Happy Birthday Nic!

This is for one of my Alt Sista's- Nic. Happy Birthday Nic! May we ALL be home sweet home with our little ones before your next birthday!!!

More Applesauce

And You thought I was done with Applesauce for the year....
Nope...by Special Request (and the grace of our friends at Kroegers on Sauvie Island who had apples on sale 10# for $2.50...), our "village" canned on Saturday. Well, not completely. Cindy is luxuriating somewhere in the Mediterranian this very moment, perhaps having just spent the day seeing the Pyramids & contemplating which of the amazing desserts from the neverending buffet she would like to try...But aside from our one missing Mama, Sharon, Heidi & I went to the task of Canning 75 lbs of apples.

Sharon & Heidi wanted to learn how to can- since Applesauce is so easy (and Apples were so available...) we thought it would be a good way to start.
So, we met up at 9 (or so, Sharon made it at 9, I made it at "or so") and took a walk to a busy street a few blocks over for COFFEE. Must start the day with Coffee! Then we went onto bagels....then perhaps there was a little shopping....then finally off to the grocery store to buy canning jars & finally back to Heidi's house about noon.
I was amazed at how quickly Heidi & Sharon picked up on all the little things that need to happen to keep canning going quickly & smoothly! They were stars from the beginning! Next year I'm certain they'll be bringing me recipes for canning and teaching me a thing or two!

Sharon was excited about the "popping" (who can blame her, I get a little excited I hear the little pop pop pop of lids sealing myself!!)- so she sat down to see if she could watch the vacuum seal in action:
We all quickly picked up on our own tasks: Heidi was food processor, water/sugar adder for the apples, and stirrer. Sharon was Jar filler and Apple peeler, I was apple peeler, jar sterilizer, and jar wiper/lid placer....between the 3 of us we ended up with a pretty good canning rhythm!
Heidi lives in this really beautiful old house that amazingly has all of it's original windows. Unfortunately the kitchen window which opens so beautifully in the summer, was swollen shut and would not budge. About half way through we realized the entire inside of the house appeared to be "perspirating." Heidi found that in the area where we were loading up jars, the heat layer was just hanging about 7-8 feet up. If you stood on a chair you could feel the actual place where the air changed from "normal" to wet/dense humid air. We all had to get up on the chair and check it out6 hours and 49 Jars later....we finished. Yes....49. 48 pints and 1 quart. As we were processing the last set of jars in the hot water canner, I looked up to see canning jars on one of the shelves in Heidi's kitchen. I said "hey Heid, you own canning jars..." She had not even realized she had them! Now she knows the glory of a canning jar, I think she will learn to be very protective of them!!
This was one of the "varieties" we came up with today. We also had "Waiting Mama Applesauce" and a basic sugar free. Okay- the "On the Nest Applesauce", "Waiting Mama Applesauce", and the regular "Applesauce" were all identical...but it makes for more interesting canned good with such fun names!!

CCAA New Rules: Singles Out

It appears that the China Center for Adoption Affairs has finally done what the singles have worried about for many years. As of today, the early reports from the CCAA's year end meeting list out quite a number of new rules. The most pertinent and sad one is, No more Singles from May 1, 2007 onwards. I do not know if this applies to Non-Special Needs adoptions only, or Special needs/Waiting Children as well. So far the info I have seen points to it being ALL China adoption. They got their wish. They outed the Singles.

It could change. It might not. But for today, that is sad news for all the Single Mamas out there whose families were not yet complete.

I'm most sorry that, if this rule stays in effect, my daughter will not be able to share a birth country with her sister or brother. It's one thing that I felt was something important I could give my future children. Not only a love and understanding of both their birth culture and their family's culture, but also a shared history of their birth cultures. Someone for the other one to "have" when it's somethng that mom just cannot understand what they are feeling.

Do & Yu

These are a couple of pics I just got from my friend Rita in Taiwan. Her two little girls are just adorable! The older one (Do) I met last April when I was in Taiwan & she brought her to dinner one night. Miss Shy girl would barely say a word to me all night but now Rita tells me everytime they go by the hotel I stayed at she says "Aunt Kelli is there?" Funny! We had dinner with a huge group, but then I went out to a tea house afterwards with Rita, Do, and Rita's husband Edward. I had no idea before, but Edwards KNOWS how to pour and serve Chinese tea. Like a pro! He was timing it, knew when to pour the hot water, how long to let it steep, how many times to pour water over it before you actually drink it, etc. It was quite impressive! They gave me the leftover tea at the end of the night to take home, which I have duly enjoyed, but it's not nearly as good as when properly made and served!
Anyway-onto the cutie kid pics!
Clearly the little one is the stylish one! Or maybe they both are!!! Look at those glasses!

