First of all, we don’t sing, unless you count the shower.
So what on Earth were we doing in a Chinese riverbank park, on a sultry summer afternoon, in front of a crowd of 200 smiling souls, cordless microphones in hand, belting out “Jingle Bells”?
And “Edelweiss.”
And, finally (mercifully, for all concerned), “Auld Lang Syne.”
We still blame each other for getting us into such a fix.
“We didn’t want to sing, but they forced us,” we try.
Max corrects us, with that roll of the eyes that comes so naturally with being 15. “Geez, Gramma, all I remember is them putting microphones in our hands and you saying OK.”
Max is the second of our grandchildren to go on what we’ve taken to calling “our grandkid trips.”
It all began a few years ago when we were talking about how we might help our six grandchildren discover themselves and their place as global citizens,
at the same time allowing us to know them better before they grow up.
We decided that when each one reaches their teens, we’ll take them to any foreign country they choose. Max’s sister, Ashley Wallace, took us to Australia a few years ago.
Max is a quiet, good-looking kid, a high school sophomore back home on Whidbey Island, near Seattle. He plays soccer and tennis and once considered Albert Einstein a hero.
Why China? The athlete in him wanted to hike miles on the Great Wall. The student in him wanted to see the army of life-
sized terracotta warriors that lay buried for 2,300 years beneath a mound of dirt near the backwater town of Xi’an.
The mischievous boy in him wanted to eat something like stewed snake or a fish with the eyes still looking at you. The budding photographer in him wanted to go to a place where he could point his camera in any direction and make “art, not snapshots.”
That’s how we found ourselves in June in Yichang, a city of about 4 million with a lovely park on the Yangtze River, waiting for a cruise ship to take us upstream past the Three Gorges and the enormous Sanxia Dam project.
Every afternoon around 3, retirees who live nearby gather in the shade of the park to catch a river breeze and entertain each other. Some bring a folding chair and an erhu (a two-
stringed instrument that looks something like a cigar-box guitar with a very long neck). Others pack a talent for singing Chinese-opera favorites.
Max was shooting pictures on a park path ahead of us and our guide, Pony Hu, when the musicians caught sight of him. They crowded around him, chattering, smiling and motioning with a microphone toward the grassy stage area in front of their folding chairs.
“I don’t know what they want,” he pleaded with Pony when we caught up to him. There was a touch of panic in his voice. “I think they want me to sing, and I don’t sing.”
“We don’t know any songs,” we chimed in.
“Sure you do,” Pony said, lining us up on the makeshift stage. “You sing ‘Jingle Bells.”‘
Twenty minutes later, when the conductor finally tucked his baton away and nodded that our gig was finally over, we told Pony how embarrassed we were. She shushed us.
“You don’t know what you did for those people,” she chided. “They’ll go home and tell their families about the Westerners with the boy who came to the park and sang for them. They’ll talk about you for days.”
On the river
As we headed for the docks and our cruise ship, we agreed to get over it and turned our attention to the muddy old Yangtze.
The river snakes its way through countryside gorgeously green. Hamlets and farms cling to great shaggy heaps of earth that rise, steeply terraced, to dizzying heights from the water. Farmers stoop to tend crops on the stepped fields. People wave to us from rickety sampans tied to the shore.
A thick tan haze hangs over China in June, a combination of dust from Mongolia and residue from burning coal to power a nation about the same area as the U.S. with almost five times the population.
The dam, a few days’ cruise upstream from Yichang, is the largest water conservancy project in history. It’s supposed to help fix China’s sickly air by replacing coal power with hydroelectricity and save lives by providing flood control over the Yangtze. By the time it’s completed in 2009, it will have raised the river more than 500 feet, drowning 570,000 acres of farmland and the cities and villages of 1.5 million people, who are moving into newly built towns higher on the hillsides.
In the Xi’an airport, a young woman introduced herself as our guide.
“I’m Jing,” she said, “as in Jingle Bells.”
She turned abruptly and motioned us to follow her out of baggage claim toward our van.
“Geez, Gramma, you don’t suppose Pony e-mailed her?” Max moaned as we struggled to keep up.
A silent army
Xi’an, at the eastern end of the Silk Road, is where China’s first emperor, Qin Shihuang, buried an army of warriors fashioned life-sized from clay. They were to protect him in his afterlife. Qin was the first leader to unify China politically, with Xi’an as its capital. He standardized weights, measures and a system of writing, and ordered construction on the Great Wall.
“Do you want to see how some people live now near where Qin buried his warriors?” Jing asked Max. “They live in what we call cave houses. They’re dug out of hillsides made of loess soil, a kind of clay.”
We drove to a village in the countryside and pulled up to a wooden gate in a red-brick wall alongside the roadway. Jing got out of the van and called through the gate. A young woman in a jean overall skirt and white T-shirt answered and agreed to show us around.
Na Zhao was home for lunch from her job at the pharmacy. She led us through a dusty courtyard to a cave – a room with a high, arched ceiling and lumpy walls and floor of packed dirt. The family uses the room as a kitchen, dining room and storage area. A dim light bulb illuminated lunch on the table – watermelon, tomatoes and a big bowl of noodles.
