A Place Called Zhaji

Since initially learning of Julien Minet’s guesthouse in Zhaji I had thought it might well be the highlight destination on our trip… and I was not wrong. Zhaji is a small 3000 person village in remote Southern Anhui, which boasts some of the most authentic and unspoiled Yuan and Ming dynasty buildings in the country. Julien is a transplanted Frenchman, a cultural anthropologist, married to a Chinese wife, and speaks wonderfully accented English as well as apparently fluent Chinese. He had searched for years to find a quiet retreat away from the crowds of Nanjing, the city that he spends much of his time in.

He eventually found Zhaji, and bought the most rundown dilapidated building there. I’m sure the local thought him completely crazy. But a number of years later he has endeared himself to the locals (he is a remarkably endearing man) and converted that run down 700 year old building into a wonderful quest house. It is like stepping back 700 years, without leaving behind our modern comforts. Initially it was only to be a retreat for Julien and his wife, but friends started visiting from France, and each friend told two friends, and you can guess how it goes. Before you know it, Julien had to either close up his doors, or get on with running a true guest house. And that is exactly how it feels – you are a guest in his house.

He has a live in housekeeper, Ayi (Chinese for Auntie), who is pictured here with Julien.

She is so eager to help out, and so obviously enjoys her work with Julien and the guests. He also has a fabulous cook. Ayi and Julien managed our breakfasts, but lunches and dinners were brought in by a village woman who does the cooking for him. He had to go through 7 different cooks before he found one that was just right (you’ve got to love the French when it comes to cuisine!). Her cooking raises the simple, authentic village dishes she prepares to true gastronomic heights. All of the food was totally fresh, much of it having been picked that day from the many gardens surrounding the village. The preparation and presentation was simple, allowing the natural flavours and appearance of the local ingredients to shine through. We ate 2 dinners and 2 lunches, with 4 dishes each time. Not one repeat, and not one that would fail to hold it’s own in a fine restaurant.

There is little to do in Zhaji, but stroll around absorbing the feeling of the place. The locals all smile and nod, but no one tries to sell you anything. There are no cranes, no apparent construction, and apart from Julien, no sign of the west. We toured some ancient buildings…

We purchased some ingenious folding stools from a local village craftsman. Those are the stools the girls are sitting on in this photo with the carpenter and his son.

We bought some authentic calligraphy brushes from an artisan who is so painstakingly methodical in his approach that he took 10 minutes or more just to wrap them up.

And we hiked around the country side, including a trip to this great old pagoda one valley away.
But mostly we just sat around talking and joking with Julien like an old friend, watching the sun set on a place time had left behind. Once the sun had set, we could watch the fireflies dance their way above the mountain stream that bisects the village, dancing to the music of crickets and frogs. The more time we spent there, the more I wondered if the girls were really enjoying it. I hoped it would leave a strong impression of the inspiring beauty their homeland can achieve. While it could not compete with the swimming pools of the big hotels, or the personal impact of an orphanage visit, both of the girls are eager to return one day to Zhaji… so I guess I got my wish.

(Lisa, if you read this, thanks so much!)

Lu'an: The Trail’s not Cold…it’s Gone

Despite the experience at Ciana’s orphanage, we looked forward to our Lu’an visit with the same degree of anticipation as we had begun Ciana’s orphanage day. And the result was pretty much the same, although the experience was completely different.

The day began with a 2 hour drive to Lu’an, a once small town 8 years ago when we first got Kailyn. Now it is a rapidly growing metropolis, the skyline dotted by China’s new national bird… the crane. (That pun courtesy of our guide Ming). Beyond clever puns, we had a very engaging discussion with Ming for most of the 2 hour trip. We learned a lot about the new China in the process.

Things at Kailyn’s orphanage got off to a better start than Ciana’s, in that I at least recognized the buildings as the ones that the other Dads had stared at through the closed gates 8 years ago.

The actual visit was so different than the Nanchang SWI. Nanchang was formal. One got the impression that our route through the orphanage was planned, with nanny/child interaction choreographed throughout. We were moved expediently from room to room, in a formal, professional manner.

In Lu’an, it was much more casual. We visited a number of rooms with children in them, and were given as much time as we wanted to interact with the children. While Maureen and I tended to scare most of the kids, Kailyn got along just fine with them.

