Leaving Lanzhou - Tal's post

HEy everybody,

we are getting ready to leave Lanzhou tomorrow. This is Dalia's home province and it is a special place.

Last night we ended up in an expensive fish restaurant, and Dalia had a wild time looking at the live fish in the tanks, one of which they brought over to us in a bucket to inspect before they plopped it in a five gallon bowl of steaming broth for us to eat. Dalia was running around and observing crowds of smoking drinking eating partiers and she wore us out.

Today our guide took us to the big "Five Springs park" up on the edge of the mountain overlooking the city. This is where the "old China" still is. No fancy boutiques or those damn sideways shag bang haircuts or leather boots or fancy imitation Dolce Gabanna bags. This was an old park where mostly retired people come to exercise, pray, play cards, meditate and sing. It had Tibetan Buddhist temples, a Confucian temple, and a regular buddhist temple, and ponds and a zoo and walkways and trees and it was very quiet and peaceful Every where were giant lanterns from the recent Lantern festival, which is after the Chinese new year.

There was a huge crowd of old ladies doing a giant dance out front, and inside many old couples and others crowded around to look at Dalia and talk to us and talk about her and her cleft lip and they all talked at once very loud and gave us thumbs up for our "good heart" and they held Dalia's hand and were very happy for her and us.

WE saw old ladies practice a Tai Chi/Kung-fu like sword dance to old Chinese opera music, and there were many old men and women using Chinese "yo-yos which are like a spinning top on a string between two sticks and one man showed me how and let me use his. I wasn't very good but I got it to work a little. We walked further up into the park and saw a Buddhist temple and then we heard some singing and we went to it and in the a very small courtyard heard were about twenty men and women singing old local songs, one about the Yellow River, in the traditional style with great vigor. Two women and a man came up to us and they were very excited about Dalia and they kept gesturing to her and then they got across to us that they were all three deaf and mute, but their hearts were overflowing with happiness for Dalia and they all held her and we took a picture and they kept signing about how clean she was and how her lip would be fixed and they wrote some Chinese characters on their hands with their fingers to tell us things and they said we had loving hearts and they were so happy with good wishes and blessings. They gave us their address so we could send them the pictures, and then they asked if Dina and I were a couple and we said yes and then the man and one of the women said they were a couple and then they shook our hands. It was very beautiful and heart wrenching too because these are the wonderful people of Dalia's home and she is leaving it tomorrow.

We also saw all the old people doing their own styles of exercise, dancing by themselves, singing, leaping and kicking, tapping their shoulders, sitting under trees with cages of song-birds, and playing cards in the sun light and gabbing away. No cell phones or crappy music or shiny cars or any of that useless crapola

we went to the top where the Tibetan Buddhist temple was--very quiet, a giant caldron of incense, many brass prayer wheels, and a couple of people praying, and a monk talking to a policeman. Our guide said that most people she takes to the park do not make it to the top to the temple. she knows a lot about tibetan Buddhism because she has many friends who are tibetan and also she lead trips to the areas where there are more Tibetan people.

Dalia is what we call "the little panther"--she is strong, wily, bold, curious, tough, smart, and funny. She is unafraid to try anything and she can communicate amazingly well and she figures out many complicated situations. She smiles at every one, waves, claps, flops her head around when she hears music, and will let the ladies hold her. Here in the room she brushes her own teeth, likes to have her hair washed multiple times, tries on all her shoes over and over, gives her bottle to her stuffed elephant, and eats many bananas.

Tomorrow we are leaving for Guangzhou, which is in the south, near Hong Kong. There we will spend a week and we will do all the final paper work. We will have lots of free time there so we will have to have some adventures. We have learned, again, that the best way is to walk off the main road and find the quiet side streets. That is where the real action is. I tell you this as valuable literal and metaphorical advice. Get off the main road and onto the side streets.

Keep working hard. Get off the book if you are still on it. Make sure you are figuring out the costumes--and get the props in!