Last day in Guiyang

This was our last full day in Guiyang. In the morning, we got Amelia’s final documents from the Chinese government, and also her passport. This completes just about all of the Chinese portion of the adoption process, next comes the US side in Guangzhou.

So with one day left to roam around, we went to the book store to try to find some Chinese kids books and also maybe some CDs with kids’ music. Like many of the other things we’ve seen in China, the store was pretty cool, mostly due to the many contrasts. On one hand, they had stacks of new books about how to be successful in business, “Tony Robbins-esque” motivational stuff, newspapers, popular novels, new computers for teaching kids English, etc. But the drain pipe coming out of the building had water and blood running out onto the sidewalk, the floor was dirty, and the official at the checkout line had a thread-bare military uniform that looked 40 years old and he was wearing sneakers. Outside it smelled like exhaust, cigarette smoke, and bad moth ball breath.

We had lunch at the Chinese restaurant at the hotel, stir fried vegetables and dim sum. Pretty good, but so much smoking in the dining room was hard. We decided we needed to get out of the room in the afternoon, so we walked to a new park about 20 mins away, that we had seen on the cab ride to the book store. There was lots of decoration at the entrance; apparently there is the big autumn Communist Party festival/event this weekend. Tracey will probably kick me for telling this story, but when we were in the cab earlier that day and had seen all the decorations, Bayard had asked what they were for. Our local guy Michael said it was for the Communist Party event, and Bayard asked what the Communist Party was. Tracey said it was one of the political organizations in the Chinese government……then we said actually it is THE political organization in the Chinese government. You kind of forget that things aren’t the same in the US. Sure you can go to Wal Mart, but you can’t vote, and 1.3 billion people minus one….is not that big of a deal. An individual person is not as important here as in the US.

Anyhow back to the park. We saw lots of amusement type rides and Bayard and I rode some kind of tank thing with a cannon on it, but we decided not to try the ones that could maim us if they happened to break…remember 1.3 billion minus one. We saw a cool wooded area where about 30 old men had brought their birds in cages and hung them in the trees. The birds were all singing and the men were hanging out, apparently they all come here to take their birds to the park, never seen anything like that before. There was also a market with lots of meat, vegetables, mushroom, dried chili peppers, Buddhist beads, jade, etc. But the one thing that really stood out was the dried hog faces for sale. They were about the size of Frisbees with ears sticking out….whoa. Bayard was really excited that we found a playground, but it was kind of hard to find a piece of equipment to play on because all the octogenarians were using them to work out. One guy was trying to chop down a tree with his fore arms (think Jean-Claude Van Damme movie with a really old Chinese guy) then he made it across about 3 of the monkey bars, finishing his workout with some leg waving while holding on the tree he never could chop down. Bayard finally got going on an apparatus, but then got mobbed by a group of 10 year old girls in matching track suits. I think it was the Guizhou Experimental Middle School, but there are lots of track suits that look alike here. So they were all trying to take pictures with him, pick him up, say “Hello” and giggle. We did pictures with each and every one of them, then he decided he was done with being a rock star, so we headed back to the hotel for dinner.

During this whole afternoon, Tracey was going hard core with Amelia, battling through the screamy times with her in the chest pack. Amelia still has a very strong preference for me (Travis) when we’re both around, so we are trying to get her some more Tracey time to even things out. She is happy, eating well, sleeping well, and has the softest skin you can imagine, very bright shiny eyes, exceptionally strong-willed and squirmy. She is pretty tuned in to what is going on, so we’re off to a good start.

Next stop is Guangzhou tomorrow, it’s the capital of Guangdong province in southern China if you want to check it out on a map or Google Earth.