Yangshuo to Guilin to Yangshuo

I love so many things about China, and I’ll probably get back to one or more of them after a short rant about one of the things I detest – government interference with access to the web. China has something like 30,000 full-time information inhibitors, internet cops whose only job is to keep people from getting full, reliable internet service. I won’t pretend to understand the technology, and I’m not really interested in discussing the politics. I just want to get my email. Some of my friends in the States have been marvelously helpful, recommending software workarounds, but I’d suspect that many a man has gone broke underestimating the cleverness of a determined and well funded bureaucracy. Just when I get one thing to work, it stops working. At least it’s the weekend now, and I don’t have to spend any more time stressing out about not being able to communicate with the office, but if I don’t have decent web access in Nanchang, where we’ll be getting our daughter, I’ll be livid. I’ve been looking forward to posting dozens of pictures of Xiu Dan each day, and clogging my blog with minutely detailed descriptions of her every move. Presumably, the hotel with have an IT guy or girl who can help, but I’m not terribly optimistic. I may have the only Macintosh laptop in China. Chinese people stare at it like it’s some sort of navigation device rescued from a downed alien spacecraft. Last night, as I was sitting at a bar furiously trying to reconfigure my proxies and ports and other things I don’t remotely understand, a british chap came up to me and said, “Nice piece of kit. I miss my ol’ Mac; I had to leave it back in Shanghai.” I asked hopefully, “Oh, a Mac guy. Perhaps you can help me connect to the internet?” “Nah,” he laughed, “Yer on your own. These blokes have it all so buggered up, I can’t make hide nor hair of it. G’luck, mate.” Sigh. At any rate, by the time you get this message, we’ll be in Nanchang, and only a couple of days away from getting Xiu Dan. Tonight, we’re in Guilin, a beautiful little city about 5 hours upriver from Yangshuo. Yangshuo was great, but if I had to choose to live in one of the two cities, Guilin would win, hands down. Guilin is big enough to feel like a real town. Yangshuo at its best feels like a wonderful resort, and at its worst like High Street after a big football game. Guilin is as beautiful as Yangshuo, but in a different way. In Yangshuo, the mountains were literally within reach. In Guilin, the same jade mountains are on the outskirts of town, just on this side of the horizon. Here, there actually seem to be businesses and stores that cater to real people, not just tourists. One could settle down here. We left Yangshuo this morning and rode for an hour and a half through driving rain that at times almost obscured the scenery, breathtaking mountains and bucolic scenes of farmers working by hand in rice paddies, vineyards and orchards. Upon arrival, Kori and the boys checked into the hotel, and I left with our guide to visit a local hospital. I have for some time been interested in Chinese medicine, but I’m not really into ingesting weird herbs – I saw that episode of the Simpsons where Homer ate the psychodelic chili, and I wasn’t in the mood for hallucinations or unpredictable intestinal activity. Nor was I up for trying acupuncture. After 16 hours of being tattooed, I think I’ve had enough elective needling for year or so. I wanted moxibustion (I’m sure you could look it up on Wikipedia and find great articles and groovy pictures. Of course, Wiki’s blocked in China, so I couldn’t help you even if I could get online…). Moxibustion, or ‘cupping’ is much scarier to look at than it is to experience. A doctor lies you down on a table, lights a small torch, heats the air within a series of small, glass cups and places the cups on your bare back. After about 15 mintues, the resulting suction inside the cups creates silver dollar-sized, purple hickies on your back. It feels weird, but doesn’t hurt. Supposedly, it readjusts your chi. I don’t know anything about that, but it did make my back feel better. The therapeutic effects diminish before the hickies, which will fade away in about five days. Pak, who is very empathetic, almost cried when he saw my back. He insisted upon putting lotion on the circles, despite my assurances that they don’t hurt a bit. He also didn’t want me to take my shirt off at the pool; he was afraid I’d scare the other people. Oh, wow. It’s 11pm, and I need to get up at 5am to make my plane to Nanchang. I should be off. I’ll continue the update later. Bye. Okay, it’s 7am, and we’re sitting in the departure lounge at the Guilin Airport. Getting up at 5:30am was challenging, but we’re all here, and poised to make our 7:30 boarding call. I’m not sure what to expect of Nanchang. It’s certainly not a tourist destination. A city of nearly 5 million, Nanchang is famous for well, um, I’m not quite sure. I’m hoping it’s famous for reliable internet access. That and a decent hotel pool will be just fine with me. The most important thing in Nanchang is our daughter. She’s probably not in Nanchang right now; her orphanage is in Zhangshu, a small town an hour or so outside of the city. But in two days, she’ll be in Nanchang, and our family will be complete again. So, I guess our trip is turning the corner. To this point, it’s been a family vacation. Starting Tuesday, it will be about something much more important. In one sense, I’ve been dreaming about this for months, and so I’m more than ready to be a family of five. In another sense, I think I’ve been in some sort of denial. The adoption process is so frustratingly long and unpredictable, it’s usually a good idea to steel oneself, to think of the ‘gotcha’ day as something in the distant future that will happen eventually, in its own good time. Now that the day is upon us, it seems a little unreal, a little numb, a little nauseating. I think that our emotions are saving themselves for Tuesday, at which point they’ll break free in a torrent of tears, laughter and ‘happy dances.’ Today, however, feels something like the night before one’s wedding – a diffuse, but heavy pressure dammed up safely behind a membrane that will stretch and grow increasingly thin over the next few hours. I think the kids feel it too; the threat of an emotional breakthrough – or maybe breakdown – hangs over them like heavy clouds undecided: do we rain, or do we disperse? Well, the terminal’s getting full, and I think we’ll be boarding soon. More later.