She really took the time to interact with the children, and had a lot of fun doing so.

After quite a visit with the children, we headed over to the office to meet with the overall director for the SWI (Social Welfare Institute). He was very accommodating, and did his best to answer our questions. This time at least the actual “file” arrived at the meeting, and we were able to look at all the forms in it. Again, we did not learn anything new, but one didn’t get the impression there was anything more to learn.

There was one comical moment. It had been raining fairly heavily all morning, and there were several leaks in the ceiling of the room we were meeting in. It was also quite warm. At one point the director got concerned we were uncomfortably warm and turned the ceiling fan on. We were all immediately cooled by a sudden shower as all the rain that had leaked onto the fan went spraying around the room. After a good laugh we headed off for lunch.

We had offered to host the director and a number of his staff at a local restaurant for lunch. Ming assisted Maureen and me in ordering lunch. Fortunately, this was another one of those restaurants that displayed all their dishes under glass, so we had a reasonable sense of what we were getting. We were being overly Caucasian in our ordering until I asked Ming if ordering bullfrog would be appreciated by our guests and he heartily agreed (it was actually very good – like chicken, as they say, but sweeter so it worked very well with the spicy sauce it was served with).

Now any other parents planning a homeland visit to Lu’an need to be aware of one important thing. The Lu’aners really like to drink! And I’m not referring to the local tea. Lu’an is known for two beverages. The local tea is prized by many Chinese, but seemed rather bland to us. Regrettably for yours truly, one of Lu’an’s other major industries is a supposedly well known rice liquor distillery. Further, Ming advised me both that it is bad form to not drain your glass when someone toasts you and equally bad form to not propose a toast back.

One look at Maureen’s contorted face after her first toast told me that I was going to be the one holding up the family’s honour. And boy, did I “take one for the team”! The lunch got more and more boisterous, and at one point it appears I acquired one or two concubines… but they both happily acknowledged Maureen’s place as “first wife”. Despite the increasing challenge of communicating (Ming was receiving as many toasts as I was, and translation was taking longer), it was a truly warm and friendly lunch. Ming’s translation of their comments told us what we could already feel – the staff were truly happy that Kailyn and her family had come back to meet them and were participating in a typical Lu’an celebration.

The kids thought that lunch was never going to end, and happily retreated to the TV over on one side of the room. We had to refuse multiple offers to attend a dinner they wanted to host in our honour that night. Judging by how much liquor they poured for lunch, sticking around for dinner would have been suicide. We were able to talk our way out of dinner by promising to let them host us for dinner the next time we visit. Eventually, as host, I was able to claim the right to make a last toast, and we escaped just before another bottle of rice liquor was opened.

Fortunately, neither our or the orphanage’s drivers had been the recipients or initiators of any toasts, so they were fine to take us out to Kailyn’s finding spot after lunch. We knew that Kailyn had been found at the gates to a nearby village, and I somehow pictured one of those three part Chinese village gates, set on a dirt path with rice paddies and water buffalo one either side. Sadly, we pulled up in front of a building supply yard on the side of the highway. The village were Kailyn’s recorded personal history had begun was gone, bulldozed to make room for building supplies. I guess it is somehow disappointingly fitting that Kailyn’s history had been swept away by the same drive for modernisation that has swept away so much else in this country.

Like Ciana, Kailyn was disappointed not to learn anything new, but took it in stride. We toured a bit more of Lu’an (new construction everywhere) and made a brief stop back at the orphanage, before heading back to Hefei. We departed Lu’an having made a bunch of new friends, but not having learned anything more about Kailyn’s history.

Riding the Rails

It’s been a while since I’ve had both the time and the internet connection to post any up dates.

Following Ciana’s orphanage we had a travel day to Hefei, our base of operations for visiting Kailyn’s orphanage. We’d heard a lot about traveling by train in China, and this leg of our trip was our chance to experience it. When traveling by train, one can normally choose from 4 different “classes”: hard seat, soft seat, hard sleeper and soft sleeper. Most Western tourists seem to choose soft sleeper when it is available. That is certainly how I’d travel if doing an overnight train, but I think it would be a mistake to do so on a day train, as you have your own cabin, leaving you entirely cut off from everyone else traveling the train. The hard sleeper on the other hand is more like a dormitory with 6 bunk “compartments” entirely open to the aisle running down one side of the train.

