再见 (zài jiàn) China!

The first time Cliff and I were fortunate enough to visit China was in October 2001. We were traveling with 18 other families from the USA to go and pick up a 10-month-old baby girl named Jin Xianling…you guys most likely know her as our precious Yve  The excitement of meeting our baby daughter for the first time, combined with the stress of international travel two weeks following Sept 11, made it virtually impossible to focus on the “wow” of China.

This April, 12 years later, we were able to travel back to China and really SOAK IT IN!  We got to hang out and just live life for 2 months in China. It was amazing and we learned things about the culture and people that we had not been able to appreciate the first time.

As we leave China, this is what we take away:

1) FRIENDLY AND NICE!  When acquaintances on this trip learned we were headed to China, they repeatedly told us “be prepared, the Chinese aren’t that friendly…!”  Born and raised in Boston, a city also known for giving people the cold shoulder, Cliff and I were not intimidated  But we found the opposite of the cold shoulder in China…we found warm fuzzies, friendly faces and people willing to help us each and every time. Perhaps those people who think the Chinese are not friendly have only traveled to the big cities in China…and let’s face it, everywhere in the world, big city people are not that friendly…they are in too much of a rush.  But get out of the city, and people want to talk to you, meet you and help you out! I can’t even recall how many times our bikes broke down in Yangshuo and each and every time, a local would stop and help us out…often getting grease all over his or her hands in the process.

 

2) THINK-OUTSIDE-THE-BOX. We are lead to believe that the population of China is full of automatons who rarely have a unique thought or approach. Again, with our time in China, we got to meet enough individuals to realize nothing could be further from the truth. Individualism and creative thinking is everywhere!  You see it in the chefs, street artists, entrepreneurs, etc. We were lucky enough to get to hang out with several Chinese nationals in their mid 20s, who sat down and talked to us about life in China while we described life in the US. We talked for hours about the family unit, going to college, getting jobs, getting married, social media, food, tv, gun control, manners, everything! And we realized that there are way more similarities than there are differences. Two of the people we hung out with started their own online business selling socks (the Chinese buy a ton online) so we even had fun brainstorming about online marketing strategies

 

 

3) FASHION! I had heard people in China are fashionable but “WOW” I was blown away! And not just in the big cities, everywhere! People are uber hip and demonstrating their own personal flair with funky outfits and combinations. It was fun to sit in an outside cafe and just watch people walk by and check out the fashion…especially the shoes

 

 

4) CLEAN. I don’t know why, but I expected to see a lot of liter in China. So many counties have such a problem with trash everywhere. But China was immaculate. And not just the big cities. Even as we traveled into remote villages on day trips, everything was neat as a pin. I was amazed. Then one day, I asked Emily, a young college student doing an internship at our hotel, what was China’s secret to keeping everything so clean. She said “propaganda” and pointed out how many of the local billboards and roadside signs were dedicated to the environment. We started taking pictures of signs and asking her to translate them when we saw her at night and they were always the same “Keep our country clean!”  “Pick up trash.” I realized that the word “propaganda” has a bad connotation in the US but to the Chinese, it just means marketing. And guess what!?!? The marketing is working 😉

 

 

 

 

5) DESTINY. Yve already wrote an awesome blog post on Serendipity in Guiping. Our amazing experience in Yve’s birth town just goes to show you that this stuff doesn’t just happen in the movies We went to Guiping with absolutely no specific goal other than to see the town and to leave feeling a little more connected to that region of China.  Meeting Chen Bin Ying and spending the day with her was above and beyond our wildest expectations. What was cool was that Chen Bin Ying KNEW Yve. She remembered her in the orphanage and spoke about the 10 months she was there.  It was like meeting a long lost aunt! And we now have a friend for life so every time we go back to Southern China, we can visit and we can keep in touch via email.

 

We left China feeling psyched that we spent time really getting to know a few people as well as some beautiful places off the beaten path and away from the big cities. But we realize that we just scratched the surface. China is enormous and there is so much left to see and do. It will most certainly take many more trips to see it all  But we are most proud that we were able to form our own opinion about the country and we leave with a really different perspective on China than when we arrived.  And I am confident that if today’s young generation in China will be running the world’s next superpower, they will do a great job!