Chen Family Museum

Hi Folks,

We are posting in two parts again today.

Last night Wim bought a stroller for us to use here and me to use during the trip home. We took Dong Dong Josie out for a stroll to get her use to it. She is a little tentative about trying new things, but she finally settled in as long as she could hold my finger.

We are on the Pearl River and there is a park on the river and people hang out here doing Tai Chi, ball room dancing, and just generally hang out and enjoy the sights.

Mommy and Josie on her first walk with a stroller. She needed to hold Mommy's hand on the first go 'round but now she is able to tolerate it without the hand holding.

This is the deadpan expression reserved especially for Daddy. Believe it or not, this is progress because at least she looks at me.

Josie's making her move upward to her Mommy. A flurry of "Mommy's" came out her mouth Friday which is a change from "aaaaayeeee". I am sure we have not heard the last of 'aaaayeee'.

Josie's smile is just a killer. You think the photo is cute - try listening to her laugh at the same time.

Josie walking around a circular table in the Swan Room, which we are trying to encourage. We already notice she is less wobbly. Initially she wouldn't even crawl in pursuit when Reena walked away, just sit and cry , some kind of learned helplessness. But now she does sometimes and gets a big dos of Mommy love to reward her effort.


She likes to take of her shoes. We think she is realizing that they are HER shoes.

This is a women doing Tai Chi at night. This is very common and you see people doing it all times of the day, mostly folks over 50. It is one aspect of Chinese life that I will not hesitate to say is better than American life.




This is a photo of a tour boat on the Pearl River with a lit up hotel in the background. The nights are really perfect. It smells nice too, probably the flowers .

Here is the scoop from Wim . . .

March 27, 2008

We went to the Chen family temple today and saw some traditional Cantonese architecture. It is a museum now but it used to be a site for ancestral worship. Many Cantonese still practice ancestral worship. In Canton the old style architecture is similar to the north in layout but the roofs are much more ornate and colorful with wood carvings of figures from Buddhist folk tales. 30-40% of Cantonese are now Buddhist. Below are some pictures:

Driving through Guangzhou with the huge proliferation of businesses it is hard to believe that until 1980 there were no businesses at all and everybody dressed exactly the same. It just seems so unChinese, especially here in the south of China.

Afterward we went to a government store where the quality of the products are guaranteed and therefore more expensive than on the street. We bought Josie a jade bracelet. The tradition in China is for the mother to wear the bracelet until the daughter gets married.

We finished our day at a Cantonese restaurant and enjoyed another great meal.
Now we are back at the hotel room and I was able to play with Josie in a way that I have not so far. Reena intentionally makes it so hard for her to get far from me that I think she gets tired of contorting her baby self to avoid me. Plus I have the power of the tickle so I was able to get some big belly laughs. Her big cheeks make her smile seem huge which increases the jolly factor to the 10th degree. Now that I have some contact with her my suffering is worse because I am still not able to give her a hug and squeeze without her crying. So when I am really feeling sorry for myself I mutter to myself something like this: "Dong dong Josie wants her dong dong daddy to take a dong dong dive in the Pearl River and dong dong disappear so she can be with her dong dong mommy and they can live dong dong happily ever after." It isn’t appropriate for me to suck my thumb, right? So my dong dong muttering carries me through.

From Reena: This is the first time Wim got to hold Dong Dong Josie without her crying- we were at the Cantonese Restaraunt and she is sleeping. As soon as she woke up, she cried.

She says words that we are sure are baby Mandarin or Cantonese, lots of vowels with ‘ng’ at the end and no consonants. We wish we had a tape recorder and we are going to try and get one.
The other families are adjusting to their new daughters and we really like our group. Most of them are from the south. Actually, Reena is originally from the south so I am the only person from north of the mason dixie line. They are a friendly bunch and all as enthralled and challenged as we are.

I am making an effort to be adventurous with the food and so far I have had ostrich, goose, eel, and a fruit drink with a crushed up tree frog in it. It just seemed like chewy pulp. The eel was good but hard to eat because of the bone in the middle.

Tomorrow we are going to walk around a local market that is nearby but not on Shamian Island-- it is where the local people shop.

Reena and Wim