Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Dateline: Sino Swiss Airport Hotel, Beijing China, 15 August 2004

After our two days with Jennifer and Zhang Yu we were desperately tired sitting through the Thursday night acrobat show. Both Vonne and I were snapping to attention from light sleeps almost throughout the show because we had racked up a grand total of about 10 hours of sleep since Monday morning. Saying goodbye to them downstairs was sad but not too sad because they decided in the car on the way back to the hotel that they would personally deliver Vonne hand-made silk Friday night once they received our call telling them we’d be back in the hotel.

That night we each quickly took an Ambien sleeping pill and conked a decent 7 hours.

Now, most in our adoption group were coming in Friday night, so Saturday was the official one-day tour for the group. But if you were in town on Friday, Delight Travel had a second-day package worth doing, so we signed up for about $70 each (about 600 yuan). It was a stem-to-stern package: 0800 pickup with bus, tour guide talking the entire time on bus and leading around with flag during day, three big stops, and a big midday meal at a restaurant tossed in, returning home at 6:30 pm. Hard to beat that, so we said yes.

Now, by taking that tour we were mixing up with all sorts of people not in our specific going-to-Nanchang (Jiangxi prov.) group, so you made a certain effort at small talk but you knew it would be a one-day interaction for many of them.

Our guide for the day was not our permanent guide, but Lin Lin (whose “American name” was Anita). She was wonderfully informative.

First stop was the Summer Palace, which is this huge expanse of walkways, palaces, temples, etc., stretched alongside this beautiful lake. Everything was intricately painted, my favorite thing being the Long Corridor that stretch several hundred yards and had some fabulous painted scene on each beam.

The place was crammed with some Western tourists but overwhelmingly with Chinese tourists. It was very hot and very sunny, the sort of day where you can feel the burn start almost immediately if you do not take measures. So I lathered up and put on my black Australian ocean-ware hat with the wide brim and the neck-covering flap in the back. That got so many stares and parents pushing their kids to run up and check me out that I finally had to ask Lin Lin what was the attraction. This one I should have guessed given all the documentaries I watch on WWII: the hat came off a little too close to the jungle-ware look of the Japanese soldiers in that conflict and occupation of Manchuria.

Hmmmm. I started looking for a cap to buy.

Vonne was targeted for many stares because of the red hair, which really sticks out. Later in the day she was approached by a family which clearly consisted of out-of-towners (like from the hills!), and they all surrounded here and started giggling and such. Finally, mom gave baby boy to Vonne to hold and they all took pictures, thanking her profusely afterwards. Vonne was surprised when holding the boy but quickly figured it out: the split pants meant she inadvertently grabbed some ass when she picked him up. Little Chinese boys and girls still wear split pants (not a lot, but some) through their early potty-training months, so they sort of let it all hang out until they master keeping it all in.

The morning wore on because there was so much to see, so much walking to do, and so much heat. There was this gorgeous temple on top of a hill overlooking the shoreline gardens and walkways, but we did not have the time to climb up it, unfortunately. We did, however, get to ride one of the funky dragon boats back across the lake to the entrance before departing. This allowed us to check out the famous “marble boat at the north end of the lake.

Next we drove to the Beijing Zoo for a short stop at the Panda exhibit, which was very nice. Vonne and I did some impulse shopping: three Chinese baseball caps for $3 each, plus a Cloisonne panda (a specially decorated ceramic figurine that is made and available only around Beijing—although you can buy this stuff back home for far higher prices), a panda matroyska (nesting) doll, and three Peking Opera painted-faces masks (now I know where Lucas got Darth Mall’s paint job).

After the zoo they took us to a pearl outlet shop. Since Vonne had already made her killing with Jennifer and Zhang Yu days earlier, she contented herself here with a slew of pearls sets that came to a grand total of about $20.

