Trip to China
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Wednesday, August 27, 2008 Greetings from Guangzhou where I think it is fair to say that everyone -- and most definitely everyone with older children waiting at home -- is so eager to come home!! As much as we love the vast breakfast buffet at the White Swan, the Starbucks selling boxes of moon cakes for the Mid Autumn Festival, and the taste of green tea -- we are all missing home now and the good news is that the U.S. Consulate was presented with our papers today and issued visas for Eva and all of the babies in our group to come on home. All that stands between us and 24 hours of travel now is taking of the oath on Eva's behalf tomorrow at the U.S. Consulate where we will travel tomorrow by bus with only minimal provisions and our passports all in clear plastic bags because of the tight security. Miss Eva is about to earn immigrant and citizenship status ... and while she is traveling now on a PRC passport, eventually she will travel the world on our familiar blue one. Today was a relatively quiet day after such a busy one yesterday. Eva was clearly a bit more tired today so we limited the morning to breakfast, playing in the room, a brief play date in our friend Ava and her baby Lina's suite and then back to our room for more bottle and another nap. At one point around lunch time when I was preparing Eva's bottle and she was playing quietly and happily on the bed surrounded by baby Lego toys, I turned my head only to see her out of the corner of my eye, lie down and go to sleep with nary a peep (usually sleep comes after being rocked while we stand and we sing and she croons lightly rubs her head and cries a little). Sleeping on the bed you can see that she has started to put on weight. Where last week her butt was completely flat, she now is showing a little tush, a tiny belly, slightly chubby legs and arms, and a very slight, very subtle double chin. Six month clothes are still fitting her well but she is pushing into nine month clothes too. And she is starting to understand that sitting at the table has something to do with food and that one uses one's mouth for eating solids (as well as kisses, bottles and singing) and that while she still wants nothing to do with solid food, she does get hungry when she sits with us and watches us eat and then wants her bottle. Today we also made some incremental advances on touching solid food where she examined half a banana in my hand for a while before squirming and trying to wipe her hands clean. Her reaction to solid food is curious given her propensity for putting everything else in her mouth. But eating is social and there is a reason, I suppose, we say solids are "introduced" and for now I feel confident she is getting what she needs from her big milkshake-thick bottles of formula and cereal. The true highlight of the day though -- other than the Congratulations for passing muster with the U.S. Consulate and the sausage and mushroom pizza which I am sure Daniel will discuss -- was gathering our group for the red couch picture. Eva grudgingly consented to wearing her beautiful Chinese kimono dress although she would not agree to button it. As it turns out, none of the girls was all that interested in participating in group photos, with or without their parents. We managed to get an OK photo of the three of us, but the effort to get all of the girls together was abandoned entirely, and even the attempt at just getting the seven girls from the Beiliu orphanage (the Seven Beiliu Sisters) didn't result in anything likely to be included on a holiday card. But it accurately captures the late afternoon chaos of the (ad)venture! We will probably suggest to CCAI that they schedule the group photos at a better time, maybe 10am after breakfast and first nap, rather than just before the "witching hour." After we went back to our room, Eva quickly forgot about the unpleasantness at the photo session and became interested in the highlights from the Democratic convention as she watched them on CNN with us though we are equally distressed at the idea that some voters and delegates might think their support for HRC is more important than their support for the party -- um, excuse me. Are we watching this correctly through the international news? Tell us it is not so ... The capper to the evening was the delivery by Mattel of the White Swan Hotel Barbie to our hotel door (I gather the hotel tells Mattel which rooms have Americans adopting Chinese children?) I had always thought this Barbie would be a Chinese women for some reason but no, it is a blond Barbie holding a Chinese baby. Interesting. Certainly would not want to commodify the whole experience. However, it occured to me that we can use the doll to play act Mommy coming to adopt Eva in China some day -- so like much of our trip it is all prelude to a larger story of coming to terms with one's identity, origins, culture and history -- a story we have begun to tell her of a beautiful birth mommy who looked like her and brought her to the gates of a good orphanage where the nannies took good care of her and the other girls, some of whom went to Florida and to Colorado and to California -- of how they dressed each of the girls carefully for a three hour bus trip from their town to the provincial capital and handed each of them to American parents chosen by the Chinese government and how they tucked into each of their bags a small silver baby bracelet... not knowing whether they would ever see their charges again -- so as we walk into the U.S. Consulate tomorrow to begin the next phase of Eva's immigrant story, we will also think of each of those citizens of China who delivered her safely from birth through her first year and into our arms. Tonight Eva was playing with a bookmark that we had been given in one of the local stores and she pulled off a red thread at the end of it and was examining it when I noticed it and, concerned about a choking hazard, wrapped it around my wrist. Then we began a fun game of her pulling on the red thread while I pulled back until we were both laughing at the game of tug of war. As the China adoption community knows, there is a Chinese folk saying that an "invisible red thread" links those who are "meant to be together" and while I have never given much credence to that saying before, tonight I felt that "red thread moment" for myself with my dear, sweet, lovable and beloved daughter -- long hoped for and anticipated -- by my side on a small bed in a hotel room 24 stories up in a hotel called the White Swan on Shamian Island in the city of Guangzhou in the province of Guang Dong, PRC. Love to all.

P.S. I guess I have been relegated to the food writer? I wouldn't mind so much if there was something interesting to say about the food here. After the breakfast buffet, which we have already talked about (and eaten) ad nauseum, here is what most of our meals have consisted of: cocktail peanuts from the honor bar (the five cashews hidden in each can are usually gone pretty quickly), packets of instant oatmeal that we brought -- I can't remember exactly why -- from home, a sandwich from Starbuck's (I'm serious, that was our lunch today), the two pieces of chocolate candy they bring with the "turn down" service each night (tonight it also came with the previously mentioned Barbie doll). After the highs of the alligator stomach and chicken feet of Nanning (and the mystery meat balls wrapped in cuttle fish -- a breakfast item which I think I neglected to mention previously), we have hit rock bottom. Even the most conservative eaters in our adoption group could be heard today saying, "I really miss that restaurant in the basement in Nanning!" We did get a bit of a reprieve from the doldrums this evening when we located a real Italian restaurant on Shamian Island with the beyond-obvious name La Dolce Vita. The cook and the pizza were the real deal however, and I brought two pizzas back to the hotel, hopefully enough to get us through to the plane ride from Guangzhou to Tokyo Friday morning. The other thing that everybody is spending time on is visiting the dozen or so gift shops within a block or two of the hotel, all containing similar, though not identical inventories of jewelry, childrens' and adult clothing, folk art of various types and qualities, painted fans, and countless other China-themed games, mementos, and tchotches. Each store has its own areas of strength, whether it is figurines, paintings, clothing, jewelry or t-shirts, so it makes sense to check out several if not all of them. What is really fun though is sampling all the styles of salesmanship at the various shops, from shadowing you around the store the whole time and pointing out every single item and what a good deal it is, to asking you stock questions ("are you just here travelling, or are you here to adopt a baby?" "how many more days are you in town?") to transparent and hilarious forms of flattery ("you have very good taste!" "you look great in that hat!" "your Mandarin pronunciation is excellent!"). In keeping with the theme of the Olympics, I have to give the gold medal for sales to the woman who tried to sell me a North Face ski parka. I told her they don't really have winter where I live and she immediately replied: "If you have no winter then you must need extra fans!" and held up two hand-painted fans for me to consider. She made me laugh, but she didn't make a sale. Not yet anyway. We have one more shopping day to go in Guangzhou.

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