Chicken Kidneys – very tough.

Octopus Balls – this is a Japanese food, was very good.  Since it was nearly 100 degrees out, we opted to not have them drizzle mayonnaise on them.

Fish Balls – I think they were made with some kind of a pressure cooked carp before they were battered, rolled into balls, and fried.  They were ok, but very fishy tasting.

Scorpions – These are actually pretty good, they taste kind of like fried soft shell crabs.

Beetle Larvae – These were edible as wilderness survival food only.

One of the vendors tried to get me to try some kind of roast cockroaches on a stick but I could not bring myself to do so.

Scorpions and Beetle Worms.

The next day our guide took us to the 6 Banyan Tree Buddhist temple (over a thousand years old) where we got the traditional Buddhist blessing for our new daughter.   The temple was very peaceful and full of worshipers.   I thought it was kind of funny seeing many of the younger monks walking around with cell phones.

Getting a blessing from the monk.

The next morning I had just about all I could stand of the city so Zhen Zhen and I hopped a cab to White Cloud Mountain.    White Cloud Mountain rises a couple of thousand feet above Guangzhou.   There are miles of trails on it and a cable car that will take you to and from the top as well.    Despite the heat, we hiked to the top and took the cable car back down.    The trails up the mountain are paved and take you through a sub-tropical forest.    Its not wilderness by any means, but its a welcome change from the concrete jungle below.

Zhen Zhen in the cable car on the way down from the top.

Thursday night we left Guangzhou and flew to Shanghai.    Shanghai is the financial center of mainland China.   Its a city of around 25 million or so and is very competitive with Hong Kong.    We stayed in the Pudong district in a funky hotel that seems to cater to western europeans.

Pudong Skyline from The Bund.

Shanghai is a true world class city.    Our problem was that we really were homesick at this point and it was very hot there (102 when we landed).   So it was not as enjoyable for us as it probably would have been under other circumstances.   Just the same, we spent the weekend exploring the city.   On saturday we went to the Shanghai Museum which houses a large collection of Chinese antiquities.     You could easily spend the better part of a day in the museum as China has a very long history.

3000 year old bronze basin at the museum.

Shanghai is the intellectual birthplace of the Chinese Communist Party, but you would not know it by looking at it now, its essentially the epicenter of commercialism in China.   30 years ago Nanjing Road would have been filled with Chinese citizens in blue Mao suits on bikes, this is it today:

Nanjing Road

Our flight back to the states left on Sunday and the highlight of the day other than knowing we were finally going home was riding the 268 MPH Maglev Train to Pudong International Airport.

On our first morning in Guangzhou we had to take Zhen Zhen to an American Consulate approved clinic for a complete physical and vaccinations.    The cost for the physical, shots, and some medication due to her having an ear infection was around 250 dollars American.   That may sound cheap, but its much more expensive than similar services offered in other Chinese healthcare clinics.  It seems as though all one has to do is create a small association between healthcare and America, and miraculously it gets far more expensive than it otherwise would have been.

Zhen Zhen taking an eye test.

Zhen Zhen had to have 3 shots while we were there and she did not cry at all getting them.   So, she is pretty tough.   After we finished with the physical we spent they day exploring the island.   This was Saturday and evidently thats Wedding Picture Day, when all the newlyweds in Guangzhou come to the island for pictures.

What was amazing to me is that it was nearly 100 degrees and very humid, yet the brides and grooms were out there for hours getting pictures taken without a drop of sweat on them.   It’s much safer going for morning runs here than it was in Nanchang because there are hardly any cars on the island.   Zhen Zhen wakes up around 5:30 AM every morning, and I have been going out for a run at around 6 AM.   There are always tons of people out exercising in the mornings, mostly doing Tai Chi, but there are some joggers as well.    No one is very fast at all so being here makes me feel like Steve Prefontaine as I pass everyone.

Zhen Zhen posing in the pedestrian mall in the middle of the island.

