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.