The last week of July until mid August we flew
to China to visit our second son, who went there
in April for an internship in Beijing. We stayed in
Beijing for 6 days, where he guided us around,
then took the train to Xi'an to see the terracotta
warriors, then travelled to Shanghai, before
coming back to Beijing and take our flight home.
It was an adventure, to say the least!
It was very, very hot and very, very crowded ;).
And since they spoke only Chinese
(almost no English), we used signs and
gestures to make ourselves understood.
Dinner was a challenge because we ate
in small, cheap cafés (like 10€ for the six of us),
and most of the time there were no pictures
on the menu list and only Chinese signs.
But we ate well most of the time and nobody
had stomach problems.
Shanghai is much more modern than Beijing,
but we liked Beijing better.
^ The Chinese wall. I would love to say that I
climbed up that hill, but I didn't...
It was just too hot and climbing stairs isn't
my favorite thing. The others did though.
^ The terracotta army, one of the most amazing
things I have ever seen. Thousands of soldiers.
^ Shanghai skyline.
^ The watertown Zhouzhuang was a highlight
and very quiet on Monday morning.
^ We tried to avoid these (not always successfully).
One thing we didn't like was the attention
we had as a "patchwork family".
It was really bad, especially for our son
who was photographed all.the.time.
Sometimes they asked if they could take a picture
(and I said "no, but thank you for asking"),
but most of the time they did it secretly.
We were so surprised because Beijing
and Shanghai are huge cities, they must
have seen dark-skinned people somewhere,
if not in real life, then at least on the internet??!!
Like I said, it was an adventure, and we loved it.
(Another three weeks before school starts 😊).
