I was anxious about Moon Festival this year. It was important to me that we observe this holiday, but I'm not very good about the holiday thing. I procrastinate and don't plan well. But as our first official observation of Moon Festival, this year was a great success. First of all we had family visiting: Tina's dad and sister were here with us, which is great because the most important part of Moon Festival is being with familiy. Secondly,we were able to buy mooncakes a the local asian market; pretty good ones too. This was great because we had waited too long to order them online. And Thirdly, the moon came out in all its big, full, extra bright glory for us to gaze at! (That's a picture of it at the top that I I took with my cheapo camera.)

Our celebration began on Thursday afternoon when our friend Mei-mei stopped by for a visit on her way to Vancouver. She brought Kai a present and a moon cake in its own fancy little tin. (That's Mei-mei up above on the right giving Kai a hug.) On Friday night (the actual day of Moon Festival) we had a family dinner and ate mooncake together. We got the lotus seed paste ones without egg yolk. They aren't too sweet, but are very rich. They kind of reminded me of peanut butter cookies. No big fans of mooncake in our family yet, but it's growing on me. I actually enjoy a little piece of fruitcake once in a while too, so I think I could become a mooncake lover. Kai loves them. He doesn't eat them, as he still refuses to eat anything requiring chewing, but he gets quite excited when we get them out. Mainly because we put candles on them and let him blow them out. But hey, he loves mooncake! (just not for eating)

Then on Saturday night Tina and I took Kai and Tina's dad and sister down to the Village Green in Fairhaven for the Mei Hua Chinese School's Moon Festival celebration. The weather was great and a lot of people turned out, both Chinese-American families, and adoptive families. The program was sort of like a talent show with students and faculty perfoming music and dance, as well as some story telling and fun Moon Festival facts. Kai's good friend Mimi and her family were there too (that's her up on the left getting a big hug from Kai). Kai's still a little young to start at the school, but we plan on having him there next year. We feel very lucky to have this program here locally for Kai.

So Moon Festival was a big hit at our house. Even though it doesn't fall on the same day every year, we feel this is Kai's REAL Family Day with us. It was so special getting to receive him in China last year on Moon Festival, we plan on always marking this holiday as his special day!

--Oh, and I started blogging again.
Yeah, I know I said it was time to stop, but how can you not blog Moon Festival?!

Have you seen Google Earth? You really should check it out. It's the most amazing toy.

I played around with it a few months ago when if first came out for the Mac. I obsessed on tracking down interesting sites, finding our home, etc, it's amazing. It has a searchable globe constructed out of satellite images complete with terrain elevations, etc. Not every area is available in high resolution (our home is in a low-res blurry area) but lots of places are high-res. If you're interested in China you might get a kick out of looking at The Forbidden City in Beijing. We got to tour it when we traveled to get Kai, so it was exciting to see it from space. You'd be amazed at the kind of detail you can make out from these images. I'm sure the government has even better imagery to play with, but this is pretty good. The images below are not as high of definition as possible to view in the Google Earth program, as I've shrunk them down a bit to fit the web-page.

Having looked around Beijing, I was curious if I could find other places we visited in China. Here's a picture of Shamian Island in Guangzhou.

The big white building on the south side of the island is the White Swan Hotel where we stayed. This was pretty easy to find as I knew the layout of the island and could just sort of look along the Pearl River in the spots where it flows straight, west to east, through the city.

The other cities we stayed in were available in high-res as well. I wanted to see if I could find Kai's SWI. Unfortunately you can't search China by street address... yet. So I still haven't found it. But I did find the hotel we stayed at when we were in his province. This one was not as easy as the White Swan. My search for this one was much more of a high tech Where's Waldo.

Here's China...


Here's Shijaizhuang...


Where do you start? All you can do really is pick a place and begin. I had a set of landmarks to work with and I'll show them to you in a minute. My mom was staying with us this weekend and she watched me doing this Sunday morning. She thought I was nuts. I probably am, but here's the picture of the hotel we stayed in...



