A retro-active post: Orientation, T-Square, Forbidden City, Silk Factory

We got woefully behind on posting for a bit towards the end of the Beijing Part 1 of our trip. I don't know if we were expecting to have more down time or what, but that is certainly not the case. Caleb is a handful occasionally, a good boy most of the time and overall delightful.


It was his second time of swimming tonight and his first bath as a Schmitz. We are only guessing that he was never swimming before last night because he was not really hyped up to get into the pool and when he was, as Lesley posted, his reactions to it were priceless. Every time I dipped him into the water up to his chin, he inhales a panicked breath and when he realizes that he did not perish, a big smile crosses his face. Same thing tonight. I actually dunked the boy up to his eyebrows and while he wasn't crazy about it, he didn't seem to mind it. When he just
got splashed in his face he was not so happy.


The bath? Not so great. It took me a while to get him to sit down (Rob was acting as an example), a longer while to get him lathered up and rinsed, and I just gave up and went for the big money with washing/rinsing the hair. I lifted him out of the tub screaming mad at me. :) He's over it. He's sitting on my lap right now making it difficult to type.


Anyway, back to the post title. This post is from last Saturday but it's a good enough story that I don't really want to skip it. It involves a lot of Rob and his exploits on this fine day. Buckle up, this could be a long ride.


Saturday, December 3rd - Woe beset me this morning at the breakfast buffet. It seems the replaced the excellent spinach and sausage spring rolls with some type of gooey fig newton'y thing. Gross. I was consoled at the sight of the heaps of bacon and sausage though. All is well.


It is orientation day. The class was held in a conference room on the second floor of the Novotel hotel where we are staying. It consisted of a slide projector and a man, William, speaking into a microphone that is barely on, and a single Bose speaker 10 yards off in the corner of the room. There wasn't a ton of new info presented during the meeting but the few nuggets that we did get made it well worth going. We were also presented with a small book that they give all of the adopting families. It contains Calebs most recent info along with a loose itinerary of what
is supposed to happen in the coming days, some common Chinese phrases and the phonetic pronunciation for us fellas who are slow on the uptake. They also freaked me out a little bit because of a story where one of the little adopted muchachos cried for 15 hours straight on the plane ride back to the states. 15 HOURS!!!!


After orientation, we went together as a group to have lunch in a big room with three huge tables to sit roughly 10 - 12 people around each one. Again, a huge lazy susan is in the middle and all of the food is served on it. Great food yet again as I am well on my way to putting on 20
pounds for this trip!


Back to our room to collect ourselves prior to our next group outing. We pile onto the bus for a short ride to Tianamen Square. We get dropped off at the far West side of T-Square. We are given explicit instructions on how to deal with the agressive street vendors that we will surely
encounter. Our guide Nancy, told us how the vendors would approach us and if you so much as make eye contact with them, they have made a sale. Only the price need be hammered out at that point which can be a big hassle. And yes, we encountered a good number of them and those encounters happen exactly as she described. It gets a little annoying after a while.


The first building that we see on the tour is an old train station that was built by the Japanese during the Japanese occupation of North Eastern China. It had a bit more of a Japanese flavor to the architecture than the other buildings around it. Once we're actually inside of T-Square,
there is an old-school Chinese architecture building or two, but mostly more newer looking stuff. What is more amazing is the actual expanse of the whole thing. It's huge! We walk for a while with our tour guide giving us little nuggets of info about what we're seeing.


Time for a little side note to our story that will figure in heavier as we go. This morning at breakfast, there was a American family sitting near to us who had a little China doll of a daughter. She was somewhere slightly beyond cute. Robby thought so too! For our entire breakfast, he would take a bite of food and then say something along the lines of, "She's just too cute!" or "She's so cute I could just keep her..." and multiple other things like that. They were part of our group from Holt International and are on our tour today. Robby has spied the little
cutie who is wearing a little harness with a puppy head on her back and a leash for her parents to hang on to. She is small and if she were to go missing in the crowd, she would be nearly impossible to find. He asks me if he can go introduce himself and I say fine, just be polite. So off
he goes... a little nervous, maybe reluctant, but he does it. He comes back and tells me, "She's 3 years old and her name is Liana. And she is CUTE!".


Somewhere in our travels of T-Square, Robby and Liana begin holding hands while we're walking. They are enjoying each others company and truly, there's not much there that would be of interest to youngsters.


We get to the East edge of T-Square and there's a Chinese dude who takes photos and adds them to a book that he then sells you. We had a big group photo taken of every family who is here adopting. Lesley and I purchased one of these books. In the background of the photo is the famous West entrance to the Forbidden City. The gigantic red wall with the three arched doorways leading inside. The middle arch has a rather large painting of Mao hanging above it. The painting is replaced each year with a new one. Now we have to get to the other side of the road... I usually don't like this part, but thankfully, they were kind enough to build a walking tunnel underneath the 6 lane road that runs between these two attractions. I say thankfully because with the traffic here, one of us surely would have ended in a smear attempting to cross here.


