Day 11: Goodbye China

Sunday at 7:30am we took a taxi to a very nice hotel that let us rent the swimming pool for a baptism. We had a short service at 8am right by the side of the pool. A young man from Ghana named Francis and my neice, Eva, were baptized. The whole thing was done in about 15 minutes. It's hard to describe how special it is to see priesthood ordinances legally performed in a country that doesn't allow us (or most churches) to proselyte with missionaries, or even allow us to tell anyone what church we belong to. We can practice our religion only amongst others who are also passport holders.

Ben, Eva, Francis, and Bill Jeffries (another teacher and long-time friend of my parents):

Eva and her daddy:

Later in church, Francis and Eva were confirmed members of the church and welcomed by the bishop. Ben, Rachel, and I were each asked to speak in sacrament meeting. Being a small branch, I think the branch president jumps at the chance to have visitors speak! Again, the kids went to Primary and we went to Sunday School and separate Priesthood and Relief Society classes.

After packing our things, eating dinner, and saying goodbye, my dad, Nicholas and I headed to the airport via taxi. The plan was to fly less than 2 hours from Xi'an to Beijing, stay in a hotel that night and then fly out to Seattle the next morning. After boarding the plane and then being told to get off the plane, our 6pm flight ended up being delayed 3 1/2 hours due to bad weather in Beijing and control tower problems. The plane had to leave the terminal and so we were bussed over to where the plane was parked and boarded this way:

I did have a fun conversation with a man from France who was sitting next to us about going camping with our kids. I asked him if they liked to roast marshmallows and he didn't know what they were and I tried to explain they were "white puffy balls of sugar" that we like to cook on a stick over the campfire. He said he never heard of those and I felt sad for the French people who have never enjoyed a good s'more!

So our night got worse: since our flight was delayed, we arrived in Beijing at 11:30pm and there was no one from our hotel to meet us. Fortunately, I had planned ahead and picked a hotel that was within 5 miles of the airport and had the name of our hotel and address translated in Chinese to be able to communicate to the taxi driver. Unfortunately, the taxi driver had no idea where this hotel was and drove us around for an hour, stopping to ask 6-7 different people where this hotel was. I tried to tell him to take us back to the airport, but he didn't understand me, so the last person he stopped to ask, I hollered out the window, "Does anyone speak English?" and someone did and I asked him to tell our driver to take us back to the airport.

So that night we slept at the airport. Nicholas had been sleeping in the taxi and on the last flight and I couldn't bare to drag him around anymore.

Nicholas slept pretty good on the seat, but I had 4 pieces of luggage to spread myself over and try to sleep. Near us was a soccer game going on TV and at 3am lots of men were gathered around the screen and cheering. At 4am the airport turns on every single light in the area. So I didn't sleep much that night. Soon enough it was time to get back on the airplane for 11 more hours.

Even though this was our 4th flight throughout the trip, this was when security decided to confiscate my small container of hand sanitizer since it's flammable. They even lit it on fire to prove it to me, then tossed it in the garbage. There wasn't much I could do, being sleep-deprived, sweaty, dirty, smelly and hungry.

This flight took off on time and minus the seaweed cheesecake, the food was yummy.

Mike pulled up at the Seattle airport just as we got there and it was so nice to be in the USA! Now for a 3 1/2 hour drive home. Due to the time change, this was the longest Monday of my life - 39 hours!

This was my first time experiencing a new culture and I just loved it. Especially because of my family that was with me. It made it easy to enjoy my surroundings when my parents were comfortable with it too.

Xi'an Day #9 City Wall, Pagoda Park, and Day #10

At 8am we headed to Xi'an's city wall to watch the older people exercising. We only caught the end of it and saw some ladies doing exercise routines with swords and I wish we were able to see more. There was a statue nearby of a lady exercising with a sword so perhaps it's an ancient custom. Here we are at the bottom entrance of the city wall with a very authentic-looking soldier:
Xi'an use to be the capital of China before Beijing and so it had a city wall going around it to protect the city. Here we are at the entrance at the bottom of the wall:

A short climb up the stairs to the top of the wall and here's (back row) dad, Luke, me, Ben, and mom. Front row is Becca, Rachel, Eva, Nicholas, and Spencer:

On the wall, we could rent bikes to ride all the way around the top for a total of 14 km(about 10 miles). You can really see the pollution, which actually prevented us from getting sunburned on these 95+ degree days.

I didn't know if Nicholas and I would make it, but it was pretty flat and we really had a good time. I enjoyed seeing the city all around.

You can see we had a little basket in the back for our stuff and towards the beginning, Nicholas' water bottle had fallen out without us knowing. Fortunately, his kind uncle found it along the way and returned it to Nicholas after the bike ride. Nicholas was quite thirsty and gladly took it and was about to take a big drink when he noticed a dead lizard had been put in it! Gotta love uncles and their practical jokes!

