Shanghai and Suzhou then back to Xi'an

We have recently returned from a wonderful trip to Suzhou and Shanghai. Since my English-major sophomores had a required week of doing "engineering projects"--building hammers and making little chairs or vases (neither I nor they have any idea why they have such a requirement!)--I only had to teach on Wednesday and so was freed up to on Thursday. John's students had a "sports day" to participate in on Friday so he too had a holiday from his Friday classes.

A perfect chance for a necessary get away. Our primary goal was to visit friends of our Kimmy's in Suzhou and to go to the Shanghai Russian consulate to try to obtain our needed Russian visas for our trip home through Moscow and St. Petersburg to allow us to visit Stephen Sorenson, our former stake president, now Moscow Mission president and his wife, Corrine.

It has been such fun to have contact with Kimmy's best friend and marathon running partner--through Skype of course. It has almost seemed like having family here since Julie is so much like Kimmy, both in looks and personality. Her husband is here in China as an entrepreneur, working with the Chinese government in an effort to make micro loans available to poor factory workers (who can't get loans from banks). He is using an innovative approach, working with the banks, government, and the employers. It is a really awesome program that has the potential to benefit the little guy in China--a group all too often neglected and forgotten. We pray that things will come together for them to make this a real success. He has great investors supporting the project, the government and the banks are on board. The hitch is the factory employers who want something for themselves to make the program available to their workers--a program that costs them nothing and benefits their people. China is a challenge! We wish them well in their adventures.

Anyway, Julie was awesome in arranging things for us. We stayed with them and then she lined up with branch friends to loan us cars and drivers to get us all over the area. (Many of the big companies provide a lot of perks to their foreign employees--among them new SUVs and Chinese drivers.) It was so kind of them to make these available to us. What a change from our usual mode of transportation in crowded and dusty Xi'an buses!

Shanghai is huge and a mix of the modern and the old. Though to tell the truth, our impression of Shanghai went only as far as the Russian consulate and the Shanghai pearl market. The rest of our time was spent in Suzhou.

Thursday we flew into Pudong, Shanghai's hugh new airport, east of the city, where we were met by one of our two drivers. He loaded our bags in and drove us to the consulate only for us to discover that the Russians were there only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday! We were grateful we were to be here until Monday in case we needed more than one day to get the job done. It was a good thing!

Disappointed not to be able to take care of our visas first thing, we got back in the car and headed for Suzhou--an hour and a half to the west. We arrived in good order to find ourselves in Suzhou SIP where many, many foreign employees live in what seemed to us to be a lovely Orlando-like setting. The streets were clean, the apartments and houses really lovely and everything very different than the China we know, and love.

We were made to feel so at home in their lovely apartment that reminded us of our Vacation Village condo in Orlando. We had a wonderful guest room (thanks to 4-year-old Porter's being evicted to the bunk in Kallie's room). Kallie and Kaitlyn added to the fun. Kallie had her sixth birthday while we were there for which Julie provided beautifully with homemade cupcakes and great activities.

Her husband got home from a business trip the day after we arrived and we loved visiting with him to hear more about his business ventures. They are a wonderful couple who are full of goodness and we loved being their guests, eating Julie's yummy food, and being generally pampered. (I have to admit being a tiny bit jealous of her beautiful kitchen!)

After arriving we left almost immediately in a taxi to a custom shirt shop Julie recommended to us. John's shirts were getting pretty ratty and we figured getting some tailor-made white shirts for our temple mission in Germany for the price of shirts from the distribution center was a good idea. We found The Dragon and Phoenix shop in the old part of Suzhou in the walking-street area.

From there we sought for a China Mobile shop to try to recharge my phone which had gone dead. (It seems like that is a regular occurrence when we are out of town.) At China mobile we found we were at the wrong place but there we discovered a lovely employee who spoke a little English who had us follow her to the right place. We so often have been blessed by such kindness. She was wearing a new rage among the stylish girls--glass frames with no glass in them. Cute girl.

We love the Chinese pay-as-you-go approach to cell phones. It is a boon not to have to lock oneself to an American subscription plan. That is one thing China has over the good old U.S. of A.

Friday morning our new driver, Key, was at our door at 7:30 and we headed back into Shanghai for a grueling morning at the Russian consulate. We arrived shortly after they opened at 9:30 and were glad to find ourselves only 4th in line. After a half-hour wait we were ushered in to the visa section were we found ourselves now at the back of a room full of people. Many of them were there as visa couriers with stacks of Chinese passports, there to apply for visas for their clients. After some time I was finally at a window with all my materials in hand. I had carefully prepared to have everything needed. . . I thought. I was soon disabused of that impression when the clerk told me we had the wrong form (which I had gotten from theirwebsite!) She provided me with another and additional instructions about our needing this and that before sending me to the counter to refill out all the paper work by hand. John took the items we needed additional copies of and headed out to find some place to copy them. After an hour of severe writer's cramp I finally had the new forms filled out and John had returned with the copies. I headed back to the counter, jumping the line of Chinese to resubmit, only to be told that we still needed two copies of the Russian invitation letters. Back to the copy machine at the hotel next door and then back to the line for another wait.

