Journal - 09/25/2000

JOURNAL FOR 09/25/00

adoption site | contacting me by e-mail | Jiangmen main journal page | home page | Meredith's page

<== Last episode, our hero...
In our next thrilling adventure ==>

(09/25/00)
Jim: After the wild time last night with the beggars and Meridith's constipation problems, we decided that we were (at least temporarily) uninterested in major adventures out of the hotel. Susan had wantd to do some shopping for gifts for her nieces, and the treasures she had found in the China Hotel spurred her on to get things going on this. We also were just absolutely smashed flat by the unending heat and humidity of Guangzhou, and today was (as it turned out) the only day we would have nice, un-humid weather.

That's the one thing the adoptive parents coming through should realize - that the heat in Guangzhou is a baking, enervaing heat. Unless you're used to a subtropical summer outdoors, it will knock a lot of energy out of you, and cook the babies as well. Dress for a roaringly hot, humid day and you can't go far wrong. Be aware that that videocamera that you brought along is going to have to get acclimatized to the heat and moisture; we had some people give up on theirs because it was locking up too much from the humidity when they took it out.

From what we've learned, most of China was like this all summer long. So all of the people who wanted their time to go to China earlier this summer - be just as glad that you did not. All of us were saying that if this was what late September was like, we didn't want to think of what July and August were like!

The heat even cooked poor Meredith, who is coming around and showing a chirpy, cheerful side to herself. She loves to sit and jabber and sing to herself, and play quietly. She's a very tactile baby; she loves finding new thngs to grab and feel and play with. As little as we know of her from before, she seems to be a pretty good baby who is finding her new world vastly interesting. Her intelligence and curiosity are almost frighteningly good - we're going to have to be very much on our toes with this kid.

She has attached herself to Mommy pretty firmly. I was expecting (as I'd heard from other folks) that she'd attach to me first, and that I'd have to comfort Susan. It's more like Susan can't go to the bathroom alone, and I'm the weird big hairy thing over there - I would guess she had no exposure to men at all. So Daddy ends up getting the short end of the stick. *sigh*

We decided to try the Chinese restaurants in the hotel this morning, and hit the Cantonese one at late breakfast-time. Dim Sum was the sum of the menu - and Susan and I struggled to figure out what to order, having never really run into Dim Sum before. Here's my short description for the uninitiated - a leisurely breakfast over a lot of tea and a ton of appetizers.

The Cantonese seem to think that the civilzed way to have lunch or breakfast is to sit down with the newspaper and a good pot of tea, and leisurely munch on different dumplings and whatnot, none of the individual dishes being all that substantial. (Remember that the English idea of High Tea is far more than just tea - it's a light meal of snacks and light sandwiches.)  So long as you have the time to do this (over barbecued pork buns and shrimp and pork dumplings, say), it is nice. However, if you're there with a baby, you can only pull this off if the baby is feedable at the table, doesn't make a titanic mess and/or raises hell (the length of a Dim Sum tries the patience of most babies pretty badly - they're used to being quick feeders and getting away from the table).

Meredith was pretty good, and we would ply her with congee and cheerios to keep her quiet and interested in being at the table for a while. Congee, again for the uninitiated, is a rice equivalent to hot oatmeal or cream of wheat, but usually a great deal thinner than either. The orphanage put the thinnest version into Meredith's bottles with her formula; we just spoon it up at the table, ordering a small bowl of it at the restaurants. Some restaurants serve it straight, some with some crumbled light meat or vegetables into the mix. Basically, the Cantonese serve it up with 'preserved egg' (hard boiled egg thats been boiled in heavy salt water and tastes like brine) or some kind of pickled vegetable (usually pretty obnoxious tasting). Without something added to it, Chinese congee is utterly tasteless, aside of the odd feeling that you're eating library paste.

We higly recommend the Cantonese restaurant on the third floor of the White Swan, but be warned - the diners are not used to seeing Americans there, particularly with a baby. 99% of the cascades of parents are never adventurous enough to leave the White Swan's 'coffee shop', which serves some American/Western foods. They're not hostile, just surprised as you might be to see a bunch of Chinese executives in suits coming to your local McDonalds.

Susan then trolled off to the local shopping places to do some digging for all of the things that she wanted to look for. Some of it was very specific - one good friend and fellow two-time China adopter wanted specific items from specific stores. Susan was also looking for stuff for friends, family (especially her four nieces) and the baby's godparents.

