Here are Jade's reflections on the trip. She's done them up so artistically and beautifully that I had to upload the original documents as she had prepared them. I haven't changed a thing about them. For those of you a bit visually challenged I've put the text of each page very unartistically below it.

Reflections on my China Trip


What I liked
I liked Disneyland, Harbin Ice Festival, chair skating, ice skating, Zoo, Night Safari, My gymnastics, Terracotta Warriors, Great Wall, Summer Palace, My Birthday, Pandas, Tigers and getting my new toys!!!

2 Things I disliked about China
I didn’t like the spitting and how the toilets didn’t have toilet paper.

2 Things I liked about China
I liked the airports and Scenery.

What I am going to remember
I am going to remember the Ice Festival, the Pandas, the Tigers, Disneyland, Ice Skating and the Zoo.






What I learnt
I learnt that lots of people spit, Chinese and beds are hard.

Reflections on the trip

Since we returned from our trip I’ve been reflecting back on it and writing in my head—sometimes during the night—some of my reflections on the trip. I’ve also asked Jarrah, Jade and Paul to write some of their reflections on the trip. To help them to do this I gave them a series of questions to answer so I’d like to first give my impressions of the trip.

What did you like/enjoy about the trip?

I really liked just being in China after so many years of thinking about going, wanting to go and learning Chinese partly in preparation to go. I loved speaking Chinese and surprised myself that I didn’t worry at all about the things that hold me back from speaking in class such as not being sure of a word or how to pronounce a word. I just went ahead and expressed myself as best I could in China and for the most part I was able to make myself understood.

I enjoyed doing winter sports Chinese style—chair ice skating, bike ice skating and normal ice skating.

I enjoyed taking the trains and mixing with people in that environment. Our first train ride from Chengdu to Xian was probably the best because we were on the train overnight then in the morning as well so we got to look out the window and see rural China pass by.

As far as locations went I liked everywhere we went. Hong Kong was great because it was familiar to me from previous trips and we had a fabulous hotel overlooking Victoria Harbour. The kids were really looking forward to Hong Kong Disneyland and that didn’t disappoint.

I enjoyed our time in Nanning especially seeing the places we went during our adoption trip through fresh eyes.

Chengdu and the panda reserve were definitely a highlight. Who could resist those gorgeous pandas especially the babies?? Tianfu Square with its musical fountains was an unexpected highlight as well.

Xian was so modern it was a huge surprise. It could have been a city anywhere. The Terracotta Warriors were also a highlight as was riding our hired bikes around the city walls.

Beijing’s sights were of course highlights—the Great Wall, Summer Palace and Forbidden City. We also enjoyed visiting our friend Henry Zhang and seeing a small slice of local life by being taken out to lunch on the university campus where his parents live.

Harbin was a huge highlight with the Ice and Snow Festival. Wow I never expected that it was going to be as good as it was. Spectacular! We also loved meeting our friends John and Emma, former Monash students, who live there.

Shanghai’s Maglev train was also a highlight and probably made more so by the silly antics of the British Airways flight staff that we first rode it with.

Singapore was also fantastic because we were ready at that stage for warmth and a swimming pool.

What didn’t you like/enjoy about the trip?

That’s easy. I didn’t like the Chinese custom of spitting out phlegm everywhere. This was especially prevalent in Beijing. People spat in the streets, on footpaths and even on beautiful granite floors in subway stations and other public places. They made no attempt to disguise what they were doing or to ensure that they spat in the gutter or at the base of a tree so that other people wouldn’t walk in it. I know that this custom was also prevalent in the West probably about 70 or so years ago so I think it is just a matter of time and education before people in China come to see it as the unsanitary practice it is.

I also didn’t like the Beijing taxi drivers refusal to take us anywhere. We didn’t take taxis that much but when we did we were sent on a wild goose chase trying to find a driver who would take us. I don’t understand why they don’t want to do their jobs!

I didn’t like the train booking system—or lack of it—which made getting our pre-booked sleeper tickets to Harbin near impossible. They really have to come up with a better system for booking train tickets especially for foreign tourists on an itinerary who need to get from one city to another.

I didn’t like the people at the train station on arrival who were so aggressive in pushing either their baggage trolley service or gypsy cab service or selling things like maps. When people push you so hard to the point that they swear at you when you don’t accept their service then that is a minus for travelling in that country. These people first of all need to be less aggressive and more polite. They need to learn English if they want to appeal to foreign tourists and they need to accept that we don’t all want help.

What will you remember most about the trip?

Oh there are so many memories I will keep of the trip. One that I haven’t mentioned is how well Jade coped with all of the attention on her and with her visits to the orphanages and foster family. She took everything in her stride and wasn’t fazed by anything. She also kept exclaiming to me how people kept speaking to her in Chinese! I hope this spurs her on to working harder on her studies in the future!