My parents venturing out on a tandom bike:

Squat toilets, gotta love 'em. This one is actually a really nice one:

We saw a few too many very dirty public bathrooms.

After hitting an Indian restaurant for lunch we headed over to The Wild Goose Pagoda. You can see the big pagoda in the background that was originally built in 652. The large fountains in front of it are about 7-8 layers long. Here you can see 2 layers. So it was a really long fountain and at noon the water would shoot out to classical music, ending with William Tell's Overture:

Here's me in the middle of it:

You can see Nicholas and Spencer getting cooled off in the middle of the picture:

The kids weren't afraid to get wet:

The rest of the park had some neat statues. This one had a plaque that said something about the father wearing a hankerchief over his head to protect him from the sun and that's exactly what my dad does too so he promptly put his own hankerchief on the statues head:

Day #10

The girls did a little more shopping at the markets while the guys took the kids to an amusement park where they rode bumper cars, shot guns, went on peddle boats and rode go-carts. That night after dinner we stopped by a French pastry shop called "C'est la Vie" and Ben bought us some yummy chocolates.
Nicholas and Spencer enjoyed riding to the top of our hotel in the this elevator (you can kind of see them up there):

Rachel is bargaining with a vendor for some tombstone rubbings:

Yep! We can all fit around my parent's coffee table for lunch of fruit and homemade bread egg salad sandwiches:

This picture is a little hard to see, but I tried to capture a guy pedaling his bike with this huge load on back:

My dad bought some traditional Chinese firecrackers that we let off on this last night and were just crazy! You'll have to wait for the video on that.

We had about a 15-minute walk back to our hotel each night from my parent's apartment. Nicholas and Spencer would say, "Just follow the 'moons' " (the street lights). Here they are holding the remains of my dad's firecrackers he bought and we had just let off:

Xi'an: Day #7 Muslim Market and #8 Terracotta Army

My dad loves the Muslim Market. You can get about any souvenir and it's quite fun to bargain for a good price. Each seller tries to get your attention and lure you in. We would start with a low counter offer and then meet somewhere in the middle. Their favorite thing to say after I offer a price is "NO! I lose money!" And then it's always, "What's your best price?" meaning, how high are you willing to go.
Here is Ben and my dad examing some items:

We also found these shirts of Obama dressed in the Cultural Revolution uniform with something about serving the country written below it and "Oba Mao" on the back. The lady selling them said the Chinese love Obama and Mao and Obama could learn a great deal about serving his country from Mao. Maybe they don't realize that Americans see Mao as another Hitler:
Another part of the market:

I really enjoyed being out and mingling with the locals and seeing how they do things and their no-fear of crossing the streets, yet they are very aware of the traffic around them and everyone just seemed really pleasant.

Hooray for McDonalds! Nicholas and I got tired of Chinese food pretty quickly. And look how people don't use the crosswalks. Pedestrians don't have the right away anyway:

Cooling off with a McD's milkshake:

McD's is always full of Chinese people, not just tourists. My mom said she asked one of her students one time why the Chinese love to eat at McDonalds and he told her that it's a cool thing to do because it's American. But the Chinese do love their ice cream and that's a good place to get it.

Day #8
In ancient Chinese culture, when an emperor died, he would have buried with him everything he thought he would need in the next life, including people like wives, servants, soldiers, and jewels, money, etc. This emperor was nice enough to bury exact replicas of his soldiers instead of the real thing, hence, The Terracotta Warriors. Here we are outside the museum with a statue of the nice emperor:

And I won't mention how it took us 3 hours to get there because we got on the wrong bus (Dad, the tour guide, wasn't with us this day) and headed in the wrong direction and we had to get back on a different bus to go back and then finally found an English speaking person to teach us how to say "Terracotta Warriors" in Chinese so that we could find the right bus that would take us there. I'm glad Ben and Luke were with us to figure that all out because otherwise I would probably still be on a bus in China somewhere!

These were created in 200 B.C. and discovered in 1974 when a local farmer was digging a water well and uncovered the beginning of these amazing artifacts:

Yep, dripping with sweat again. Upper 90 degrees and lots of humidity.

The gang: Luke, Ben, Spencer, Nicholas, Eva, Rachel, and Becca:

The warriors were made life-size and each one is unlike any of the others. Even the soles of the shoes had intricate detail. It takes quite a bit of work to piece them all back together:

And they were intricately painted as well, but that has all worn off.

That night we left the kids at the apartment with a movie and the adults went out to dinner to a really nice restaurant for a steak dinner. The meat didn't look like American steak, but it tasted like it, and it was a big, filling meal - all for $10!

