February 20: Changsha
Here in Changsha they're still celebrating Chinese New Year, a term that is really sort of a western expression for what the Chinese call Spring Festival.
The Spring Festival starts in the early days of each 12th lunar month, lasts until the middle of the first month of the new lunar year, and its end is marked by the full moon of the Lantern Festival when brightly colored lanterns are displayed and yuanxiao or glutinous rice dumplings are eaten. Within this period the Chinese government asks businesses to give workers seven vacation days off around the lunar new year and Spring Festival is by far the biggest holiday in China. It's like our Christmas, New Year, and Valentine's Day all rolled into one.
The streets, stores, and restaurants are filled with big red paper lanterns, China braids, and other festival decorations. Firecrackers and fireworks are a constant and can be heard at just about at any hour of the day.
One side effect of the Spring Festival is its celebratory imbibing. Last night in the room next to mine a group of men--no, not possibly the same group from the airplane--could be heard carrying on in this vein until 5 a.m., when instead of going to sleep they all just seemed to say goodbye and go home. Actually, my wife and I had noticed a little of this sort of competitive Ralph Cramdenizing in China before during our earlier trips, putting us in mind of the drinking contests in Fulong that Peter Hessler described in his book River Town.
Of course not all Chinese men do this, but it's interesting. Interesting too to hear a bunch of guys coarsely shouting to one another over their apparently preferred accompaniment of soft ballads and that beautiful, lilting, almost new age music that is popular here in Changsha, the kind with no drums, electronic backgrounds, and mellow wooden flutes--and ethereal voices singing about things that are lite.
In the morning after breakfast I walked behind the hotel to the familiar Whacko Market (yes, this is the name on the sign out front) for a few supplies, almost reaching for disposable diapers from force of habit as I passed them on the shelves.
Later I walked up the main street, Furong Zhonglu, for a few miles to get some more air, which was still chilly in the upper 30s. The wide street is lined with fascinating little shops and food vendors and occasional larger stores. Walking in Chinese cities is very safe, with street crime and police usually invisible. Generally accepted or generally imposed, there are strictly enforced rules here, legal and otherwise, but this is not at all obvious.
The larger stores I explored were crammed with people, products and flashy advertising, the dominant theme being a highly stylized happiness. In fact, this seems to be the dominant theme in Chinese urban popular culture overall. I've been asked several times in China what is it, exactly, that Americans see entertaining in horror, murder, crime, and mayhem. Good question.
It's worth noting for this trip and before heading off for the rural countryside that women and girls are hardly ignored in Chinese urban popular culture. Quite to the contrary, smart women broadcasters seem to be the norm on TV and the very large number of cable channels in China feature a varied array of shows about teen girls and little girls who are very cute, in serials and in game shows. One very interesting game show even features beauty contest winners who rate older women on the warmth of their smiles and other personal qualities, the things that should really matter.
In Changsha little girls on the street and in stores seem hugged and pampered by their parents, equally as much as parents' little princes.
Back at the hotel, I watched a growing number of adoption travel groups coming and going, and it was interesting to be an observer of this rather than a participant. The Grand Sun is one of three hotels in the city used frequently by foreign travelers and adoption groups. For years now, in the case of the Grand Sun, foreign adoption groups have been staying for a week or so with their adopted babies nearly nonstop, yet the hotel is not a baby hotel. While its staff are uniformly kind and more than helpful to adoptive families, the hotel continues to primarily serve its Chinese clientele, to host local banquets and parties, and to cater to locals through its several interior restaurants and smoky lounges, especially the lounges. In this terrarium, Chinese foreign adoption and routine everyday life simply coexist.
Next it was time for some trip planning and running a few errands around the city. During this I found that the broad walkways of Martyrs' Park in the city's center were draped overhead with literally thousands of bright red and yellow Spring Festival banners, an amazing sight.
As in other Chinese cities, in busy Changsha there are no traffic signals, stop signs, or crosswalks at even the largest or busiest intersections. This along with a lack of seatbelts adds an element of high drama to road travel. Common scenes that call for pedestrians or heavily laden carts or bicycles to cross multi-lane streets or highways can be especially gripping.
My primary road trip that is now set to begin very early tomorrow morning looks to be an epic nail biter, although its twisting route that I've traced on a local map of Hunan also looks fascinating. With the temperatures hovering around freezing and rain mixed with sleet or snow in the forecast, it's hard not to envision some slippery roads in the days and long miles ahead. I've decided not to think about this too much.
I learned today that my guide Leon does not actually work for OCDF. Instead, he works for a general guide service that is based in Changsha. Although he is relatively new to the profession, his job has already taken him to Yunnan Province and to a six-month stint in Tibet. Earlier, he earned a degree in mechanical engineering at a college in Hubei Province, but rather than resign himself to a career behind a desk, he took a quick English language training course and became a guide. He is originally from Yueyang, which is north of Changsha and where he grew up with his grandfather.
Driver Chen Xi Yun is my age (in his 40s) and lives in Changsha with his wife and their 18-year old son, when he isn't ferrying people around the province in his small van. Despite our separate languages, Chen and I hit it off instantly. The man clearly has a sense of humor.
In the evening I met up with my Chinese friends Daphne and Ellen Feng, local representatives from our adoption agency and sisters who helped us so much during our last adoption trip, heroines really. I had emailed them in advance of my arrival and they were such a sight for sore eyes as they came through the revolving lobby door. They had two new adoption groups in tow, with 15 families representing a total of more than 60 people including the children and travel companions that often accompany adoptive parents on these trips.
When they were free, they pressed me for news of my oldest daughter Dorothy-Rui, with whom they fell in love during our trip last summer. They asked about Clara-Li too, and were curious about my pending trip to Hengdong. I told them everything I knew. They genuinely wished me luck, although in a way that reflected the subtle complexity of the project. I gave them the gifts we had packed for them, mostly photos of our girls.
Because of their genuine devotion to the baby girls who Daphne and Ellen work so continuously hard to rescue (this word selected carefully), it sometimes feels like they are sisters to my daughters. It would be dangerously wrong to believe there is any general need to rescue children from China but I know that Daphne and Ellen, native to Hunan, feel stongly about their work in helping to take these children out of institutional care and into situations of remarkable opportunity. Through their work they have seen many institutionalized children in many different orphanage settings in several provinces. To deliver abandoned children into loving families clearly has become more than a job in this case.
As I watched Daphne get the large new group settled, I felt so proud of her and of Ellen. It's not just what they do, it's how they do it: with so much love and care for the families wise enough to be open to them.
Tomorrow before dawn we would have breakfast then I would be off to Shaoshan, Hengshan, and to Hengdong. "You better take down my cell phone number," Daphne sternly told me several times, finally borrowing a pen and just writing it down herself.
"I don't want you to get lost in China."