What do you think about China now compared with seven years ago?

China has changed a lot in seven years. It is much more modern. There are fewer ‘old-time’ things such as pedicabs which we saw last time. There are more cars, more high rise buildings. The air is also much cleaner. I was amazed at the amount of infrastructure building that is going on. Many cities are building or expanding their subway systems. There just seems to be no limit to what or where China is building and modernising even to the extent of putting in an experimental system as the Maglev in Shanghai. What a contrast to many Western countries where aging infrastructure is failing, sometimes dramatically as with the bridge collapse in the US. Why are we not investing in the infrastructure we need? The one area where I was surprised that there hadn’t been more changes was in Shanghai. The buildings just one block away from Nanjing Rd are decrepit and boarded up and the view from the Oriental Pearl Tower still shows much of the surrounding area’s construction to be either halted or at the foundation stage. I remember it was much the same last time and don’t understand why more of the buildings there haven’t been finished.

What did you learn from the trip?

Other than the experience of being in China I learned many new Chinese words and expressions. I think I also gained the confidence to plan a much more independent trip next time.

Was there anything you didn’t see/do that you would like to see/do next time?

We did and saw a LOT of China this trip. No doubt about that. I would like to go to Tibet and possibly Yunnan next time and I’d also like to see the Yellow Mountains and water towns near Shanghai. But I feel quite happy to wait a few years for any future trips.

Return to Australia

We got back to Australia on Wednesday 28th January after an overnight flight from Singapore. Our last day in Singapore was a lazy one. We decided to hang around in our hotel room and chill out rather than go out to see anything. Even Paul, who usually has to be on the go constantly, agreed to this. I've been to Singapore a number of times now and didn't really feel the need to take a tour of the city and the kids are just happy going to the pool, watching TV and playing on the computer and DS. The cable TV we had in our rooms was outstanding in its selection. This was the first time I've watched Discovery channel and there were any number of fascinating programs--one about a guy who explores various dirty jobs like scraping barnacles off of floating buoys, another featuring a British adventurer who gets dropped into wildernesses and demonstrates survival techniques and another one about a dog-sled race in Alaska. Maybe after a while these programs get repetitious but to me they were so new and fresh that I kept watching. I know it probably sounds bad going on an overseas trip and then staying in the hotel room and watching TV but I think we were really all 'toured out'. Singapore was our 8th city on the trip and it gets harder to keep pushing yourself to go out and explore a new place each time. Paul was coughing a lot so I think that is why he agreed to a rest day.

We had a late check-out from the hotel at 6 and had a van booked to take us to the airport for our 11:30 flight. We didn't have anything else to do other than go to the airport and hang around for 4 or 5 hours. The van we had was very new and nice and the driver immediately popped a screen down from the ceiling and put on a Mr. Bean video for us to watch. As he drove he pointed out the Singapore Flyer observation wheel and asked us if we'd been on it. We were surprised to find out that it had started operating that morning. If only we'd known we would definitely have gone on it because it's the largest observation wheel in the world. I went on the London Eye in 2004 on my way to Ireland but I'm the only one in the family who has ever been on an observation wheel. Oh, well. We weren't to know.

At the airport we were fortunately able to check in early and we then went to get something to eat. We had about $S30 or so to get rid of. It gets hard to get rid of all the coins. There was a convenience store at the airport which had some lollies for less than $S1 so we were left with only 5 cents in the end. We didn't manage to get rid of all of our Chinese Yuan either when we left China and found even when we went to convert our notes in Singapore that they wouldn't take the 1Y note. The smallest note they would convert was 10Y. So we have about 4.5Y left over from China. We also have quite a few Hong Kong coins too.

Changi Airport was well air conditioned and I found I had to put a fleece jumper on to stay warm. It was then that I discovered that Jade didn't have anything to put on over her t-shirt. All of her clothes had been packed in her suitcase. She was quite cold and went to sleep all curled up on a seat in the airport. Paul gave her his winter coat but she didn't want to use it because it was so big.

Our gate didn't open until 10: 30 and the security clearance procedure took place at the gate. By then I was so over the emptying out the water bottle thing that I went through with a full water bottle which was then intercepted after my bag went through the scanner. There was nowhere to empty the water out so I told them to throw out the bottle. I refused to feel guilty about carrying water with me when the security person pointed out that I had a water bottle on my backpack. This whole water thing is such a pain when you're travelling constantly and not knowing when you have to be ready to empty the bottle and when it's OK to keep it filled.

Our flight home was an uneventful one and when we landed we were just about the only incoming international flight so our passage through customs was fairly quick. We declared our food (we had teabags, breakfast cereal from Harbin and a few other things) without saying exactly what it was but after our bags went through the scanner nobody even asked to see what we had. We then caught a van taxi home.

In my next post I'm going to discuss some of my impressions of the trip so stay tuned!