Our Family's Journey to China
(cont'd)
4
There is morality in bee-keeping / it teaches how not to be afraid /
of the bee swarm / it teaches how / not to be afraid of / finding new places /
and building them / all over again.
We ate dinner at a KFC restaurant. It was the first North American fast food that I had in China-- and the last. Still suffering from an unsettled stomach, I really didn't want anything fried or breaded, but there wasn't much choice. I ordered a chicken breast sandwich, but it was very different from the sandwiches here. It was spicey and the chicken was an odd colour. I ended up eating some of the bun and some french fries, but that was about it for me. Faith had her mixture, some bread and some crackers. We watched some Chinese children playing on the slide and climber in the play area of the restaurant. One little toddler was wearing split pants and when he got to the bottom of the slide and bent over to push himself up, you could see he had messed himself rather seriously. His mother came running over to clean him up, but all I could kept thinking was, "Thank goodness my kids aren't playing on that slide!"
We left to meet the rest our group outside the main entrance of the store. We got there about fifteen minutes early and were very glad we did, because the bus had had to park quite a distance away and Yulin's brother was already there, shepherding our group towards it. It was kind of a scary walk-- the only time in China that I felt a little uneasy. It was dark by this time and there were beggars lying on pieces of cardboard along the sidewalk. Some had small, tattered children beside them. It was very sad. I'm used to seeing homeless people on the streets of Toronto, but they're always adults and I know that most of them could choose to go to one of the shelters if they really wanted to; but nothing like that exists in China. One of the couples in our group missed walking back to the bus. Yulin was waiting for them at the rendezvous point and then rode with them in a cab back to our hotel. They told me it was a terrifying ride, with the taxi vying for space between huge buses and almost striking other vehicles, bicycles and people countless times. I was very thankful that Rob, Corinne, Faith and I had gotten to the meeting place early. I would have panicked if I'd gotten there and seen nobody at all. It's one thing to be the only Caucasians in a group of Caucasians; it's another to be the only ones, period. For the first time in my life, I knew what it was like to be a minority. Very disconcerting.
Bback at the hotel, Rob and Corinne basically got ready for bed, turned on the English CNN station and tried to stay awake until at least 8:30. Faith was in a deep sleep by 7:00 p.m. One of the nights previously, Yulin arranged for an artist to come to the hotel to show us various chops that we could order for our children. I picked out a dragon-carving chop for Faith and a pig-carving for Matthew. The artist would put both children's English names on the bottom of the chop, right above their Chinese names. ("Matthew" was translated into "Ma Fu." and, of course, Faith's was "Fu Jia Fang.") The artist would also carve a poem in Chinese on the side of each chop-- the only man in China who do such tiny carving by hand. I knew Matthew would be enchanted with his and I expected it would mean something to Faith as well, especially when she was older. I went back to the hotel room and had to wait until 9:30 before I could sleep for the night. Many of the other families spent time at the swimming pool, which was clean and beautiful, but they said, a little cold for an in-door facility. We were always so tired, there was no way we could have managed that.