Thanksgiving at the Oregon Coast

I've been terribly remiss in keeping my blog updated, and in reading others blogs, so here is a quick update! I still have lots of China pics to post, but still trying to catch up with everything! So, we'll fastforward ahead of the remaining China pics for now and skip to Thanksgiving!

Thanks to Cindy and her timeshare at the coast, 3 of the 4 of us went to Newport for a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner! We were missing Heidi who flew home (With a walnut raisin pie on her lap!) to surprise her Mom, but most of our Village was there. Cindy, her friend Connie who will go with her to China, and Connie's Mom, Louise. Sharon and I both drove out on Wednesday to meet them, and we all left on Friday.

Cindy (being the wise woman that she is) bought a 24 lb turkey to ensure we would all have Leftovers.

This would be the Turkey Bra. No I have no idea what it's really called, we were calling it a Turkey bra. As I had to squeeze orange innards for the sweet potato recipe I had found, but had no juicer, the turkey bra first became a juicer before becoming turkey lingerie.
Connie and Louise were in charge of the stuffing: The noun and the adjective. It was made with homemade cornbread, and a bit of sausage...oh SO yummy. I love love love stuffing. It might well be my favorite part of Thanksgiving.

The sweet potatoes in process: Hollow out orange cups, then mix sweet potatoes, cinnamon, brown sugar, orange juice, pineapple...um...few other things....then bake, and top with pecans cooked in butter, brown sugar, corn syrup, vanilla and bourbon. WOW. They were good. sweet, but good.
Checking on the Turkey. There was lots of good turkey discussion. Sorry for the Glare...I blame it on the set up of the condo. There was a lovely bar for propping the camera up on, but unfortunately it was directly facing a window. Connie tried to convince us it wasn't the window, but her natural halo.

Weather at the coast was cold and windy! It rained most of the time we were there, so the only time we went to the beach was the day we were leaving. Sharon & I took walk down, but the water was so high that there was no beach for a beach walk! We had a tough time getting a picture where you could actually *see* both of our faces from the wind blowing our hair...!We all look forward to next Thanksgiving with 4 Mamas and 4 babies. We have already told Heidi her Mom can't have her next Thanksgiving, we are claiming her and the baby for our thanksgiving for 8! (or 10...) We did discuss the possible necessity of everyone registerring for portable highchairs...

9 Months

Well I'm a few days late, but Friday was officially my 9th Month of this elephant Pregnancy. 9 months down, unknown number of months to go. I picked the hammers as it feels that's all I've been doing the last 9 months...hammering away at my upstairs remodel...okay quite a bit of painting & other stuff as well...

There are some positive rumors floating around this week with regards to referral times but I'm not putting too much stock in them, as it's easier to be happily surprised than let down when it doesn't come through. There has been a bit of other dissappointment lately & there is no need to add to that during the holidays. It's just best to focus on all the really wonderful things in my life rather than stress on the rest.

Still Ping'An

Just a few more pics tonight, but no long stories.

This is the view down the "lane" that led to the hotel I stayed in. You can see the man at the end of the building carrying a bamboo pole over his shoulder- those baskets are empty but a few moments later he showed up again with them full of rocks. This was an all day sight with many men traversing down this lane to pick up rocks from another location, then bring them back down and dump them somehwere else. The baskets were not very large, but the rocks were. It certainly was no easy job.
Believe it or not there were actually 3 girls here. I'm quite sorry that the only part of the third girl you can see is the tiny top of her head over the little girls head. It was actually quite sweet- 3 little girls on their way back to school after lunch, and they all stopped and two of them were fixing the 3rd girls hair at the same time. I'm not sure how my skill is so great that I managed to hide the 3rd girl entirely, but I swear, there were 3!
I saw this woman every morning selling vegetables. She was very sweet and always had a smile for me. I appreciate that especially in China since it's not really as common to smile at people as it is in the US. When I smile to someone in China and I get a smile back, it's usually a very warm and real smile. It's nearly always a smile from their heart. In the US...well...sometimes it is, but sometimes they are just being polite! Of course the smile well have been because she thought she could get some money out of me. On the 3rd day when I finally asked if I could take her photo, she did hold out her hand for cash after...ah well...guess there is little that is free. I gave her a Yuan and went for breakfast.
I swear these are the chickens who woke me up at 5 am every morning I was in Ping'An. Maybe it was their cousins. At any rate, they were loud, and they were regular. Who needs alarm clocks when you have a hotel with thin walls and a bunch of loose chickens and roosters outside?
One of the many stone stairways in this village.It's a bit deceiving, but this man's bundle on either end of his bamboo pole is nearly the size of a haybale. The green blends a bit with the green in the background, but I certainly don't imagine these were light loads.
This is what I was whining about yesterday. The guys waiting at the bottom of the hill where the bus lets you off with sedan chairs. You'd think that lots of people took them, based on the sheer number of chairs there are, but in 3 days I didn't see a single chair with anyone actually in it. All empty. I suppose it only takes one chinese tour group of about 20 people to fill most of the chairs though...so maybe it's not such a stretch having so many there. I wonder how many days these porters go between carrying people? As in...I wonder how dependable their salaries are?

