aadler | Seventh day in China

Susan woke earlier, but I slept in till close to 7:30. Then up, showered and shaved. I called Kevin to see if everyone else was up and just letting us rest, but he said no, they were still asleep.

Eventually everyone was up and ready to move. We went downstairs to have breakfast, a standard quick hotel breakfast — and now that is the ‘worst’ non-household meal we’ve had so far, meaning in the States it would have been a pleasant and interesting change of pace — then loaded up and started back to Shenzhen.

I slept most of the way, but when I woke up I was deeply surprised: we’d begun the trip something like 9:45, and were in the city by noon, meaning we spent almost three times as long as necessary reaching the city of the hot springs. (Didn’t get the name.) Mei-li’s family took us directly to lunch, which happened to be the same place her mother had taken us to eat on our first arrival in Shenzhen. Fine and satisfying food, as usual, then back to the family apartment.

We could have done pretty much anything in the afternoon, but Mei-li’s family was worried that Susan and I were overtired from traveling, and offered us the opportunity to simply hang around in their apartment and rest for the remainder of the day. Mei-li went to visit the doctor, try and find out what she’s been sick with and get some treatment for it; her father put on some Cinemax movies for us to watch.

(The movies were a bit of frustration. Maybe it was the sound system on their television, or maybe it was something about Cinemax as it works in China, but we couldn’t understand what anyone was saying. Understand: these were American movies, the actors were speaking English, with Chinese subtitles for the Chinese audiences; but the voices were so low, we couldn’t make out more than maybe 40% of the dialogue. And, when we tried to turn up the sound, that made other sounds obtrusively loud, but we still couldn’t catch all the dialogue. The three movies were “Shadow Hunter” [something with Scott Glenn and Benjamin Bratt], “the American” [I suspect the plot would have been murky and muddled even if we had been able to understand everything], and a Wesley Snipes vehicle called “the Detonator” [which might have actually been somewhat entertaining if we’s been able to follow it.] It was mystifying as well as frustrating, and I honestly can’t figure it out. We just plain couldn’t hear.)

Mei-li came back from the doctor: he’d told her she had a cold. (Which occasioned some laughter on our parts; Kevin had given us some stories about how, no matter what symptoms you described to a Chinese doctor, he’d tell you that it was a cold.) Her family put out dinner for us, and it was honestly better than the holiday feast they’d done for us a couple of days ago. (Maybe because it was less ambitious? It might be that their special dishes don’t agree with us — or with me, I didn’t ask Susan’s opinion — better than their everyday fare.)

We did a bit more television after dinner, but then we were offered the option of returning to Kevin’s apartment for the rest of the evening, and we accepted. Back there by 8:30PM, and settled in to end out the day.

Next Day