A little about Mississippi, a little about Louisiana, a little about New Orleans and A LOT about our adoption story. This blog and our adoption story is dedicated to Camryn and Matthew Cassreino so that you both will know. Copyright 2021 by Terry R. Cassreino
BEIJING, China (Friday, Dec. 5, 2008, 6:21 a.m.) – Don’t forget: If you enjoy reading about our adoption trip to China, click the link in the left-hand rail to “Follow this blog.”
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BEIJING, China (Friday, Dec. 5, 2008, 6:05 a.m.) – I thought I would share a few random thoughts and observations so far after two shorts days into this incredible trip to adopt our son.
Raising children
We have an awesome task as parents. Sometimes that doesn’t really register that much with many of us, other times it hits us (including me) like a ton of bricks.
Children are special no matter who they are, where they came from or whether they are adopted or your flesh and blood. We help shape them into fine adults; everything we do and say has a profound, deep effect on them.
Like many parents of young children, we are constantly amazed with our 3-year-old daughter, Camryn, who soaks up everything and anything she can.
She already has picked up language and sayings I use that are part of my New Orleans and Southeastern Louisiana culture and background. And she says it with a Mississippi twang.
I can only begin to imagine what life will be like with two children running around the house. We have a difficult time keeping it straight and clean with one child – I guess we’ll give up with two. The joys of parenting.
Approaching adoption
Speaking of Matthew, he will be home in the Henan province when we arrive in Zhengzhou on Tuesday. After we check into the Crowne Plaza, we are scheduled to go to the Civil Affairs office to get him at about 3 p.m. that afternoon (1 a.m. Tuesday in Mississippi).
This is a different from the way we got Camryn. If you read my blog entry from Tuesday, Dec. 2, you’ll remember we got Camryn at our hotel in Nanchang; the change this time could be due to the fact we are the only parents on this trip arranged by Holt International.
We’ll be in Zhengzhou until Friday, Dec. 12, completing adoption paperwork before we head to the final stop on our trip in Guangzhou.
Enjoying great food
Like our last visit, the food here has been excellent and relatively inexpensive. We eat breakfast every day at our hotel, a buffet that includes the usual: eggs, bacon, sausage, waffles and pancakes.
The breakfast buffet also includes other items such as fresh sushi, congee, baked fish, juice and a whole array of breads. The only coffee is an incredibly strong, but good, espresso.
On Thursday night, Pam and I joined a couple from the states for dinner at Xiu Lan, a small restaurant two doors down from the hotel that was packed with locals. We were the only non-Chinese in the entire place and, amazingly, were able to order and pay for our food with a wait staff that spoke no English.
As I said before, a smile goes an awful long way here.
Interestingly, Xiu Lan was the same restaurant Pam and I stopped at in March 2006 on our second day in Beijing hoping to eat roasted duck, the city’s famous dish. We left, however, after we saw the restaurant menu said it served roasted dog – a common Chinese dish we later learned.
We didn’t leave this time and we didn’t see dog on their dinner menu. We ordered a whole roasted duck and an order of fried noodles; both were excellent, authentic Chinese food (not the watered-down Americanized versions) and cost about $25 total.
Now, if only I could figure out how to use those chopsticks ...
Copyright 2008 by Terry R. Cassreino. All rights reserved.
BEIJING, China (Friday, Dec. 5, 2008, 5:25 a.m.) – The streets are eerily silent next to our hotel in the heart of this historic city while I sit in the lobby gazing out through huge, plate glass windows.
At 14 degrees and a 4-degree wind chill, it’s not that surprising the number of folks on the street are at a minimum. It’s cold here. This is the bone-chilling freezer weather we don’t get in Mississippi until, maybe, January if at all.
It was so cold Thursday night that Pam and I decided to stay at the hotel and relax rather than walk through the nearby Wangfujing shopping district. We hope to try to visit there possibly today.
Tonight, however, is a different story. Pam and I have tickets to a 5:15 p.m. (I believe) performance of the Peking Acrobats. We considered catching a show in March 2006, but were so busy we missed it.
So, we are going tonight. And the best part: It’s inside.
Copyright 2008 by Terry R. Cassreino. All rights reserved.
BEIJING, China (Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008, 5:05 p.m.) – Pam and I took this trip determined to record a lot of video to replace some 10 hours of video from our 2006 trip that we lost moving from Hattiesburg to Gluckstadt.
So after our trip Carrefour, we took a $5 taxi ride to the Lama Temple – a beautiful Buddhist site we visited in 2006. This time we visited on our own rather than with an organized tour.
And despite 25-degree weather and biting cold strong wind, we managed to walk through the site and admire the lengthy history and beautiful classical architecture.
Built in 1694, the Palace of Harmony and Peace was originally the residence of Emperor Yongzheng before he ascended the throne.
After he ascended the throne, he transformed half of it as his temporary housing place and the other half as the upper house of Huangjiao, a sect of Lamaism.
What struck me the most Thursday was the quiet, reverent tone visitors took combined intermittently with the sound of clanging bells hanging from the buildings and rushing traffic and police sirens in the background.