The result is that you end up interacting a lot more with the other passengers. Fortunately, our train only offered hard seats or hard sleeper, so we ended up traveling in a hard sleeper. Given all our luggage, it occupied one berth, leaving three for the family to use, along with the fold down seats opposite our compartment on the aisle.

While the kids found the train a bore, Mom and Dad enjoyed the downtime. It was fascinating watching the countryside roll by….. and kind of fun hanging off the bunks.
Dad got a bit more caught up on his blog (Celine this photo is for you.)
One additional word of advice to first time train travelers: have your guide with you if you can. The train station is hectic, to say the least. There is very little English posted anywhere and we didn’t encounter any English speaking staff to explain anything to us. Fortunately we still had Grain with us, and apart from a bottle of apple juice opening up and soaking everything in Ciana’s backpack, the process of getting on the train was straightforward.

Seven hours later we pulled into Hefei and were met as we got off our train car by our Hefei guide, Mr. Zhang Ming. Zhang Ming is one enterprising guy. He works closely with Love Without Boundaries, a wonderful charitable organization that does a lot of great work with Chinese orphans and orphanages. He is their primary “on the ground” person in Hefei, ensuring the smooth operation of their cleft palate home, and coordinating the foster parent programs and orphanage donations in the area. He also acts as a tour guide and tour planner for CITS, the Chinese government travel agency, and I suspect has a few other ventures underway given the frequency with which his cell phone rings.

However none of that got in the way of our receiving his near undivided attention throughout our visit. He was exceptionally knowledgeable, had very good English and knew the orphanage staff very, very well given his work over the years with them. But most importantly, you could see how much he cared about the orphans every time we were around them, and how happy it made him to see these children getting the help they so desperately need. As with Zhang Gin Ju, if anyone reading this is interested in Zhang Ming’s contact details, just contact me.

We had a very short ride to our hotel, the Hilton Hefei. It was easily the most luxurious place we stayed in China. Our family suite, had two complete bedrooms, a huge sitting living room dining room, 2 full bathrooms, and much more. It was all beautifully appointed.

After quickly checking in, Bill ran over to the neighbouring Walmart to get a bunch of baby formula for Kailyn’s orphanage and Love Without Boundaries’ cleft palate home (oh, and a bottle of wine for Mom). The kids were really keen to go swimming (note to self: next time, bring bathing caps to avoid paying extortionist prices to buy them at the hotel), so Dad stayed with them while Mom went off with Zhang Ming to the cleft palate home.

We had some clothing to deliver for one of the Love Without Boundaries people, and had brought some muh needed liquid vitamins from Toronto, as well as the aforementioned formula to deliver as well. Maureen was really impressed with the cleft palate home (except for the 6 flights of stairs she had to walk up to get to it).

Kids come to the home from a number of different orphanages. They usually stay at the home for 4 months, the first half getting strong and healthy enough for the surgery, the second half recovering. Double cleft babies tend to be there longer, usually up to 6 months. The formula and vitamins are very important given that the children usually arrive at the home underweight and malnourished.

The babies were being exceptionally well cared for. There were about a dozen children in the home, being looked after by 4 staff, although there were 6 there the day Maureen visited. The home was the cleanest place Maureen had seen in China. And it was the only time over 4 trips she’d made to China that Maureen held a baby that actually “smelled like a baby”.

Maureen really enjoyed the visit and was deeply impressed with the work Love Without Boundaries is doing.

Nanchang: The Trail's Gone Cold

We arrived in Nanchang searching for answers, and left with more questions. We had hoped that our visit to the town where we adopted Ciana would allow us to get more information, both about the area Ciana came from, and more importantly, about her personal history. We achieved more than we might have expected on the former, but certainly less than we hoped for on the latter. Indeed, a few of the things we thought we knew are now in question, and there are new possibilities and questions regarding her history. But I am getting ahead of myself.