And the baby, of course. Shoes for the baby, for starters. Susan says that she *only* bought four pairs, and it's Jean Greensley's fault anyway, for telling her baby shoes were cheap in China....they cost about $5 a pair.

I will direct you over to the photojournal at http://www.marmotgraphics.com/jiangmen/0925.html for a real look at the sort of things that were available. There were some things I wouldn't touch because they were obvious crap (such as fake old coins), junky or too big to send home easily. In the White Swan, you will se some very nice and very expensive pieces of stuff (such as ivory carvings) that are either too big to take in your luggage, too difficult and expensive to ship, or prohibited by the US government (like the ivory). But they'll sell them to you with a smile, and what you do with it after that point is your problem!

Adoptive parents get goofy notions of certain places near the White Swan; Sherry's Place is one of them, and probably the most interesting selection. ( The picture below shows a general shot of the place.) But they're all the same, really. To be frank, all of these places charge roughly the same, have so-so English, and are about the same quality of merchandise. If you're going shopping, don't grab the first thing you see. They're pretty competitive, and if one has something, they'll all have it if it sells.

For example, there's a new twist in getting your baby's portrait done; having a artist engrave it into black granite with a tool that looks like a huge steel pencil. This costs about 250 Yuan (just over $30) per engraving, and can look pretty spiffy, if you have a good artist doing it. There are samples out of the work at the places that do it - copies of the 100 Yuan note, of an eagle in flight, even Michael Jordan in action!  I'd guess from what I'd heard and seen that one place started doing it, and now even the photo processing shop offers it. Susan ordered three copies from a Polaroid we gave them of a laughing baby meredith - one for each of the grandmothers, and one for us.

Susan is getting a silk blouse specially made for herself from this place and two dresses for her nieces. We ended up getting most of our stuff from here; chops, dresses, trinkets, accordions, you name it. Nice people, good prices. This was the only place I saw Mao buttons or the 'Little Red Book' anywhere in China - as a tourist curiosity. It is stuffed to the gills with all sorts of merchandise As we've yet to hand a lot of these presents out, I won't go into detail as to what she picked up.

One of the neatest things (if I were a kid) are the Chinese kites; beautiful butterflies and birds, fish and dragons. Even a praying mantis!  We had no particular need for them, had no wall space and don't fly kites (let alone trying to haul something that delicate home in a suitcase) so we passed on those.

Someone asked me 'what are chops', and I can only reply that for the last couple of millenia, China has had an advanced bureaucracy, and invented 'official stamps' on paperwork. In the old days, you would have someone do an official seal for you, carved out of stone, that had your name in calligraphed (but easily readable) characters for you to use to officially stamp all of the documents that you were 'signing for' or approving. Always in bright red vermillion ink. And they still do this. In fact, any kind of reciept (and we got a lot of them) had a big red rubber stamp on it.

Many Western people will have their name engraved in soft stone (as the Chinese did) just for fun; most will say some kind of Chinese phonetic transliteration of 'Joe Blow' on it. I went a step further, and created Chinese names for myself, Susan and our four nieces. If you'd like to look at them, check out http://www.marmotgraphics.com/jiangmen/western_names.html. In the Chinese names I created, the idea was to create a new name, referent to the person and their personality and only secondarily to what their Western name sounds like. (Most Western names have meanings that are long forgotten, so I was not about to use the ancient meanings for anything.)

My name came from two sources. A Chinese scholar who was helping me with the process suggested Li Deng Hao as phonetically close to my last name (Rittenhouse) and noted that Li is a very common last name. However, another last name - Xiong (Bear) - fit me better. My 'totem animal' has been a bear for a long time; the fact that I'm big, hairy and broad and bearlike would have nothing to do with it, uh-unh.

A nore here to further explain: as noted before, the White Swan is a favorite place for high-end tourists - and adopting families, since the US Consulate that they have to deal with to get their baby's USA entrance visa is right next door. It offers a fair amount of creature comforts, and will allow you to cocoon up in the hotel and never step outside, eating nothing but Western food. (More on the Western Food later.)

