Pandas

The city of Chengdu in Sichuan province is famous for its hot, spicy food, its pretty girls, its beautiful mountains, and its adorable pandas.  Bordering on Tibet to the west with mountains to the north and west, Sichuan province is home to 80% of the 1600 pandas still living in the wild.  Today we toured the  Giant Panda Breeding Research Center.

The giant pandas can be seen in a setting approximating its natural habitats.  The base focuses on getting the pandas to breed with a goal of eventually returning them to the wild.

 

On a more personal note,  30 years ago today Greg and I were married at the Presbyterian Church in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.  We never would have guessed then that 30 years later we would be spending our anniversary in China with our youngest daughter, Julie.  It's been a great 30 years, and we are looking forward to the next 30 together.

Our 30th Anniversary Dinner at the Chengdu airport McDonald's

From a Tranquil Temple to Spicy Sichuan

The Big Wild Goose Pagoda and Temple in Xian was built 1300 years ago to honor Buddha. According to Jerry our guide, Taoism was popular in China until 500AD when civil wars caused the people to turn to Buddhism for relief and tranquility.  Today, around 2% of Chinese practice Buddhism, around 2% practice Christianity and Muslim, and around 95% have no religion.

At the temple, we learned how to make some Chinese characters and then the girls had their names written in Chinese, Julie’s name means the following:  

             Julie – a member of the Ming Dynasty family and beautiful

             Ping – a flower that floats in moving water

             Jones – Jade earring and silk

This afternoon we flew to Chengdu in Sichuan province.  We ate a yummy traditional and  spicy Chinese dinner before heading back to our hotel for some much needed sleep.

Built to Last

Our  destination for today was the site of the Army of Terra Cotta Warriors, one of the world’s most famous archaeological finds.  In 1974, peasants drilling a well uncovered an underground vault that eventually yielded thousands of terracotta soldiers and horses in battle formation.  Emperor Qin Shi Huang had them built to guard his tomb over 2000 years ago.  The life-sized soldiers are lined up in battle formation, and the really awesome thing is that no two of them are alike.  Each soldier has a distinct expression on his face.  Experts think that the emperor was either afraid of the spirits waiting for him in the afterlife and built the soldiers for protection or he expected his rule to continue in death as it had in life.

It will be a week tomorrow since we left Wisconsin and flew to China.  We have been super busy each day and have seen many different things.  We are travelling with eight families.  There are 15 adults and 15 children(13 girls and 2 boys) in our group. Most of us will be together until next Wednesday when we travel to our individual provinces where we adopted our kids.

The majority of the girls are between 11 and 14 years old and are having a great time.  They sit in the back of the bus and have their own table at restaurants. They swim in the hotel pools and just enjoy being together.  Because they all share the same story (adopted from China and now living in the US - and everything else that goes along with that), I think they immediately felt comfortable together.  Those of us who were not adopted can never understand what it’s like  to be adopted like they do.  I suspect that their new friendships will continue for a long time.

 

In case you haven’t noticed,  my wonderful daughter Amanda has been posting on our blog for me.  In each of our hotel rooms so far, we have received a letter that says the following- “Due to recent Internet Policy and Regulation by the local government, some of the overseas websites and emails are unable to login or access, for instance, Yahoo, Google, Gmail, etc.” It seems the etc. means almost everything else.  Amanda is a treasure.  And Jamie is home helping with cooking, shopping, yard work and more.  It’s kind of cool to have grown children.  But we sure do miss them.

Until tomorrow…

A Day in Xian

The city of Xian, located in the Shaanxi province, was the capital of China 1200 years ago.  At that time, 80% of the people were farmers.  Today only 47% of the people are farmers. The Chinese people place great emphasis on education. Big cities provide a much better education than rural areas so many parents try to move to cities for their child’s education.

Today we visited a primary school which is located on the campus of The Shaanxi Normal School, a university for future teachers.   We spent an hour and a half with a class of 6th grade graduates.  Since Julie just finished 6th grade, it was fun to see how 6th graders are similar no matter what country you are in.  However, the children here have a much longer day that our kids do.  They begin at 8, have a 2 hour break from 12-2 , and are mostly finished by 5.  They then go home to study some more.  Their summer vacation is July and August.