We arrived in Nanchang around 10:15pm, and emerged from the airport needing to find two taxis, given we were still carrying excess luggage with all the orphanage gifts. It was a chaotic scene, with several taxi drivers grabbing our bags and rushing off in different directions. We finally managed to get everything into 2 cabs with drivers that nodded in just the right way to make us think they knew where we wanted to go. What ensued was our second hair raising overland race at obviously unsafe speeds, this time through darkened streets and near invisible countryside. I probably would have been more concerned about traffic safety, had I not spent much of the ride worrying that I had not written down the license plate number of the taxi Maureen and Ciana had disappeared in.

As with our race to Red Capital Ranch, all was OK in the end. We arrived almost simultaneously at our hotel, which was labeled with the best name of any hotel we will stay at on the trip. We were about to call the Galactic International Peace Hotel home for the next three nights. For anyone reading this blog who plans on traveling to Nanchang, we recommend it highly. As we had with all previous hotels, we’d booked a suite with an extra bed. At the hotel in Xi’an the girls had learned to push the extra bed up against the sofa in the suite, to create an effective queen sized bed, and they did so again at the “Galactic”.

The hotel was beautiful.

Most of the staff spoke enough English to make communication possible. And the hotel had the most important attribute a hotel can have in Ciana and Kailyn’s judgment – a really good swimming pool. And for Mom and Dad, the in house restaurant had all of the dishes they served displayed in a large area next to the restaurant. One could order simply by walking through the area and pointing at the food one wanted. Of course, preparation and indeed most of the ingredients on display, were still a mystery, so it did not eliminate much of the adventure of ordering a meal. Apparently this approach of displaying all the food was common throughout Nanchang restaurants, as we ordered the same way when we went out to dinner with our guide and driver on our last night.

With our late arrival, morning came quickly. We were met at 9:00 by our guide, Mr. Zhang Jin Gu, a 23 year old student doing his masters in tourism administration. Whether it was the degree he was getting or simply a natural desire to show off his province to “foreign guests”, he was a wellspring of information about Nanchang, and the province of Jiangxi. We learned more about Jiangxi in the first 2 hours we spent with “Grain” (his English name) than we had in the entire week we originally spent in Nanchang. His English was above average, and while far from fluent, we didn’t struggle often to communicate. We’d recommend him highly to anyone looking for a guide in Nanchang – just e-mail us for his contact information.

Grain took us on a tour of a trio of ancient Chinese villages, dating back 1100 years or more.
Undoubtedly this was a bit of a preview of what was to come when we stay in Zhaji later in our trip. We saw many ancient buildings, learned a lot about Chinese respect for their ancestors, and even got to touch the “Grandmother tree” which was an ancient tree reputed to bestow good luck on the first touch, and long life on the second. (We all got in a double touch.)

Lunch was in one of the village “restaurants”. There was no menu, one ordered by looking at the produce arranged in baskets, and specifying the meat one wanted. We decided to avoid the little finned eels swimming in a bucket and selected pork, chicken, and several vegetable dishes. The pork was outstanding, served in a garlicky, gingered soy vinegar sauce, with the richness of a lot of rendered pork fat. Not healthy, but certainly tasty. At one point our guide apologized that the chicken dish was taking a while to come, but they had a bit of trouble catching the chicken we were going to eat. We didn’t have much longer to wait until the freshly deceased and stewed chicken appeared at the table, with the head s proudly floating on top of the bowl. The chicken tasted good, if a little tough in texture. When we indicated we’d not be eating the head and feet, our guide happily devoured them.

After lunch we toured around a bit more, than returned for a quick shopping trip to Wal-Mart to purchase some formula to donate to the orphanage (oh, and some beer for dad and wine for mom)

Our second day in Nanchang was the orphanage day. Things started to get interesting when our guide announced we had arrived, much sooner than I expected given the length of the trip some of the other dads and I took to what we thought was our daughter’s orphanage when we were originally in Nanchang. Sure enough, the place we had arrived at had no resemblance to the place we had once photographed from outside the closed and locked gate. Was this really Ciana’s orphanage? Where were we taken 11 years ago? There were more surprises to follow.

We had originally been told that Ciana had been abandoned on the steps of the Nanchang Steel factory before a shift change. This time, when we enquired about the circumstances of Ciana’s abandonment, the new orphanage director (Mme. Tan) told us she had been left at a police station in Luo Jia Ji. 12 years ago, this was a smallish village near Nanchang. Now it was essentially a suburb. So between a switch in both orphanage and “finding place” two of the very few things we though we knew about Ciana’s history were thrown into significant uncertainty.