A uniformed security guard and doorman opens the front door for everyone; the building and Shamian Island in general has very good security. The building is generally well air-conditioned, plush and comfortable. Whatever you have ever run into in the way of service, food or whatever in a hotel, this one beats it by an incredible distance. In the front plaza in front of the hotel are a number of small clothing shops and a deli. They also have a reasonable laundry service if you take 'em yourself - I don't recommend that you try to save and do your own, or to just leave it in the hotel for the staff to do up. The one is a silly effort - the drop-in laundry is cheap - and the latter is too expensive.

All the streets on Shamian are one-way, and parking is very limited - there is a set of small car-park areas at the hotel for people driving in. Private car ownership in China is nothing like that of the USA; most cars are owned by business and the well-off. And most are German or Japanese - with a few home-made Chinese cars. If you are Joe Average in Guangzhou, you use the buses, the subway, or some kind of two-wheeled contrivance. I saw many motorcycles, scooters, bicycles - many gimmicked up to haul heavy loads with some kind of trike assembly.

Beyond the tourist shops a bit further is the Shamian Hotel and the KiuMei Restaurant (of which we discussed on our outing to the Qingping Market) - on the left further is a car park area, and two restaurants - the Rose Garden and Lucy's. Between them is a park where people practice ballroom dancing and have concerts of Chinese traditional music. The Rose Garden and Lucy's both have fair food at cheap prices, and cater to Westerners. When we took Meredith to Lucy's (which is heavily rigged up with movie posters, etc.) she grooved on the Chicken Congee, but she really got into the '70s music. You've never lived till you've seen a baby trying to dance in a high chair to ABBA.

Otherwise, we spent a quiet day around the hotel. The heat and the bustle of Guangzhou and both Daddy and Meredith feeling under the weather didn't help, and everyone decided to take it easy. Elsewhere in our group, a woman and her baby were both dreadfully ill with high fevers. Many of the babies ended up being taken down to the clinic with problems - constipation, infections, congestion. Us too, unfortunately. We made several trips there ourselves.

At the end of a pleasant day - the weather had cooled off temporarily, and there was a fresh breeze from the South-East and the Ocean. This is sunset over the Pearl River, taken from the back of the White Swan, where a cluster of twenty-odd adoptive families, many of who knew each other from the internet, were celebrating their good fortune with a German Barbeque Buffet. Complete with Chinese Waiters in Bavarian lederhosen and dirndls....barbecuing wursts, steaks and seafood. Care for a stein of bock beer? Prosit!

