From Wuhan to Guangzhou

We've left one large city and arrived in an even larger city! Wuhan's population is about 8 million, while Guangzhou's population is around 11 million. Guangzhou is located in the Guongdong Province on the banks of the Pearl River. Guangdong Province is the southern-most province in the contiguous Chinese mainland, and the weather here is glorious. We arrived to a sunny afternoon, albeit hazy, with the temperature in the 80s. The breeze picked up overnight and brought very clear skies to the city this morning, although the temperature has fallen to a high near 70 degrees. A cooler day is forecast tomorrow, so we may have to eat outside today in order to enjoy the weather.

On our bus ride from the East Lake Hotel in Wuhan, Joanna and Christina led the bus in a rousing bus-karaoke experience - we sang children's songs in English and Chinese, Christmas songs, and "Brown-Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison. We had fun! We arrived to the airport in Wuhan in plenty of time for our 1 PM flight, so we cleared security and awaited our flight and shopped a bit. While looking for a couple of snacks to keep hunger at bay (we weren't sure we'd have time for lunch on the 1 hour 25 minute flight to Guangzhou), I stumbled across a box of sesame crackers from the Jinling Sesame Factory in Xiaogan. This is the factory on whose gates Emily was found, so I immediately bought the box. I imagine we have no intention of eating the crackers - we just wanted to be sure we had something from Emily's finding place. We did not get an opportunity to visit the finding place, although the Xiaogan orphanage director has promised to take a photo at her finding place. So this box of crackers will become part of the story we tell Emily when she's old enough to understand.

We boarded our China Eastern Airline flight right on schedule and found ourselves pressed like sardines into our seats. A chaotic few moments erupted as we discovered none of the families was seated in adjoining seats - or rows, for that matter - and we worked hard in a full plane to maneuver folks until almost everyone was able to sit next to, or near, the rest of his or her family. The seats were impossibly close to one another. Tom said it was the tightest he'd ever been in an airplane, with the exception of tiny propeller planes. I think I agree with him! The flight was mercifully short. We did receive a full lunch on board. We ascended to cruising altitude, ate, received seconds on our drinks, and had our lunches cleared in under an hour, so we started our descent into Guangzhou with full stomachs and cramped legs! Emily and Sydney were both well-behaved on the flight. Emily, in fact, fell asleep on Tom's lap midway through the flight, while Sydney enjoyed her noodles and talked non-stop about getting "tie shoes" and her stuffed monkey from the suitcase in Guangzhou.

Our arrival in Guangzhou is where things started to unravel just a bit, although we didn't know it at the time. We landed and deplaned without incident, then collected our baggage and the two strollers at baggage claim before heading out to meet our CCAI representatives here in Guangzhou, Maggie and Jason. Our bags had been checked in as a group in Wuhan; as a result, one person from our group carried the baggage receipts for the 39 checked bags in our group. This is important because one must show a match between one's receipts and one's bags when leaving the baggage claim area in Guangzhou. Of course, when we all arrived eagerly pushing to depart, there was no way for the officials to match our 39 bags one and a time. So the officials fussed and fumed and demanded that a representative of our group give a phone number so we could be contacted should it be discovered we took a bag that wasn't ours. So we left baggage claim and boarded the bus, with our luggage under the bus and in an accompanying van, to head to the White Swan Hotel on Shamian Island. The bus ride was uneventful as Maggie and Jason shared our itinerary for the upcoming 5 days and offered suggestions for phone cards, email access, and the like.

As I was checking us all into the hotel, Tom, Deborah, and the girls were waiting with other families in our group. Deborah, who's been struggling with a mighty head cold since we left Hong Kong, started into one of many coughing fits she's been experiencing over the past few days. Only this particular coughing fit left her writhing and crying out in pain. She told me she thought she'd broken a rib and that she needed to go to the hotel medical clinic right away. So Maggie took her to the clinic while Tom and I brought the girls upstairs to the hotel room and started the get situated.

The bell service started delivering bags shortly after we arrived in our rooms. Tom received his single bag, but we received only two of our three bags. We informed the bell-hop who in turn checked throughout the hotel, including in the rooms of other members of our group, trying to find our missing bag. The bell-hop then contacted Jason, who asked us about the bag and told us he'd contact the bus driver to see if perhaps the bag remained on the bus.

