The City of Nanchang

Dad, you would like this city because many of its monuments and bridges are named "August 1st". August 1, 1932 was the day the Red Army began its long march to Peking, now called Beijing, to try to defeat the Kumongtong, which was the leading party at the time. The Kumongtong-not sure if I spelled it correctly-was fighting the Japanese who were invading the north of China at the time. Cindy our guide told me the Japanese occupation was one of the darkest moments in Modern Chinese History and many Chinese people are still VERY angry at the Japanese for the occupation. She said to this day the Japanese have never apologized to the Chinese for the murder of 300,000 people and the current Japanese history books do not teach their children the correct history about that period. Cindy will not buy Japanese products and she and her husband are both still very angry at the Japanese. You could hear it in her voice. I thought that was some interesting history. A great book to read is called Wild Swans and it is a biography that tells about 3 generations of women living in China beginning in the 1920 up until the Cultural Revolution in the 70's.

Today we went to The Tang Pavilion which was built during the Tang Dynasty in 620 AD. It is 1400 years old! Imagine that! It has been renovated 29 times. We saw a Tang style dancing and music show at the top of the tower. Jack really enjoyed it and Lily liked the music. We looked around the Pavilion and then ate lunch at a restaurant near by-Chinese of course. It was delicious and quite spicy even for me! The spice in China Chinese food hits you after a few minutes. Above are some of the items we ate. The lotus roots and seeds were delicious. Not joking. We also had sticky sweet rice for dessert and it was really tasty. Sort of like rice pudding, but Chinese style. Jack ate a lot of the food and really liked it. We were surprised.

Now for little Lily Lu. This baby is so adorable. She is really starting to trust us and is just so sweet, calm and really smart. I can say that can't I? We had her checked out yesterday by a doctor who our group hired to come to the hotel to look all the babies. it was 80 yuen for the check up which is about 10 dollars. Lily does not have an ear infection. He said her ears were clear, but very dirty. He also said her chest sounded good and the fever could have been from teething or possibly some of the stress she has had to endure. He did mention that she had large ears which means she will have a long life. Her fever has not returned in a day or so and she does rub her ears before she goes to sleep so I think that is just something she does when tired. She is laughing so much more and is starting to like Tim. She let him hold her for about 20 minutes this morning without crying while I took a shower. She also let him carry her in the front pack for a while. Day by day all the babies are getting more comfortable with their new families. I really think they took good care of these babies. The families in our group are so nice and everyone is really helping each other out.

Tonight we have to do some paperwork for Guangzhou which is the next city we go to. In Guangzhou we do the American portion of the adoption.

Tomorrow we will go to the countryside to see how they live!