First day in Jinan

Once again I’m writing this blog at 4:00am. Let me see if I can get some thoughts down on paper before Ben wakes up for the day. Yesterday, Easter Sunday, began when Ben and I went down to the lobby in the wee hours of the morning. As I’ve said, Ben and I are NOT adjusting to the time change. At 6:00am, Ben and I roused David and John for breakfast. By 8:00am, we were in a taxi heading to the Temple of Heaven. The Temple of Heaven is actually an enormous park, with many temple buildings. I had no idea that it was so large; it seems to be as large as Central Park. We walked around for a few hours, admiring the Emperor’s Palace. What struck me as interesting today is that the things that used to offend my Western senses don’t bother me this trip. What I mean is, the Chinese people have customs that I dislike (spitting, smoking, squatty potties, babies’ butts showing with split pants etc.), but I just chalk them up to cultural differences and move forward. The babies’ exposed bottoms are now kind of cute, in their own way. And I really admire the way that elderly Chinese people exercise and play. In the Temple of Heaven park, there were literally thousands of senior citizens dancing, practicing Tai Chi, playing badminton, tennis, hacky sack, singing, flying kites, fan dancing, and just enjoying the outdoors and in their friends’ company. Older people sit in groups on the sidewalks playing chess, poker, and stretching their muscles. What a contrast to most of our senior citizens! My biggest impression at the Temple of Heaven was that Chinese people retire so that they can play all day, not so they can rest.

At 10:30am we were at the railway station to board the bullet train to Jinan. If you ever have to travel from Beijing to Jinan, I highly recommend the bullet train. Once out of Beijing, there are miles and miles and miles of farms. Although we don’t think of China as having lots of farmland, it makes sense given the population that they have to feed. The farms consisted of small fields of crops, interspersed with small orchards. There didn’t seem to be acres of one crop stretching for miles. In the fields, there were often big mounds of dirt with flowers on top. We can only guess that the mounds were actually burial places, since the decorating the graves holiday was this week. Once in awhile there were several mounds of dirt, in the middle of an agricultural field, with what appeared to be a tombstone marking the spot. ‘

Once we arrived in Jinan, at 2:30pm, we were met by our new guide, Missy. This guide is actually the first guide we’ve had that wanted to accompany us for our entire evening. Usually, we just tell the guide thanks for the ride, the smooth check-in at the hotel, and we’ll see you tomorrow for the government appointments. This guide, Missy, walked us to a park, walked us to a restaurant, sat with us while we ate big bowls of noodles, and walked us to the bookstore. We were able to purchase a set of DVDs for Ben of his favorite cartoon, and a few DVDs for John too. We tried to find Pokemon books for our friend’s daughter, but they were sold out. We also went to Walmart. That description I’ll leave for when we visit the next city and go to Walmart in Harbin. Just let it be know, that the Walmart in China is an experience that I won’t soon forget. At 8:00pm, we returned to our room to watch TV and settle in for the night. Originally, we were supposed to have family day with Sam on Easter, but it was rescheduled, for reasons I don’t understand, for April 9 (today) at 8:30am. So, in 3 hours we will finally meet Fu, KangChao!  I will, of course, write more about our meeting later today.