Upon further questioning, Mme. Tan informed us that the orphanage we had been take to on our original adoption trip was a facility primarily for special needs children, and that Ciana had definitely been at the orphanage we visited this time. The story about being abandoned at the police station also had more apparent truth to it than the original steel factory story. Ciana’s original Chinese name, Chen Luo Ying, includes the name Luo, which was the predominate family name in the village where we now were being told she was found. The police station at the time was on the road leading into town from the countryside – a likely route for a rural family to take if they came in to leave a child where they would certainly be found. This, and the orphanage change, both had the ring of truth to them. So while it opened new questions, we think we are now closer to the truth.

And that was it. We were not able to get any more information from the Director, despite extensive questioning and the fact we know that the Nanchang orphanage is well known for excellent record keeping. Every question was met with a polite smile and the explanation that it was too long ago. Even our “look at her file” was less than we expected. Instead of seeing a file, the director had simply brought several pages from the file, all but one of which we already had copies of. We’ll get the other one translated when we get home. Perhaps it will have something new.
But the visit was not all disappointment. We had a great tour of the facility, and met many children, most of whom seemed to be doing quite well. If you ask Ciana, she will tell you that the highlight of the visit was a huge red banner, easily 20 feet long, that was suspended across the orphanage entrance reading, “Welcome back Chen Luo Ying to your “mother” home”. Chen Luo Ying being Ciana’s Chinese name. It was a really nice touch, and they gave Ciana the banner at the end of the visit.
The orphanage director (pictured with Ciana above under her banner) and 2 officials from the Jiangxi adoption department then treated us to a huge banquet lunch at a local hotel. The food was, again, fabulous, even if some of the guests found it visually less appetizing due to the reappearance of fish heads. But the highlight was that there were twin girls from a family in Carolina who were also visiting the orphanage. Our two girls and the twins sat together chatting and laughing their way through lunch. Kailyn and Ciana really enjoyed the chance just to spend time and have fun with other kids.

After lunch, we went out in search of Ciana’s finding spot. Fortunately our driver knew the outskirts of Nanchang well, and we were able to find not only Luo Jia Ji, but also the police station where Ciana was apparently found. The actual police station had moved over a year ago to a much more modern facility but we were able to find the original location. Our guide and driver spoke briefly to several people at the site, but learned nothing of value. Still it was a neat expereince, and better than not ever visiting the finding place. Here are Maureen and Ciana at the place where it all began for our family.


Our driver thought it was worth stopping in at the new police station, just in case we could find some records or the police man who actually found Ciana. Neither proved out. The people at the station told us that many of their records were unavailable following the move to their new facility. We did learn that it was a much smaller police station when Ciana was found, with only 2 officers, but our attempts to get names and contact details for the officers met with the same “it was too long ago, we no longer have records” response that was the recurring theme in our day.

So in the end, we didn’t learn much, but we did have some likely past inaccuracies corrected, and Ciana got to see where she was likely found. And that is better than nothing. As Ciana said, she had hoped to learn more, but the finding place, the banner, and talking with 2 other Nanchang adoptees at lunch, was really fun and made it all worthwhile.

Days 4-7 Xi’an Notes

On Monday we awoke to skies that actually had a hint of blue tinting the normal pollution grey. The old wall watch towers across the valley were much more clearly visible. We had one last Tibetan breakfast (well the yoghurt, was Tibetan, but the bacon and eggs a far more western touch.)
The flight to Xi’an was uneventful, and we were met at the airport by the driver we had booked, who took us to the Tomb of Emperor Jingdi. It fully lived up to it’s billing in the Lonely Planet as Xi’an’s most underrated attraction. It is the mausoleum of an early Han Emperor. Like his predecessor, the much better know Qin Shi Huang, Jingdi decided to surround his burial tomb with trenches of buried terracotta figures to help him with is life in the “afterlife”. His figurines were generally only half or quarter sized and had wooden arms, which have long since tuned to dust, so his “army” is an unuslay set of armless figurines. Jingdi was known as a more moderate and benevolent Emperor – by Chinese Emperor standards - and people like to talk about how his tomb was surrounded by burial trenches filled with terracotta figures of animals and administrative officials, not the famous warriors that surround Qin Shi Huang, a more traditional brutal tyrant. Given that they have unearthed only a percent or two of each of their respective burial trenches, it seems a little early to draw that conclusion – but it does make for an interesting story.

