Our Journey to the Middle Country

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Thursday 23 March 2000: Nanning

Breakfast

This was my second day of eating cereal. I was craving milk and the coco puffs were wonderful! Tammy was still eating toast or croissants, but she was feeling much better.

Steve M. shaved his mustache this morning. He's had it for 14 years. Hannah and Jonathan were a little leery of him after this. He shaved it for Sara's benefit. She didn't seem to like it. It seems like he can't win.

Today was the Half day city tour.

Joy's talk on the bus

The Zhuang Festival, which is a Song Festival is April 7th, 2000 this year. It takes place the on the 3rd day of the 3rd month each year. There are green eggs, red eggs, and five colors of rice: white, black, yellow, purple and red. There is a heart sized embroidery ball. These are made by Zhuang girls. The girl will throw it to a boy who is smart enough. It is thrown through a hoop that is perpendicular to the ground and raised on a pole. If the boy can't catch it, they will give the girl a gift, usually cosmetics.

Qing Xiu "Green Beautiful" Mountain View Park

The park is 5 km SE of the city center of Nanning. This is where we saw a the large stage with the huge stone shapes in the middle. There were also large recreations of the embroidery ball.

I want to by a map of the city (Nanning). Things to mark on the map: Orphanage (Mother's Love), Hotel (Mingyuan Xindu), Foster Mother's home, location where Delainie was found.

Miriam told me about penjing which is the Chinese equivalent to Bonsai. It can be with rocks and trees.

Long Xiang Tower

After the park, we took a bus ride and had a nice walk up to Long Xiang Tower. It is 9 stories tall. I went to the top and took photos in each direction. The tower is eight-sided and thus has seventy-two openings.

It was interesting to see the graffiti in Chinese everywhere. But it didn't seem very destructive or offensive like spray paint or something like that. It reminded me of the rocks in what are now national parks which have names carved in them from people passing by.

It was quite a climb at lease for me and when it was over, I was hoping that there would be another certificate declaring me a hero for climbing to the top.

No one is really a hero until they climb the Great Wall and Long Xiang Tower.

I like that idea.

I found a page by a girl named Ariel who lived in New York but was born in Nanning. It had a picture of her and her mother in a park with Long Xiang Tower behind them. The page has since gone from the internet, but I saved the image to compare it with our photos. If you are this girl, or her parents, please email me. I'd like to talk about Nanning with you.

Tammy and Delainie stayed down at ground level while I climbed the tower. There were ladies there that were doing yard work. They were very excited about the babies with all of us. They clucked their tongues and spoke softly to Delainie. She looked back at them in amazement.

Over by the side of the tower, we bought a rather tattered embroidery ball. It was 10 Yuan ($1.24 USD). We ended up leaving it on the bus and just not claiming it. We later bought a much nicer embroidery ball. I think we also bought a Sprite and a Coke or water.

Fish Ponds

After the tower, the group went down the other side of the hill to the ponds. We had walked up a small road and were now going down gradual steps. All of the girls had a good time feeding the fish.

Fish is said "Li Yu", with "Yu" meaning fish. David also taught me that a word for Adoption or to adopt is "Ling Yng". Each word is said in the third tongue in Mandarin. That is, the inflection is down then up.

There was a man down by the pond. He gave Delainie high fives as she was looking at the fish.

Cultural Village and Lunch

We had lunch here. We first witnessed a pole dance and did some dancing ourselves. At lunch, the girls came around and picked a couple of men at the table for some sort of strong liquor, a rice wine of sorts. Doug and I were given it twice! We spent 80 Yuan ($9.91 USD) for lunch and it was a great meal.

Antique Store

At a 2:15pm, after lunch we went shopping. This was at the antique store.

• 2 porcelain "pencil" vases
• Chinese calligraphy set
• 5 small vases in a red box - 2 were broken during our travels

Visitors

We took a photo of Delainie with the Gui Gang orphanage director and nurse when they came to visit at the Mingyuan Xindu. This was in the evening.

Dinner Party

Last night in Nanning. We had dinner in the restaurant in the hotel. There was a large, beautifully carved jade boat near the entrance. I really enjoyed being able to feed Delainie with chopsticks. That was one thing I definitely wanted to capture in a photo. Mary Lou sent us two pictures from the dinner party. After dinner, we bought the two scroll wall hangings (one for Bill & Mary and one for us) and a charcoal sketch of sorts for us in the hotel gift shop.

This might have been when I bought postcards of Fujian Scenery and Song Dynasty landscape painting each for 70 Yuan ($17.35 USD total) with Steve M. Or that might have been the same time after we went across the street to get water and a map of Nanning. Steve, Jonathan, Hannah and I all went over to the grocery. There is a beauty salon along the way. Several women came out and admired Jonathan and Hannah. They wanted to touch her hair. She didn't mind. They also took off Jonathan's glasses and touched his eye lashes.

I think that this was when we started talking about making a business creating postcards, refrigerator magnets and key chains from various cities in China.

Channel V

This was the last night to watch Channel V - the equivalient to M-TV. It was great and I'd like to be able to get it here in the US. I saw saw several good videos by Globe, Tanya, Penny, Pretty China Doll, TM Network with "TK" featuring Sheila E., Stanley, Kone, and Mountain. I also saw something with TK again where he was making music with Georgio Moroder.

Mountain was interesting in that the name of the band is just a single character in Chinese. It's the character for a mountain and pronounced "Shan". It even looks like a mountain.

I would continue to look for a CD by Tanya during the trip. She was on several times an hour that week since she had the VCD of the Week. I would later find that the video was the second track on her Remembering CD.

There were some good shows on Channel V as well. David Wu had a show called Go West where he would teach English. It was on many times a day and was only about 5 minutes long. It was subtitled in Chinese and English. Literally, every word and hesitation he said was listed. On one program he was covering the terms used in Baseball: Where's Joe? He's in the outfield! One program was on terms for work and holidays I think. I just remember him saying: Are you on vacation. No, I'm on extended vacation! The funniest was when he was talking about English terms for weather. He was going down a list and you could tell that he was saying that Typhoon was the same in Chinese as it is in English. Our guide David said that Wu was quite a popular star in Hong Kong.

There were other programs on dealing with music from Japan: Turn on Japan and J-Pop of the Century. One good song was Goodbye Yesterday and Hello Tomorrow which was in Japanese and English.

• (http://www.channelv.com) - is the URL
  
• (Bydemand@channelv.com) - is the email for requests - it's a pity that I can't watch it anymore

I also caught an ad on Channel V for (http://www.netvigator.com) again. These were very bizzare commercials. I remember one with a dog licking a guy's feet! Ick! But it did grab my attention. I never have gone out and seen what is at the web site.

By the time the Freshman Show came on, I was too tired to stay awake.