China 2/12/2018 - 2/21/2018

Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - Return to Guiyang, Farewell Dinner

We ate breakfast as soon as the dining room opened at 7 a.m. Craig was happy to fill his belly with spicy noodles prior to our long car drive. The plan was to leave at 7:30, and we checked out of the hotel and met the group in the parking lot.

The hotel has two caged birds that they put outside each morning. One of the birds repeated "Nihao" after one of the guys said it to him. Later little Dou Zai started to shriek back and forth with the birds. It was very cute.

Our caravan left closer to 8 a.m. than 7:30, as one of our group members was late to wake up after drinking a bit too much last night.

Ziting was in fine form, cheerful as ever. She likes practicing English phrases, especially "Thank you" and "You're welcome," which she pronounces as "Shank you" and "Ya weh ka!"

After four hours on the road, at noon, we pulled off the highway to get lunch in small city. Most restaurants were still closed here in observance of the festival, but we found a Muslim-owned restaurant which was open. For the sake of expediency, we had a hot pot rather than individual dishes.

The friendly proprietors led us upstairs to two rooms. One room ordered a spicy hot pot, the other not spicy. We were among 14 people in the spicy room. Wang Jun kept asking if we minded spiciness...was he forgetting with whom he was dealing?

Rather than a hot plate in the center of the table as we have seen in prior restaurants and homes, there was a full on gas burner embedded in the table. The spicy concoction bubbled away as beef, tofu, tripe, potatoes, mushrooms, and vegetables were added in to cook. And we each got an extra bowl of spicies for dipping. Yummy!

A young woman in a headscarf who delivered our food kept stealing furtive glances at us. Craig tried to catch her eye to say Nihao, but she was too shy to meet our gaze.

Some other diners came in to get photos of us eating all of the spicy food. Members of our group were impressed that Craig was devouring every crumb of the chili powder for dipping.

After we were done eating, little Dou Zai put away all of the plastic stool seats, and Ziting stacked them up.

An hour after we stopped, we were back on the road again. This afternoon Ziting was once again practicing English. Craig drew my attention to something, and I replied, "Oh yeah." Ziting, always listening, picked right up on it and started to chant "Thank you. Oh yeah! Thank you. Oh yeah!" while rocking back and forth in the back seat.

As we drove through Luoping, we once again got a view of the gorgeous canola fields. It was much more interesting than the highway that we had been on for the rest of the day, so we all enjoyed the view and I snapped some drive-by photos.

We had another #LostInTranslation moment: after traveling in a caravan for 5 days with cars numbered 1-7, only today did we notice that there are only 6 vehicles. In Chinese culture, the number 4 is unlucky, so there is no car 4 (much the same way western cultures avoid #13). This explained why we thought one car was missing on the way to Yuanyang. It also goes to prove that we had never seen all of the cars parked together (with all of the difficulties in crowded parking lots) or we would have noticed this long before now!

As we passed into Guizhou province and drew closer to Huangguoshu Waterfall National Park, we started to hit gridlock. Craig and I had expected this, but the others seemed surprised. The Chinese middle class is just beginning to travel during these holidays, and every year it gets a little worse. The toll policy doesn't help: tolls are free for vehicles which seat fewer than seven passengers. Larger vehicles still have to pay. This encourages people to travel in their personal small vehicles, and contributes to a growing traffic problem.

At one point, it was an accident that had brought the highway to a standstill. We took a slight detour and regained the highway past the site of the accident. At first it seemed like smooth sailing, and we were traveling at a normal speed. But soon we hit more gridlock that was much more widespread.

Mr. Zhou was actually at Huangguoshu Waterfall, waiting in the van for his Chinese tourists to finish their day. We sent him photos of us stuck in traffic on WeChat. Xiao Yi checked the traffic report on her phone, and was mortified by what she saw.

Traffic report on Xiao Yi's phone

Ziting took it all in stride, taking selfies with my phone and cracking herself up. Her little giggle was enough to cheer us all up, even knowing that we were at a standstill with hundreds of kilometers left to go.

Ziting selfie in the car

The sun began to set, and cast a luminous glow over the karst formations in our rearview mirror. We eventually needed to make a pit stop at the next available rest area. So did everyone else in the traffic jam, and we could barely pull off the offramp.

Xiao Yi, Ziting, and I queued up in the ladies room. When it was our turn, a young woman tried to cut in front of me. Xiao Yi practically bodychecked her, blocking the door with Ziting and insisting that I go inside the stall. I was impressed (and grateful).

When I got out of the stall, Ziting was waiting for Xiao Yi. I thought I would escape the mob and go out to the sink area to wash my hands, but Ziting was worried about me. "Gan Ma! Gan Ma!" she called, motioning for me to come over. She is so cute! It made a lot of the other women in the rest room look at us with interest.

Meanwhile, the men's room was upstairs, for some reason. Craig took the stairs slowly, as his legs were a bit locked up after sitting in the car for so many hours. Add to that the fact that the tile floor of the men's room was soaking wet and slippery and it was a precarious stop for him!

