China Tour 2006

Whew! It’s been a tornado of activity here in China over the last few weeks. The 12-person shopping maelstrom, also known as our family, blew into town last week, sweeping up every possible knick-knack in sight, from pashmina scarves to lacquered screens to some statuette known only as “pee-pee boy”. Their determination was relentless, and their selection indiscriminate; they left in their wake a swirl of dust where knock-off bags once sat, and crowds of grinning, waving Chinese shopkeepers. China is assured of yet another year of double-digit GDP growth...

Tiffany and I flew up to Xi’an for Easter weekend (note the side picture of the live Easter chick/bunny/duckling exhibit in our hotel-bird flu anyone?) to meet up with the tour, and it was great to see our parents and family for the first time since we left the States. On Saturday, we saw the legendary Terra Cotta Warriors, the 2200 year old clay army of an ancient emperor. It turns out that some of the live soldiers were actually “put to sleep” and baked in clay, but that practice stopped as the emperor watched his army dwindle. Out of the estimated 66 tombs that were mentioned in ancient writing, only about 4 or so have been discovered so far. The most impressive one is about the size of two football fields. We then saw an old Buddhist temple, followed by an endless dumpling dinner (maybe 15 different courses of dumplings?) and a colorful dancing show.

The day was long, and as the lights went down for the dancing show, some of our tour took the opportunity to catnap.

While Tiffany and I had to leave Sunday to get back to Shanghai, the tour, which had already hit Beijing, moved on to southern China and the beautiful rivers of Guilin. Apparently the list of purchased items was about thaaat close to including a time share holiday home in Guilin, if that’s any indication of how much they enjoyed themselves!

Last Monday, Tiffany and I met up with another contingent of my family, the Jangs, who were in Shanghai on a separate China tour.

Then on Wednesday our parents et al. arrived in Shanghai, and Tiffany traveled with the crew to Suzhou on Thursday, where the local silk inventory was decimated by our hardy shoppers, and then Tiffany took charge of the tour on Friday, leading our family through Shanghai’s finest collection of fake goods and Chairman Mao watches.

It all wrapped up with a big end-of-the-tour party at our apartment Friday night. Tiffany’s friend, Stacey, set us up with an amazing caterer, and we thoroughly enjoyed an 18-course Chinese meal cooked up in our kitchen by an ex-Peace Hotel chef (a famous old hotel in Shanghai on the Bund). We also threw in an order of 5 extra large pizzas, as everyone had been eating Chinese food 3 meals a day for the entire tour. The pizzas barely hit the table before being enthusiastically wolfed down as well!

We also invited some of our good friends from Shanghai, so our family got a chance to meet some of our friends and got a glimpse of our lives here in China. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the total cost of Chinese food for 25 people and in-home cooking services of the caterer? $80.

On the right you can see Stacey, Vanessa and Tara, three of our fun, young friends. They are all like 21 and either make us feel really young or really old, I'm not quite sure.

In the end, we stuffed ourselves to contentment and traded war stories about China: near-death traffic experiences, favorite bargaining battles, and overall culture comparisons as West met East. It was a satisfying end to a whirlwind visit.

It was so great to see our parents and family, and to get to show them a little bit of our lives abroad. As much as we can describe to them on the phone and in our blog about what it is like to live in China, I think they now have a whole new understanding of the fun and craziness of our day-to-day existence out here! The China 2006 Tour was a big success, and we look forward to the reunion tour………