The Boy and the Bulldog: Guangzhou Retrospect

This is the third and final installment of our travel retrospectives.

On November 11^th, after 8 days in beautiful Hangzhou, we begrudgingly packed our belongings, including an additional duffel and suitcase of souvenirs, a child, and our accumulated gear for him…and boarded a plane to Guangzhou.

We were looking forward to Guangzhou because it would be even warmer than Hangzhou, and we were excited at the idea of being with other adoptive families. Because the US Consulate is located in Guangzhou, all families from the US adopting from China must pass through that city to finalize the US portion of the adoption. The China portion was done already…In their eyes, Ian was ours and they were no longer responsible for his welfare.

Ian did wonderfully on the 2 hour flight. We learned that he was a "thrower", so unfortunately, toys were a no go on the flight. He did great with snacks and had his own seat, so napped well spread out between us. I was glad to see that the pressure of the cabin didn't seem to affect his ears at all. I was concerned about how he would decompress, but he did fine…better than me. Unfortunately, with my chronic sinus issues, I think the pressure did something and kick started a sinus infection. If wasn't 48 hours later that I was sicker than I'd been in a long time. Great timing!

At the airport, we met our guide, Simon, who was uncharacteristically tall and stocky for a Chinese man. The tall part, I can understand, but he was built like a football player. Not typical. He was wonderful. He had very clear English and told us about his wife and 6 year old daughter that live in the city. Oddly, he doesn't live with his daughter. He owns two apartments in the same building and she lives in one with a nanny while he and his wife live in the other. Seemed like an odd arrangement, but it didn't seem that uncommon from the nonchalant way he explained it. He also volunteered that he doesn't care that he had a daughter and explained that the preference for boys is an old fashioned way of thinking that is slowly going away. I couldn't be happier to hear that.

In Guangzhou, adoptive families usually stay on a very small "island", essentially a neighborhood of approx. a mile circumference, surrounded by the Pearl River and a connecting canal. Shamian Island has a Colonial feel and was not at all "China". I was disappointed. I so wanted to love Guangzhou. It had all the potential...but just lacked substance for me. I was still thinking about Hangzhou and wasn't ready to give up that feeling of traditional China just yet. However, I knew we were only in Guangzhou for this last step in the process of bringing Ian home, so anything we had missed up to that point would have to wait for another trip…Like Hong Kong. For some reason, I had only applied for single entry Visas, meaning we couldn't leave China and come back on that trip…which also meant we couldn't go to Hong Kong and come back in since Hong Kong is it's own municipality and technically separate from mainland China. Guangzhou is only a couple of hours away from Hong Kong by train, so gone was yet another opportunity to see a great place. Shawn had received an offer from a coworker for a family relative in Hong Kong to be our personal guides…and we had 3 extra days in Guangzhou due to airline conflicts with our consulate appointment. It would have been amazing. Yet we couldn't go. Bummer.

We were deposited at our hotel on Shamian Island, and found that we were not in the hotel we expected. Most adoptive families stay in one of two hotels on the island, and we were at the less desirable of the two. We weren't terribly bothered by it though, so we ventured out to do some sightseeing. The island is filled with nothing but shops geared toward the adoptive families…Every shop with the exact same items. We found Michael, at Michael's place…and he was wearing a Minnesota Wild tee shirt. He and Shawn talked about hockey and Shawn's childhood playing hockey on the ponds in Minnesota… We liked Michael right away and went back to him for several of the hand crafted souvenirs we purchased. Soon, we found that every shop owner had a reason to be your best friend… they all thought Ian was the cutest baby, loved his home town, etc. It was fun for the first hour or so, and then it became gimmicky. It was Sunday and we weren't leaving until Thursday. Uggh. This was going to be a long week. To top it off, the shops cater mostly to girls. Since the predominance of families staying on the island came/left with girls, that was their market. Ian was an exception to the rule. Still, everywhere we went we heard "special deal just for you" and "how your baby today?".

Ian did not like our new hotel room one bit. I think he expected to get off the plane and come back to the hotel in Hangzhou. He was thrown for a loop when we were suddenly in a new place with new furniture, etc. Shawn wanted him to go down for a nap, but he was too wound up and sat in the crib and cried. Shawn and I had our first big fight about how to handle that…let him cry or pick him up. In the end, I took Ian for another walk to go find a shop that lent strollers, and left Shawn to stew/sleep in the room.

