Shanghai and home

We spent our last two nights in Shanghai, where we'd never been before. Not enough time to see much, but we did visit the Jing An temple (beautiful), shopped on Nanjing Rd (intense) and took a cruise on the Huangpu River (cloudy, but watching the tops of the tall buildings appear and disappear in the clouds was worth the price). To me, Shanghai doesn't have as definite a sense of place as the other major cities we visited, but that may be only because we stayed such a short time.

The only disappointment was our hotel -- a very quaint, very centrally located small hotel called the Old House Inn. Upside: central (as I said), quiet, secure (everyone has to walk right past the desk, which is staffed 24 hours a day). Downside: dark rooms, no elevator, no Chinese breakfast. This is the only hotel that I would not stay in again.

Our trip home was a bit rough, as our flight was delayed about 10 hours. The plane was late in arriving from Newark, apparently due to equipment problems, so we were stuck in Pudong Airport and didn't take off until about 2 am. It wasn't horrible, since Pudong is new, not crowded and has plenty of shops where we used up our last yuan, but it meant we didn't get in to Newark until 4:30 this morning (the 12 hour time difference means flying time was about 14 1/2 hours.

I miss China, but it's nice to be home. It's especially nice not to live out of a suitcase.

Over the next few days, I'll be posting more thoughts about our trip, and more pictures.

Ma'anshan Social Welfare Institute

After breakfast, we took the van to the Ma'anshan Social Welfare Institute, where Sara lived her first year. The institute, at the edge of the city, is a compound of white brick buildings surrounded by grass and pomegranate trees. It is a very peaceful place.

We met the current director and the person responsible for international adoptions. We gave the director a contribution for the children still in the institute. We also gave them a photo album.

As we stood at the gate, Mrs Liu, the former director, ran up to Sara and gave her a hug. She told us she recognized her immediately and made a big fuss over her.

We asked her about Ma You Jing, Ma You Tao (English name Laurel) and Ma You Lan (Kathryn), all friends of Sara in New York who are from Ma'anshan. She told us that before being adopted they were all together in the same room. Now it is the room for toddlers.

Most of the children now in the institute have special needs -- other children are either in foster care, or live with families in institute-owned housing in the city where the children attend school. The policy now is to place all non-special needs children in foster care. This policy has been effect for only two years; before that, all children lived in the institute.

The director presented us with a certificate of appreciation and a receipt for our contribution. We gave Mrs Liu a small gift and talked. We saw Sara's file, which did not have much more information than we already had. We also asked a lot of questions. The most interesting was how the girls were selected for international adoption and matched with their families in 1994. As Susan had suspected, it was Xiong Yan, our 1984 facilitator/guide, who did it. She picked out pretty girls with big eyes and matched them to pictures of the parents. That is why Sara looks so much like me, something Mrs Liu remarked on several times.

We took pictures, and then got into vans to go to a restaurant for lunch. On the way, we stopped so that Mrs Liu could by Sara a gift. We ate in a private room on the second floor with Mrs Liu, the international adoptions person, Yang Qin (our guide) and the two drivers (ours and the institute's). The food was excellent (I told Mrs Liu that it was the best meal we had had on our trip, which was true). We had egg drop soup, shredded duck with eggplant, fried tofu, a vegetable dish with lotus root and snow peas, chicken in a spicy sauce, steamed buns, and fried dumplings in an egg pancake. Mrs Liu put food on Sara's and Lia's plates, which was very nice. There were two toasts, one by Mrs Liu and one by me. At the end of the meal, Mrs Liu presented Sara with a beautiful cotton picture of two pandas. This is a local handcraft.

After lunch, we followed the institute van to a local tea shop where we bought some local Yellow Mountain Green Tea recommended by Yang Qin. Then we said goodbye to the institute staff.

We drove about 50 minutes to the Nanjing railway station and waited in a crowded waiting room to board our train. Now we're on board the train (very comfortable and very fast), on our way to Shanghai.

It was a happy day and Sara was very moved by Mrs Liu's interest and hospitality.

Warmly Welcome International Families

I'm going to start posting some things that I didn't have time to during the "official" part of our tour.

Whenever we arrived in a new city, our group was welcomed with a banner like this one. I'm sure it's the only time in my life this will happen!

Saying Goodbye to Meng Haoran at Yellow Crane Tower

This is my favorite Li Bai poem.

At Yellow Crane Tower in the west
My old friend says farewell
In the mists and flowers of spring
He goes down to Yangzhou.

Lonely sail, distant shadow
Vanish in blue emptiness
All I see is the great river
Flowing into the far horizon.

Ma'anshan

Today we arrived in Ma'anshan, a city of over a million people that almost noone in the US has heard of. It is the place where our older daughter Sara was born and lived until we adopted her. This is a steel-producing city in Anhui province on the southern bank of the Yangtze River. It is also known as the home of the Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai, whose poetry (in translation) I love. We have an excellent local guide who met us at the airport in Nanjing (a 2 hour flight from Guangzhou) and drove with us 40 km to Ma'anshan.

We are staying in the Nanhu Hotel, a four star hotel that is perfectly comfortable and adequate for our needs. This afternoon we walked around South Lake, in a park right next to our hotel. Tomorrow we'll do some sightseeing, and also see the place where Sara was left by her birthparents. Monday we hope to visit the orphanage.