Next we went to the Temple of Heaven, which was this intricate series of great temples laid out in a huge pattern. Lotsa of places to shoot video and film, and Vonne made a point of standing on the famous center stone of the highest temple, which was where the emperor stood whenever he wanted to speak directly to the people. The whole setting was based on 9’s, the ultimate lucky Chinese number. The Heavenly Centre Stone is sort of like the Blarney Stone: step on it and your voice becomes sonorous and resonant.

At that point we were pretty beat. Heading back to the hotel, I bought a beer, a San Peligrino, and two slices of cheesecake for Vonne and I for the evening. A friend Vonne had made earlier in various chat rooms, Janet from Kansas, then showed up for about two hours of conversation in our room, mostly about the adoption process. She smokes and since we had brought some packs along for the trip, we did too. Actually, I had been smoking throughout the trip so far, declaring it an “un-American activity” that I only performed abroad. This is true, other than trips overseas, I haven’t smoked with any regularity in almost 20 years.

But this last smoking session was to be our last. Vonne and I looked at each other after Janet left and said we simply no longer had the strength or will for even extended joy smoking on the road. Fighting the pollution and the jet lag, plus the grueling pace, meant the remaining packs would be for gift purposes only.

We were going to do a lot of repacking Thursday night, but we conked at 9pm, sleeping to 5am Saturday morning. Even that wasn’t an easy sleep though, because we got some scary news from my friend who’s taking care of our cat. She’s been staying in his large basement since Sunday, but being Sophia, she refused to show herself to him or his wife. Still, she ate the tuna they put out every morning and left evidence in her box, so no problem. But Friday morning, no evidence in box and it was her second day of not eating the tuna, and my friend Bradd and his wife were leaving for the weekend for their son’s wedding in DC. This was all planned in advance, as we had no fears of leaving Sophia alone for a weekend on her own, as we have done it many times. Still, we now have some fear she’s managed to harm herself or get trapped somewhere in his basement. But I remain hopeful she’s just being incredibly secretive, which she frequently does to us, disappearing for most of a day when she wants to and being almost impossible to find if she doesn’t want to be found. Hopefully, Soph’s being a little freaky and nothing more, but it is disconcerting to say the least. We won’t know anything more until Bradd and his family gets home Sunday night (or Monday morning our time). But then we’ll be in a very different place (holding our Vonne Mei Ling in our hotel room in Nanchang, Jiangxi).

Saturday morning we took the one-day tour and meet up with the couples that will be traveling in our collective group, although we all split up today (Sunday) to fly to various provinces, only to regroup a week later in Guangzhou, Guangdong for the official adoption registration with the U.S. Consulate there.

Our guide Saturday is the man who will be with us until the end of our China journey: David. He is considered by most chat-room types to be the best of the guides, so we’re fortunate to have him. He’s in his early 30s and seems very confident and reassuring. He’s done this for 5 years and has his system of collective tipping for this and that person, so he really goes out of his way to simplify everything.

He has many nice things to say about going to Nanchang, noting he’s been there 5 times this year and that the babies adopted there seem to be among the healthiest (or “fat” in the Chinese vernacular)

Our agenda today is a brief stop at the north end of Tiananmen (making us glad we did the bike tour of the southern end on Wednesday, plus Vonne doing Mao’s Mausoleum Thursday), where we had a group shot below the giant Mao portrait, that we pasted into a giant postcard book and delivered to our hotel that night for 100 Yuan (about $8).

Then we took the long and windy tour through all of the various gates, temples, and halls of the Forbidden City. If you like Chinese architecture, this place really is heaven on earth. I shot dozens on my digital camera and added a good 15 minutes of video. It was a fascinating tour from start to finish, like walking around the set of the “Last Emperor.”

Actually, that was what we were doing.

