Ni hao!

Hi all,

Sorry for the delay in posting. It has been a busy couple of days and we just now had time to figure out how to connect to the Internet from our room. The time change between Canada and China must be more severe than even we figured because the 24-hour business centre was closed last night when we went looking for some help. :-)

So, anyhow, here is a short recap of our last couple of days. (I know, you're all just interested in what happens from today on anyhow, when we will have B.)

Day 1 -- travel

We left home at 5:00 a.m. on Friday to head to the airport for our flight to Shanghai, via Beijing, via Vancouver. 30 hours later we finally arrived in our hotel room in Shanghai. A pretty exhausting day (actually two days as by that time it was 11:00 p.m. Saturday in China.)

Day 2 -- Shanghai and more travel

Yesterday, we went on a whirlwind tour of Shanghai. It's a pretty cool city, and one I'd like to visit when I have more time (at least another day). We joined a city tour which was all in Chinese, but our guide (Lily) translated some for us. We went to the Oriental Pearl tower which offered a great view of the city. It kind of reminded me of the CN tower. When you took the elevator up to the viewing location it took 48 seconds to travel up 88 floors. Pretty fast.

Here is a picture taken of (part of) the city from the tower observation deck. As you can see, it is a bit hazy in this city (although I didn't notice it until I looked out from the tower).















After the tower, we visited a museum on the history of Shanghai. It was pretty interesting. You can tell though, that China is growing and changing super fast, because Lily refers to things that were made in the last 20 years as really old. Basically it seems that anything in China that was here more than 10 years ago is considered old. This was reinforced at the museum, where most of the exhibits demonstrated Shanghai in the 1930s or 1940s. Here's a pic of DoT and I at the museum...
















Then we had a pretty funny experience. The tour guide took us to visit what we were told was one of the 50 most successful businesses in the world (Hillman's, a German company). Turns out we were part of a live infomercial. Basically we went into a room and watched a guy demonstrate the amazing slice and dice capabilities of knives. Pretty funny. I think the tour guide operator must be getting kick-backs or something if he brings tours into there. Worked out pretty well for the company though, they made a lot of sales to our group.

Then from there we headed off to the next place that the guide was getting kick backs for -- a jade factory, which we were told before we ever went in that there is no good jade in Shanghai, so don`t buy anything from there. We went into a boardroom and sat there while everyone chatted with the store personnel -- mostly about where in China they were from, at least according to Lily. Then we were done and we left. No purchases, by anyone, there.

Then we went on a boat tour on the Huangpu river. This was nice, but I'm told it is much nicer in the evening, when all the buildings along the river are lit up. Since were catching a flight in the evening, day time was our only option. It was nice to see along the river, where on the one side were buildings with old architecture, and right across the river were the new skyscrapers. Here is a pic of DoT and I on the boat...















And a couple of shots of the river banks from the boat...


(The tower in this picture is the Oriental Pearl, that we went up.)














Then it was lunch time and we went to a local restaurant, where Lily ordered for us. (Good news, Lily doesn't like fish either, so completely understands when I don't want any part of the tonnes of fish or seafood dishes available here.) The meal was very good.

Then it was time for a visit to a shopping section of the city. We got off the bus and walked around and visited the shops. Where we were, there used to be a big Buddhist temple, but it has now been turned into shops of all kinds. I almost bought a painting at one of the shops, but decided against it in the end, much to the chagrin of the woman trying to sell it. She actually followed us out of the store and down the street, and agreed to sell it to us for the original price I said we would pay. But by the time it got to that point we didn't have time as we needed to be back on the bus. Lily has assured us that she will take us to some nice studios in Beijing when we are there, where she says there is great work by some of the more famous Chinese artists. We were also hampered somewhat in our shopping efforts because so far we have not been able to get any money changed into Yuan. DoT brought a bit of Yuan with us, mainly in case we needed to get a taxi from the airport to our hotel, but not enough for any serious shopping. The hotel in Shanghai wasn't able to change our traveller's cheques into cash. Not sure why... maybe we were trying to change too much (Cdn$200). It wasn't very clear. And so far, we have found communication here in China much more difficult than the last time. Nobody seems to speak English, so we are reliant on Lily to translate. Which isn't a problem, but we don't want to call her constantly and drag her here to help us. (Now that we are in Guangzhou she is staying in a different hotel, close by. Not in the one we're at.)

Here's a pic from the shopping area we were in...

(Lily took this picture for us since it shows the contrast between the old (shopping area) and the new (buildings in the background).)


(This picture is of a tree we saw, in the market area, full of lanterns which I thought looked pretty cool.)




After finishing our quick shopping, we got back on the bus and saw a few more sites (just from the bus) as we headed for the airport. We flew to Guangzhou at the end of the day and arrived in our hotel here around 11:00 p.m. last night. I slept great (8 hours uninterrupted... don't remember the last time that happened .. but I'm still tired), but DoT was awake today from about 5:30 a.m. We go to meet B at 2:00 p.m. this afternoon, and then have a bunch of appointments to legalize the adoption and start the paperwork for his visa. I'll try to update the blog tonight (assuming we can get him to sleep at a decent time), with pics and info about B.

Bye for now.