Ping'An & the Dragons Backbone Rice Terraces

This was one of the main 'streets' in Ping'an. When we arrived on Wednesday afternoon at the bus stop, we still had a 20 minute walk up the mountain- up flights and flights of stone stairs, to the ridge of the mountain. This is how you arrive in Ping'an. Unless you are a full on tourist who hires the sedan chair at the bottom of the stairs in which case you are carried up in a chair by two Chinese men, and you are probably also having your luggage carried in (or on) a basket of a woman or a few women from the village as well. In which case you should be downright embarassed for A) not walking on your own, and B) Traveling to places that are beyond your abilities if you cannot carry your own luggage. Oh but that's being a wee bit judgemental-I know- blame it on the jet lag. People getting themselves to places like these on their own two feet will keep them looking natural and help to keep their heritage. Too many tourists coming & hiring locals to carry their luggage, carry THEM, and the town may try to make it even easier to get the tourists up there by putting a road in. A road that would no doubt need to take out quite a few rice fields in the process, leaving village families more dependent on the tourist trade than their rice business which has sustained them for hundreds of years. Next thing you know, it's all roads, no rice, and the tourists stop coming because the beauty and tranquility of terraced mountains have been replaced with a nice view of many roads zig zagging up the mountainside. No more tourists, no more rice, families have to move to the city, and China loses one of it's wonders. SO: That is why I am anti sedan chair when it comes to the tourists. Now, I am all for an exception- a family takes an aging relative to see a beautiful part of China...a young person in a wheelchair wants the opportunity to get up there...those are perfectly reasonable reasons to employ a sedan chair. But not wanting to climb stairs for 20 minutes just "because"- is not a good reason. On the upside, I did not see a single person hire a sedan chair in the 3 days I was in Ping'An. I did see a few tour groups hire the porter women with big baskets on their backs though. (Imagine a woman with a big basket on her back, and a big square rolling suitcase strapped to the top of it. What a sight...)

So once you get up the mountain and "into town"- the streets are verry narrow. You see a few wheelbarrows, but nearly EVERYTHING, from hay to rocks to rice, is carried over one shoulder on a bamboo pole. One basket on each end. Subsequently, the roads don't need to be very wide and they are more walking paths than roads. I did not see a single bicycle...and no wonder- the town is on a hill, I don't think there are more than 2 houses on one level, all of them are staggered up and down the hillside. Which means, a whole lot of stairs. It would be impossible to ride a bike in this town. This was taken coming down from viewpoint #1 as the sun was going down- dusk was setting in & the view was beautiful. Unfortunately we were there for the sunset, but it was cloudy so we didn't get a show.
Just before sunset....
This was at one of the shops at viewpoint 1- It was unclear how "Tea Make Coffee"- but I was intrigued by the concept...

There was spying here there and everywhere! The elementary school was just 2 buildings down from the hotel we had gotten rooms in, so I was able to see lots of comings & goings of the kids from the elementary school. I was surprised to see a large number of girls. I was very HAPPY to see a large number of girls in this village. I don't know if it was because the boys were not in school (were off working?) or just because there had been lately more girls than boys.

