Back home.

So after a brief rest, we woke up at 3:30 AM China time and after some last minute packing and some final goodbyes, we began the journey.

2hrs by bus to the Hong Kong border.

1hr by van to the airport in Hong Kong.

15hrs by plane to Newark.

A little less than an hour by car back to Keyport.

Plus the associated waiting times at the various entry and exit points.

We arrived home around 3:30 PM Keyport time (about 24 hrs door to door). It's great to be gazing across the Raritan Bay again.

Final Day - Valentine's Day Dinner

After saying goodbye to Mango, Fei & Damin, we returned from the fish dinner, drove across town and were met by Tony, Queenie, Tiger, Jason, Vicky's parents and godparents.  They set up shop for the afternoon to see us off on our final day.  Most played Mahjong while others looked at the book I wrote on the first visit.  Vicky and I packed and then opened our red "lucky money" envelopes.  We ended up with enough to cover Valentine's Day dinner.

So as evening approached, we walked over to the Chinese Steakhouse for a mixed Eastern & Western Valentine's day dinner.  The weirdest part of the meal (aside from having a first Valentine's Day dinner with 10 people) was seeing Tiger and Jason get served wine in a restaurant.  (There is no drinking age in China.)  Tony drove the parents home and Queenie, Tiger and Jason stayed with us for the night.

That's all I'm going to write... the car comes at 4:00 AM tomorrow for the start of the long journey back.  I might even get some sleep if the fireworks and firecrackers ever stop.  

A Fish for Dinner on Valentine's Day

Thursday was Valentine's day.  I received a gold and jade dragon necklace, and gave Vicky a necklace and ring with hearts and diamonds.

Late in the morning we started out to Mango's other house which is about 15km from the city center.  

Now, for this next part, you should know that I was feeling a bit queasy before we started out... 

We arrived at Mango & Fei's other home which is a type of homesteading property.  They had to qualify and apply to the government and then entered a lottery.  They ended up winning a home at low cost.  It was a wonderful space on the top floor of their building with several bedrooms, a nice kitchen and a wonderful view from their balcony.

From there we went out for a fish dinner.  That didn't sound too bad to me, but... well... it turned out a fish was dinner (for all of us).  We sat around a table with this big heater in the center and after a bit of time, a waiter brought out this huge platter with a 2 to 3 foot long fish that was split in half and set among vegetables.  Head, eyes, fins and all.  

Vicky promptly stabbed it with chopsticks and pulled out a hunk of fish for me.  I've seen her family pick at a fish before so it wasn't too bad.  I was seated between Damin and Vicky with Fei right next to her.  I was aware of a bit of competition over some sort of white blob, and later learned that it was the fish's stomach and was considered a choice part.  Vicky evidently won and I got to watch my beloved chomp down a fish stomach right before my eyes.

Did I tell you I was feeling queasy?  Well surely the worst was over...

Maybe not... I saw Fei stand up and start digging around the head and suddenly come up with the fish's brain.  That went to the guest of honor and THANK GOD that was Vicky's father who was the ranking person at the feast.  

Did I tell you I was feeling queasy?  Well surely the worst was over...

Maybe not... I then watched Fei as he started digging around the carcass and suddenly placed the largest remaining part of the fish in his bowl and STARTED CHOMPING ON THE SPINE!  (I was fast enough with the camera for that one.).

Did I tell you I was feeling queasy?  Well now surely the worst was over...

And it was.  We finished shortly afterward... said our goodbyes and returned to Agile Gardens to begin packing.

Did I tell you they sell Hershey bars in China?

Dinner and a Party

After the temple visit, we stopped by a mall store Vicky had invested in to inspect it (just an empty space right now) then returned to Vicky's parent's home for another dinner - this time hosted by her mother.  At this dinner I got to meet her uncle (from her father's side).  He used to be the CEO of some endeavor and you could tell he was used to being attended to.  As he walked into the room, the whole family snapped to attention.  After introducing me, Vicky and her Aunt and Uncle had a long conversation, little of which was translated.  I noticed her demeanor change a bit and all she would tell me is that "he is very traditional".  You could also tell that several others in the family didn't seem to enjoy their interactions with him.  He did have a nice camera and we exchanged them so we could each inspect each other's equipment.  That seemed to be as far as I could get in the interaction with him.

After dinner, some of the family went to Vicky's parent's apartment to chat for a while.  You could tell that her cousin Wen Feng (the uncle's son) and his wife were a bit shaken up and after some pleasantries we were invited to their apartment for "to taste some wine".  So we walked across the street to Wen Feng's apartment where we met up with some of his soccer buddies and had a grand time enjoying fine food and drink as well as the incredible view from her cousin's apartment.  He was proud of what China was becoming and pulled out all the stops for his family and friends.  I sampled my first shot of Louis XIII, tried some incredible chocolate and a couple of very fine wines.  By the end of the evening we were all feeling quite good.

