Back to the Beginning

I said I would post more about our trip when I got back... so here it is. I went all the way back to us on the plane out of LAX. This is what I would have posted if I was able to get on-line and wasn't so sick and dog tired. So here are photos (with captions) mostly from our first day touring Beijing before we went to get XuXu...


Its very early in the morning and we are on our the first leg of our flight to China, LAX to SF.
Zion was so excited to go on his first airplane trip... but not so excited just a few minutes after leaving the ground. The poor guy got air sick. We found him some Dramamine in the San Francisco airport and he was fine on all the subsequent flights.



This was our first day in China. First we walked around Tienamen Square. We couldn't actually go onto the square because the Chinese "congress" was in session. Then we went to tour the Forbidden City which is at one end of the Square. It was a lot more crowded there this time than in 1993. This is us entering the Forbidden City. (It is called that because only the Imperial Court and the servants of the Emperor could enter, no commoners allowed.)



The Forbidden City is a vast and amazing complex. I like to imagine what it was like in it's glory during anceint Imperial China. The first time I was there in '93 our guide told us that 10,000 people lived within the walls of the Forbidden City. Many of those people were guards or servants.




Above are some of the interesting signs that Bill took pictures of. Sometimes the "Changlish" can be hilarious. I might need to spend more time in the "Hall of Mental Cultivation" after becoming a mom of two! The brain cells are dwindling. And how could you pass up a "Four Star Toilet"! The cultural differences can definitely be "Way Out".

The next photos are from my favorite sight-seeing venture in China. We went on a tour of a part of Beijing called Hutong. The people still live in the traditional courtyard style homes, some of which have housed the same families for many generations. I loved getting this taste of real China. We all piled in bicycle rickshaws and were toured around this quaint and delightful part of "Old Beijing". The ride was fun and exciting and the drivers were very playful, sometimes racing each other.


The first place the rickshaws stopped was where we were to have lunch (photos below). Our lunch was hosted in the master bedroom of a traditional courtyard home and it was cooked by the lady of the house and served by her daughter and our guides. There were three tables with small stools around them set up in the room and the one couch and bed also served as seating. What a gracious display of hospitality. Can you imagine hosting over 20 strange foreigners for lunch in one small room of your home (the room was probably as big as my kitchen.) And the lunch (which was delicious) was cooked on a tiny two burner coal fired stove in a tiny kitchen (about 1/4th the size as mine.) This really taught me a lesson about Christ-like hospitality. Amazing. You can get a sense of it from the photos below.

This is Zion, Bill and I at the lunch.

This is a photo of the part of the lunch where our hostess and local guide proudly told us about her home and family.

Our very gracious hosts.

We then went to visit another traditional home and family. The matriarch of the family (an adorable woman) just loved Zion. She asked him to sit with her while she told us about her home and family. I'm so glad he did without hesitating. (Thank you God!) This family had several pets: fish, turtles and birds. One of the birds kept saying "Ni Hao" (pronounced "nee how" and is "Hello" in Chinese). This experience was such a wonderful part of our trip. It really impacted my heart and increased my love for the Chinese people. Everyone who visits China should have an opportunity to do something like this before it is all taken over by high rises.

Next is a picture of some of the adorable children we met visiting a Chinese preschool. Aren't they gorgeous kids! And so well behaved. Could you imagine an American preschool parading foreign tourists through just so they could check it out!?! NO WAY! But it was good to see. Outside this classroom were baskets of toys and one of them was full of TOY automatic weapons... you'd never find that at an American perschool either.

I just love this picture of an alley way on our Hutong tour. It shows some the charm and simple beauty of China.


After this Zion and BIll went to a Chinese acrobat show. (Zion loved it.) I was too worn out to join them and went back to the hotel to try to rest some, but really only got to lay down (on the stone bed) for about 10 minutes and then had to get in the bus to join those who went to the show for dinner. We all were super cranky at dinner and practially collapsed when we finally got back to our rooms.

Well that was our first day. I'll continue to go through our trip in the next posts.