Dateline: White Swan Hotel, Shamian Island, Guangzhou China, 22 August 2004
Much ground covered since last I blogged: the big pack-up in Nanchang Friday night, the none-too-short China Southern flight to stormy Guangzhou, the discovery of how good the junior suite really is at the White Swan, baby’s visa photo, a hot night in the city, visiting Buddha and getting blessed, the please-let-this-be-the-last-shopping-extravaganza seguing into one quiet Sunday afternoon.
Packing Friday night was a real work of art that took about six hours. Divesting ourselves of little of our goods, because everything Vonne brought along has proven quite useful in the end (pun intended)—to wit, the Plush Tush wipes with aloe vera. I was pretty sure humping all those little individually wrapped packets through Asia was going to be a huge waste of time, until we landed in Guangzhou and five days of Nanchang diet finally worked its way through me. Now, I consider each packet to be a little bit of sunshine in an otherwise typhoon-infested season.
Vonne’s other little bit of genius was packing additional luggage within our original luggage. We set out with two big roller frame bags and two large roller duffels, checking the first two while carrying the latter two. Inside one of the big frame bags were two heavy-duty hiker backpacks. Additionally, we checked the box with the stroller/car-seat combo. That’s how we got to Beijing.
From Beijing to Nanchang we pulled out all the bubble wrap that Vonne had strategically placed inside the car seat box and used that to wrap all the various breakables we bought in Beijing. Then we stuffed the car seat box with all our clothes because we couldn’t break out the backpacks yet as additional luggage since we were traveling on only two tickets.
Well, collectively ever more gear in Nanchang, we also collected our excuse for more luggage—the third ticket now known as Vonne Mei. So going from Nanchang to Guangzhou, we checked both big frame bags and the duffels and carried on the two backpacks plus a small roller bag from Vonne Mei that Vonne picked up at the Nanchang airport. Pretty clever huh? And all by Vonne’s design, having thought it all out months in advance. Me? I just stand to her side and smile every time the question is raised and Vonne pipes up: “Oh yeah, we brought one of those. You’re free to use ours if you need to!”
Best example besides the Tush Wipes (which still comes in Number 2 after the Polaroid—God, was that another pun?) is the cream called Aquaphor that’s good for heat rash. Heat rash for kids in SE Asia is like freckles back in the States—every other kid’s got ‘em. So no big deal right? I mean, who worries and plans ahead about these things?
Well, Vonne did. Vonne Mei had some nasty heat rash all around her head, to include a boil just behind one ear. So we applied the stuff methodically over several days and voila! No more boil. Why that matters is that another baby in our group had a similar problem, the boil got infected, and the couple spent a night in the hospital nursing a baby with a very high temp.
So, the packing all done around midnight, I finally join Vonne and Vonne Mei in sleep. Up at six, bags at the door at seven, and one last trip to the breakfast buffet before we leave the Lakeview Hotel in Nanchang.
The chartered bus to the Nanchang airport is about an hour, but we get to get one last nice tour of the city for last-minute shots, to include the giant black and white cats statues on one end of the landmark August 1st bridge over the Gun River.
No big issues getting on the plane. You can lock your checked bags in China and you don’t have to pull out laptops or take off your shoes to get through the metal detectors, so it’s a bit easier than in the States. Plus, the stroller/car seat combo works really well: two tugs on two levers and the wheels and steering handles disappear into the frame of the car seat—just like that. So despite it’s apparent size as a stroller, it slips through the baggage screening machine as a simple car seat.
Later, when walking down the jet way to the plane, I could see the China Southern stewardesses shaking their heads when they saw the stroller, because the airline told us we had to check all strollers due to it being a full flight. But before they can get a word out, I stop just before the door, suck up the wheels and sink the handles and voila! I pick up the seat and we’re in like Flynn.