About this time, Deborah returned from the clinic to inform us that she had, indeed, cracked a rib in a coughing fit and probably torn or strained a muscle as well. The doctor offered some medication, both Chinese and Western, and also gave her a patch and some ointment to rub on the sore place. The pain persisted with every coughing spasm, and shortly after returning to the room she was reduced to tears from the pain. So we pumped her up with pain medication and hoped for the best as we tried to figure out where our third bag - the one holding Sydney's stuffed monkey, and therefore an object of fixation - could possibly be.

That's when Tom and I realized we only claimed three of our four bags at baggage claim! Both of us had counted our three suitcases and, once retrieved, we headed out. But we have four total bags (one more than we checked in the states, which may explain why we had the number three in our heads) and we simply left one at the airport. So we informed Jason, who called the airport and discovered they did, indeed, have the bag. So Jason arranged with Tom to return to the airport at 6 PM (we arrived to the White Swan Hotel around 4:30) on the hotel shuttle. Tom exchanged money and met Jason to return to the airport to retrieve our bag while Deborah, the girls, and I headed to Lucy's, a nearby restaurant with outdoor seating and excellent Asian and Western food, for dinner. Deborah made it through dinner without coughing too much, and we enjoyed good food before returning to the hotel to await Tom's return with our suitcase. And about 7:40, he returned with bag in tow after having spent some quality time getting to know Jason and the Guangzhou airport! He encountered no problems claiming the bag, and the cost of the hotel shuttle to and from the airport was minimal. So after we got the girls to bed and Deborah took more medication to help ease the excruciating pain, Tom and I returned to Lucy's so Tom could get some dinner. He, too, enjoyed his meal and we returned to the hotel rooms just after 9 PM. The girls were sleeping soundly and Deborah was suffering, trying not to cough.

Deborah spent a tough night, often coughing painfully, while the girls and Tom slept soundly. I found myself awake with Deborah a couple of times throughout the night, but eventually the night ended and we were able to get to breakfast this morning and get everyone fed and showered. One of our first stops was to the pharmacy to find some cold medicines to help ease the coughing - Maggie ended up purchasing some Robitussin for Deborah, and we also purchased some Chinese cough syrup in a nearby pharmacy. Tom attended a Christian church service this morning at nearby Christ Church; Deborah, the girls, and I visited the pharmacy and some local shops as we knew neither Deborah nor Emily - and probably not Sydney, either - could remain quiet through a church service. Deborah, the girls, and I returned to the hotel so Deborah could take her medicine to keep from coughing, and Tom met us there so we could return to Lucy's for lunch.

So now Deborah is meeting with other families in our group to complete the U.S. Consulate visa paperwork. The girls are sleeping as I post this message, and Tom is next door enjoying a well-deserved break. Deborah is feeling a little better with Sudafed and Robitussin and an anti-inflammatory all working to help her heal, and we all look forward to doing a little more shopping and site-seeing in the city of Guangzhou. Tom has already purchased a custom-made gift, while Deborah and I are having custom, matching red dresses made for the girls. Sydney and Emily both have new shoes, and they squeak when they walk. It's a charming novelty, of course, for about 30 seconds!

Deborah has just returned, so I'll close with a couple of observations about returning to the White Swan Hotel. The hotel is very, very nice. We have a concierge on our floor who greets us as we come off the elevator and questions anyone who does not belong on the floor. The hotel is extremely crowded as it is hosting some kind of technology convention on the third floor. The breakfast buffet is expansive as we remember, but the crowds make it a little difficult to navigate. Shamian Island itself has experienced few changes - the shop owners are a little pushier to sell their goods than I remember, and now all the shops offer free email access - but it remains a quaint and restful oasis that is pleasant and marked change from the urban pollution and industrialization of Wuhan. While the block around the hotel is quite crowded and trendy among locals, convention attendees, and adoptive parents alike, other parts of the island further away from the hotel are peaceful and serene, wonderful places to walk the girls and get to know the locals. The island is small, so we look forward to couple of optional tours to get away from the island and see some small portion of the rest of Guangzhou. We are less adventuresome with two girls, one a grown-up toddler and the other a grown-up infant, than we were our last time through. I think this would be an entertaining, perhaps even relaxing, place to visit for a vacation with the girls when they are old enough to understand the importance and significance of Guangzhou and the White Swan Hotel. For now, it's a temporary home for a few days until we board our series of planes on Thursday that will return us safely home.