Sixth day in China [October 6]

[aadler]

Susan and I were both up by 6:00 AM; showered, dressed, snacked on a few things, and started off by 7:00. Knowing that his full-time teaching schedule would start back up tomorrow, Kevin had decided he’d spend the day showing us parts of Guangzhou, where he’d spent ten months teaching before he was able to make the move to Shenzhen.

On Saturday, he’d shown Susan and me which subway lines to take to manage basic travel from where we were. I had planned to get a refresher from him at a time when I could write it down, but hadn’t known then that the next several days would all be spent with the Yins picking us up and dropping us off by car. Fortunately, Susan’s navigational sense is near-supernatural, her brain simply works in such a way that all this stuff makes obvious sense and slots into a natural context in her understanding. We bought tickets, rode to the stop for Window to the World (the place we visited 8 Feb 2013), and then texted Kevin as to our whereabouts. While we waited, Susan had coffee (at a Subway, as a matter of fact), and when Kevin arrived, he took us to a McDonald’s, still down at the subway level, where he bought breakfast for the three of us.

We rode the subway to the end of the line, then Kevin bought train tickets to Guangzhou. I’d got decent enough sleep, but dozed through most of the train ride. At Guangzhou itself, Kevin found and paid for our lunch at KFC (and how had it gotten that late already? the ride wasn’t that long, must have lost time on other stuff). Having looked at the clouds before we left the apartment, I had brought the umbrella Mei-li had pulled out for us when she dropped us off Sunday; Kevin hadn’t thought of that, though, and he now he was emphatic about the rain being ‘dirty’ (he said something about it being possible to catch a skin infection from it, so maybe that hadn’t been about air pollution at all), so he looked around various stalls at the train station till he could find and buy two more for us to use.

(The way out of the train station was the first intersection in my experience of 1] everyone around us using umbrellas, and 2] crowd density that high. I learned that ‘jostling umbrellas’ is an actual thing.)

We took a taxi to a museum, but I’m not sure which one; the first couple of floors were devoted to history of artifacts (kilns, porcelain, some metalworking, some jade) from the Nanue kingdom. Kevin told us during this time that, while he was showing us around, Mei-li was getting Amber her next set of vaccinations. Yeah, that’s sure to make a baby happy! After the museum, we took the subway to a different part of the city to visit the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. By this time, however, Susan had been doing enough walking — quite a bit of it upstairs and downstairs — that her legs were beginning to give out, so she basically listened to history lessons from Kevin, and sat in an auditorium while he and I walked around looking at exhibits. As it happened, she wouldn’t have got much from those anyway; all of them were in Chinese script, and while Kevin can speak Mandarin well enough to work in the society, his reading is a lot more rudimentary.

The rain kept falling all day, and everywhere we went it was muggy and damp: not really hot at all, but we always felt sticky. We took a taxi to Shamian Island, which is a minor tourist spot and also where Kevin had intended we get dinner. One of his friends had said there was a place where excellent hamburgers are available; Kevin has been living in China for four years now, and every now and then he finds himself craving tastes from home. We found it, Lucy’s Bar and Café. Kevin got a double cheeseburger, I ordered what I usually do when it’s available (steak and shrimp), and Susan got something … well, obviously something forgettable because I don’t remember it. The café’s reputation was justified, but the prices were a bit higher than anticipated, and Kevin did some calculation before ordering to be sure that — even after I’d added ‘our’ money to his — there would be enough to get us all home.

We had a bit of trouble getting to a place where we could summon a taxi, but managed it eventually. Back at the train station, we stood in two different wrong lines, but Kevin eventually found the right one; the first train that would take us back to Shenzhen didn’t arrive for more than an hour, and I stood for quite a bit of that (though Susan had found or been given a seat more or less immediately). Once on the train, I again dozed now and then till we were back in Shenzhen.

Kevin had figured the costs properly, but — as it happened — with none left over. From the train station we got on the Shenzhen subway again; after repeated reassurances from his mother, and given the time, he agreed to get off at the Window of the World stop (from where he would catch another line back to the Yins’ place). Susan and I stayed on the original line until the Bao’an Stadium stop, then walked less than a block back to the apartment.

We both showered, remembering Kevin’s statement about the possible effects of the rain. Susan didn’t go to bed immediately, but I did so just after midnight.

Next day