October 16, 2005

October 16, 2005

This morning we head to the airport for our very long flight back to Chicago via San Francisco. Our trip to China was great. Aimee was pleasantly surprised about the whole trip. We loved the size of our tour group, the food was excellent and I liked that we attended a cultural entertainment show in almost every city.

Her only disappointment was the Chinese style of public toilet. The Chinese like to squat and have yet to adopt western-style toilets outside of the hotels. For the Chinese a nice toilet is one where the porcelain sits on the floor and is only a few inches high.

She is also intrigued by the Chinese care of babies. They don’t seem to use diapers. The pants on babies are open along the back exposing their rears. When necessary all the Chinese need to do is dangle the kids over a grassy area.

Surprisingly, I also learned to recognize quite a few of the simpler Chinese characters. The one for mountain (山) is easy to spot. I learned the one for water (水) because it was written on the bottles in our rooms. One guide helped us understand the character system better when she explained that when mountain and water are put together, 山 水, the meaning is “landscape”. Makes perfect sense!