the weather is always hot and sticky
even though there’s no sun in sight. i guess that’s what happens when the pollution gets up into the air, it smogs the environment. i have this theory that if everyone who owns an air conditioner in china– which is practically anyone who can afford it– stops using it for a year, then perhaps it can buy some time for further global warming prevention. i mean, it’s ridiculous how some people still have their air conditioners turn on at night while they sleep with a blanket tossed over themselves. what a waste of electricity. but back to china…yes, it was real hot. once you stepped outside you could feel the immediate sensation of stickiness on your skin. and i was guaranteed by a friend that i’d lose a lot of wieght when i come back from sweating so much due to the weather, but she was wrong. she was absolutely wrong. i didnt lose any weight at all.
i blame eating all that chinese food;
that greasy, sick-to-the-stomach oily, restaurant, chinese food. to those who knwo me well, know that i dont like chinese food. fortunately for me, i had three weeks of restaurant chinese food. but “no worries” my friends told me, “chinese food here is more westernized, you’d like the food in china.” oh what deceiving lies. well then again, i think it’s the restaurants i was taken to. stupid tour group, they always chose the cheapiest combos; leaving us with the cheapiest experience. and a bad after taste.
now that i think back on it, i took many, many modes of transportation;
i arrived on plane (1), then we toured around in a big tour bus(2), then we went on those chinese-styled boats to look at the view (3), then in beijing we went on a bicycle wagon ride (4), i rode on a double decker bus in hong kong (5), took the taxi (6) to the ferry terminal where i took the ferry (7) to get to macau. once i arrived in macau, my mom’s friend picked us up in her car (8), after our stay in taishan we got to guangzhou on a police van (9), in guangzhou we went on a small cruise (10) and toured its lake. from guangzhou, we got to hong kong by train (11). and of course, the whole time we walked (12).
like my sister said,
we accomplished a lot of things whiel we were in china. we got foot massages, we got our nails done, we took those self-portraits where we got to dress up, we visited historical chinese buildings and gardens, we shopped, we met important people in my mom’s life, met up with relatives i never knew existed, visited my grandparents’ village and their homes, etc.
most importantly, this trip allowed us
to spend time with one another. i dont nearly make as much time as i ought to to hang out with my siblings and parents. although i’d say im clearly closer to my mom than my dad, i’d say i learned a lot about my mom that i hadn’t before. the way she is and how she treated others made me see her in a different light. i have always seen her as a selfless person, and being on vacation with her for such a long period of time really brought out her selflessness. and there are things that i leanred, which i have suspected before, are now confirmed. and then there are things that help make me understand why she values the things she does and why she behaves the way she does.
i know the china i visited isn’t the china i’d can make my own,
the china i visited is my mom’s china. the places she use to live, the people she knew; everything we saw and did was help us see into her china– the way things have once been. before the next decade, i’d like to visit china again and visit other locations to create my own china. i hope i make sense.
once i stepped out of hte plan from my 12 hr flight,
vancouver greeted me humbly with its familiar weather. the gentle overcast hinted at a light sprinkle. it almost feels like i never left. when i got in my dad’s van for our drive home, michael buble’s “home” played on the radio. it was the prefect song to describe how i felt. i cna’t say the trip passed by really fast. in fact, things seem distant and far away. three weeks seemed much, much longer.
it’s now 8 20am and i’ve been up since 5am,
at first i thought i defeated jet-lag but i must admit, it still possesses me. im not really tired nor sleepy, yet my eyes want to have a little rest– probably from all that harry potter reading.
that’s it for now,
love ya later.
