First full day in Beijing. Led by our relentlessly cheerful
guides, Alice and Wendy, feels like we’ve lived a full week in this 3000
year-old-city, now home to 20 million souls.
On the bus, there’s instant ease and conviviality among
participants from across the U.S. No surprise, given the shared central fact of
our family lives.
The sub-freezing day is bookended by two monuments to Chinese
genius, both epic in scale and ambition: the Great Wall and the 2008 Beijing
Olympics Stadium: the Bird’s Nest.
At the Wall, the younger girls are giddy, slipping and sliding on
the ice approaching the climb, then up the uneven steps, built by hand some
2000 years ago. Ascending just the first landing is a workout, given the
20-degree weather and icy steps. Some descend on their bottoms, gripping the
side rail for dear life but all return happy with a great sense of
accomplishment. Gongzhan, it should be noted, climbed to the fourth landing with
some of the teenagers.
Three of our stops today are exit-through-the-gift-shop events: a
jade factory, a tea house and a cloisonné artisans’ workshop. At the first
stop, Mark, or “Mr. Jade” as he tells us to call him, delivers a talk on “jade
culture” in China, taking us through commonly carved archetypes and their
meanings--dragon for power and strength, horse for intelligence and
accomplishment, etc. He shows us how to distinguish quality jade from plastic
or marble knock offs and then lets us loose to shop. Similar format at the
cloisonné workshop and tea house, making for heavier suitcases when we leave
for Xi’an in 2 days.
The evening is a Christmas celebration featuring entertainment
from a few of the kids as well as our tour guides from BLAS. A top official
from the CCCWA arrives to give an emotional speech welcoming us, telling our
daughters and sons that they’ll always be embraced in their homeland and
thanking the parents for providing such loving homes for the children. Even in
translation, a bit of a tear jerker.
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