(cont'd)
'Tis the human touch in this world that counts,
This touch of your hand and mine,
Which means far more to the fainting heart
Than shelter and bread and wine;
For shelter is gone when the night is o'er,
And bread lasts only a day,
But the touch of the hand and the sound of the voice
Sing on in the soul alway. by Spencer Michael Free
On the way back to the bus, we met up with some beggar children, who ran along beside us clasping their hands in front of their faces, as they implored us to give them some money. Of course Rob and Corinne did. How could you resist? They quickly ran away, however, when a group of the familiar green uniformed soldiers came marching down the street. Obviously they knew when it was safe to approach the tourists and when it wasn't.
After we got back, it was time for dinner. Yulin took us to a restaurant that was close to the hotel (about half a block's walk) and we had what I thought was the best dinner in China. My favourite dishes were the creamy Japanese-style tofu, which Faith also loved and the spare ribs that were kind of "dry-roasted," with rosemary, garlic and maybe cayenne pepper on them. I ate the most I'd eaten since we'd arrived, because my stomach was normal and it was great. Then, it was back to the hotel, watch TV, get ready for bed, do some laundry, jelly-roll it with towels to dry and then sleep to prepare for the trip to the Great Wall the next day.
October 12: When we woke up this morning, we had to get ready for the trip to the Great Wall. Yulin had recommended that we not take the babies with us, since it would be an all-day trip and she thought it would be hard on them. For those of us who had taken her advice (most of us), she had arranged for friends and colleagues of her mother's to babysit. As much as we were reluctant to leave Faith, who had already had such a traumatic change, we thought that she might actually like having an older Chinese lady look after her and speak to her in the language she had heard before we'd intruded so abruptly into her life. We filled containers with congee from the breakfast buffet, made up several bottles of Faith's mixture, took our the crackers, bread and bananas and wrote out instructions on a piece of paper, which Yulin's sister Yufen, translated for us to the babysitter. She made notes on the paper in Chinese as we explained through Yufen what Faith's schedule for the day would be. Basically I told her to feed her as much as she wanted and to take her for rides around the hotel corridors in her stroller. I knew it would be hard on Faith at first, but I also knew that if you never leave your child and come back, the child never learns to trust that you always will come back. Anyway, we all wiped away a few tears when Faith cried at being handed over to the babysitter and as we later found out on the bus, everybody who'd hired babysitters had had virtually the same experience.
On the way to the Great Wall, we stopped at the cloisonne factory, to see how it's made and to shop. The artwork was incredibly beautiful. I loved the colours, the shapes and especially, the wide variety of cloisonne objects-- everything from jewelry to vases to pictures and ornaments. I bought quite a few bracelets to give as gifts when we got home and a lovely picture of a bird. I should have bought lots of ornaments, but stupidly, didn't. I was so conscious of my spending on the trip that I didn't buy the things I really wanted and later, absolutely regretted it. I mean really-- when am I going to be in China again?!!
