Zhen Zhen got on a horse for the first time there and smiled for a picture despite being obviously afraid.
Zhen Zhen
As I said, the animals are not kept in the best of conditions, and many look rather unattended. This was especially the case with this huge Boa we saw whose cage was carelessly left open by a zookeeper.
Huge "man eating snake" in the bowel - Notice the large open window in the back of the cage.
After we finished with the zoo, our guide took us down an old street full of vendors and a farmers market.
Old Street in Nanchang
Last time we were in Nanchang our guide was from Shanghai and she came from a fairly bourgeois family – the kind of family that was condemned as “counter revolutionaries and landlords” back during the cultural revolution. It was obvious that she thought Nanchang was a dump full of China’s version of white trash, so she did not take us into any areas like this. Our guide this time is a local though. So she has taken us to a lot of places like this one that we did not get to see last time. On a side note, the communist revolution essentially started in Nanchang and many of the locals seem proud of that, including our guide. Thus our guide has told us a lot about the history of the beginnings of the revolution and this evening we are going to a museum on heros of the revolution. Unlike many other places in China, many of the locals here don’t seem to know how much of a total douche-bag to his people Mao was (giving the Chinese government something actually legitimate to censor this website for now). Anyway, I ended up trying some street food, specifically some “Stinky Tofu”. You can smell stinky tofu long before you actually see it. It smells literally like an open sewer. We smelled it about 30 feet or so before we got to the street vendor. Our guide dared me to try it so I did. Once you get over the smell, which is pretty much impossible, its actually ok. Its deep fried, then drenched in chili oil. I ate a couple of pieces, Tiffani had a little bite, and Zhen Zhen had some.
Trying Stinky Tofu
Other crazy food I have had on the trip so far:
Steamed OX Tripe with Ginger – Zhen Zhen really likes it. I thought it was easily the most disgusting thing I have ever tried.
Green Pea Ice Cream – Zhen Zhen’s favorite. I thought it was ok.
The guide tried to get me to try a preserved egg but I declined. Preserved Egg is a Duck Egg that is wrapped in a special mud and left to rot for about 2 months. I am very adventurous when it comes to trying new things, but I drew the line there.
Afterwards we went to dinner at another nice restaurant where we had:
Chicken Wings covered with a Sweet Coconut Rice – Tiffani’s favorite thing she has had so far on the trip.
A Mushroom and Pork Dish that was fried and drenched in Chili Oil. – Was very good Zhen Zhen loved it.
Some Greens – Very Good.
For desert Mochi stuffed with sweet whipped cream and pineapple – I love Mochi and they were the best I have ever had. Despite being a Japanese Pastry, evidently the Chinese like them too.
Anyway, Zhen Zhen really wants to go to the pool so I have got to wrap this up.