One thing that dissappointed me on this trip was towards the end I became suspicious when I saw a family with a baby boy or young boy. It's incredibly unfair of me to think this, but I found myself thinking "was that her first child?" The other evil and less than nice thoughts I had were when I saw pregnant women. I had this little evil voice in my head thinking "what will you do if it's a girl?" From my purely optimistic standpoint, I want to believe that 99% of all the boys I saw WERE first children, not 2nd children. And I want to believe that all the pregant women I saw will be ecstatic to welcome their son OR daughter into the world. But the other part of my brain tells me that the likelihood of both of those being true is not very great. I know that views are changing in the cities. But I also know that to change a belief as strong as the importance of boys over girls in Chinese society is not something that changes overnight....not even in a few years. It will more likely take a few generations.
Everywhere we could see rice drying in peoples front yards. On rooftops, on wooden decks, everwhere there was a big flat space. Also lots of red chilis were out in the sun dryng.
Besides spying on the sweet kids, I also found a mama kitty and her babies to spy on. They were toddling along after her and she sat for them for a few minutes, then apparently decided she'd had enough nursing and wandered off...they were adorable toddling along after Mama & mewing for more milk. I don't think they were more than a few weeks old.

The long Airport Check-in

I'm home!
It's True!
HOME HOME HOME!
Yay! After the 2 bag checkers n Guanghzou checked absolutely every crevice/bag/fold/s hirt/pair of underwear/shoe/container in my 2 big bags (and took 30 minutes and they ignored around 40 other people to do so), they finally let me through & off I flew! I have now discovered that the theory to airline security in China is if they spend MORE time on one passenger, they have fewer bags to open. And therefore fewer bags to re-pack & close. It's far more important to be 100% certain that ONE passenger is not carrying anything bad than to ensure that MOST passengers are not carrying anything bad. I have to say that at 6:15 in the morning I was a tad bit grumpy about it and made them figure out how to get it closed again. Personally, I sat on it in my hotel room to get it closed, but no way was I letting on my secret or offering to help. Grumpy? Yes. Normally? No...but they went to the extreme.

Ahhh....airline security. Most the time I support them, but these guys just went way freaking overboard. They didn't even ask how long I was traveling for, nor did they stop once they realized it was just a lot of dirty clothes and baby gifts. Nope....you just never know with these baby shoe/chinese baby flashcard carrying women, they just might be the ones to blow up the plane.

Did I mention I'm happy to be HOME? Now I need to figure out how to stay awake the rest of the day. it's 9:30 am and the only plans I have are dimsum with friends at 10:30. That leaves a lot of hours to force my eyes to stay open. wish me luck.
More Pics later today.

No Stories: Just a few more Ping'An Pics

Sorry all, no story tonight. It's 10:30 here in Guangzhou...and I have to be up at 5 AM tomorrow morning to head off to the airport because I am going HOME! So tonight it's just pics. Did I mention I'm going home? As in...to my own bed? As in...to the Kitty who will now follow me around the house for the next 3 days and if I'm lucky will nap on my lap when I get a nap in sometime tomorrow? As in...to my kitchen where I can cook? As in...HOME? Did I mention that? Whooo HOOOO! I love China, I love traveling, I love traveling TO CHINA, but always always...I really love going HOME!

Pics today...story tomorrow. From HOME. (In case you didn't get it.)

takes your breath away, huh?
A bamboo forest we hiked through...

By the way, did you know I'm going home in the morning?

Ping'An & The Dragons Backbone Rice Terraces

What better way to start a 6 day mini-backpacking adventure then with a good Foot Massage in Guangzhou? Yes, these are my footsies as they appeared about 45 minutes into a lovely evening with the young and talented (and I was told SINGLE) #13. I'm certain he had a name, but in the massage places, they all have numbers, and they proudly tell you, "I am number 13!" Great! We knew from experience earlier in the week that #7 was a master, but #13 was a complete unknown until this evening. My toes were feeling quite lovely by the end of the night & I was wondering what it would take to employ #13 full time in Oregon so that I could partake of a lovely and wonderful foot massage one time a week...

So after the foot massage in Guangzhou, the next morning I headed off to the airport bright and early and took a 9:30 flight to Guilin. The trip on the first day was rather a surprise. Lonely planet assured me the bus from Guilin to Longsheng took 4 hours. So- after arriving at the Guilin airport, I took the airport bus to the train station, then a taxi to the bus station, and bought a ticket for the 4 hour busride to Longsheng. 2 hours later, the bus arrived in Longsheng! I guess the roads have been improved since the 2003 edition of Lonel Planet China... I had planned to stay overnight in Longsheng, then go another hour north to Ping'An the next day...however as I arrived in Longsheng, I noted what an ugly little city it was, and opted to skip the town altogether and go straight into the bus station and check for the next bus to Ping'An. I found out I only need to wait an hour, so I turned around to find a seat, only to find another westerner coming in the bus station. He said hello & we started talking. I told him I was skipping Longsheng as it appeared to just be an ugly city, and was going straight to Ping'An (he had also just come from Guilin, but on a different bus)- he said it sounded good & would go along as well. HE ended up being Tamir, from Israel. One thing I learned on this trip is the word for Israel: Isari. As in, when people would ask me "ni shi meiguoren?" (you are an american?" And I would respond, (in Chinese) I'm American, my friend is Israeli.