The consulate is open only until 12:15 and we began to fear we'd never make it with all the delays. We also were wondering what we could have been thinking of to have chosen this route home! Finally though I handed in the last of our materials and was asked when we needed the visas. Since we couldn't get back to Xi'an without our passports, our need was "urgent." Urgent for the Chinese meant that day. Urgent for a foreigner meant Monday. Grateful that we had an afternoon flight Monday, I asked how early we could pick them up. They graciously arranged to have us come in the morning, though their usual policy was to pick up visas from 2:00 to 2:30--after we needed to be at the airport! After going out to rob a bank to cover the exorbitant costs for an "urgent" visa we had done all we could do until Monday morning. With some consternation we left our precious US passports in the hands of the Russians and called Key to pick us up.

With the afternoon open, we decided to have him drive us to Hai Ning and the leather factory market--the largest in China. We took a much needed nap while we were driven through lovely canal-riddled countryside two hours from Shanghai, south of Suzhou.

We have for some time wanted to find John a leather jacket as a casual coat and Hai Ning was the place to go. The market is huge, floor after floor, shop after shop of leather goods, purses, hats, coats. Of all those we found the one that spoke to us was a beautiful textured leather jacket sporting a 6,500 yuan price tag! Of course it was in one of the top designer shops. We walked away, came back, walked away again. Our sales girl had by then lowered the price to 3,000 but it was still way above our touch. Just before we were going to leave empty handed, we went back to look one last time and she said 1,500. I countered with 1,000 and we settled for 1,200--about $180. We handled over the dough and ran! Actually the Chinese are always delightful once a price has been agreed upon and she loved seeing John get his coat.

We were delighted with our purchase and with the bargaining--in good Chinese fashion--we went through to get it. It is part of the fun. We also grabbed a small leather computer bag for John's little Acer, also bargained down to a rock bottom price.

Then we met Key for our drive back to Suzhou. It was a wonderful day.
We arrived back just in time to join in the last few minutes of Kallie's birthday party and enjoyed an evening relaxing.


Saturday we had a driver until 2:00 so started the day by having him drive us to Tongli--an old Suzhou water town where we wandered the narrow streets along the canals.

Tongli is called the Chinese Venice and it was fun to see. Julie had recommended we get a rickshaw for a drive through the area, but we choose to walk and were glad we did.

In the afternoon we had our driver take us to the Suzhou pearl market to leave us there to explore on our own before arranging for a taxi to take us back. We had been to the pearl market in Guangzhou and had a ball there but Suzhou was something else again.

Three buildings of shop after shop of pearls (and other jewelry, I suppose--we never got past building one). It was an amazing adventure. We were only in the market for some blue-grey irregular pearls that I call "Levi pearls" so we were not the big spenders but it was a blast to look. Whatever you find and want, the clerks string and knot it for you on the spot. It was just fun to see it all. Poor John, what a good sport he was as we wandered from shop to shop.

Finally having worn both of us out we had one of the vendors arrange for a car to take us back to Suzhou SIP where we attempted to join our hosts at a barbecue at the home of one of the folks who had been loaning us their car and driver. The driver got us to the right part of Suzhou but had no idea where to go from there. We called Julie and she put the branch president (with his flawless Chinese) on the phone with the driver to guide him to the location where we met many of the branch members we would see again at Church the next day.

Sunday we attended the Suzhou branch and loved meeting with the members there. We enjoyed the spirit of the day with wonderful talks, classes, and visits. One of the couples we met were from St. Petersburg, Russia. it was fun to visit with Julianna and Peter who agreed to email us some ideas of what to see when we are in their home city.

We especially enjoyed a wonderful combined meeting for priesthood and RS where we were reminded of the opportunities to do family history on line. It was very motivating for me and John.

"Home" again to a lovely Sunday evening dinner and pleasant walk around a part of the lake close by their home was a nice way to spend the evening. The lake features a music and water show more spectacular than Las Vegas' Bellagio--Even from the balcony of the apartment it lit up the sky.

At 8:00 Monday morning our driver was there to take us back to the Russian consulate in hopes of getting our visas finally picked up. Thankfully everything went perfectly. By 10:00 we had our passports in hand with our visas in place. To celebrate we went to the Shanghai pearl market and knock off shops for a couple of hours before needing to head back to Pudong for our flight to Xi'an. It had been a wonderful trip and we were so grateful for the hospitality we enjoyed and to all our new friends in the branch there.

Despite our enjoyment of the luxuries of Suzhou, somehow it always feels like home to get back to Xi'an. We miss our funny ole town. We hurried to prepare for school the next day--easy for me since my oral kids were giving their mid-term presentation with the theme of "This I believe. . . "

We enjoyed our week of teaching and getting ready for Easter Sunday--Friday John and I were both asked to talk to round out the Easter program. It has been interesting to be in China for this Easter season since we have had none of the commercial distractions so prevalent at home at this time of the year--no sign of bunnies, chocolate eggs, marshmallow chicks, and Easter baskets. It has been nice to really focus only on the Savior, the Atonement and the Resurrection, and on our gratitude for Him.

It reminds us of how important it is to be grateful for all our blessings and each of you are numbered amount those blessings. Have a wonderful week.