The first day was wonderfully memorable. We stayed in Guangzhou, where I went to pick Mom up from the airport. We were well-fed by the free buffet breakfast the hotel offered, which was mostly composed of Chinese food (noodles, buns, pig's blood, potstickers...), but also included some Western treats, such as the cereal pictured below.
When I saw four varieties of cereal on the breakfast bar, I was giddy. All but the lower left-hand cereal are common in China as well as the US. However, I got a kick out of the label for the fourth one:
Mmmmmmmm. All Brain....
During our first venture to the great wide wonders of Guangzhou, Mom was pickpocketed. One could consider it a relief. The damage was done the first day, so she didn't have to worry about it thereafter. She had no wallet or cash to protect. My friend's phone was abducted from her coat pocket along with everything else -- which Mom managed to laugh at that day when she remembered that the microphone on the cell was broken and that I had saved my friend's SIM card and put in an old one of mine before the theft (so no phone numbers were lost, just a broken phone, quickly canceled credit cards, and, yes, cash). And what is a few hundred dollars of cash worth when, in Zhuhai, happiness comes from long strolls along the beach, cycling down Lovers' Lane, and eating street food? If they had stolen her camera, maybe the story wouldn't have been told quite so light heartedly...
Mom loved the gardens that we saw everywhere: throughout campus, on rooftops, along highways -- simply put, anywhere there was space and light.
She was even happier to find tons of greens on sale on the street. (Actually, she was not so thrilled with the prospect of buying greens off of mats laid by the side of busy by-ways at first, but she warmed up to it after tasting what I could do with them in a wok.) We would buy so many vegetables that, as we walked home or rode our bikes through town after buying several kilos of goods, villagers would ask one another, "Why are the foreigners buying so many vegetables? What did they buy? What will they do with them?" It is important to note that plenty of Chinese people walk through town with as many bags full of vegetables as we, but I guess many of the foreigners either go to restaurants for their meals and/or buy relatively little produce from the open air market.
Sometimes Mom & I spent our time exploring Tangjia. We had the best time when we went with friends, one of whom was a Tourism Management prof and ideal native English-speaking guide, to visit a park and the home of Tangjia's namesake. The whole day was not only entertaining, but we returned home having successfully captured several Kodak moments. I only wish I had spent more time with our neighboring tourism prof before he moved out, because he and his wife were wonderful, knowledge-rich people who were always excited to share their vivid experiences.
Before Serge and Lisa welcomed their first baby boy into the world (ultimatley dubbed Michael Aquila), ...
(This is Lisa sitting, very pregnant, below an observatory.)
Lisa tried to teach me & Mamma how to make jiaozi, but... well...
Lisa's plates had uniform rows of efficiently and artfully folded jiaozi. Mine, as we can see above, did not. I did achieve something no one else did. I crafted a dragon and a mouse, and I made them kiss.
Chase the Matchmaker
(This is not my forte, as evidenced by the fact that the mouse attached itself to one of my proteiform jiaozi later in the evening, and the dragon died in silent agony soon thereafter.)
Mom was often impressed by the fact that, while Zhuhai and Tangjia had many roaming canines, none seemed aggressive and their presence was not much of a nuisance.
I'll go ahead and publish this post and continue summarizing our adventures in another.