Another bit of weirdness: they scatter our seats all over the plane, so none of our three seats are together. No problem, says guide David, in China you don’t have to use the boarding pass with your name, so he gathers up all our passes and redistributes them so everyone can sit together. Vonne and I put up one seat arm in our trio of seats and the car seat slips in just fine. We snap a photo of Vonne Mei during the liftoff of her first jet plane ride.
It’s an easy flight in the rather old 737, until we get near Guangzhou and you can see the clouds piling up outside. When we try to descend, we’re beaten off by a huge rain storm that hits the area, dousing it. Apparently, this happens just about every day, sometimes several times a day, during the typhoon season, which the Guangdong province is now enduring. So we circle for close to an hour and our simple, one-hour flight drags on and on. But Vonne, as always, has thought ahead and we are carrying a good supply of rice cookies, which Mei loves to chomp-suck on as her incoming upper teeth give her pain So she works her way through several cookies and we eventually get to land.
The new Guangzhou airport is very sleek and very impressive—one of the nicest airports I’ve ever been to. Our four bags arrive without issue and we haul them to the curb, where the White Swan has its porters ready to transport them to the hotel for us—right to our rooms. We’ve pre-paid David for porter tips throughout our journey, so it’s a very simple process.
Next, we jump onto the White Swan’s own tour bus (they have quite a few) and we’re off through another downpour to the luxury hotel. Checking in at the hotel, which is full of high-end shops, a waterfall, couple of pools, ten restaurants, and someone seemingly every ten feet to do your biding (including pushing the elevator buttons in advance for you and then making sure the doors don’t close until you and your stroller are safely inside), we finally hit the big-time in terms of living well.
Vonne and I decided in advance to take the basic rooms in both Beijing and Nanchang, but then to spend the money on a suite at the White Swan. We figured it wouldn’t matter in Beijing, since we’d be on our own and out the door the vast majority of the time, which turned out to be absolutely true. In Nanchang, we figured we could handle the space because it would all be about spending time with baby and running around making various appointments—also true.
But in Guangzhou we knew we’d have serious time on our hands, lotsa rain falling on our heads, and that we’d be sick and tired of urban camping—like using one sink to shave, brush our teeth, and wash all our bottles and our clothes.
I gotta tell you, I’ve stayed at this level before. When I went on my book tour with Putnam and whenever I give speeches to big conferences held at luxury hotels, I usually do this well. But the thing is, in those situations I’m always on the go the entire time, so I spend at most about 8 hours in the room, meaning I admire but I rarely enjoy. This time is different.
The junior suite consists of two rooms with two baths. First room is your basic living room set up with nice office desk arrangement in front of bay windows overlooking the city skyline (the 27th floor). Nice bar set-up is perfect for baby’s food stuff and bootles, to include the hotpot for boiled water. Great TV hidden in furniture with about 50 channels, only five of which I can understand. But off this room is the best part—a half bath where we can do bottles, thus keeping them out of the master head.
Glass French doors close off this room from the bedroom, which is nice for when Vonne Mei sleeps away a good chunk of her afternoon and I want to watch the Olympics, drink tea, and type on my laptop.
The master bedroom is bigger than the room we had in Nanchang—by a ways. More wall-to-wall windows, two big beds pushed together, another TV, great walk-through closet, and a head to die for! It’s got a nice bath, glassed-in shower, nice Kohler (enough squat WCs for Vonne to last her lifetime!), and great vanity/make-up area—everything in marble from floor to ceiling.
On, and finally, the place comes with a first-class crib.
We have arrived. Having already paid the sum in our tour package, it’s balanced by all the cheap meals, cheap chartered buses, cheap tours, etc., so the whole thing seems quite reasonable. Yes, it’s a bit distancing from the real world, but I can live with that for my third week on the road. I don’t pretend I’m going to “get” China in all its complexity in three weeks and I don’t really want to try. What we’re here to do is spend an intense amount of time bonding with our little girl, and yeah, I prefer to do that in a junior luxury suite if it has to be done in some hotel on the other side of the earth.
