Eighth day in China

[aadler]

We got up in the morning, got ready, and about 8:00 we gave Kevin a call. He showed up an hour later, and after some preliminaries we started off.

Today we took the subway to get us to a place called Splendid China, another sort of theme park. Like Window of the World, it has a lot of miniature replicas of famous landmarks and cities; the difference is that they’re all places in China. We started out with a short tour on a motorized trolley (more like a series of golf carts linked to make a train), seeing some of the replicas while the tour guide explained them to the passengers; unfortunately, all the explanations were in Chinese, and we didn’t stop or even pause anywhere, so the experience was severely diminished. When we dismounted and began exploring things ourselves, Susan quickly confirmed that the place wasn’t what she’d thought (and Kevin, too, had had the same idea), sort of a local version of colonial Williamsburg; no, this was largely replicas and a few people in historical/ethnic costumes to pose for photographs, and all kinds of stuff for sale as souvenirs. She didn’t care enough for that kind of thing to put out the effort that would have been required to continue exploring, so we called it off.

(I could have gone on longer, but we’re dealing with the ramifications of something else: when packing, she’d made a momentary misjudgment on her principal antidepressant medication, and only brought enough for ten days. Two days ago she cut the dose to try to stretch it out till we leave, and it’s making her a bit volatile.)

We returned to Kevin’s apartment. He himself hasn’t been feeling well today: upset stomach, general blaaah. He took us down to a fast-food place nearby (fast Chinese food), and after ordering for us he went to get some colas for us elsewhere nearby. He hadn’t returned by the time the order was ready; after Susan and I had waited around for ten minutes, we were uneasy enough that I returned to the apartment to get the cell phone he’d given me — plugged into the charger, it hadn’t repowered properly overnight — so I could try to contact him directly. By the time I made the call, however, he had reconnected with Susan and the two of them were already on their way back.

She and I had lunch; he lay down on his bed to nap for awhile and see if he could get to feeling better. Then, once he had sufficiently recovered, he went on his way again.

We hung around the apartment, watched a couple of movies on the hard drive of his laptop. In the early evening we went shopping at the nearby department store where we’d got supplies a couple of days ago, picked up some ice cream and some M&Ms. Then back to the apartment and watched another movie, till at last Susan was ready to sleep.

I stayed up working on this entry and catching up on Internet readings, then eventually to bed myself.

Next Day