We met up with Craig and Wang Jun and got back into the car. It was already quite late, and we were all exhausted. We were still supposed to go out to dinner when we reached Guiyang, followed by karaoke. Then tomorrow morning we would be flying home.

By this time karaoke was pretty much out of the question. It would be way too late. My cold was getting worse and I had almost completely lost my voice. But now we were even starting to think that once we finally got back to Guiyang, we should just go straight to the hotel and try to get some sleep, skipping dinner entirely. Craig was thinking we would be lucky if we made to it Guiyang by midnight.

Wang Jun was starting to think the same way, and before we left the rest area, he went into the convenience store and bought snacks (potato chips, chocolate chip cookies, and strawberry jelly rolls) which he distributed to each car in the caravan. We hungrily devoured the snacks as we got back on the road.

Ziting was playing music on Xiao Yi's phone. Apparently she really likes Adele. It was hysterical, because at the beginning of the song "Hello," Adele said "Hello?" and Ziting didn't miss a beat in answering her: "Hello!" This kid is so cute!

We eventually were able to exit and get onto an alternate highway. Thankfully, this one was not backed up, and we were able to proceed the rest of the way to Guiyang at a normal speed.

We arrived at the restaurant at 10:30 p.m., four hours late for our dinner reservation. We had been on the road for 14 hours. We don't know how Wang Jun managed to drive for that long, and we were very grateful for his efforts (although of course he wouldn't allow us to thank him).

The restaurant was beautifully appointed, but it was a ghost town. There were no other diners. We were led upstairs to two private rooms. It turned out that the restaurant had technically closed two hours beforehand. Some of our caravan had taken an alternate route, and had arrived just as they were closing. Liang Bo is friends with the manager of the restaurant, and convinced them to stay open for us. He ordered all of the dishes, and they were there waiting for us on the tables when we arrived.

Although we were absolutely exhausted, we soon got our second wind in the company of the entire group. Everyone was a bit punchy after being cooped up in a car all day, and soon everyone was laughing and talking loudly, and the alcohol started to flow.

We drank Moutai in tiny little wine glass shaped shot glasses which come packaged with the liquor. We ate our very first Beijing (Peking) duck. It was nicely deboned and sliced. Wang Jun taught us how to eat it. You dip the duck into sugar, soy sauce, and mustard, add juliened cucumber and spring onions, and wrap it in a thin rice pancake. It was absolutely delicious! Now we know what all the fuss is about!

There was plenty of other food as well. We all toasted one another and promised to get together for another road trip in the future...possibly over the National Day holidays in October of 2020. (But Wang Jun said that we would stick to their home province of Guizhou, so that there is less driving involved and it will be more hospitable than Yuanyang!) Everyone laughed at this proclamation, and pride in their province was displayed when they all agreed that Guizhou is better than Yunnan.

The table burst into song, singing in Chinese about waiting for us to return to Guizhou when the sky is so blue; the waiting is so painful and so beautiful.

We were so touched. We felt so welcomed into this "cozy family." It had been a joy traveling with all of them. Even though everyone had been a bit weary at times from the long drives and some of the frustrations in Yuanyang, we all kept a positive attitude and enjoyed every minute of the adventure. We were grateful for the long hours in the car, because it really allowed us a chance to bond with Ziting and observe her always-sunny disposition and ability to amuse herself. All in all, we had driven 1840 km (1143 miles)! She had only cried once on the entire trip, when she fell down in a restaurant and hurt herself. She never initiated a car stop for bathrooms or food. She entertained herself and was always cheerful. At the end of the trip, we were still very happy with our choice of Joy as her "English name." It truly embodies her personality. We have never met a toddler like her!

There were more toasts, and everyone wanted to get photos of various permutations of people with us. It was so much fun! Liang Bo insisted that we still go to karaoke afterwards. Unfortunately, we had to decline. Not only did I have absolutely no voice by this point, but it was almost midnight and we had a long day of travel back to the USA tomorrow. We apologized and promised that we would do it next time. It was something to look forward to. We could tell that they were a bit disappointed, and were maybe a bit skeptical that we would truly return. But when we told them that we had just obtained a ten year visa, they realized that we were serious, and that prompted another round of toasts.

They announced that they had purchased a gift for us in Jianshui; some purple pottery! This was perfect, as it is the definitive souvenir from the region and we hadn't had a chance to visit a pottery shop ourselves. They had planned to present it to us tonight, but it was so late that they decided that Xiaohong would meet us in the morning before we headed off to the airport and present it on their behalf. We were so touched by this gesture!

It was difficult to say goodbye to everyone, and we lingered over hugs, toasts, and photos. We eventually took our leave. We arrived back at the hotel at around midnight. We said our goodbyes to Xiao Yi and Ziting, knowing that we would probably not be seeing them early in the morning when Wang Jun would drive us to the airport.

We couldn't believe that in the exhausted throes of the 14 hour car ride, we had considered blowing off tonight's farewell dinner. It was an amazing send off. We will miss our cozy family, but will keep in touch via WeChat. In the words of Xiaohong, they are all truly superstars!!