I've decided "Heaven" = showering and lying down on the bed after a long hot sticky day with lots of walking.

Xi'an Day #6: Kindergarten and campus tour

We started this day bright and early by walking to a near-by elementary school to visit. My parents use to volunteer here to teach the kids some American songs and games. The staff was very gracious and excited to have us tour the school.

I mostly got video of the school since that captured the experience better. Before school starts each day, the students go out to the playground to follow their teacher in doing exercises to music. When they started playing "The Yellow Rose of Texas" I had to join in! Afterwards, one little girl quoted all the verses of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" to us and the students wanted to shake our hands so that is what we are doing here:


There are 1000 students in this school ages 3-6. School is from 9am-6pm with a 2-hour lunch/nap during the day. Some classrooms have bunk beds lining the walls for this purpose. Here are the students participating in a music class. This song involved playing with pink netting:

Here's another class where the students performed a form of the Beijing Opera for us:

After the Opera performance they signed their name on their shirts and gave our kids the shirts they were wearing! What a nice gesture.

And also a kickboxing routine:

Then we got to join the kids for a craft project:
The principal and her interpreter then took us on to the roof of the school to show us the vegetable garden they were working on.

After the school, we went to another market to buy fruit. It's not so easy when we can't understand each other to communicate price and such. Fortunately, a calculator usually comes in handy where they could punch in a number and show it to us so we can understand the price.

Then we took the 45-minute bus ride my parents took everyday to the University they taught at. Northwestern Polytechnical University has a science emphasis with military purposes. One of my mom's students was the translator for our tour. There was a lot of heavy machinery that the students would learn to use. For example, this one was used to crush big metal objects:

It was a little difficult for me to follow with the translator and the technical terms, but still interesting!

After dinner on campus with a group of students, Ben and his family, and Nicholas and I gave a lecture on American life. Here I am giving my portion and even had Nicholas speak a little:

Here's Ben talking about experiments he does on pigs for research:
About 350 students attended. Afterwards we mingled with the students and answered questions and asked them questions too. I noticed a great kindness, respect, and innocence about these students.

Some observations: even though we were in a large city of over 3 million people and around a lot of college students, I never saw anyone jogging for exercise and I only saw one overweight Chinese guy. The culture has an active lifestyle and lots of transportation by foot, bike or bus. Most kids don't get a driver's license until they are out of college. The Chinese are not sloppy in their appearance. Button-up or polo shirts and short haircuts for the guys and many girls wearing dresses/skirts. My dad pointed out an interesting observation that the writing on the t-shirts were all in English! I searched for people wearing t-shirts with Chinese writing but only found that on tourists.

Xi'an: Day #4 Church and #5 Orphanage, Massage

Always helpful to recognize some familiar things:
On the sleeper train, we were awake by 5am again (it was taking a few days to adjust to the time change), which was nice because we had a few hours to watch the scenery as it zipped by on the train. Lots of agriculture, orchards, poor housing compounds, fruit stands on the corners, and plenty of people bustling about on bikes or on foot early in the morning. It was humorous to me to hear the wake-up music at 6:45am and it was Whitney Houston's song "Give Me One Moment in Time."
Xi'an didn't have as many tourists, so it was neat to see regular city life among the Chinese. In fact, I wouldn't see another white person (outside of our group) for several more days. I had no idea how we would find my parents among the mass of people exiting the train. S0 we just followed the crowd and sure enough, it wasn't too hard to pick out the only 2 white people waving us down at the train station. We continued to follow the masses to wait for a taxi. We jumped in a couple of taxis and braced ourselves for another "amusement park" ride. There are no seatbelt laws, lots of honking - not in a rude way, but in a "watch out" kind of way- swerving around pedestrians, bikes and other cars, and pedestrians do NOT have the right of way! Taxi rides were fascinating and exciting. Many intersections not only have traffic lights, but a traffic cop standing in the middle:

So after a quick stop at my parents apartment to drop off our luggage and eat some breakfast, we got back in a taxi to go to church. The small Xi'an branch of about 20 people is held in a hotel conference room. The branch president's wife and my dad both spoke about fathers since it was Father's Day. A primary was created for the kids we brought, and the adults went to Sunday School class and we heard the same lesson I would have taught back in my home ward, followed by Relief Society. I love how the church is the same all over the world - even in Communist China! How blessed we were to be able to legally participate in church services even though proselyting to the Chinese is not allowed.

The rest of the day we spent in my parents apartment, and I didn't get any pictures of the day. However, I did get on video of that night we walked to a park and watched the locals dance in rhythm and sing together a very moving and patriotic song with a band. I loved how we could feel the passion in their music. So many people were out mingling in the parks after the sun had set.