At the school, the children played games together, performed for us, and exchanged gifts.  All of the children were able to speak to us in English. 

We had lunch today in a famous dumpling restaurant, one of the two main places people visit when they come to Xian. The other is the site of the Terra Cotta Warriors which we visit tomorrow. 

After lunch, we visited the Muslim Quarter and the Xian City Wall, both located in the center of the city. The ancestors of the Muslim people came here 1300 years ago.  They helped the Chinese people keep the invading Mongolians out about 700 years ago and are considered minority Chinese. The city wall was initially built during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and is the most complete city wall that had survived in China. It is also one of the largest ancient military defense systems in the world. 

The Forbidden City

After checking out of our hotel in Beijing this morning, we headed for The Forbidden City.  It was built in 1406 for the emperor of China.  The people believed that the god of heaven had a palace with 10,000 rooms. The emperor, who believed he was the son of the god of heaven, thought his palace should be smaller so he had it built with 9,999 1/2 rooms. The Forbidden City is the largest imperial palace in the world.

Tomorrow, we tour the city of Xian…

Walking on the Wall

Today we visited the Great Wall of China,  the only man-made object that can be seen from space.  According to our guide, it is over 5000 miles long.  We walked on the Juyong Pass in the Jungdu Mountains.  This section was completed in 1368 during the Ming dynasty.

The Great Wall of China

Part way up the Great Wall in Beijing

Way too many stairs…

Julie and her friend Emma

Beijing is the second largest city in China behind Shanghai.  Our guide says it is nicknamed “the largest parking lot” in China.

The Bird’s Nest – the site of the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Our First Day in Beijing

Here we are at the Temple of Heaven on a beautiful sunny day in Beijing.

Visiting a silk factory  and learning  how silk is processed into clothing and other goods.

Julie and Ava riding in a rickshaw as we tour a Hutong in an old part of the city.

The children in our travel group pose for a photo in the Hutong courtyard we visited.

We're on our Way

                                                   

Our suitcases are packed and we're on our way to Chicago's O'Hare airport for a 12:35pm direct flight to Beijing.   We are very excited and a little nervous. And wishing Amanda and Jamie were coming with us.  Definitely next time...

The next post on here will be from the People's Republic of China. Talk to you then!

Our Itinerary for the Next Two Weeks

Attribution

6/21: Depart from Chicago.
6/22: Arrive in Beijing.
6/23: Visit Tienanmen Square, the Forbidden City, and Hutong.
6/24: Visit the Great Wall and Bird Nest & Water Cube. Watch the Peking Acrobats.
6/25: Visit Temple of Heaven. Take bullet train to Xi'an.
6/26: Visit Xi'an City Wall and Muslim Market. Visit a local elementary school.
6/27: Visit Museum of the Qin Emperor's Terra Cotta Army. Watch a Tang Dynasty Show.
6/28: Visit the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. Flight to Chengdu.
6/29: Visit Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. Flight to Guilin.
6/30: Free day in Guilin.
7/01: Take cruise from Guilin to Yangshuo.
7/02: Drive back to Guilin. Take bullet train to Changsha and then a second bullet train to Nanchang.
7/03: Visit Jianxin orphanage and Nanchang orphanage.
7/04: Take train to Yudu. Visit finding place and police station.
7/05: Visit Yudu orphanage. Drive to Guangzhou.
7/06: Tour Guangzhou City.
7/07: Drive to Hong Kong. Depart from Hong Kong. Arrive at Chicago.


This is our tentative itinerary as of today, but we wanted to share a basic idea of where we'll be traveling and when.

Attribution

Welcome!

“I didn’t give you the gift of life. Life gave me the gift of you.”  

--Unknown

Thanks for visiting my new blog.  In five days, my husband, Greg, and I will be returning to China for a heritage tour with our younger daughter, Julie.  We adopted  her eleven years ago at the age of 15 months from the Jianxin Social Welfare Institute in Jiangxi Province, China.  She has been asking to go back since she was seven so we think it’s time…

Blogging was not really an option for me during our first trip to China, but I thought I’d give it a try this time around.  And, lucky for me, I have one smart husband and three smart (not to mention technologically savvy) kids who helped me get this blog together.

So I hope you’ll join us as we “journey to Jiangxi” once again so Julie can see and experience China up close and personally.