JOURNAL FOR 09/25/00
adoption site \| contacting me by e-mail \| Jiangmen	main journal page \| home page \| Meredith's page
<== Last episode, our hero...	In our next thrilling adventure ==>
(09/25/00) Jim: After the wild time last night with the beggars and Meridith's constipation problems, we decided that we were (at least temporarily) uninterested in major adventures out of the hotel. Susan had wantd to do some shopping for gifts for her nieces, and the treasures she had found in the China Hotel spurred her on to get things going on this. We also were just absolutely smashed flat by the unending heat and humidity of Guangzhou, and today was (as it turned out) the only day we would have nice, un-humid weather. That's the one thing the adoptive parents coming through should realize - that the heat in Guangzhou is a baking, enervaing heat. Unless you're used to a subtropical summer outdoors, it will knock a lot of energy out of you, and cook the babies as well. Dress for a roaringly hot, humid day and you can't go far wrong. Be aware that that videocamera that you brought along is going to have to get acclimatized to the heat and moisture; we had some people give up on theirs because it was locking up too much from the humidity when they took it out. From what we've learned, most of China was like this all summer long. So all of the people who wanted their time to go to China earlier this summer - be just as glad that you did not. All of us were saying that if this was what late September was like, we didn't want to think of what July and August were like! The heat even cooked poor Meredith, who is coming around and showing a chirpy, cheerful side to herself. She loves to sit and jabber and sing to herself, and play quietly. She's a very tactile baby; she loves finding new thngs to grab and feel and play with. As little as we know of her from before, she seems to be a pretty good baby who is finding her new world vastly interesting. Her intelligence and curiosity are almost frighteningly good - we're going to have to be very much on our toes with this kid. She has attached herself to Mommy pretty firmly. I was expecting (as I'd heard from other folks) that she'd attach to me first, and that I'd have to comfort Susan. It's more like Susan can't go to the bathroom alone, and I'm the weird big hairy thing over there - I would guess she had no exposure to men at all. So Daddy ends up getting the short end of the stick. sigh We decided to try the Chinese restaurants in the hotel this morning, and hit the Cantonese one at late breakfast-time. Dim Sum was the sum of the menu - and Susan and I struggled to figure out what to order, having never really run into Dim Sum before. Here's my short description for the uninitiated - a leisurely breakfast over a lot of tea and a ton of appetizers. The Cantonese seem to think that the civilzed way to have lunch or breakfast is to sit down with the newspaper and a good pot of tea, and leisurely munch on different dumplings and whatnot, none of the individual dishes being all that substantial. (Remember that the English idea of High Tea is far more than just tea - it's a light meal of snacks and light sandwiches.) So long as you have the time to do this (over barbecued pork buns and shrimp and pork dumplings, say), it is nice. However, if you're there with a baby, you can only pull this off if the baby is feedable at the table, doesn't make a titanic mess and/or raises hell (the length of a Dim Sum tries the patience of most babies pretty badly - they're used to being quick feeders and getting away from the table). Meredith was pretty good, and we would ply her with congee and cheerios to keep her quiet and interested in being at the table for a while. Congee, again for the uninitiated, is a rice equivalent to hot oatmeal or cream of wheat, but usually a great deal thinner than either. The orphanage put the thinnest version into Meredith's bottles with her formula; we just spoon it up at the table, ordering a small bowl of it at the restaurants. Some restaurants serve it straight, some with some crumbled light meat or vegetables into the mix. Basically, the Cantonese serve it up with 'preserved egg' (hard boiled egg thats been boiled in heavy salt water and tastes like brine) or some kind of pickled vegetable (usually pretty obnoxious tasting). Without something added to it, Chinese congee is utterly tasteless, aside of the odd feeling that you're eating library paste. We higly recommend the Cantonese restaurant on the third floor of the White Swan, but be warned - the diners are not used to seeing Americans there, particularly with a baby. 99% of the cascades of parents are never adventurous enough to leave the White Swan's 'coffee shop', which serves some American/Western foods. They're not hostile, just surprised as you might be to see a bunch of Chinese executives in suits coming to your local McDonalds. Susan then trolled off to the local shopping places to do some digging for all of the things that she wanted to look for. Some of it was very specific - one good friend and fellow two-time China adopter wanted specific items from specific stores. Susan was also looking for stuff for friends, family (especially her four nieces) and the baby's godparents. And the baby, of course. Shoes for the baby, for starters. Susan says that she only bought four pairs, and it's Jean Greensley's fault anyway, for telling her baby shoes were cheap in China....they cost about $5 a pair. I will direct you over to the photojournal at http://www.marmotgraphics.com/jiangmen/0925.html for a real look at the sort of things that were available. There were some things I wouldn't touch because they were obvious crap (such as fake old coins), junky or too big to send home easily. In the White Swan, you will se some very nice and very expensive pieces of stuff (such as ivory carvings) that are either too big to take in your luggage, too difficult and expensive to ship, or prohibited by the US government (like the ivory). But they'll sell them to you with a smile, and what you do with it after that point is your problem! Adoptive parents get goofy notions of certain places near the White Swan; Sherry's Place is one of them, and probably the most interesting selection. ( The picture below shows a general shot of the place.) But they're all the same, really. To be frank, all of these places charge roughly the same, have so-so English, and are about the same quality of merchandise. If you're going shopping, don't grab the first thing you see. They're