There are lots of American families on the island with their new kids.   Zhen Zhen gets excited every time she sees a new family.   Most of them seem to hang out around their hotels though.   I think its because most of them are yankees and can’t handle the tropical heat and humidity here.   Some of them seem to do nothing but bitch about it here every time you talk to them.   Personally I don’t get it.   It’s hot here, and we miss our kids, but how often do you get to spend time in a place like China.  For crying out loud, this is for many of them a once in a lifetime experience, so quite bitching and get out and explore.   Today we left the island and explored Guangzhou.    The area around the island consists of a lot of older neighborhoods with lots of bustling markets.    Zhen Zhen and I tried some street food, and Tiffani was able to get a new pair of glasses in her prescription for – get this – 32 dollars American.   They had them ready in 1 hour.   Not only that, but they did a better job with the prescription then the optometrist did back in the states when she got her last pair.

Tiffani in her new Glasses

Afterwards we came across a street that was all pets for sale:  Dogs, Cats, Birds, Fish, Chipmunks…..

Chipmunks for sale.

Zhen Zhen pet a puppy for the first time while we were there.  Hopefully this is a good sign in so far as her not being afraid of Carter.

We came across several really cool old lanes as well called hutongs.

Guangzhou Hutong

We also saw lots of exotic foods including: eels, snakes, turtles, jellyfish, and even scorpions:

Be careful eating these...

Evidently there are places here where you can get them served on the street roasted on a stick.    Thats definitely something I will be trying while we are here just to say I did it.   Anyway, Zhen Zhen is driving us crazy wanting to get something to eat so I have to wrap this up.

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.

What kind of school will I go to?

Will they be nice to me in school?

Where is Qiong Qiong?  (Harper’s Chinese nickname, they were friends in the orphanage)

Where is my new brother?

Will I have my own bed?

Will we ride on a plane?

When will we go to America?

Are you (the guide) going to go with us to America and help me talk to people there?

Will I ever see my friends at the orphanage again?

Will my Mama and Daddy teach me how to swim?

Zhen Zhen with her nannies and the orphanage director in our hotel room.

We then went to the Civil Affairs office across the street from the hotel and finalized the adoption with the Chinese government.   You see, that hour and a half you spend with your new child in your room is when you are supposed to decide whether you want to go through with the adoption or not.    You would think that no conscionable individual would decide not to go through with it, but believe it or not, people actually have.    In the civil affairs office we paid most of our fees, got our adoption certificate, and exchanged gifts with government officials there (traditional asian custom).    It was very hot in the civil affairs office, and the entire process took close to an hour or so.  The waiting area was full of families around the world getting their new kids for the first time.

Zhen Zhen and Tiffani in the Civil Affairs office

Once we finished up there Zhen Zhen said goodbye to her nannies from the orphanage for the last time, and we went over to the notaries office to notarize all the official documents.    From there we went to Walmart and bought her some toys and a movie (some Chinese cartoon).   We then went to KFC (there are tons of them over here, the Chinese love KFC for some reason), and then came back to the hotel room.

I then showed her some pictures of her on the laptop that the orphanage had sent to us over the last year.   We had quite an extensive conversation about them even though neither of us could understand a word the other was saying.   She seems to be rather put out that her new parents don’t speak mandarin and I think part of the conversation on her part consisted of her voicing that.   Afterwards she had me turn the TV on and we all watched some Chinese Soap Operas together.   Its been a long day for all of us and she is now asleep.    Like I wrote earlier, I really just cant find the words to describe this whole experience so far.

Tomorrow we are all going to the People’s Park together.