On Monday (Day 5) I planned on waking up at 5am as usual, but I finally slept in until 8am and Nicholas slept until 10! That afternoon we took a taxi to what we call "Amanda's Orphanage." Amanda is a friend of my parents from church who takes in abandoned Chinese babies (mostly with medical deformities like cleft palates), arranges for the surgeries and their adoptions throughout the world. Here's her blog: http://www.chinesestarfishcleft.blogspot.com/ Her program survives strictly on donations as the government does not support abandoned babies.

Several of the babies were not shy and loved to be held and played with. Here is Becca and me:

This little girl enjoyed rolling a ball back and forth with Nicholas:

Then a couple kids got really interested in Nicholas' hat and kept taking it off his head and he would tease them and they would giggle and run around:

This picture isn't very clear, but I wanted to show this little 2-month old baby with a cleft palate. They have a great deal of trouble sucking with this deformity, yet need to get bigger and stronger before being able to go into surgery:

My heart goes out to them and to Amanda and her dedication to saving these children!

On our way home, mom, Rachel, and I stopped at this massage parlor for THE BEST massage of my life! As you can see in the reflection, it's a small shop, yet there's 5 tables for massage all at the same time. It's different from an American massage in that you stay fully clothed and they use this thin towel over the area being massaged. It felt wonderful and only cost $5.80!

Even though Ben and his family were with us, I felt relief to get to my parents city and to have them be our tour guides for the next week. My brother, Luke, was also living in my parents apartment while doing an internship for the summer. My dad is very comfortable with the bus system and with how life flows in China. My parents both love teaching the college students and have developed some good friendships with them and with the members of the Church in their branch. It's really hard to express how much I enjoyed mingling with the people in Xi'an yet having the safety net of my parents right there too. I would never have the courage to go on this kind of trip without someone I trusted who knew the area.

Beijing Day #3 Zoo, Great Wall, Sleeper Train

I wanted to experience a "private" and "group" tour so this day was our private tour. Just us and our guide in a van. We started out by going to the Beijing Zoo, mostly just to see the panda bears. Our guide told us it was not open to the public when it was built in the early 1900's and only the emperor's family could visit the zoo. It was later opened to the public in the 1950's.

We also saw some beautiful tigers and leopards, cute monkeys and even roosters and chickens!

We were also taken to a Pearl Market and watched a demonstration of cutting open an oyster and 16 pearls lined each side of this oyster! We were taught that to tell if a pearl is real, you rub 2 pearls together (or gently scrape them with a knife) and it will emit a white residue. Then you know it's a real pearl. I couldn't resist, and bought a pretty pearl bracelet.

After lunch we were off to the the Great Wall of China! I was really looking forward to this because if you would have asked me 3 years ago if I ever thought I would be on the Great Wall during my lifetime, I would very easily say NO.
But we did it! It was incredibly steep in some areas and it was amazing to see the Wall snake over the rough mountains. The sign behind us says "One World One Dream."

At the entrance to the tourist area, you could choose to climb to the right or left. Most people choose to climb to the right because that is where Chairman Mao went (in the 1950's) and declared that anyone who hikes the wall is a hero! So most Chinese tourists like to stand where he stood. We decided to hike to the left. Nicholas and me:

This is the closest to a blue sky we saw the whole time. Probably because it's quite a ways from the city. Here's my brother, Luke, before the ascent:

This was as far as we were allowed to hike. Beyond this point the wall was crumbling in some places.

I even bought a "Great Wall" magnet from a guy selling them there at the wall. I talked him down from $7 to $3.
Interesting fact: it took 7,000 men 1 whole year to build 200 meters of the wall!

We were incredibly hot and thirsty and dripping with sweat!

Nicholas, Ben, Becca, Eva, Spencer, and Luke:

After this we drove to The Ming Tombs to see where each emperor was buried. I only took video (not pictures) of that so when I figure out how to post video, I'll share that.

We all really enjoyed seeing Beijing and experiencing the culture. It was just fascinating to me to be in China!

That night we said goodbye to Beijing and took an 11-hour "soft sleeper" train ride to Xi'an where my parents lived. Our sleeping quarters were quite compact, yet comfy and we slept well with 4 people per room. Here's Becca trying to sleep-in (Nicholas' foot dangling down from his bunk):

My big suitcase could barely fit between the 2 bunks.

Nicholas and Spencer on the top bunk and the continual game of "Scum":

I was surprised, in Beijing, to see many signs written in Chinese characters and also in English. I was surprised that many of the other tourists were Chinese and not foreigners. I was also saddened to know that many of the ancient Chinese statues and monuments were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution in the 1950's. The idea was "out with the old China, in with the new." I was pleased with the smiles and kindness we saw from many strangers.