Dateline: White Swan Hotel, Shamian Island Guangzhou, Guangdong China, 25 August 2004
We’re tired of the road. Tired of the freak-show status whenever we walk out the door. Tired of living in hotels. Tired of having our daily routines dictated by others constantly. Tired of the pollution and the headaches it causes. Tired of too many of our fellow travelers. Tired of the lady next door who claims our child has “been screaming for hours” if she yells for five minutes while we’re preparing a bottle.
Frankly, I’m ready to break out the Ugly American to the next old lady who gives me that glare.
Yes I know, I’ve written before about how many Chinese seem to marvel at us whenever we walk down the street with Vonne Mei. But let me tell you something about the Chinese after three weeks here: they’re no more inscrutable than anybody else on the planet. Few real poker faces here. Vonne says you figure out how any Chinese feels about international adoption within about five seconds of meeting them, and she’s right.
Ten days of sampling this interaction tells me that about a third of the Chinese find it delightful and wonderful that foreigners will adopt these baby girls, and they’re more than happy to tell you about it and how “lucky” those babies are. Another third find the whole thing rather puzzling, and you can see the confusion on their faces immediately: they simply have no idea why Westerners would do this. And so they are infinitely curious about your motivations. When they hear you already have kids, they are even more perplexed, but typically not unfriendly about it. They simply want to know.
Then there are the glares, which display undisguised contempt driven—one can easily imagine—by a deep sense of shame over the plight of these girls in an economy that is booming for so many here. They watch the Olympics on TV and see China neck and neck with the Americans for the most gold and they’re naturally filled with great pride. But then they see Westerners walking through the city with their babies on their hips and it’s gotta feel bad.
What’s worse, of course, is that we don’t handle babies like the Chinese do, so by their standards (and we’re in their neck of the woods) we seem to be doing everything wrong or at least awfully oddly.
Of course I’m being touchy here and let me tell you why: we had to vacate a restaurant this evening because Vonne Mei simply lost it. She’s back in our room now with a belly full of formula and a little Motrin cold for what we fear is the same problem now afflicting me, and—of course—she’s back to happily crawling around the floor and smiling at us for no good reason. But 30 minutes ago she was a 9-month-old social disaster that drew a lot of nasty glares, as though somehow a crying baby craps you out completely in terms of parenting.
Now, I know this sort of thing happens everywhere all the time: that nasty sort of response you get from people (mostly older women) whenever your kid acts up anywhere in public. And yes, occasionally I do employ my great gift for biting comebacks in their direction. But it’s a different sort of feel when you’re the two round-eyes in the place and everyone is staring at you like you’re clearly failing/ruining one of their own. Naturally, everyone assumes you’re first-time parents, which only about half of the parents actually are (in our group, roughly a third were facing their first parenting, another third already had Chinese daughters, and the rest already had biological kids). So the glares come off with that added sense of not just cultural superiority, but that additional sort of interpersonal contempt reserved for the ignorant or unexperienced.
I also know that going back to the States won’t erase that dynamic from our lives, because—frankly—we’re repeat offenders in terms of raising kids with outsized personalities, and Vonne Mei certainly seems to fit that pattern so far. Plus, there will be the usual rude or inappropriate questions about the child’s ethnicity or—better yet—“How much did she cost you?” (like they’re running a special at Walmart or something!).
Nor am I forgetting the myriad of inappropriate or insensitive statements or actions by my fellow travelers on this long journey. In fact, I could give you the same basic breakdown of one-third seem to appreciate Chinese culture, another third seem simply flabbergasted by it, and the last third can barely disguise their contempt on many levels (to include the regular racist statements that they themselves would be surprised could be interpreted in that way—“It’s not bad to say that! That’s just pointing out a cultural difference!”)
Don’t worry. I’m not suddenly souring on the whole thing or backtracking whatsoever. I just feel bad and want to go home, like we’re been forced to stay at the delivery hospital for ten days after birth so that everyone there can scrutinize our parenting skills every hour on the hour in what can only be described as fairly trying circumstances (who the hell would take a baby on the road for two weeks overseas right after adopting them?).
But all these complaints will melt away soon enough, and all the bad memories will be swamped by the far larger number of great and really beautiful ones. Hell, maybe it’s just the Cipro talking here.
I guess I just can’t give you one of those constantly cheery rundowns of the whole experience that you often find at those “Bringing Britney Home!” websites that dutifully chronicle every “glorious moment of our new family!” It has been a long and difficult trip on many levels, no matter what your level of parenting skills. Hell, it’s been a hard trip no matter what your tourism skills. It’s just plain been exhausting.
Tomorrow we get up for one last fabulous meal at the Great Swan breakfast buffet. That’s how we started our day today, and it’s always good, so that will send us out the door feeling happy.
Today we did our last group event: a quick trip to a local folk arts museum that actually began as the training academy for the giant Chen clan here in Guangzhou (there are four great families that account for a good 100 million of the surnames in China: Chen, Wang, Li and Zhou). It was full of beautiful stuff and we bought some nifty bone carvings (no, no ivory—just bones). Our group of ten families was down to just four, as six skipped the last event. But since they were our favorite three, frankly, it was a great farewell experience.
The rest of the day was spent packing up (me) and last-minute sightseeing, tea-drinking and shopping around Shamian Island (Vonne, mostly with new good friend Janet from Kansas—the two even went out at 0630 this morning to watch some Tai Chi in the park). Despite our tumultuous dining experience (I can feel the cramps beginning already), we’re feeling pretty good about where we are right now (everything packed up nicely, we love this child, and we still love each other after 20 days with virtually no breaks in face time—a real test of any marriage). Yes, four straight days of air travel ahead, with plenty of stress and emotionally-laden experiences attached, but at least we’re beginning the long journey home, and that feels awfully good.
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