pretty competitive, and if one has something, they'll all have it if it sells. For example, there's a new twist in getting your baby's portrait done; having a artist engrave it into black granite with a tool that looks like a huge steel pencil. This costs about 250 Yuan (just over $30) per engraving, and can look pretty spiffy, if you have a good artist doing it. There are samples out of the work at the places that do it - copies of the 100 Yuan note, of an eagle in flight, even Michael Jordan in action! I'd guess from what I'd heard and seen that one place started doing it, and now even the photo processing shop offers it. Susan ordered three copies from a Polaroid we gave them of a laughing baby meredith - one for each of the grandmothers, and one for us. Susan is getting a silk blouse specially made for herself from this place and two dresses for her nieces. We ended up getting most of our stuff from here; chops, dresses, trinkets, accordions, you name it. Nice people, good prices. This was the only place I saw Mao buttons or the 'Little Red Book' anywhere in China - as a tourist curiosity. It is stuffed to the gills with all sorts of merchandise As we've yet to hand a lot of these presents out, I won't go into detail as to what she picked up. One of the neatest things (if I were a kid) are the Chinese kites; beautiful butterflies and birds, fish and dragons. Even a praying mantis! We had no particular need for them, had no wall space and don't fly kites (let alone trying to haul something that delicate home in a suitcase) so we passed on those. Someone asked me 'what are chops', and I can only reply that for the last couple of millenia, China has had an advanced bureaucracy, and invented 'official stamps' on paperwork. In the old days, you would have someone do an official seal for you, carved out of stone, that had your name in calligraphed (but easily readable) characters for you to use to officially stamp all of the documents that you were 'signing for' or approving. Always in bright red vermillion ink. And they still do this. In fact, any kind of reciept (and we got a lot of them) had a big red rubber stamp on it. Many Western people will have their name engraved in soft stone (as the Chinese did) just for fun; most will say some kind of Chinese phonetic transliteration of 'Joe Blow' on it. I went a step further, and created Chinese names for myself, Susan and our four nieces. If you'd like to look at them, check out http://www.marmotgraphics.com/jiangmen/western_names.html. In the Chinese names I created, the idea was to create a new name, referent to the person and their personality and only secondarily to what their Western name sounds like. (Most Western names have meanings that are long forgotten, so I was not about to use the ancient meanings for anything.) My name came from two sources. A Chinese scholar who was helping me with the process suggested Li Deng Hao as phonetically close to my last name (Rittenhouse) and noted that Li is a very common last name. However, another last name - Xiong (Bear) - fit me better. My 'totem animal' has been a bear for a long time; the fact that I'm big, hairy and broad and bearlike would have nothing to do with it, uh-unh. A nore here to further explain: as noted before, the White Swan is a favorite place for high-end tourists - and adopting families, since the US Consulate that they have to deal with to get their baby's USA entrance visa is right next door. It offers a fair amount of creature comforts, and will allow you to cocoon up in the hotel and never step outside, eating nothing but Western food. (More on the Western Food later.) A uniformed security guard and doorman opens the front door for everyone; the building and Shamian Island in general has very good security. The building is generally well air-conditioned, plush and comfortable. Whatever you have ever run into in the way of service, food or whatever in a hotel, this one beats it by an incredible distance. In the front plaza in front of the hotel are a number of small clothing shops and a deli. They also have a reasonable laundry service if you take 'em yourself - I don't recommend that you try to save and do your own, or to just leave it in the hotel for the staff to do up. The one is a silly effort - the drop-in laundry is cheap - and the latter is too expensive. All the streets on Shamian are one-way, and parking is very limited - there is a set of small car-park areas at the hotel for people driving in. Private car ownership in China is nothing like that of the USA; most cars are owned by business and the well-off. And most are German or Japanese - with a few home-made Chinese cars. If you are Joe Average in Guangzhou, you use the buses, the subway, or some kind of two-wheeled contrivance. I saw many motorcycles, scooters, bicycles - many gimmicked up to haul heavy loads with some kind of trike assembly. Beyond the tourist shops a bit further is the Shamian Hotel and the KiuMei Restaurant (of which we discussed on our outing to the Qingping Market) - on the left further is a car park area, and two restaurants - the Rose Garden and Lucy's. Between them is a park where people practice ballroom dancing and have concerts of Chinese traditional music. The Rose Garden and Lucy's both have fair food at cheap prices, and cater to Westerners. When we took Meredith to Lucy's (which is heavily rigged up with movie posters, etc.) she grooved on the Chicken Congee, but she really got into the '70s music. You've never lived till you've seen a baby trying to dance in a high chair to ABBA. Otherwise, we spent a quiet day around the hotel. The heat and the bustle of Guangzhou and both Daddy and Meredith feeling under the weather didn't help, and everyone decided to take it easy. Elsewhere in our group, a woman and her baby were both dreadfully ill with high fevers. Many of the babies ended up being taken down to the clinic with problems - constipation, infections, congestion. Us too, unfortunately. We made several trips there ourselves. At the end of a pleasant day - the weather had cooled off temporarily, and there was a fresh breeze from the South-East and the Ocean. This is sunset over the Pearl River, taken from the back of the White Swan, where a cluster of twenty-odd adoptive families, many of who knew each other from the internet, were celebrating their good fortune with a German Barbeque Buffet. Complete with Chinese Waiters in Bavarian lederhosen and dirndls....barbecuing wursts, steaks and seafood. Care for a stein of bock beer? Prosit!