During our three days in Beijing, we stayed at the Oriental Culture Hotel. It was located to the northeast the Forbidden City, to the northeast and near the Tibetan Buddhist Temple. The hotel was near to some hutongs that used to be the homes of the imperial magistrates. However, many currently did not have indoor plumbing or electricity and early in the morning we would see people in their pajamas heading to the public restroms to do their daily ablutions. Along the street near our hotel were quite a few restaurants that specialized in hot pot. We were amazed at how clean the streets were. Later we saw quite a few workers out very early in the morning sweeping the sidewalks.

We took a half day trip to the Summer Palace. There were many older people enjoying the day at the park where they played musical instruments or practiced calligrapphy on the sidewalks. These were not street artists playing for money. In China the retirement age is 50 years old.

During the 30s when my dad was a teenager, he spent a summer living in a compound near the Summer Palace. His best friend was the son of a high ranking oficial of the area. My dad spent the summer swimming in the lake and sunbathing on the marble ship. Today, you can only observe the marble ship from a distance. The Dowager Empress Cixi spent the country's naval budget to build the boat and the palace.

We spent another half day visiting Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and Jingshan Park (also known as Propect Hill). In Tiananmen Square are the Zhengyangmen gate (Qianmen), the Monument to the People's Heros, the Mao Zedong Memorial Hall, the Great Hall of the People and the Tiananmen Tower. The Forbidden City was the Imperial Palace from the mid-Ming Dynsaty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. The last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Chongzhen, committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree in Jingshan Park in 1644.

As we toured Tiananmen Square, Karen and I met a mother and daughter from Hebei. The girl wanted to practice her English and Karen walked with her through the Forbidden City and up to Jingshan Park as they tried to communicate.

Wangfujing Avenue lies to the east of the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square and is the largest commercial area in Beijing with two large shopping malls and many large department stores. A good portion of the avenue is a pedestrian street. We spent an evening there. We were quickly accosted by an art student who took us to a student gallery where they tried to sell us some paintings. We later learned that this is a fairly common occurrence where students come up to tourists to practice their English and then try to get them to visit their galleries. I wouldn't call it a scam though. Later we walked down Dong An Men Avenue where street food stalls sold everything from fruit to noodles and dumplings to deep fried scorpions, grasshoppers and insect pupa. We went to the Wangfujing branch of Qianjude Restaurant to have Peking Duck.

We travelled northwest of Beijing by bus to visit the Great Wall at Badaling. The section of the wall there has been restored and is in excellent condition. As a result it is the most visited section of the Great Wall. Most tourists hike the south section of the wall at Badaling since it is not as steep as the north section. Because of the throng of people in that direction most of our group went to the north. It was by far less travelled but it was as advertised quite steep. Along the wall were peddlers trying to sell souvenirs. Even when we climbed to fairly desolate areas of the wall we would arrive at a watch tower and there would be a peddler waiting for us. By that time of the trip we had gotten pretty good at saying no.

On the way back from Badaling we stopped at one of the Ming Tombs. Leading up to one of the halls was an avenue lined with large stone sculptures of different animals and scholars. One of the memorable things that we saw there was a car that somehow turned off the road and then went over a trench in such a way that the front of the car was on one side of the trench and the back was on the other. As we walked by, they were trying to figure out how to get the car back on the road, no easy task.

In Wuhan we stayed at the Best Western Mayflowers Hotel. It was a couple of blocks from a commercial area and right next door to a middle school. The staff at the hotel was very friendly. They gave each adopted child a jade monkey necklace (since they were born the year of the monkey). We bought a Chinese hand drum that Hua Mei loved to play with. The hotel had a business center so I could get on the Internet and email back home. On our floor, the hotel had a great playroom for the kids. We obviously weren't the first adoptive families to stay here.

For dinner, Shirley, our rep in China from CHSFS, recommended the food court in a department store near the hotel. It was excellent. They made food to order and you could decide among several different food booths what you wanted to eat. They also had photos of all their dishes so it wasn't hard to find something good to eat. We went there almost every evening for dinner. Karen was amused that the dispensers that we have in the States for drinking straws are used in China to dispense chopsticks. One evening as we were returning from the food court,we saw a group of women practicing a drum routine. They invited us to watch and then let Hua Mei practice on one of their drums.

The Wuhan CCAA was where we received Hua Mei. Five of us received daughters from Wuxue City. We did not get to meet Hua Mei's foster mother but we did receive a photo album with pictures of Hua Mei in Wuxue and information about the city and the Wuxue Social Welfare Institute. We visited the CCAA a couple of times to take care of paperwork and to go through an interview with their staff.

One of the sights that we went to see in Wuhan was the Yellow Crane Tower. While we were there, we saw an artist who was painting fans. We decided to purchase a fan painted with the Yellow Crane Pavilion for Hua Mei and we had the artist write Hua Mei's name on the fan. We also bought a small replica bronze statue of the crane, snake and turtle that sits in front of the pavilion.

According to a sign by the statue, "'The Yellow Crane Returning' comes from a fairy tale. It is said that God was moved by Da Yu's spirit and let the general tortoise and general snake help him bring the river under control. In order to control the floods, the tortoise and the snake changed the hills, forming the situation known as the 'tortoise and snake locking th Yangtze River.' From then on, there were no floods, allowing people to live and work in peace and contentment. The two cranes overlooked the earth and were moved, and then they came down to earth to celebrate with the ordinary people."

Both the fan and statue are displayed in Hua Mei's room.

In Guangzhou, we stayed at the White Swan Hotel on Shamian Island. This is where most adoptive families stay as they wait for their appointments at the US Consulate. It was a nice place to stay but by this point we were all anxious to get home.

On Shamian Island there were several places to get laundry done and they all gave free strollers to families who used their services. There were also many places to get souvenirs and we ended up buying an extra carry on suitcase to give us some extra space to bring everything home. Since Karen could speak a few words of Chinese, she got the reputation on the island of being the American woman who could speak Chinese. She was quite pleased. By the end of the trip she had gotten quite good at haggling.

On one day, we saw a film crew shooting a scene for a movie or TV seires on Shamian Island. The Hong Kong star Felix Wong was in the scene and we were able to watch from close by. That was fun.

One morning we visited the Chen Clan Academy which is also the Guangdong Museum of Folk Arts. The carvings on the buildings were amazing. The museum exhibted paintings, embroidered paintings, carvings, and sculptures. In the museum store, a folk artist was doing painting using the side of his hand and fingers. They were amazing. Even though it was quite a rainy morning, it was nice to visit the museum.

Our entire group visited to the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees. Shirley arranged for a monk there to perform a ceremony and give blessings to all the kids. It was a really nice ceremony. We later made joss stick offerings.

One evening, our group took a boat ride up the Pearl River. At night the city is awash in neon lights and from the river, it was a great light show. It was a really nice evening on the water.