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June 19, 2005
The blessed child
Eight-thirty Sunday morning found us awake, medicated, dressed and strolling into the hotel café for breakfast. Emma, seeming much recovered from her own bout of illness, was fascinated by everything, starting with the fish. What she found most fascinating, though, was breakfast. We enjoyed a leisurely feast, each of us making multiple trips to the buffet -- an indicator of our improving health.
Emma ate...well, what didn't Emma eat? Mango, pineapple, banana, eggs, rice -- the kid was turning into a garbage disposal. Again, her father's child to be sure.
We finished our food and coffee (or juice, in Lara's case), and whiled away a few pleasant minutes in the hotel shops. Like all hotel shops, they feature some truly amazing merchandise -- two sided embroidery pieces the size of a couch, fancy silk clothes, hand-carved pipes and beautiful lacquered chests. They also charge for it, so looking was all we did.
At 9:30, we met the rest of the group in the second-floor lobby, and for the first time I took notice of the lobby's main decoration, a towering carved jade junk, at least five feet long and as high. The intricate detail and beautiful work of the piece are easy to miss at a casual glance, and I spent a few minutes photographing it while we waited.
Piling onto another bus, we motored through the city streets to the Six Banyan Temple, a Buddhist temple featuring elegant buildings and sculptures and, unsurprisingly, six banyan trees. In the center of the front courtyard stood a tall iron pot with openings around the top, about seven feet from the ground. Tossing coins into the openings brings good luck, Rose explained, so we all had a try, with varying degrees of luck. Norm Soohoo tried a half dozen times before young Ryan, evidently exasperated with his six-foot father's inaccuracy, picked up one of the misses and promptly shot a beautiful nothing-but-net drop, which brought a cheer from our group, and laughter from the locals gathering to watch.
The temple was filled with altars, each piled with offerings to the Buddha. Fruit, flowers and incense created a colorful, fragrant tableau in front of each gold-leafed statue. After a short stroll around the grounds, we gathered in a central room for a blessing. The ceremony was simple, almost austere. As Lara knelt with the other (mostly) mothers and held Emma, the monk played a simple rhythm on an instrument I never saw well enough to describe. He chanted over the mothers and children in Chinese, bowed, and wished us luck. With that, we were free to go.
To be honest, I think Lara and I expected, and maybe hoped for, something more elaborate. But the monk seemed genuine in his wishes of luck, health and prosperity for the new families, and that was enough. Returning to the bus through a thicket of halt and lame beggars, we piled in for the ride back to Shamian.
Once back on the island, we commenced our explorations in search of a Pizza Hut for lunch. Having been told by no fewer than three people that such an establishment existed, we had high hopes for an American-style pizza for our noon meal. Alas, it was not to be. Combing the island from end to end and side to side, we could discover no red tile roof. Instead, we returned sweaty and disappointed to our room, and finished off the last remains of our Danny's order. I told you it was huge.
We would learn later that evening that the nearest Pizza Hut was, in fact, across the Pearl River about two blocks away...not far, but dauting given our ignorance of the geography and the pace of the traffic.
We ventured back out for part of the afternoon, exploring a variety of shops, acquiring a few small items -- a wall hanging for Lara and a rattle for Emma, among others -- and generally making note of where we wanted to return for more serious retail enquiries. The heat sapped us quickly, though, and we returned to the hotel for a long nap.
I woke before the others and stood by the window, looking out over Shamian's European-style rooftops and quiet streets. Guangzhou rose in the distance under a sky that seemed perpetually gray (mostly with rain clouds, as it happens). Guangzhou is actually quite pretty, even if it does become oppressively hot and humid. As in Beijing, the city's friendliness toward Western tourists made us feel at ease, especially on Shamian, where adoptive families are the norm.
Later that evening, we crammed into yet another bus, this time destined for a dock on the other side of the Pearl. Arriving at the docks, we waited while Rose purchased our tickets for a dinner cruise -- a belated Father's Day celebration for the new Dads in the group. Gradually, the waiting room filled, warming as more and more bodies gathered in the late afternoon air. The boat was a standard river/lake tourboat, three decks of white painted steel, utilitarian in every aspect. We boarded after a wait of about 20 minutes, joking and laughing with the other parents in the group.
The atmosphere among the group members was noticeably lighter this time, as everyone's spirits rose in proportion to the proximity of their dates of departure. Clearly, most of us were in love with China and her people, but equally clear was the growing desire to return home and begin settling into habits both old and new -- to begin or renew the process of becoming a family.
The boat set out from the dock as we took our seats on the second deck, with its polished wood floor and huge glass windows. Grouping with Pamela Johnson, her mother and her new daughter Liliana, we took a seat at the very front of the dining room, with the clearest view out over the river. While the Guangzhou riverfront slid by in the gathering darkness, we visited the buffet and -- for the first time -- returned to the table with sparsely populated plates and lots of questions on the order of "What the heck was that stuff?" We're reasonably adventurous diners, so gather from our unwillingness what you will.
During the whole of dinner, a guide speaking Catonese droned on -- quite literally nonstop -- in what was apparently an instructive lecture for tourists. Since I don't speak Cantonese and they provided no English version, I'm not sure what she was talking about. I only know that she made conversation difficult.
Nevertheless, we talked aatnd length with the two women about their journey -- one that truly put our own situation in perspective. They had traveled on their own to Zhejiang province, just east of Jiangxi. According to Pamela, the town they ended up in was relatively remote, and the dialect there so uncommon that even the guide confessed to knowing only about half of what was said. Virtually by themselves, they retrieved Liliana, a special needs child with serious, dark eyes, a cleft palate and harelip, and an intense interest in food (which was a commonality among most of the kids).
Pamela related their trials in getting through the same bureaucracy we dealt with, only with less assistance, and told us how they had managed their baggage and travel plans and such -- little things that we realized only later we had depended heavily on Rose to handle. I have rarely come away so impressed with the dedication and fortitude of any individual as I did that night.
We passed under Guangzhou's beautiful modern suspension bridges. In the gloaming, the skyscrapers along the river lit up with neon and LCD displays, advertising everything from pianos to Coca Cola. As darkness fell, we ventured out onto the astroturfed upper deck, where we took more pictures and chatted with the other members of our group. The Hagues enjoyed their beers, while behind them a group of Chinese tourists excitedly snapped one another's picture as they leaned against the railings.
Reaching a downstream confluence with a smaller stream, the boat turned and headed back to the dock. As it turned, we realized we had moved downstream all the way to the White Swan. I nudged the elder Hague, whom I regarded as a moderately kindred soul due to our shared affection for Tilley hats, and commented that it would be a kindness for the pilot of this august craft to deposit a fair portion of his passengers at the White Swan's dock. He agreed, and further concurred that the likelihood of this occurring (and thus sparing us yet another bus ride) was vanishingly small. We laughed and settled back against the railing, enjoying a breeze that, if it wasn't exactly cool, was at least comfortable.
Returning to the dock and disembarking, we all tried our best to ignore the imprecations of yet another crowd of vendors and beggars. Rose and Connie warned the group not to accept even offers of free flowers, as payment would be expected. Just as we boarded our bus, however, a small boy of 12 or 13 approached Lara and offered a free rose. She politely declined, but he insisted and, in the end, said explicitly "No charge for you." She accepted and was rewarded with a small smile as the boy scurried away, picking up his basked and heading either for home or his next target.
The remainder of the evening was uneventful -- a short stint of Discovery Channel for a taste of America, followed by a bottle and bed for Emma, and medicines and bed shortly thereafter for Mama and Baba.
Posted by brlittle at June 19, 2005 05:00 PM