Now here's the landmarks as I've labeled them above...
(A) is our hotel The Hebei Century


(B) is a middle or high school courtyard we could see from our hotel window. See the narrow strip of blue rooftop?


(C) is a destinctively shaped building we could see out our window...


(D) is the mall across the street that we hung out in and annoyed the shopkeepers with our inability to speak the local language...


(E) is the park across the intersection we visited ...


Pretty good, huh?

So now on my hunting list are the temples we visited, and of course, Kai's SWI. If you are planning on visiting any of those places, please do me a favor and bring along a GPS device. exact latitude and longitude would make this a LOT easier!!!

If you'd like to visit these locations in Google Earth, you can click on the links below to download the KMZ files. Opening these will take you to the the location in Google Earth if you have it installed on your computer.
Shijiazhuang - Hebei Century Hotel

White Swan Hotel

I haven't edited any more of the video from our trip to China in several months. I keep meaning to do this but have been really short on round tuits lately.

I have one sequence I finished back when I was working on this and have finally uploaded it to "Hui-Hui's World". It's of our day trip to Longxing Si in the old city of Shijaizhuang. We were really impressed with this temple. It is quite old and has a couple of very impressive images of Guan Yin Pusa. I have some friends who are anthropology/archeology buffs that I think will really find this clip interesting.

I'm posting this one now because I have been reading China adoption travel blogs again and feeling nostalgic for our trip. It was all of six months ago. I love the driving sequence in this video because it has Hui-Hui in Tina's lap (no carseats in China) and he is really starting to show his cuddly playful nature (this was his 3rd full day with us) and in the background you can see the semi-rural countryside of China rolling by.

Clicking on this picture will take you to our video page
then click Shijaizhuang Temple Visit

A few notes on the music I used for this video: The first track is from a disc of contemporary music featuring the Hulusi, or Chinese gourd flute. Our guide "Bob" played this disc for us in his car and loaned it to me so I could make a copy. The music I used for the temple sequence is from a CD we got at the Six Banyan Temple in Guangzhou. We were very interested in the Buddhist practices in China which really seemed to please our guide Connie. I know there are adoptive families who use their China trip as an opportunity to evangelize Christianity. I think the guides probably bear the brunt of many of these efforts as they have quite a bit of "face time" with us adoptive families, but I felt this was our opportunity to learn about their lives and faith. Because our visit to the Six Banyan Temple was our second temple visit, I think (or hope) we didn't appear to be quite such bumbling novices regarding the practice of lighting incense, etc. Connie asked if we were Buddhist. I told her no, but said we were quite interested in the faith. She explained that she was, and that her family regularly came to this temple for festivals. She then took us over to a table that had free literature and scriptures. She gave us a number of small books (in Chinese) and the CD with the track I used for part of the temple sequence. The part with the monks playing for the man praying is actually live music we caught with the camcorder.

One of Kai's friends from pre-school is a little girl named Yoshimi. Yoshimi's mother Shuhsin is from Taiwan. Their family visits there often and had been there for Chinese New Year. They brought Kai back a souvenir from the 2006 Taiwan Lantern Festival.

Kai got a real kick out of this little lantern...





I thought it was pretty cool too, so I fired up Google to learn more about it.

This logo was printed on the top of the lantern.
I had not heard of the Taiwan Lantern Festival before. It looks like a pretty cool event. You can see the official website by clicking on the logo.
On the site I learned that these little lanterns were passed out free of charge to children. "They are named "Mechanical Dog" and are designed to inspire an interest in science, technology, and mechanics among children in this new technological age. These lanterns exemplify the concepts of environmental protection and safe toys. They also represent the pursuit of newness and change."