Here are a few photos I snapped today, including a few from our visit to the Lama Temple. You also can visit the new photo gallery in the rail on the left of this page.
And yes, we were able to snag about 20 minutes of high definition video – which will go a long way toward showing our daughter Camryn, and our soon-to-be son, Matthew, a few things about their culture and heritage.
Photo 1: Pam stands bundled outside the entrance to the Lama Temple. The wind was fierce and quickly numbed our hands and face.
Photo 2: The street just outside the Lama Temple is lined with shops selling incense for worshippers to use.
Photo 3: Pam stands outside the entrance next to an impressive statute.
Photo 5: Pam was obviously bitterly cold.
Photo 6: One of the impressive statutes at the Lama Temple.
Photo 7: Just in case you were wondering if was here in Beijing, here is a shot of Pam and me on the second floor of the Novotel Peace Hotel. If I looked incredibly stuffed, I was: I had layers of clothing on so I could stay outside in the 25-degree cold weather. I mean it was cold.
Copyright 2008 by Terry R. Cassreino. All rights reserved.
BEIJING, China (Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008, 4:40 p.m.) – A lady hunched over an open-air bin, picking through loose, raw, chicken legs and tossing the ones she wanted into a small bag.
A few feet away, an attendant behind the meat counter wrapped her hands inside a plastic bag. She grabbed a handful of ground meat from another open-air bin, turned the bag inside-out, tied the ends and handed it to a customer.
The lunchtime crowd at the Carrefour grocery and department store in Beijing was as crowded and packed with shoppers as any American store might be on a busy weekend. Folks bought food, clothes and other necessities.
Pam and I wound up at the Carrefour purely by accident. We began our morning determined to go to the Wal-Mart SuperCenter in Beijing.
I wanted a pair of inexpensive gloves to help fight the bitter, 25-degree cold and Pam wanted to replace face cleanser that security confiscated at the Tokyo airport.
Our concierge at the Novotel Peace Hotel hailed a taxi for us and, we thought, told the driver we wanted to go to Wal-Mart.
Headed for Wal-Mart
But after about a 30-minute, $6 taxi ride across town, we found ourselves in a strange, unfamiliar part of Beijing. The driver took our cash and told us to take a pedestrian bridge across a busy highway to Wal-Mart.
I was game, Pam wasn’t so sure.
At the top of the bridge, we realized we weren’t at Wal-Mart and were at a place called Carrefour. And even though we were the only American tourists in the area, we were comfortable enough with our surroundings to visit it anyway.
Why not? Security and police were nearby. And the store was crowded.
I’ve said before, and it bears repeating, I think you can learn a lot about a foreign culture by visiting local grocery and department stores. There, you can learn about the food folks cook and eat and what kinds of products they buy.
Carrefour was no different.
Like the Beijing Wal-Mart (which we still hope to find at some point before we leave Beijing on Tuesday), Carrefour is a two-story grocery and department store. Groceries are on the first, other goods are on the second.
Searching for Blu-rays
Upstairs, I was excited when I saw the DVD aisle. I came to China hoping to buy a Blu-ray version of “Red Cliff,” an historical epic and Hong Kong director John Woo’s first Chinese-language film since “Hard Boiled.”
But no such luck. After Pam spotted some inexpensive men’s gloves, we headed downstairs and wound up in the produce and meat section where we saw things we didn’t see in March 2006 at Wal-Mart.
Employees were everywhere, eager and ready to help customers. In fact, you couldn’t go anywhere in the store without running into a waiting attendant wanting to help you find a specific product.
Open tanks housed fresh seafood: crabs, eels, turtles and clams. Open bins displayed live crawfish crawling on top of each other, live prawns still moving feverishly and piles of freshly caught shrimp.
Across the aisle were bins with raw chicken parts segregated by type: legs, thighs, wings, breasts.
Butchers worked behind counters, slicing and trimming cuts of beef and tossing them aside as customers used metal tongs to pick over pieces and cuts they wanted.
Offering tempting samples
Another bin featured fresh roasted duck, with workers offering customers free samples. Off to the side, employees prepared and cooked fresh dumplings for customers.
And, of course, the bread. The aroma of fresh-baked bread filled the back of the grocery as one employee urged us to take home a hot loaf of what looked like French bread.
We passed.
Instead, Pam and I headed toward the front of the store and the cashiers; after about an hour browsing the aisles we were ready to head out and find another place to visit.
Ah, but we had one more chore before we could leave: Pam had to find her face cleanser.And because we don’t speak a lot of Mandarin, communicating her needs took a little time.
So there we were: We checked out of the store, buying a pair of men’s knit gloves (about $2), a bar of Oil of Olay soap (about 90 cents) and a tube of Garnier face cleanser (about $2.25).
And the best part about it: Pam’s face cleanser came in a 100 ml tube, the maximum amount allowed on a flight. So, if she still has it when we return home on Dec. 18, she should make it through the Tokyo airport security.
Copyright 2008 by Terry R. Cassreino. All rights reserved.