After that long and exhausting tour (the Forbidden City) is actually quite large, we got back on the bus and headed to this famous Cloisonne factory out in the boonies on the way to the nearby section of the Great Wall (just north of the city where the mountains begin). First thing we did there was have another group lunch, which was pretty good. So far neither Vonne nor I are having any stomach trouble, although eating Chinese non-stop does something to your digestive track that’s a bit disconcerting. Still, having stopped the joy smoking, we’re settling in to the routine of drinking many cups of tea throughout the day. Vonne bought her favorite Chinese brand at the store on the way out, along with another figurine (dragon on a large wooden egg).

Then to the Great Wall up in the mountains above Beijing. This section is not very wide, only about 10 feet in most places, and not that high (only 5 to 15 feet up), but it does have plenty of towers. It’s a section that snakes up the ridge of a very steep hill, so the joke is, “It should be called the Great Steps!” The drill on this section was simply to be tough enough to climb to the top, which was maybe 1200 feet up. David gave us two hours, noting that the saying in Beijing was, “You are not a man until you have climbed to the top of the Great Wall”—meaning this grueling vertical section. He gave us two hours, saying that if we went fast, that was just enough.

Only men made to the top in our group. Vonne went up a couple of towers, but then her right knee, which often gives her trouble, started to ache and since this was the late afternoon after a full day of touring in the blistering sun, she declined further stress. I, being the natural hiking maniac, thereupon took off at full speed, making it to the top without stopping in about 35 minutes. I then took a load of video and pictures at the top tower (the wall abruptly ends about 10 meters beyond that), then checked out an alternative branch that snaked down another part of the mountain. But going that far down a section where there was nobody but me made me a little nervous once I remembered I was carrying about several grand in uncirculated $50s and $100s (for various adoption fees), plus about a k’s worth of electronics. I mean, if I were surrounded by Chinese I would have felt comfortable, but there’s that feeling you get on a trail way out by yourself that went off in my head like an alarm. I mean, the place is full of stories of well-conditioned people getting stranded way out on the wall and then having to be helped back to the bus. The steps are that tough.

Harder still was the jaunt down, primarily because many of the steps are about 50% higher than your average stair step, and each step came at its own particular length and height, meaning you had to watch your step constantly. If the road up was a heart stress test, then the road down was a joint test. I ditched my cap at the bottom, because a near-continuous stream of sweat was pouring off the tip of the bill by the time I hit bottom. Naturally, I paid 40 yuan to have my name and date engraved on a brass plaque suitable for hanging. You bust your balls like that in the heat and humidity and you want a trophy, damn it!

After all that Vonne and I took pictures of each other on the lower sections and then hung out with friends waiting for the bus. The two-hour ride home was spent in conversation with another couple from Kansas, where the wife had a strong Terre Haute connection (mother in Brazil, many trips as kid to Honey Creek Mall, and lo and behold she’s now a prof in interpersonal communications at Kansas State!).

Last night was repacking everything, which took about 5 hours in terms of deciding what to give up, how to accommodate all the souvenirs, and how to keep our checked to the same three bags (meaning we kept our backpacks in the checked). We also rechecked all the paperwork and money supply, plus our gifts. Why such an effort?

Today (Sunday) we’re up for breakfast at seven. Then we put out our bags at eight to be picked up and checked at the airport for us. Then I write this and we gag down our malaria pills (always the joyful sensation to follow). Then we leave for the airport at 10, fly at noon, go pretty much straight to the town hall, and get Vonne Mei at 4pm, along with three other couples and a single mom. So, sitting here now at 9am Sunday, we’re only about 7 hours away from meeting our fourth child and daughter number 2.

I have a load of thoughts I want to share about Beijing in general, but I think I need to cut off now as the hour of departure approaches. I want to check all our email accounts before I log off for the final time. Our schedule will slow down dramatically starting tomorrow: no more 14-hour days where we are never in our room except when it’s dark. So I will try to catch up with those impressions during some future Vonne Mei nap.

Now to off load my several hundred photos from the camera to my laptop, swap out the tape on the camcorder, and other such last-minute preparations. Wish us luck today, and keep Sophia in your prayers.

Tom (for Vonne).