Below are pictures of the event's "Theme Lantern" which according to the website:
...is titled "Pan Hu Re-creates the Heavens." (Pan Hu is a divine hound of Chinese mythology.) This huge lantern masterpiece is in the shape of a mountain with three dogs perched on its flank. The male dog, eyes to the front, is in a powerful and majestic pose as the protector of home and country. The female dog sits with an affectionate attitude at the side of her mate, while their pup plays with a globe-shaped holographic lantern. The idea is to portray a land of stability, ethnic harmony, prosperity, peace, and happiness.

CLICK HERE to see a cool video of the fireworks display at the event!

I've been surfing around on youtube.com's site because there are a number of China adoption videos on there. While I was searching through the site I found another interesting clip I wanted to share with you. This is a video of the China Disabled Person's Performing Art Troupe presenting a modern Thousand-hand Guanyin, or Goddess of Mercy dance. All the dancers are deaf. The laser light show backdrop gives it a bit of that odd "asian-disco" feel, but it's still very beautiful with a hypnotic, other-worldly quality to it. This performance troupe is a branch of the China Disabled Persons' Federation. I was not familiar with this organization before, but am very interested in it now.
If you have followed this blog you probably know I am very fond of Guanyin Pusa. Pusa, is Chinese for "bodhisattva", a soul who, through compassion and altruism, has earned the right to leave this world of suffering and enter nirvana, but has chosen instead to stay on Earth to instruct others to until all beings are enlightened.
Hui-Hui really loved watching this video. He moves his hands in patterns like the dancers. While watching it he also spontaneously started a gesture we call "pray to Buddha". This consists of him putting his hands together and raising them up and down while "singing". He has done this since we got him in China. Ben's the one who named it and was able to get Hui-Hui to do it by simply saying, "Pray to Buddha."
I would like to find other videos of this performance company. From the pictures on their website it looks like they do some amazing things.



(Oh, if you're one of my workmates trying to watch this at Premier, our web filter blocks the "You Tube" site so you'll have to watch it at home... sorry!)

Kai and Daisy wish everyone a very happy and prosperous Year Of The Dog!

As you can see from the picture above, Hui-Hui has overcome his fear of dogs. Daisy on the other hand has begun to develop a fear of Hui-Hui!

This is the first year our family has celebrated Chinese New Year. The traditional Chinese calendar follows the lunar cycles, and the New Year festival is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. You can read more about it by CLICKING HERE. Tina and I took Hui-Hui to a local asian market to buy red envelopes, some decorations and other goodies.
It was a busy day with other activities as well, Cameron competed in the local level of the WMEA Solo and Ensemble Contest. He played violin, both solo, and with the Bellingham High School's advanced chamber orchestra. The performances are single songs played in a classroom for a judge who provides the student with a constructive critique. Hui-Hui was very well behaved as we sat in on the performances. Cam did well and it was fun to hear him play pieces on which he has really worked hard.
For dinner we all went to the Lychee Buffet with two other families with children adopted from China. There were 14 of us in all and it was very fun. Hui-Hui's little friend Mimi was there and the two of them had a great time together. I forgot my camera again so I will now subject you to more pix shot with my crummy cell phone camera...






Our local newspaper ran an article (CLICK HERE TO READ IT) on extravagent dinners being offered for New Year's Celebrations by restaurants in China. One of the restaurants they mentioned was Quan Ju De. This is the Duck restaurant we went to when we were in Shijaizhuang!

The article talks about their most expensive holiday menu which feeds 10 people for about $1000. I would love to see that meal as the one we had there for 5 people had more food than we could every hope to eat in one sitting and the bill for everything came to only $45!

Apart from dinner out and red envelopes for the boys we haven't done too much else this year. There are some big celebrations both locally and in Seattle and Vancouver that we hope to be able to take Hui-Hui to when he's a bit older.
We have been enjoying a variety of great documentaries on China that are playing on the Discovery Channel this weekend and on CBC television.

Okay, we're guilty...
We let Hui-Hui watch TV.
As former Waldorf parents we are all too well informed regarding the evils of television and the threat it poses to the developing minds of young children.
But he likes it.
We limit it mostly to a bit of PBS children's programming and a few DVDs like "Big Bird in China". Well, there's been a few holiday specials too, he really seemed to enjoy "It's A Wonderful Life" and "The Christmas Story". We're hoping this doesn't leave him with much more permanent damage than what Tina and I sustained as kids.