A Visit to the Temple

After the tea lesson with Mango and Fei, we went to the Temple.

The temple area was a riot of color, smells and sounds.  Just getting to and from it meant traveling streets lines with shops selling temple accessories.  The temple itself is a series of old style buildings right in downtown Guangzhou (one of several temples), and as I understand the process after paying an admission, Vicky and her cousins went around to several shrines inside the temple walls and prayed to the appropriate Buddhas which signified what they were interested in or worried about.  There were shrines for health, wealth, relationships, etc.  Evidently they used to light incense at or in each shrine, but now the practice is to place the incense on a table in front of the shrine and workers come by and collect it to burn in large cauldrons.  I guess this keeps the insides of the shrine from getting black with incense soot.

I won't try to explain it beyond this except to say that I finally figured out that the "Lenten Fare Restaurant" was a vegetarian restaurant.

One interesting aspect was the fundraiser to fix the older roofs.  You could purchase a roof tile and write your prayers on the underside.  So your prayers literally became part of the temple itself.

A Morning with Vicky's Cousins

I started Wednesday morning by photographing the flowers Vicky purchased at the flower street a few days ago.

After that we went for Brunch (Dim Sum) with Vicky's cousins Mango and Demin.  Tiger and Tim, being typical teenagers, promptly lost themselves in some sort of video application on the smartphone and that meant I had the undivided attention of three beautiful women.  (OK, I didn't have their undivided attention, they mostly talked to each other and occasionally shot me an English phrase, but a guy can dream can't he?)

After lunch we walked a bit around the waterfront.  This is an area that seems like Inner Harbor, Baltimore, where an industrial area has been transformed into a beautiful waterfront with bars, restaurants, and shops (though most of it was closed due to the new year).  From there we walked to Mango's apartment where we met up with Fei, Mango's husband. They live on the 9th floor of a building without elevators, so after a brief rest after lugging up my camera bag, he started to share his passion... 

Which was for tea (and what a passion it was)!  Fei has been collecting tea his whole life and aims to collect enough to drink throughout his retirement.  He seems well on his way to that goal.  Fei described the different types of Pu'er tea - he had a large variety of both fresh and cooked tea with a fair bit of top quality stuff as well.  He broke out an amount of fresh tea (which he says he's shared with less than 10 people so far - 5 were in the room and one was me) and then described to us over an hour or so all aspects of washing, brewing, tasting and enjoying tea.  Since we were drinking so much (evidently you can get drunk on tea alone), Mango made some dumplings for us as well.  This was one of the most comfortable times I've had in China so far.  Afterward we went up on their rooftop garden where they grow some of the vegetables the family uses and took in the sights.  It always amazes me how when you're in downtown Guangzhou, the city seems to go on forever in all directions.

One interesting note about today... we had BLUE SKIES!  With most of the traffic gone for the past week or so (it started to return to normal levels today), pollution was greatly reduced.

A Day with Tiger and Jason

Today (Tuesday) was the day for Tiger's family to host the events, so we drove back downtown to a series of apartment buildings in the old section of town.  I was expecting to meet some strangers with Tiger and his family there as well, but was pleasantly surprised to see Vicky's parents as well.  We spent a small amount of time in their apartment, then proceded to leave for the local restaurant.

This involved a walk across the highway.  I didn't get photos, but we walked up over a pedristian bridge above the street level main road, but then below the elevated section of the highway and descended right into a local market with people selling all sorts of items by just setting them out at street level.  Some of the sales people were very young (families work very hard together to produce the means to live in some places.

At lunch, Vicky gave me the task of handing out the lucky money this time.  It was fun and gave me the chance to directly interact with a wide circle of Tiger's family.

After lunch we took Tiger and his cousin, Jason, back to Agile Gardens for a photography lesson.  Jason sat next to me at lunch and spoke at length about his love of making photos and capturing beauty with his phone.  So I swallowed hard and handed my D700 to the two of them to see what they would produce.  After starting with some typical scenery photos, I assigned each of them a mundane object and asked them to produce 10 different photos of it.  Jason had a fire hydrant; Tiger had a garbage can.  Tiger had me stand in one of the photos of the garbage can and as he was taking my photo burst out laughing.  It seemed an elderly man was walking by and started talking out loud about the insane american having his photo taken next to garbage.  We finished by having a lesson on working up the photos in Lightroom.  

After the photography lesson, we went to the mall for Pizza Hut and another movie with Queenie, Tiger and Jason.