Luana Rubin

We met our local guide Yvonne in the lobby and proceeded to our flight from Guilin to Hefei, in the Anhui Province. We are now traveling to Hefei where we first met Sophie, and then to AnQing to visit Sophie’s orphanage, and hopefully her Finding Place. (The place she was found when she was 2 days old.) When we arrived in Hefei, our local guide Mr Ding met us at the airport, and we had a car and driver to take us to our hotel. He explained about what to expect tomorrow when we visit the AnQing orphanage, which has moved to a new building. These days there are about…

We started the day at our Green Lotus Hotel in YangShuo, and the kids had a Tai Chi lesson in the hotel. Then we checked out and loaded up the bus to head back to Guilin. Since we took the boat cruise on the Li River to YangShua, coming back on the highway was a different view of the karst mountains. Just outside of YangShuo we stopped at the “Pearl Museum” which was just another shopping stop. We were led into a large room with chairs around a runway, and we were treated to a ‘fashion show’ with young ladies in gowns, wearing ensembles of pearl jewelry, walking up and…

We started the day in Xian, packed up and checked out of our hotel. We headed out on the bus to the Terracotta Warriors site. It was 16 degrees this morning…7 with wind chill. Ouch! The Xian hotel was probably our least favorite. The water smelled like burnt gas or some chemical. The food was not that great either. We did however see a wedding party in the lobby as we were leaving. It was the groom, holding a bouquet of red roses, making his way down the marble staircase to the decorated Maserati out front. Evidently the tradition is that he goes to pick up the bride and then…

Today we got up early and took a bullet train from Chengdu to Xian. There was some excitement at the Chengdu Train Station, trying to find a toilet. While waiting in a long restroom line, the woman in front of us did a long loud hawk and spit on the floor. Sophie just looked at me with big eyes. We’ve found that often the easiest Western toilet in a public place is the handicap toilet, but this one had a smelly flood all over the floor. So we stood in the long line, only to find at the front of the long line that the 20+ stalls (in a huge…

The big event today was visiting the Panda Park. It is one of the Chengdu area research centers where they raise Panda babies. From the 6 original pandas rescued from the wild, they now have 146 pandas at this center. There are about 1600 pandas in the wild, and 200 in captivity. They live in the mountains of Central China, and 99% of their diet is bamboo. They eat 20-30 lbs of bamboo shoots a day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_panda Pandas that go to zoos like San Diego and Washington DC are rented out but still belong to the Chinese government. If the rented bears give birth, the cubs also belong to China,…

This morning we checked out of our hotel and headed to the Beijing Airport. We flew on China South Airlines from Beijing to Chengdu which is the capitol of the Sichuan province. I watched ‘The Wife’ and ‘Journey’s End’ on the flight. Our flight was delayed one hour, sitting on the tarmac. About 30 minutes before landing there was a strong smell of burning plastic or burning electrical throughout the plane which was…concerning. But we landed ok so I guess it was not a fatal event. However I did have a brief paranoid fantasy of the cabin filling with burnt-plastic smoke… Chengdu sits in a valley surrounded by mountains. 85%…

Great Wall,  Jade Factory, Cloisonné Factory, Olympic Village. Today was our 2nd full day in Beijing. Yesterday we visited the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. Today our big destination was The Great Wall. But first…we had to stop at the government-owned “Jade Factory” which is a huge retail complex that sells all kinds of jade products. Everything is “On Sale” in fact they claimed they had an extra discount for Christmas. The prices still seemed high on most items. We visited a very steep section of the Great Wall, different from the one I visited many years ago. We were able to talk right up to the entrance to the…

Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Hutong Rickshaw tour & home lunch, Hutong artist home visit. Tonight I am writing to you from Beijing China. Sophie and I spent our first full day here in China, and she is having a great time with the other adopted girls.  We started the day at the Tiananmen Square and then Forbidden City. Like so many other great tourist destinations around the world, security has tightened and there are less viewing options available than in the past. I have been here 4 times over many decades, and it was a different experience this time. Tiananmen square is fenced off and you need to go in…

We flew Air Canada through Vancouver to Beijing. The flight was 99% ethnic Chinese, i.e. Sophie immediately had the experience of looking like everyone else. It took about an hour to get through the fingerprinting machines, immigration, and baggage claim at the Beijing Airport. It was a long walk to get from the plane to the first fingerprinting station, which was automated but the kiosks were glitchy so that took awhile. As we came in to land we saw rural forests of identical high rises all lined up and blocked together, as we descended into the heavy haze of pollution. We saw giant dams that were so huge, even from…

It is Christmas Eve 2018 and Sophie and I have just arrived in our hotel in Beijing China. We had a connection in Vancouver BC (Canada) and then flew across Alaska and Russia, then down into China. It took about an hour to get from the plane to the exit – with fingerprint station – immigration line – and retrieving bags. It is a big airport so there was a lot of walking from the airplane to immigation. Tomorrow we hit the ground running at 8 am, so we are going to try to get some sleep early. My eyes are getting very heavy so it is time to take…