But now we've found a program which we are trying to expose him to as much as possible: "Fruit Ice Cream"
We stumbled across this program on the local World Television Channel our cable provider carries. We look at this channel occasionally, and wonder if the program on at the time is in Mandarin, or Cantonese, or Korean? I wish I could tell, but I can't. So one morning a few weeks ago I was home with the flu. I was laying on the couch with a low-grade fever feeling miserable. So I'm flipping through the channels and there was this asian children's program on. Tina and I both keyed in on it and wondered aloud, "Is this Mandarin?" Then one of the little puppet characters came on screen appearing upset, and the Grandma character said to it "Mei guanxi" - "It's Okay" in Mandarin, one of the few Mandarin phrases we recognize!

I looked up the cable channel's website, (KBCB TV) and found their programming guide which confirmed the program is in Mandarin. There was some writing in Chinese, but it didn't say the name of the program in English, just "Mandarin Children's Program". I was really curious to learn more about the program but couldn't find anything on the web. So I emailed the Chinese writing to our friend Meimei who translated it for us. It's called "Fruit Ice Cream". With this knowledge I began Googling more aggressively and I finally found some good links.

The program fascinated me as it had a number of unusual qualities, the first being that the grandmotherly hostess is obviously a man. And while there are slick Sesame Street-like puppets, the pacing of the show is much more like Mister Roger's Neighborhood.

It turns out the program is an extremely popular one which is produced by Taiwan Public Television. It's been on the air for 6 years and there are over 800 episodes filmed so far. There is an interesting article about the show you can read by CLICKING HERE. The article mentions that the Grandmother character was partially inspired by Robin William's Mrs. Doubtfire, which is exactly who we thought of when we first saw her.
You can see the English webpage about the show on the Taiwan Public Television website by CLICKING HERE. This page has a short video clip of the show you can watch in Windows Media Player format. The episodes we are seeing air here at home are apparently older ones, and aren't quite as flashy as the one in the video clip online, and we don't get any English subtitles, but we are all enjoying them.

We feel it is very important to try and maintain Kai's Mandarin as best as possible. We feel this is one of the strongest ways we can preserve his cultural identity and provide him with a valuable tool and skill when he is older.

When we were in China I squirreled away a bunch of stuff to bring home for scrapbooking. Some of it was actually interesting and some of it was just stuff I kept for reasons I can't recall now. I have scanned some of it to put on the blog here. Many of these things have websites associated with them so they make a nice "on-line" scrapbook. I encourage you to click on these artifacts to see their links. If you do, please be patient and wait for the sites to load. They tend not to be the fastest sites, and Chinese web designers like lots of Flash animations and music.

This is a scan of a ticket stub for The Forbidden City. This was a fascinating place to see. They have a website too, which you can visit by clicking on the ticket...


How do you get around in China if you don't speak any Chinese? Most hotels have these handy cards you can show to the taxi driver, so you can always get back. The trick is getting to where you want to go first! Click on the images of these cards and you will go to the hotel's website. The English page for the Hebei Century Hotel doesn't work, but that actually makes sense based on our experience there!



PiyoPiyo and BoboHouse are brands of baby clothes and stuff that we bought in China for Kai. These are scans of packaging for things we bought. Both have cool websites you can see by clicking on the pictures...

Now I'm guessing that you probably recognize this package even if you can't read the writing on it. If you click on this picture you will go to the Chinese McDonald's website. It seems quite a bit flashier than the US site.

Hui-Hui's "Gotcha Day" was on Chinese Moon Festival Day. These are Moon Cake packages. The boxes contained individual cakes, each the size of a cupcake, but very heavy. These images may be upside down as my Chinese reading skills are non-exisistant. These link to the Wikipedia page on Moon Cakes