Simon took us to do some light sightseeing the next day. We went to the Chen Family Complex, which is a expansive area devoted to the Chen families of Guangdong. I forget all the facts about the Chen family Dynasty (I was already feeling sick by then), but it was very unique, and easy to see the differences in the architecture of the north (Beijing/Peking) and the south (Guangzhou/Canton). From there, he took us to the jewelry market. Never before had I witnessed anything like it. From the outside, it looked like a normal mall, but inside, it was floor after floor…shop after shop… of different loose stones (precious and costume). Pearls and jade are the specialty in Guangzhou, so between the two, there were literally miles of stalls and shops, each selling essentially the same thing…leaving a lot of room for bartering. I should have bought something for my amber collection, but didn't for some reason. I was so afraid to overspend. Outside, in the open Jade market, we went booth to booth looking for the perfect souvenirs, not to mention something for ourselves. To that point, almost all of our spending was on other people. Shawn found a beautiful men's' dragon carved jade ring for himself. I was contemplating a jade bangle, but learned that I had not budgeted enough. Jade was much more expensive than I ever expected. It got even more complicated when it comes to learning how to tell a fake from the real thing, and how to tell the age and quality from the color and marbling.

In the end, the 29 pounds of sleeping child and my sinuses won out and I left with nothing. I still regret it…Much like my regrets over not buying more in Italy. I guess I'll never learn.

From there, we continued on to the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees, which is a Buddhist monastery and temple in the heart of Guangzhou. There, Ian was blessed by a monk, which was the highlight of our time in Guangzhou, and Shawn climbed the Six Banyan pagoda. It is built to look like it is 9 stories from the outside, but inside, it is 17 stories…making for a shock to those who think it's not that difficult to climb, but then encounter 17 staircases instead of 9.

Simon deposited us back to the hotel and we, starving, headed out to what I had heard was one of the best restaurants on the island, Cow & Bridge. It was a Thai restaurant, but honestly, we found authentic Chinese food to be what we in the states refer to as Thai. Chinese food in the US is nothing at all like real Chinese food…So we discovered.

It was wonderful. Ian ate an adult's portion of rice and Shawn and I ate…I don't remember, but what ever it was, it was great. We ate there several times during that week.

The following day was reserved for Ian's Physical Examination. He was not happy. I'm not sure if the food from the night before didn't agree with him or if he was just done with Guangzhou (like I was) and ready to go home. The physical exam office was packed with other adoptive families and it was just sensory overload for Ian. Our guide got us in and out quickly (while other families waited and waited). Simon was ultra organized and had a way of saying something in Chinese and the crowd parted. While there, we heard one mother speaking in tongues over her child and another yelling at her new son. Suddenly, we realized we were so lucky to be travelling alone. For all the fun and bonding that can be done in a group of families travelling together, we realized that just wasn't us. At this stage in the trip, we were just worn out and ready to go home…and in the meantime, content to hide our heads under the covers in the hotel. We narrowly missed a couple of families that I had hope to meet in Guangzhou, and that would have been the exception…But at that point, we were just tired and ready to either go home or go back to Hangzhou. Three weeks is a long time to be away from your own pillow (or the next best thing).

The next day was our consulate appointment, which oddly, the family doesn't attend, only the guide. As it turned out, WACAP had us fill out and notarize two outdated forms and Simon had to make two trips from the Consulate to the Island to have us fill out again. Of the entire process, the US Consulate paperwork was the most complicated. We signed more documents in the hotel lobby in Guangzhou than the entire adoption process leading up to this. Much of it was Homeland Security red tape thanks to 9/11. Whatever it took to make Ian our son in the eyes of the US government. I would have walked over broken glass at that point if it's what it took to board a plane and bring him home.

