Yesterday and today (Wednesday and Thursday) we had no official activities as we are waiting for Mackenzie's Chinese passport and to receive officia original Chinese adoption documents.
Yesterday we went by bus to Nanning's oldest park, locally know as People's Park. the park is very centrally located in a busy urban district. The park is very busy and has a very nice sidewal lined with lush vegetation. At the center of the park is a lake and an amusment park with rides more resembling a traveling carnival.
Many of the elder people come to the park in the morning and do various activities from tai chi to singing and dancing. As we walked the park many local people wanted to talk to us and aeven a group of 4 musicians stopped our group and asked to sing a song wishing good fortune to us and our new daughters.
It was interesting going to the carnival as we became a carnival attraction. Local people do not see many western travelers here and they are intrigued by our fair skin and different look. If we would stop any any location for more than a minute or two several locals would surrond us and want to talk to us mainly in chinese and take pictures of us (everyone seems to have a cell phone with a camera).
The environment is rather warm and humid as Nanning is just north of the equater and south of the tropic of cancer. Nanning is a "small" city by China standars although it is a city of 6 plus million prople. It is the import export hub for trade with Vietnam, as we are less than 50 miles from the Vietnam border. The vegatation is very lush and tropical. After being outside for any length of time it becomes rather uncomfortable.
After our visit to the park we wentepresentative enjoys going to with his family and friends. A traditional chinese dinner table is round and has a lazy susan where food is placed and spun around the table to be served. Out table accomodated 24 adults and was about 8 to 10 feet across and the lazy suan covered about 80 percent of the table top. Our representative ordered food and we had a very wide selection. One interesting thing about eating here is when you order multiple dishes as a family, Cantonese tradition is that the food comes out one item at a time so you do not have a very large plate and you may only have 1 or 2 items on your plate at a time. Towards the end of your meal there may be multiple items on the table if the whole dish was not eaten on the first pass. One other item of note is they do not have soy sauce on the table and when asking our representative about this he said it is something we do in the US but that is not tradition here.
Today we went on a bus ride and went ourside the city to the coutryside to visit a traditional village. The village we went to is in Laling which is located in a mountainous region about 45 minutes to 1 hour oaise utside of Nanning. It was interesting watching the transition from metropolitan city to 3rd world agricultural area. the village we went to is a community of about 3,000 people who do not have running water. Many live in single story row houses that are very small. They raise many items for consumption from corn and other vegetables and they raise rice to sell. They use cows to pull carts to haul carts for supplies and deliverying rice to sell. The cow is on a lead and walked by the farmer (we saw both male and females) leadiung the cows and carts.
The village has multiple ponds and they raise fish for their consumption. they have a pump system to pump the water from one pond to an adjacent pond and as the pond gets near empty the retrive the fish and eel with small nets on a long bamboo pole. They hand scoop the top layer of mud and place it in buckets and carry the mud to the field as fertilizer.
Near the center of the village there is a "clean" water supply for thge village. This supply is river and the water is diverted by a concrete channel where it spills out into a concrete pool about 1 foot deep over about a 40 sqyare foot area that is lined with concret and stairs going down to the water. Kids and adults play in the water and they also fill jugs from this water to take back to their homes to consume. This pond holding area is lined with algea and other stuff, but unlike the other ponds, you can see the bottom surface.
Prior to getting to the village we stopped at a roadside market and all bought bags of candy and as we walked thru the village we handed candy to the elderly and the childgren. They were very appreciative and enjoyed seeing us and wanted to pose for pictures and talk to the babies.
After returning from the village Lisa Mackenzie and I along with one other family went for a walk in a nearby park that is buile around a lake and has lots of manicured lush vegetation and a large bonzi tree garden. The park has many ficus and palm trees as well as other tropical plants. The locals there found us intriguing and would photograph us as we went by. They even stopped to take a picture of Lisa and Cathy taking a picture in the park.
Tomorrow evening we travel to Guangzhou where we will remain until July 10. We are a little nervous about the upcoming flights and especially nervouse about car seats.
Mackenzie is opening up much more and becming more relaxed. She is talking alot and she is laughing and much more engaging. She is not that interested in playing on the floor and will not go in a stroller. She constantly wants to be held and does not like to be put down, have her diaper changed or to have clothes taken on or off. She will eat most anything ouput in her mouth, but she will not feed herself or held her bottle. She likes conje (rice soup) and loves traditional noodles.
We will try and update more later. I wil try and post some pictures (which I can not do directly due to censorship ) and even updating this blog is a challenge and cannot be done directly.
