Family, Friends and a Surprising Anniversary

The past six weeks has been a whirlwind of teaching, traveling, talking, touring and just trying to keep our heads above water!

Six weeks ago, our daughter Katie and her husband Jason came to China. They spent a few days in and around Beijing doing all the tourist things (they were, after all, tourists!). They saw the Great Wall, Tian'anmen Square, the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace.  Then they took one of China's bullet trains (300 kph  / 188 mph) from Beijing to Jinan. We had the opportunity to share some of the parts of our city that were special to us, including Buddha Mountain, Baotu Spring, Furon Street, etc.

       

This lady owns a bread and soup eatery, and after just a couple visits, she and Bonita are BFFs -- no surprise to anyone who knows Bonita!  She loved being able to meet our piao liang (beautiful) daughter and shuai (handsome) son-in-law!

It was very nice seeing Katie and Jason and showing them many of the people and sites we love in this city!

The first week of May is May Holiday in China -- roughly equivalent to our Labor Day holiday. We chose to go on a tour with a group of about a dozen other BYU China Teacher Program teachers. As you can imagine, a group of BYU teachers can be pretty wild and crazy...not really, but we did have a lot of fun seeing more of beautiful China. We visited Hangzhou and Suzhou (also known as China's Venice), two large cities in southeastern China, near Shanghai. Five million souls call Hangzhou home, and ten million live in Suzhou. They have a saying in China: Heaven above, Suzhou and Hangzhou on earth. Both Hangzhou and Suzhou were beautiful.

Here are the BYU teachers we hung out with for the better part of a week. Some of them were friends from before, and about half were new friends. We loved spending time with all of them!

And a few scenes we were able to see:

                 If I titled my pictures, the title of the above picture would be Peace and Harmony...(it could apply to the picture below as well!).

On April 13, Bonita and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. 

When these two starry-eyed youngsters married forty years ago, neither of us in our wildest dreams expected or anticipated we would be celebrating a wedding anniversary while in China. Surprise!

But we did.  

As part of her anniversary gift, Bonita crafted forty little origami cranes, and labeled each one with a memory from the past forty years -- our wedding day, the birth of each of our children, our moves to Boise, Salt Lake City, New Jersey and Colorado, etc. and etc. Then we sat together and reminisced while we placed them all in chronological order, and then  hung them from the ceiling in our dining room so we could remember what a wonderful forty years it has been.

And it has.

And now for a few pictures:

Chinese girls like to dress up in nice dresses and in traditional Chinese dress and have their pictures taken in public places like gardens, old town streets, etc. During our journeys over the May holiday, we probably saw at least 100 young women dressed in traditional dress, posing for pictures. Many brought their own photographers, others were taking selfies.  

The last two above were of my student Tracy (Zhou Xue Fei), who dressed up in traditional dress and took pictures during May holiday also.  You may remember her from an earlier post:

A few more:

I saw this lovely young woman taking selfies of herself, and offered to take some pictures for her, and she accepted my offer.  Then I asked if I could take a couple pictures with my camera, and she said yes. (How could she say no?!)

The little boy above bravely approached a group of us foreigners in the train station and announced, "Hello. My name is Wilson."  Cute kid.

Hangzhou has its own leaning tower, much like Pisa, Italy.

Cranes symbolize longevity in China. This crane was embedded in the walkway.

Bonita and I got separated from one another in the considerable crowds at the first place we visited in Suzhou...This young woman could see me, and could also see Bonita looking around for someone (I couldn't see Bonita from my vantage point).  She saw Bonita call someone on her cell phone, then me reach for my phone. As I answered, she stepped up to me and in near-perfect English, said, "Your wife is over there."  :-)  

One of the downsides of traveling during holiday weeks is dealing with the immense crowds! But it was worth it.

And finally, you thought it was just a bad joke...apparently not...