About China..

It's only days away now and packing is paramount in our daily activities. It seems that streamlined packing is more difficult than taking the works! We hope to pack very lightly for ourselves in an effort to squeeze in as many basic supplies for some special orphanages as possible. We are still hunting colostomy bags in small sizes if anyone has connections with the powers that be in this area!

We will leave the US arriving into Beijing. After a 6 hour layover, we then head to Guilin which is another 3 hour flight South of Beijing. At this point we will take a few days to acclimate to China time, recover from jet lag, etc.. This is where the adventure will begin. A Chinese "local" will be taking us to some of the back roads of the rural Chinese countryside. It is our understanding they speak English and know their stuff... ok. We shall see.

After a few days in the Guilin vicinity we will then fly back to Beijing and meet up with Angie and the rest of the adoption group from the Living Hope adoption agency for "part two" of our journey.. exciting days ahead! Come back to join in!
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-China is the world's fourth largest country (after Russia, Canada, and US)

-Area: 9.6m square km (slightly smaller than the US)

-Coastline: 14,500 km

-Climate: extremely diverse, ranging from tropical in the south to subarctic in the North

-Terrain: mostly mountains, high plateaus, deserts in west; plains, deltas, and hills in East

-Highest point: Mount Everest 8,850 m (world's tallest mountain)

-Natural hazards: frequent typhoons (about five per year along southern and eastern coasts), floods and earthquakes

-Population: 1,321,851,888 (July 2007)

-Language: The official language is Mandarin

-Government: Communist

-Capital: Beijing

The Chinese People:
Chinese people have always put a lot of emphasis on everybody acting the right way for their position in life. They thought poor people should act different from rich people, and women should act different from men, and city people should act different from country people.

In China, people thought your most important relationship was with your family. Kids often lived in the same house not just with their parents, but also with their grandparents, their aunts and uncles, and their cousins. People thought that family was much more important than friends.

Most boys and girls in China did not go to school, but worked on their parents' farms, picking weeds and planting seeds. Even rich girls did not go to school, but boys from rich families did. The boys worked very hard at school, because doing well on the state examinations was the only way to get political power.


When girls grew up, they got married and left the house they had grown up in to go live in their husband's house, with his family. This was often hard, because girls got married young, and when they went to live in their husband's house they had to do whatever his mother told them to do.

But the lives of slaves were the hardest of all. Many Chinese people were slaves. Most people who were slaves worked in the fields, the same as free people. Some of them worked as servants in rich people's houses. The Emperor owned hundreds of slaves, and some of them worked for the government, collecting taxes or building roads. Some people were born slaves, because their mothers were slaves, and other people were sold into slavery to pay debts.