So we unpack everything and get settled in. Then we’re off with the group across the street to a photo shop to shot the babies for their U.S. entry visas. After that, we’re off to a nearby statuary park and Lucy’s, a local haunt that specializes in American cuisine. Almost everyone in our group is dying for a taste of home, so they order tacos, cheeseburgers and what not, and you know what, none of it is really any good. It’s like taking a native Chinese to a Chinese restaurant in the U.S.—typically they can’t stand it. It’s not that it’s bad per se, it just doesn’t taste right—like a bad copy from a Xerox.
Vonne and I are well aware of this pattern, so we order Japanese flat noodles in bean sauce, so great spring rolls, and some Thai curry with eggplant. Oh, and we order a “jar” of beer for 40 yuan ($5) that turns out to be a pitcher of Tsing Tao, which is really the best beer in China. We also order scrambled eggs and apple juice for Mei. The food is all fabulous, if a bit hot (my first heartburn of the trip later on). When you’re gulping beer and your forehead is dripping with sweat, you know you’re heading for a fall, but it was well worth the trip. All that and a big tip equals 150 yuan, or roughly $12.
When you can eat like that every night for 12 bucks, you get the junior suite and live it large. But that means no room service like in Nanchang, because the Swan itself is very expensive, but fortunately Shamian Island is full of restaurants. Basically, eating at restaurants is the favorite pastime of Chinese in general. When Vonne and I carried out our last night in Nanchang, guide David was extremely puzzled. He just couldn’t understand why we wouldn’t want to eat in the restaurant, it’s just that ingrained into the culture here.
Great night of sleep and we’re downstairs to the “coffee shop” for the free breakfast buffet. I say “coffee shop” because it comes with a 30-foot waterfall with miniature temple on top on the “mountain” thingamabob, and then there’s the rather large wading pool full of about 100 brilliantly colored carp. Being a former kid from the Wisconsin River basin, I suddenly felt an urge to pick up a big rock from the surrounding setting and pick myself out a nice one for dinner, but I resisted. Anyway, the smoked salmon did the trick, along with the other—say—hundred food items to choose from.
After that feast we were off to the local 1,600-year-old-Buddhist temple, where we had our babies blessed in a nice little ceremony, and got treated to a colorful collection of freakishly malformed beggars in the street—the kind you haven’t seen in the U.S. in many decades, simply because we have medical treatments for all those things nowadays. So you distribute your small bills and you tune out the carelessly cruel comments from your fellow tourists (“We’re just here for the babies! Please, go about your pain-ridden and pointlessly impoverished lives! But what the hell, would you mind I shot your picture?”).
Inevitably, as guide David explains the five major religions now operating in China (Buddhists, Taoists, Muslims, “Christians” (meaning Protestants) and Catholics (funny how we’re always being voted out of the Christian club by everybody, isn’t it?)), you end up discussing some religion with your fellow tourists, and the heavily evangelical tone of many can come off as a bit disconcerting. I mean, we’re not rescuing Vonne Mei from eternal damnation here, we’re just trying to give her a better chance than she’d have at the orphanage. Yes, we’ll raise her Catholic, but I’ve received enough emails from Chinese readers who say the ideas in my book clearly identify me as a Buddhist in mindset and that I should abandon my Catholic faith to know that there’s not the huge gulf in understanding that some see between the world’s major religions—at least when practiced by reasonable, loving individuals. My years of exposure to the world’s religions tells me I find the same concept at the core of each, whether you recognize it as the Golden Rule or not. So let’s just say we’re going to treat Vonne Mei as we’d want our orphaned children to be treated by somebody else, if the tables were turned, and we’ll leave our sense of cultural “superiority” at that.
Not that I’m not intrigued by the historical theory that Christ might have traveled in the direction of India in his twenties and been exposed to Buddhist ideas in those years . . .