The rest of that day was spent walking the grounds of the island. We found that the best place for lunch was Lucy's, an American style diner, with a gigantic menu of almost everything "from home" that you can imagine…from spaghetti to hamburgers. We ate at Lucy's almost everyday. We discovered on our first day there that the buffet in our hotel was disgusting. We had grown to love the buffets in our other hotels, but it was really awful here. After that first day, we ended up at Starbucks, which was around the corner from our hotel, every day for breakfast. It was nice to have that oasis that spelled H-O-M-E.

We did venture off the island one day. We traversed the side roads of the area just outside the island and across the freeway. Booth after booth was filled with different live, dead, and dried herbs, vegetables, and…unfortunately…animals. We passed many overflowing bays of dead turtles and seahorses. In China, nothing goes to waste, so…need I say more? Cats roamed the area, offering as rodent watchdogs. We didn't love this area. However, we learned later that we were just a few minutes away from an even larger open market. If we would have kept walking we would have found it, but ended up turning around too soon.

Back to the island, we continued exploring the areas furthest from the hotel before heading back to upload pictures and nap. A large school backed to our hotel and it was loud and frenetic sun up to sun down. Often, kids were in class or yelling/screaming between classes before we were up and after we were asleep. While there, we also witnessed their morning exercises, drills, and skits. It was quite entertaining to sit in the courtyard by Starbucks and watch the kids.

Speaking of exercises, in China, the country over, the #1 pass time of older folks is dance and exercise. If only our own country could take a cue from the aging generations in China. They eat fresh meats, fish, and vegetables, drink green tea and fruit juices, and most of all…they walk/ride bikes everywhere, and exercise like I've never seen. It was so much fun watching groups of men and women dance to old boom box tapes of grainy ballroom music, practice sword or Tai Chi dance, and even playing hacky sack. Shawn got in on one game and after only a few minutes was out of breath. Some people played all day and never seemed winded. No wonder the population is so large…they live forever! The parks also have older versions of circuit training equipment and we often saw older folks going about the serious task of hip adduction, chin ups, ab crunches, etc. It was entertaining to say the least.

We also saw a lot of men swimming the Pearl River, which is probably not fit for swimming, but there they were…along side barges and freighters in the port inlet… swimming in the early morning light.

Our final duty in Guangzhou was to board a bus and travel to the US Consulate for Ian's swearing in ceremony. He had several people recognize him (us) from this blog and many times I heard "are you the boy & the bulldog?". Ian was a little celebrity! The swearing in was quick, but it was really chaotic and the extreme noise and chaos was very overwhelming for Ian. He screamed the entire time. I can't imagine how horrible it felt to have all of that noise coming in one ear. I don't blame him for screaming. I would have, too.

As our days in Guangzhou came to a close, we did pretty much the same thing over and over… Woke up, went to Starbucks, walked around the island, watched the police training exercises, old folks exercising, kids coming and going from school, resisted the efforts of the shop owners, ate lunch at Lucy's, went back for a nap, back to Starbucks, souvenir shopping, Cow/Bridge or Papa Johns delivery for dinner, and then back to the hotel for the evening. Snooze! We were so bored.

Thankfully, Thursday the 16^th came quickly and we loaded up and headed out for the airport. We travelled from Guangzhou to Tokyo, and then from Tokyo home…and at 7:15am on Thursday, November 16^th, 2007, Ian Xuan Mrzena passed through immigration at Sea Tac airport and became a US Citizen.

To do it over again:

We would stay off the island. There is a nice Holiday Inn and a very nice Westin not far from the island, and closer to the Consulate. We're in the minority, but we just didn't come away with a loving feeling of the island. Maybe it's because we weren't in a group, but we just didn't love it. Heaven help the families that adopt from Guangdong province and spend their entire trip there.

We would take a side trip to Hong Kong or go from Guangzhou to HK, spend a few days there, then fly home. We are extremely disappointed that we missed it.

We would see more of the parks in Guangzhou. We weren't interested in seeing the conditions of the zoos in China, but we do wish we had spent more time in the parks of Beijing and Guangzhou. After being in Hangzhou, we knew the parks were amazing…nothing like what we have here.

Below are a few pictures of our time in Guangzhou. For many, this will be a trip down memory lane. For others, a glimpse at what they will see at the end of your own trip. I know we were in the minority having not fallen in love with the island. I'm sorry. I'll try harder next time!