Keep in mind that I am still heavily coughing up a lung with the upper respiratory-whatever infection at this time, so I'm drinking a lot of water. Now envision that this little town- Ping'An- is suddenly more accesible in the past few years because while it IS on the top of a mountain, the nice paved road goes almost up to it...but with lots of twists and turns. Back to me drinking a lot of water. I was talking in Chinese with the woman who collects the money on the bus- she told me her friend has a hotel in Ping'an. I told her "great, but now I really need a bathroom." She said "yes! the hotel has toilets! The sit down kind!" I said, 'great, but right NOW I need a toilet!" She said, Oh! Now!. So moments later we come to a fork in the road, she tells the bus driver to stop, sends me off the bus to a little cement shack down a little hill with a toilet! I was incredibly thankful, but even moreso when we arrived finally at the "top" of the mountain, only to find that from where the bus lets you off, you still have a 20 minute climb up stairs/up the mountain before you get to the town. That is when I was especially thankful of the mercifully located squatty potty halfway up the mountain!
We found the hotel & this was the view out my window (or part of it).
The entire city was under construction. They have been getting Chinese tourists in droves & are building hotel after hotel. We stayed in the conveniently located but LOUD 45 Yuan a night hotel. But, it had western style toilets. That was quite a bargian we found out. We checked out another hotel, but the rooms with toilets in them (squatty potties at that) were 120 Yuan, 80 Yuan a night for a shared bathroom (squatty and all) in the hallway.

This is Tamir- my travel companion. Until this trip I had never traveled on my own- not on vacation that is. Several people told me "you won't travel on your own, you always run into people & you always end up traveling with other people, even if you try to travel on your own..." Clearly this turned out to be true, as I met Tamir even before I got to my destination on the first day, and we ended up traveling together the entire time I was on holiday.

Now before anyone gets too excited about those lovely icy blue eyes or that adorable rugged look, I need to be absolutely up front & say that Tamir is best described as "Rabbi Tamir". This trip was fantastic because I saw some beautiful things, I ate wonderful food, I had a very companionable and agreeable travel companion, and he was incredibly interesting to talk to. Tamir is the first person I have met who is "very Jewish." I have met "very Catholic" and "Very Methodist" and "Very other things", but I have never known anyone who is "Very Jewish"- so I asked him question after question after question because he was first a fountain of information, and secondly incredibly patient with all of my questions! Clearly a good combination in a travel companion! He prays 3 times a day, doesn't travel on Shabbot, we had a lovely Shabbot dinner together, had a few good long hikes, traveled on busses together, shared some great meals, and just a very enjoyable time, overall. And at the end of the trip, we wished each other luck & went our separate ways. The whole "dropping in" and "dropping out" was quite reminiscent of the letter I typed in my blog several months ago from my Grandmother many years ago. Sometimes people just come into your life for a few conversations & then you never see them again, but your life is enriched for these moments. After several days of my incessant questions he asked something to the exent of "am I converting you" or something like that, I told him no, but as I had never met someone who was so devoutly Jewish, I had all these questions that I was so curious to understand. I told him it was so easy to ask him all of the questions because while it was clearly the center of his life and very important to him and the way he believed was best, he was patiently answering my questions without being 'preachy' or trying to tell me why it was the "only" way to believe. He laughed & said "well you can't be Jewish anyway so why would I try to convert you?" I think that's when I told him he had a big head & we had another beer. Anyway- it was all very interesting & I learned a lot!

