Shenyang

We took a three and a half hour drive to the north part of the Liaoning Province, this is the province where we live. Shenyang is the capital of the province and has about 6 million people. The drive was beautiful, but it was a little hard to relax because of the crazy Chinese drivers. Often they would swerve in and out of lanes, drive WAY TOO fast and zoom by us, or lay on the horn to get cars out of their way. This is a common practice in China. Coming from Portland, Oregon, where people rarely honk their horns, I still can't get use to all of this noise! Our driver is very cautious and only honks (very quietly, a polite honk) to let other drivers know he is there. The drivers here seem to talk to each other through their honking. They also have some strange ways of yielding to one another in busy traffic. They inch their way out onto busy intersections and just weasel their way on to a three or four lane road. It is so strange! I am so glad we are not going to be driving while we live here. I have been meaning to do a whole blog entry on transportation in China, but haven't gotten around to it....

Anyway, our road trip to Shenyang was very nice. We visited the Imperial Palace which was built while Shenyang was the capital of the Manchurian empire in the 17th century. Interesting fact: in that same century, the Manchus overran China, making Beijing their capital, relegating Shenyang to a secondary position.

We visited Beiling park which was beautiful and Nicole flew a kite while Trejan and I played tag. It was nice to run around on something besides concrete, which is all we have in our neighborhood right now.

The kids enjoyed Shenyang, but had a couple of complaints.....the hotel pool was too cold and people took too many pictures of them. In one instance I eventually had to rescue them. Who knows how many people would have gathered if I had just waited around. As we were fleeing the scene a lady grabbed Nicole's arm to get another photo, I think with her daughter. I have learned how to say "bu yao" which means "don't want" and finally she let go. The Chinese in the northeast part of China have not been around many foreigners, so they are very curious about the kids' hair and eyes. Damon had a guy taking photos of him for about five minutes, Damon turned and looked straight at the guy and then took his picture. This didn't phase him as he continued on with the staring and more photos.....hard for us to get use to. This photo is an example, a crowd of about 20 gathered while Trejan and Nicole posed with a couple of cute Chinese kids.