Circling the small compound were several small brick houses, individual living quarters for Na Zhao and her new husband, his parents and various other family members. The newlyweds’ home had two rooms, a bedroom and a small living room. One wall was dominated by an enormous wedding picture – she in white with veil, he in suit and tie. On the sofa were pillows decorated with Tom and Jerry cartoons. To the side was an entertainment center with a TV and VCR.
It used to be shameful to be so rich, Jing told us, but no more.
In 1976 Deng Xiaoping took power, initiating economic reforms to encourage foreign investment and more personal wealth. China is still considered a developing country, but now 10 percent of Chinese people own a private apartment and a car.
“That’s my definition of a middle class,” said Norman Zhang, our Beijing guide.
Freedom, on the other hand, is relative, Max learned.
“We Chinese have freedom of speech,” one Chinese man told us. “We can say anything we want about our government, as long as we don’t criticize our leaders.”
The encounters Max may remember in detail when he’s older were with kids his own age.
Jing had pizza and dim sum brought to the Tang Dynasty Art Museum in Xi’an one afternoon for a party in Max’s honor. She’d invited four teens (two girls, two boys) who entered the room giggling and poking each other as buddies and best friends do.
Max smiled shyly and sat stiffly in the middle of the group, thinking how they weren’t dressed too differently than the giggling girls and his best buddies at South Whidbey High School. He asked if they play soccer (they do), and told them he plays bassoon in the band (“What’s that?” they wondered).
The Chinese teens had studied English since grade school and had taken English names for their classes. Wang Meng-
xiao’s mother chose the name Dream for her when she was 8. Gao Han likes soccer player David Beckham, so he goes by David. Li Cheng chose Clover “because I want to be lucky.” Tang Hao picked Tom “because it sounds like my Chinese name, Tang.”
They came up with a Chinese name for Max: Ma Zhi Yuan. It’s similar to the name of a famous Chinese poet, they explained, and it means something like “Max goes far.”
Our last day in China we went to Beijing’s Temple of Heaven, a large tree-shaded park that dates to 1420 and the Qing Dynasty. At 8:30 a.m., the temperature was in the 90s, the sky a now-familiar gray-tan. And the park reminded us of the one in Yichang.
A woman tried to coax us into a paddleball game. A little distance away, a man practiced calligraphy, drawing his letters on the concrete with water he gathered onto his brush from a bucket.
And in the distance, a group practiced tai chi to the strains of “Edelweiss.”
“Did you hear that?” we whispered to each other. “You don’t suppose …”
“Don’t get too close,” Norman said with a wink and a grin. “Otherwise you may have to sing ‘Jingle Bells.”‘
…
Tips with grandkids
If you like the idea of taking your grandchildren to see a bit of the world, consider these travel tips:
Shorter, close-to-home trips with the youngster can help set the stage. Traveling with children on foreign soil can be quite different, especially if they haven’t been out of the United States before.
If possible, let your grandchild decide on the destination. (Our main rule was no theme parks.) Let them and their parents help plan.
Talk to a travel agent who knows about traveling with teenagers. An agent may be aware of potential headaches you missed.
Unless your teen has traveled a lot, help him or here with packing. Luggage should be light enough to handle and save space for gifts and souvenirs.
Be sure you have all the necessary legal documents, including a letter from the teen’s parents giving you permission to have the child along and the power to make important decisions (such as medical ones). A travel agent can help you with this.
Don’t forget to carry the child’s medical information and medicines. Have his doctor provide written prescriptions and suggestions if he gets sick on the trip.
Include the youngster in any insurance you may purchase.
Allow your teen to set the pace. Teenagers often need more sleep and more calories than adults.
Teens may not be keen to sample as much of the “local” food as you. Be prepared to hit an American-style fast-food cafe if they need a hamburger break.
Buy a telephone card and make time for them to call home. (Don’t forget the time difference.) Our teen used an Internet cafe to e-mail friends back home.
Encourage your child to take photos. Be sure they have a camera several months before so they can practice with it.
Provide a small, sturdy notebook for the teen to keep a journal. Encourage the artistic child to make sketches.
It may be possible to connect with kids of the same age by visiting a school or joining a sports practice while in a foreign country. Agencies that specialize in family travel can help arrange the visit, as can the U.S. tourism offices of the foreign land you’ll visit.
Pacific Delight World Tours, an experienced Far East firm, helped with our China trip. Information: Pacific Delight World Tours, 3 Park Ave., 38th Floor, New York, NY 10016-5902; 800-221-7179, 212-818-1781 or pacificdelighttours.com.
Three agencies that help arrange grandparent/grandchild trips:
Generations Touring Co., 2366 Eastlake Ave., Suite 238, Seattle, WA 98102, 888-415-9100, 206-325-2830 or generationstouringcompany.com.
GrandTravel 1920 N. Street N.W., Suite 200, Washington, D.C. 20036-1601, 800-247-7651 or grandtrvl.com.
Elderhostel, 11 Avenue de Lafayette, Boston, MA 02111-1746, 877-426-8056 or elderhostel.org.
For general information about touring China, the China National Tourist Office has offices in Los Angeles and New York City, 888-760-8218 or cnto.org.
– John and Sally Macdonald