We dined at a famous, if somewhat touristy dumpling house that night, and must have ate close to a hundred of dumplings, most shaped liked their fillings. There were scallop shaped dumplings, and chicken shapes ones, and duck shaped ones, and even walnut shaped ones.


And speaking of nuts, Ciana has always been a bit of a dumpling nut, and this picture shows her reaction at learning that our entire meal was to be of dumplings.

The next day we did the obligatory tour of Qin Shi Huang’s tomb. Kailyn impressed our tour guide with her knowledge of Qin Shi Huang, who was one of the featured elements of a speech Kailyn gave on China this year for her school’s public speaking contest this year. The Terracotta guys were every bit as impressive as Maureen and I remembered. Their size and number clearly overwhelm Jingdi’s funerary supporting cast that we had seen the day before, but the kids left equally impressed by both.

For an early dinner we snacked our way though the Muslim quarter’s street vendor offerings. Time doesn’t permit me to provide full descriptions, but once we got feeling sufficiently adventurous to actually start trying things, we had a great time sampling unidentifiable ingredients prepared in ways we’d never seen before. Yum!

Our evening was spent at the Tang Paradise park, taking in a water, light, laser and stage show that was entertaining, yet completely incomprehensible. Before leaving for Nanchang the next day we made a stop at the Big Goose Pagoda. Regretably, the actual Pagoda was closed for repairs – but it was still an interesting place to wander around – and we lucked out and chanced upon the 12:00 fountain and music show. The fountain is really impressive. It is easily over 100 yards long, and a good 40 yards wide. It is arranged in a series of 5 or 6 tiers,, that step down in 5 or 6 foot increments. You can walk back and forth across these sections – a remarkably cooling experience on the kind of hot humid day that we visited on. We had just enough time for a quick trip back to the Muslim quarter to visit the old mosque and do a bit more snacking, before heading out to the airport for our flight to Nanchang.

A Little Peice of Chinese Paradise

If Cindy or Catherine of the Homeland Travel forum happen to read this, we can only say THANK-YOU so much for the encouragement to visit Red Capital Ranch. The Ranch is the inspiration of a former American lawyer, who had spent 20 years practicing law in Beijing, before starting what has become a small chain of exceptionally unique boutique hotels. He has other properties in Beijing and Tibet, and I believe is working on one in Mongolia.


They combine a strong historical feel, with exceptional cuisine and a modern sensibility. At the ranch, all the staff are Tibetan, working as part of a cultural exchange. While most of the facility has been fairly recently constructed, much of the material used was salvaged from old Beijing hutongs that were recently demolished to make way for the Olympic construction frenzy. Other materials were found at antique dealers in the surrounding country side.



And the food in the restaurant was as delicious as it was unique. The chef has combined local north China and Mongolian influences with a number of Tibetan ingredients.
Here are just a few of the dishes we had. The yin and yang elements of locally growing white and black tree fungus made for a subtle earthy flavoured mushroom dish. We had a salad of parboiled willow leaves, with fresh almond meat in wonderful vinaigrette. And the highlight was fresh, raw Tibetan Yak, packed in snow and flown in, served with a crumbly Tibetan cheese, raw fresh walnuts and a garlicky soy vinaigrette. Wow! Breakfasts featured granola and Tibetan yoghurt, flavoured with a little bit of the local honey, which is wonderful – milder and less suite than our honey.

Now as good as the accommodation, grounds and food were, the highlight of the place was the location. It is nestled into a narrow valley, right at the point where the Great wall swept down one side of the valley and up the other. Climbing up from our accommodation, it was about a 10 minute climb to the first watch tower on the old wall – that is if you didn’t take a wrong turn and spend the better part of 2 hours trying to forge your way through a peach and walnut orchard that ultimately proved to provide no access to the wall, although the rocks did claim a good junk of flesh from my elbow and shin. Our advice to any future travelers is to bring sturdy footwear and get one of the staff to take you to the first Watch Tower. From there, it is impossible to loose the trail.

