Why are we going to China now?

Well, it's Saturday morning and we've just celebrated our Christmas. Santa managed to come a bit early for us and the kids are happy now with new DS games they can take on the trip.

I've adjusted the time zone on this post so it should show Saturday's date at the top. My previous post was written on Friday but because I hadn't adjusted the time zone it showed up as Thursday.

So, why are we going to China now? It's winter, the exchange rates aren't as good as they were earlier in the year and there's a global economic crisis on. All of this doesn't sound conducive to an extended overseas tour.

Well there are a number of reasons why we've chosen to go to China at this time. Firstly, at the time we adopted Jade in November, 2001 Paul and I discussed when we would return to China. We decided to return when Jade was old enough to begin to understand her background and to appreciate the experience of travelling in a different culture. We felt that age 8 was old enough for this. As a corollary to this, our son Jarrah would be 13 at that time--still young enough to want to go away with the family.

Secondly, in 2001 China had just won the rights to host the 2008 Olympic Games so we felt that once the games were over, any crowds would be gone yet the infrastructure which had been created for the games would all be in place.

Thirdly, we decided that we wanted to visit many places in China so we needed a large block of time to do this in. This time of year is good for this because Paul's work closes for mandatory holidays for 10 days or so around Christmas, the kids are on summer school holidays and I'm on a break from my job at a university and have finished my studies for the year. An additional consideration which we now have to take into account is Jade's gymnastics training schedule, which thankfully includes a short break at Christmas.

Fourthly, December and January are great times to travel because tourist numbers are down and this makes visiting popular attractions, well, more attractive to us. A few years ago we went to the US and visited Disneyland in January. This was my third or fourth time there so I was quite prepared for the long lines to get onto the rides. We were just amazed that there were no lines at all and we just walked on to every ride! Fantastic! We are hoping that Hong Kong Disneyland in December might be the same.

Finally, on this trip I really wanted to see the Harbin Ice Festival which is held each January. The Ice Festival features many large ice sculptures of famous buildings and structures like the Great Wall. At night the sculptures are lit from inside by coloured lights. The photos I've seen are absolutely spectacular. Have a look at this link http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/heilongjiang/harbin/ice_snow.htm. You can also google or youtube photos and videos of the ice festival. Many years ago when my sister lived in New Hampshire I saw some snow sculptures that the Dartmouth College students had made on their campus. Their tradition of making snow sculptures goes back to the early 20th century. Here is an article about this year's sculptures: http://thedartmouth.com/2008/02/08/news/sculptures/ For some reason my interest in ice and snow sculptures is one which has stayed with me for many years so when I heard about Harbin's festival I knew I wanted to go there one day.

We booked our flights in March, 9 months in advance, so that we could travel on the dates of our choice. Little were we to know then that first, the cost of fuel skyrocketed so that we were hit with fuel surcharges. Then the exchange rate plummeted and finally the global economic crisis surfaced. We were already committed to the trip so in one week at this time we'll be on our way!