Once we came back up to street level on the other side, something rather strange to us pale "Westerners" occurred. We're waiting for a few people who had to use the rest rooms. A group of young Chinese girls spies one of the teenaged (or very near teenage) boys in our group. They want to take photos with him. He doesn't mind. Heck, I can't think of too many teenaged American boys who would! So they're snapping photos of him with their group and then they want photos with him one on one. That in and of itself is not so strange, but what is, is the fact that a sizeable group of all ages of Chinese folks are gathering around us. Our very white group is now surrounded on three sides (the 4th side is the fence blocking people from becoming smears on the 6 lanes immediately behind them) with curious on-lookers. They are fascinated by this large group of white people and begin taking photos of us. Some older people in their group start lining up our kids and getting into photos with them. It is very strange to us but our tour guide assures us that most of the Chinese people hold Americans in high regard and like to take photos with us, especially the kids. Okay, I suppose.


So off we go into the Forbidden City. Very cool at first but honestly, it's another huge expanse on a rather cool day with a large group of people that are tough to keep together. Translated: We move slow and my feet are getting cold. You go from one really big open area to another
really big open area that looks virtually identical, to another and another and so on.


Robby is still keeping a firm, manly grip on Liana's hand. Her parents comment on how well behaved she is with him around and ask if they could borrow him for the rest of the trip. They got to the point where they were pretty much inseperable and that's fine because it's hard to keep track of people in such a crowd, much less, short little people (it's tempting to insert a joke here, but the Chinese folks are not nearly as short as Americans like to joke about).


We finally get to the Emperors garden and it is nothing short of stunning! The trees, the rocks, the walkways, the landscaping, and everything is is just breath taking. It's like you walked into a fairy tale setting. Unfortunately, it's getting late and we were hurried through this part so we were just snapping as many pics as we could while walking thru.


We then go into a smaller courtyard area. There is some ice on the ground from yesterdays snow getting trounced by that days tourists. We stop for some story telling by our guide. Robby and Liana start dancing on the ice and the site of the two of them starts attracting the older Chinese
set. They get a good crowd gathering when it happens again. Some Chinese people start posing for pics with the two young dancers and even go so far as to pick them up and hold them for pictures! Robby doesn't seem to mind, but Liana wasn't happy with this development at all. Again, we are reassured that this is just the Chinese culture. Okay, I suppose.


We finish up the tour of the FC and are on our way out. We stop to take a head count and I get a chance to talk with Liana's grand parents who are on the trip. Great people and they tell me how good Rob is with Liana and that he's going to make a great big brother. I agree, he's a great
kid who makes his daddy very proud. So now it's about a mile walk to get back on our bus. I've mentioned that it's cool previously but now the sun is beginning to set on top of that. It's cold. My feet are freezing and my toes are numb. Rob and Liana couldn't have cared less. They held
hands on a very fast walk, sometimes jog (much to my overweight chagrin) to the bus. Once we're on the bus, Robby, very politely, asks Liana's mom if they can sit together. She says yes, much to Rob's delight!


After a short bus ride, we arrive at the silk factory. Ahhhh, I can get on board with a heated, in-doors tour! Robby and Liana seek each other once inside and hold hands for most of this tour as well. I mention to Liana's daddy that if Robby becomes, or already is, a bother, to let me
know and I'll seperate him from Liana. He replied, "Are you kidding me? This is the best she's behaved since we left home. He's great with her and is going to make a wonderful big brother!".


The silk factory was much more interesting than I gave it credit for. I was almost willing to just sit on the bus while the rest of the folks went on the tour, but decided that since I'm in China, I had probably better experience it while I had the chance. Glad I did. They show how they
farm and harvest the worms and their coccoons, how they boil the coccoons to seperate them into individual threads and other stuff. It's nearly 1am as I finish typing this, so the details will have to wait.


Back to the bus for the ride to the hotel and to end a very long day. I made Rob sit with me on the ride back and he spent most of the ride with his head turned back and talking to Liana who was one row back on the opposite side of the bus. The two little buggers said good night to each
other in the hotel lobby and we headed for our room. We had to wait a little longer than usual at the elevators and because of that, Liana's family caught up with ours. They held hands again up to the 10th floor where they said good night for a final time.


We went to our room for a short rest before heading out on the town to find a restaurant that Lesley wanted to eat at. It's walking distance and we had instructions so off we went. It's cold... have I mentioned that? It was also walking distance if you knew where you were going. We
didn't. I'm guessing that we walked to the place two times just to get there once. I nearly had a moment when the hostess asked if we had reservations... are you kidding me? No worries though, they let us sit at the bar. We ordered our food and loverboy Rob fell asleep on the bar
stool waiting for it. He was out!


The food was worth the wait and although you don't have to call 24 hours ahead of time here for peking duck, they do recommend that you call 1 hour ahead because that's really how long it takes to cook it. Crap. There goes Lesley's meal. She got the crispy duck with little dinner rolls
that you make into tiny duck sammys. Good eatin'.


Now, with bellies full, it's time for the final walk of the day, back to the hotel. Robby went straight to bed while mom and dad repacked and reorganized for tomorrows flight to more North Eastern China, the city of Caleb RongBo Schmitz, Changchun China in the Jilin province!! We keep getting reminders from the Holt people that it is very cold there, so hopefully we have prepared correctly. Time will tell.