After the temple we went to our last planned shopping experience (God, please let be the last—any god out there, I’m asking for help, or more luggage!). It was this two-story porcelain place with really good stuff and reasonable prices. Plus, it was standard to argue them down about 20 to 25 percent without having to put on too big a show (something I frankly find distasteful, knowing that someone on the other side of this equation should be reasonably compensated for their time and sheer artistry). So we got three big scrolls of watercolor landscapes (not wide, but very tall). Fortunately, Vonne pre-packed this special luggage tube—as if I had to mention it!
We also got some “hair embroidery” for later framing: one of a tiger with a woman and another of two birds. What I mean by “hair embroidery” is just that: embroidery using human hair as the thread. It’s amazingly fine stuff and a very old tradition in China. Vonne also got a high-quality jade bracelet for Mei’s 16th birthday (does that woman ever stop planning ahead?). Weird thing I learned on that one is that the paler the color, the better the quality, whereas I was certain it was the other way around—until I read the prices in yuan. I also got a small bust of Chairman Mao to go with my Lenin-Marx-Engels trio from Moscow, and with that we were finally out the door, with the promise from the store that they would deliver to our room the “chops” we were having made for all our children. Chops refers to the seals that are carved into the ends of small granite pieces [right on cue, as I typed that, the knock on the door announced their delivery]. We had the four kids’ names done up in Chinese characters.
This afternoon has been mostly about Vonne Mei catching up on her napping, me catching up on my blogging, and Vonne roaming around the island with friend Janet from Kansas (they interacted for months on the Internet in various chat rooms and discussion groups) doing various piddling shopping. Vonne’s last quest is a granite etching of the four kids. We shot a Polaroid of Vonne Mei and cut it out, inserting it roughly right-sized into a Christmas portrait of Em, Kev and Jerry that we had shot last December. We had the photo with us because Vonne had created a soft-plush baby photo album for Mei months ago and mailed it to her orphanage, along with some toys and two disposable cameras—all of which were returned to us by the orphanage director. With that kind of loving care being shown by Mei’s caretakers, you need only imagine how easy it was to lighten my money belt when it came time to give an additional, impromptu donation to the Yongfeng Social Welfare Institute last Wednesday when we visited.
Anyway, granite etchings of photos is something of a local art thing here, and it’s amazing to watch, because it’s not done with some computer or anything, but actually by free hand. The artist simply stares at a photo and works the granite with a very precise drill bit. The output is nothing less than stunning, and as usual, quite cheap by our standards.
So while Vonne and Janet navigate Shamian Island in what looks to be another impromptu downpour, I bang away on my laptop, waiting for permission to visit—yet again—the hotel “business center.” To my amazement, what the junior exec suite does not come with is a broadband connection!
But that’s fine, because it keeps me from spending too much time surfing and encourages more time simply playing with Vonne Mei, who really loves to do just about anything so long as you’re touching her. So today has been a never-ending quest to break her personal record for standing free. She’s now up to about 20 seconds, and that amazingly beautiful grin of hers is reward enough
Tomorrow is medical check-up, then a paperwork meeting, and finally a Dim Sum extravaganza group meal per David’s arrangement. Vonne’s also likely to have a massage, which can be had in your room for about $10 per hour (when you tap guide David’s preferred pick, vice the staff provided by the swank Swan). Tuesday is the all-important Consulate appointment and swearing-in ceremony, and I think a cruise on the Pearl River. Wednesday will be the last day that will focus on packing up. Thursday we check out and fly to Hong Kong, where we’ll spend one night at an airport hotel, then a flight to Tokyo connecting to the Twin Cities, where we’ll recover one night at a hotel and see my family. Then a Saturday flight to Indy where we reconnect with the kids and Vonne’s family, and then a flight home to RI on Sunday. Four days of flying in a row, but that spreads it out nicely and gives people a chance to meet the new girl in the family.
I’m just sorry my Dad never got to meet Vonne Mei, but you can’t have everything, so on this rainy afternoon we count our blessings and hug that little jewel for all she’s worth.
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