There is something about walking the original Great Wall that I just can’t describe, and to do it in a setting as wild and rugged as this is a blessing. Now, as much as I could go on about the old wall, the kids will kill me if I don’t describe what they considered to be the Wall highlight.

. We also went to the “restored” wall at nearby Mutianyu, although reconstructed is I suspect a more accurate description. One can ride up to the wall on a chair lift, which we did given our plans to hike the old wall later that day, and head off in either of two directions for a good half hour or more before one gets to the end of the restorations.

We counted 716 steps in on before one section alone, so all told we probably went up over 1800 steps and then back down the same number. But the absolute highlight of the Wall at Mutianyu, if you were to ask Kailyn or Ciana, is the sled slide down off the bottom. While one feel a little awkward at the overt commercialism this represents, at what should be a site celebrating 2000+ years of Chinese culture, even Mom and Dad agreed it was a fun ride down.

If you were to ask Kailyn, the other highlight was undoubtedly three of the resident dogs, and Candy, the collie pictured here was the highlight of the three. Kailyn and Candy (we believe the dog’s actual name was Chinese, but it sounded pretty close to Candy) each burnt a lot of energy off chasing each other around the property.

So in the end, we all got something we really enjoyed. Mom and Dad got to walk on the original wall, and eat some fabulous cuisine. Ciana got her slide down the Great Wall. Kailyn got her dog fix (and horses too). To quote Kailyn on our departure, “I’ve never been so sad to leave a hotel”.

Day 2 - More Beijing

Day 2 was a bit more adventurous than Day 1. We started with a visit to the Temple of Heaven, pictured here to the left. The Temple itself is situated inside a very large park. As impressive as the Temple is, I enjoyed our stroll through the park even more.
It appears to be a common weekend excursion for Beijingers, and we had the opportunity to observe lots of people engaged in a variety of activities, including a hacky sack like game using something akin to an oversized badminton birdie, a different game Ciana engaged in above, numerous karaoke singers, a large choral group singing what I suspect were Chinese folks songs, and even a few old ladies singing Chinese opera.
We could faintly hear these ladies singing as we strolled through the beautiful rose garden pictured here. Combined with the light mist falling, it made for an other worldly feel.

Following our visit to the Temple of Heaven, we encountered our first language based snafu. It was easy enough to show our taxi driver the Summer Palace on our map and get him to understand that as our destination. As we set out, an idea seemed to strike our driver and he pulled over to show me the map. He traced a route that went from the Temple of Heaven along several roads and then along a road that ran beside a canal up to the Temple of Heaven. I assumed he was either confirming the route with me, or indicating a faster route that would require a toll. Unable to learn more, I nodded acceptance.

Twenty minutes or so later we pulled into a park entrance, and he walked us up to the ticker booth. Our concern started to rise when they charged us more than we had expected for entry. As we passed through the turnstile, a woman came out to show us the way. We feared that we had just inadvertently purchased a guide, who spoke no English. This fear was soon replaced by even greater uncertainty when we spotted an English sign, welcoming us not to the Summer Palace, but to the Zizuyuan Park. Before we could find a way to express our concern to our new guide, we arrived at a canal with several boats. There, English signage made it clear that what we had actually purchased was a canal boat ride to the Summer Palace.


Much later we actually arrived at the Summer Palace, where we had to significantly curtail our visit, arriving as we did at the wrong end and with little time until our required departure time. At least Maureen and I got to see aspects of Beijing we’d not seen our 3 previous visits. Even the girls were able to all laugh it off. We’re still divided on whether our taxi driver was truly trying to show us more of Beijing, forgoing some of his own fee in the process, or whether he received a healthy kick back from the canal boat operators. We suspect the latter, but he seemed such a kindly old gent.
The day ended with a hair raising drive in 2 taxis up to Red Capital Ranch at speeds briefly approaching 160 km/hr, with the two drivers chatting back and forth on the cell phones while dodging around traffic. The worries of the day soon passed away as we passed the gate of the Red Capital Ranch… a small piece of Chinese paradise I’ll write more about tomorrow.