These women practicing traditional Chinese Dance:

Fan Dance

People Exercising:

Tai Chi

A guy showing me his impressive beard (few asians can grow a full beard):

I bet he has been working on this at least 20 years

Chinese seniors singing traditional Chinese music:

Chinese Singing

People in paddle boats:

Fishing Boat

Quiet lanes:

Path

Even a guy using the lake to shave:

Man Shaving in the Lake

After traveling over 24 hours we finally arrived in Nanchang last night around 8 PM. This was someone advantageous to our getting over our jet-lag as we were not able to sleep much on the trip. At any rate, we checked into our hotel, The International Galactic Peace Hotel (no its not ran by Moonies), and were in bed around 10 PM local time. This morning we got up, ate a breakfast of noodles, dumplings, and fruit, and went to Walmart. Believe it or not, but there are over 150 Walmarts in China. The one we went to is about a 20 minute walk from the hotel, just across the August 1st Memorial. Its rather ironic that such a symbol of western capitalism would border a memorial to the first major communist uprising in China.

August 1st Memorial - Nanchang

Something tells me that the late Chairman Mao would have never imagined that Sam Walton would have a 2 story Walmart right next to one of the biggest memorials to Maosim in China. Of course, the new China is communist in name only. Walmarts here are not much like the ones in America. They are full of employees (hey, with over a billion people here you have to have jobs for all of them), and many of them serve as hawkers for various items. We bought 5 beers, 4 cokes, 3 bags of chips (mango and blueberry flavored), some mochi (Japanese Pastry – I love them), various other snacks and toiletries, and this T-Shirt:

for a total of around 8 dollars American. On the way back from Walmart we saw these workers demolishing a storefront with sledgehammers:

I am sure it would have warmed Mao’s dark heart to know that even today, many Chinese laborers are still made to do work the hardest way possible.

After we got back to the hotel I changed into my running clothes, went down the to hotel gymnasium, and then went outside for a run. Running in China is not like running in the United States. To start with, hardly anyone in China runs. Seeing runners in China is about as common as seeing people playing Cricket in the states. Running in China is a true extreme sport. Its about as safe as base jumping. During the summer its quite hot and humid, the air is thick with smog (this is an example of that EPA-free paradise we could enjoy in America if only we could get rid of all those “needless environmental regulations”), the sidewalks are full of people, and you risk being ran over anytime you have to cross a street. In fact, you can be ran over while running down the sidewalks as well because all of them that are wide enough to accommodate a vehicle will have cars driving down them and the others are full of people on mopeds and motorcycles. Ironically, I was almost ran over by a man in a Hu Jang Auto Insurance Van that was driving down the sidewalk to get around a traffic light. That said, going for runs or long walks is the best way to see the real China. In just a 4 mile run from the hotel, I saw -

Some men gambling:

Men Gambling on the Street

Everyday is like the 4th of July in China:

Fireworks at the Nanchang Zoo Entrance

Negotiated at least a dozen intersections like this:

Just step out into it, its the only way to get across.

Found old quiet streets like this:

Quiet Side Street

Passed a club advertising a Michael Jackson Impersonator Show in memory of the late Michael Jackson – What I would not give to see a Chinese Michael Jackson impersonator show:

MJ Impersonator Show

Passed quiet parks like this:

Nanchang Park

And of course saw plenty of the venerable 3 wheeled bikes that are still common sites in China:

I think he has room for more.

I thought it was cute seeing the kid ridding in the back of this one.

……All in just a 4 mile run or so. Which was the longest I could run before I felt as though I was coming down with the black lung from inhaling so much soot and acrid smoke.

In fact, here is a picture of her the first time we met her:

This picture was taken in a government office building.  She had just arrived a couple of minutes earlier from her orphanage.  We were in a room full of people who where all meeting their adoptive children for the first time.    Within an hour we were back at our hotel room with her and she was playing with the toys we brought for her.

Its really amazing when you think about it.  We travelled literally to the other side of the world.  Met our new daughter (who did not speak a word of English), and just an hour later she was in the floor of our hotel room playing with us.    A few hours later she spent her first night with us.

When I think back on all of it I just can’t believe that its only been 2 years ago that we met her  - and here we are about to do it all again when we get our travel approval to bring home Harper’s friend from the orphange Zhen Zhen.