Sam At Large

Almost done, almost home.  24 hours from now I’ll have been in the air for about 40 minutes of the 11 hour flight from Beijing to Vancouver. I’m looking forward to being home.

Today, I met up with a friend of mine from home for a good Starbucks chat in Sanlitun, a very trendy shopping area of Beijing. I’ve known Dan Unrau for about 15 years. The first time I met him was in Russia, of all places. I was with a church group in St. Petersburg and we were touring the Hermitage, probably one of the largest art galleries in the entire world.  My friend, Chris Janzen, was looking at a picture when he heard someone call his name. It was Dan. Dan and Chris had gone to high school together and were good friends. Such an insanely random place to meet up.

So here are Dan and me having a coffee in Beijing, chatting away about China and what we’re doing with our lives. Dan, his wife Kate and their kids live here while he works at the Canadian embassy. He’s my favourite Canadian diplomat. So good to catch up. He also sent me into the shopping centre with all the clothes and whatnot… I wished I had another 1,000 Kuai to spend.

As you can see above, I went and did the classic Beijing tourist stuff.  I went to Tienanmen Square which is absolutely enormous.  For about  two minutes, I considered going in to see Chairman Mao’s tomb but then I saw the line up and changed my mind… I’m not kidding when I say there were probably 40,000 people in line waiting to enter the mausoleum. In the Square is the Great Hall of the People, the national seat of government for China. Some houses of government look inviting or, at the very least, a bit alluring. The Great Hall is nothing like that. Probably one of the most forbidding buildings I’ve seen for a government.

I took a bunch of pictures of the Square but they look like it’s a cloudy day out. It was actually a gorgeous day, 30 degrees celcius and humid… that’s the smog that’s perpetually on the horizon coupled with the classic Chinese far-off horizon haze. I don’t think this picture does justice to just how many people were there.

The picture at the top of the post is a panorama of the first proper square inside the Forbidden City. Again, it is enormous and there must have been 100,000 people inside. I’m not kidding. It was a crush of people, completely a madhouse.  But, what an amazing place. So rich and old and beautiful. I couldn’t help but keep pinching myself that I was in Beijing, inside the Forbidden City, walking around something that is something in the range of 600-700 years old!!!

Quite the city, Beijing. I have to come back and spend more time here next year.

I’ve just arrived in Beijing.  It is the sixth city in China that I’ve visited in the last two days.  I have been on planes, I’ve been on trains and I’ve been in many automobiles in these last two days.  I don’t think I’ve ever done this much hopping around before.

Since about noon on Tuesday, my boss, Dave Gotts, and I left Hengyang by high speed train back to Changsha.  We met up with two of our China staff, Heng Khee Tan and Bruce Regier (who, incidently, comes from Langley), and we flew to Zhengzhou (roughly pronounced, Jang Joe, in case you were wondering), the capital of Henan province.  Henan province is so populous, if you took it out of China and made it its own country, it would be the 12th largest country after Mexico!  We picked up two more ICC staffers and then met up with these government people who wined and dined us with a very fancy meal as we were there to sign a contract to partly run a facility in Sanmenxia.

We then hopped another high speed train that evening to Sanmenxia.  The next day we visited our new facility, signed the contract with the provincial government (which was like sitting at the UN), got treated to two more VERY fancy meals, then a tour of an ancient city and then we hopped another high speed train to Xi’an.  Then this morning, I went out to see the Terra Cotta Warriors, caught a flight in the late afternoon and then made it to Beijing.

I’m exhausted.  Soon, I head to bed. I wish I had the energy to edit some photos to put in this post (lame).  Friday, I’ll do a bit of touring around and then meeting up with an old friend, Dan Unrau, who works at the Canadian embassy.  Saturday, I’m on my way home.

I’ve spent just about two days in Hengyang, which is about 40 minutes due south of Changsha by high-speed train. I have a few hours in the morning before I go back to Changsha and catch a flight north to get to Sanmenxia. We’re due to sign an official agreement to operate another facility there.

I suppose I should give some context to why I’m in China in the first place, if you don’t already know.  Almost exactly three months ago, I joined a non-profit organization called International China Concern.  Our primary function is to work with children in China who are disabled and have been abandoned by their families.  Many of these kids are born to poor families who have not suddenly gotten rich as the Chinese economy booms.  These are families that make up the vast majority of the population of 1.5 billion (officially) — lower class people who live hand-to-mouth and can’t afford to care for a disabled child.  Many feel the only alternative is to get rid of the baby, consigning it (not so much by commission as by omission) to state care.  And let me tell you, Chinese state care for abandoned kids with major disabilities is absolutely awful. Click here to read more »

Absolutely mind-blowing how large this station is. Much like the Beijing airport, they build everything huge here.

5 months old. Holes in her heart. Light as a feather.