We met up for breakfast the first morning at a place serving eggs & toast with a lovely view of the terraces. On leaving the restaurant I saw this in an alley:

While this looks like a lot of trash, it's good to know that the Chinese are actually quite good at recycling. All of these plastic bottles they will turn in for cash, and they will be recycled. Boxes, paper, plastic- at least in the interest of money and profit, the Chinese are good at recycling, which is a very GOOD thing.
The story behind the terraced rice fields is that many many (MANY) years ago, the various minority groups in this area were all trying to stake their claims on the land. Warring minority tribes took over land, lost land, back & forth, until finally some of the minority groups were forced up the mountains, while the stronger minority groups maintained the lower/flatter areas. Those in the mountains (the Zhuan Minority) needed to find ways to continue to live and thrive, so they started to form rice terraces in the hillsides. As they were gradually pushed further and further up the mountains, the mountains were gradually terraced all the way to the top. Because they are on a mountainside, the entire village is covered in stone stairs & stone paths. Generally no more than 2 houses are on the same level, with the next house being anywhere from a few steps higher or lower, to a dozen steps higher or lower, in some cases, much more. The byproduct of this is that nearly every house, at least on one side, has an amazing view of these beautiful mountains that spread out below them. Ping'An rests right on the ridge of a few of the mountains, so you can see these terraced mountains all around you.
The Rice season has passed, so the fields were mostly brown, but here and there we could see water in a few of the terraces. There was rice laying to dry everywhere, also a lot of red peppers.
China's population is getting wealthier and wealthier- as a result they are starting to discover their own country and flock to places like Ping'An, Yangshuo, Beijing, LiJiang, etc in droves. Be it good or bad, they are discovering their own country. I think that's very positive because it's THEIR country- it's a shame to think they don't all know of the vast array of amazing things their country has to offer. Now that more of the population is becoming wealthy enough to be mobile and tour in their own country, it gives them another thing to be proud of. That's great. From my very western ideals, the downside is the style of tourism is not quite what I value when I travel through China or any country for that matter. When I am in China, I LOVE going to Markets- Vegetable and meat and medicine markets. I like to get into the countryside and see the natural beauty, I like to go through small villages where families are living their lives & maybe wave as I go through, but that's it. The vast majority of Chinese prefer to travel in large tour groups, and the tour groups arrange "cultural experiences"- which are a bit like forced exposure to the culture. For example- arranging local minority groups dancing- imagine walking into a small village & suddenly 20 women appear & start dancing just as your tour group with the yellow flag and matching yellow hats appear with your cameras. Oh! How did that happen?! SO GREAT! We saw minority dancing! While certainly there is the likelyhood it was beautiful, it's not exactly an accurate picture of the country. It's a bit like turning these tourist locations into mini versions of disneyland. Of what I've seen of the bulk of Chinese tourists (and I don't want to say this is "all" by any means)- is they like the group experience, and they want it packed into a tight, organized event, with every bell & whistle possible, and a bag full of souviniers to match. There are PLENTY of Americans who want the same thing! I'm only observing the chinese method of travel and would not attempt to say there are not a LOT of Americans who do the same thing, I just don't tend to be one of them!
The downside of these tour groups coming & encouraging this 'forced culture' is that it then changes the culture. When we were in Ping'An, we were ruthlessly chased by the Long Haired Zuang Minority women who wanted to show us their Long Hair. It's a show. You pay money, they un-do the long hair that is wrapped around their heads, they comb it out, you take pictures, they hold it, they all pose holding their hair various ways, you take pictures, they smile, you take pictures, end of show. One day, two of the women followed us hiking for 2 hours! Long hair? Want to see long hair? YES! WE GET IT! YOU HAVE LONG HAIR! NOW PLEASE GO AWAY!! Seriously, once you've seen the pics, that's all their is to see. it goes down to their ankles. Great. What I'd really like to see is where you plant rice, how you work in fields that are so small & so steep. How you hull the rice or store the peppers. But no, I really, and TRULY, do not want to see your long hair.

Last of the Chinese Medicine Market

No it's not the LAST Chinese medicine Market....just the last pics for this round. After today, we're onto photos from my traveling last week. Ping'and & Yangshuo. I have to go to breakfast & our group activity today is that we are going to a factory to make shoes. Should be interesting since I am the only one in my 'shoe group' (others are going to apparel factories & bag factories) who has ever made a shoe. And my experience was 5 years ago so it's not exactly fresh!

I really have no idea what these were, there were bulging bags of them everywhere and they were so pretty to look at. It wasn't tea, but maybe a big leaf at one point?

Again, not sure what these were, but they were so pretty all indivually packaged each with their own stamp.
This little boy was adorable! He came up to me in the market and was just staring up at me. I took a picture & showed him. He pushed the camera away then stood back & looked at me again. so I took another picture then he pulled my arm down to see the picture again. This happened about 6 times in a row, but never cracking a smile! He just wanted to see himself in the camera!

Finally between his Mom, me, and the other 20 people who by that time had gathered around to see the big nosed waiguoren snapping pics we got him to giggle a little!