SummerPalace

Day 22

I woke up early despite being sleep deprived. My ears still wouldn't equalize after yesterday's flights. I could feel fluid sloshing around in my right ear and the ear was starting to hurt. I was worried about getting an ear infection. I took a Sudafed to try to decongest.

I was texting to Sonja, who models for me, on messenger about rescheduling a shoot when Donna and Ray came with breakfast (those deep fried churro things, sesame pancakes, and hard boiled eggs).

We are staying at our friend Li Feng's apartment. It is on the top (18th floor) of the building. The apartment is quite nice. The living room has this ornate overstuffed furniture that looks like it could be in Versailles, not my style but very comfortable. They appear to have a very comfortable lifestyle although she and her husband work very hard to maintain it. He leaves for work at 6:30 and she at 8:00 and they routinely work past 8:00pm.

We ate, woke the kids, did a few loads laundry, showered, and realized that it was getting close to lunch time. Andrea, and Donna, and the little kids went to her apartment while Joshua and I hung laundry. When they returned 20 minutes later, we all headed for the staff cafeteria at the University where Donna teaches. The food was good, too many choices to try everything, and amazingly cheap. We sat in a clean room, with clean tablecloths on every table, and pretty art on the walls. The plates are all color coded by price and have some sort of embedded electronics and when you are ready to check out you put your tray on the counter next to the register and it totals the price automatically and deducts the total cost from your ID card (or in our case from Donna's).

After lunch we headed to the Summer Palace. We took the subway and a bus. Despite being told to keep it safe, Ari lost in his subway card, fully charged with 50 Yuan on the first train. A ride is four Yuan, a little more than 50 cents.

When I checked I it was 93 degrees ("feels life 92," according to Google, but felt like 99 to me). The palace itself was pretty but mobbed with tourists, including a number of Westerners. "There are Americans," one of the kids exclaimed upon seeing a group of them. "Who let them into the country?" I retorted in a voice full of mock horror.

I sort of dragged through the palace. It was rebuilt in the 1860s after the Anglo - French burned it to the ground. The palace is beautiful but you could only look into the rooms through the windows. It is on a huge lake, which was pleasant to walk along. We had a group of 8, which was hard to keep together. First we lost Tianzu, Ray's friend who came with us, and spent 20 minutes looking for him. Then we lost Ari who insisted on running ahead and spent half an hour locating him. He didn't see what the big deal was.

Tianzu is staying with Donna for a couple of nights while his mom is in Hong Kong on business. I really like how the Chinese people help each other out, taking care of children, sharing meals; it seems in many ways a more integrated social fabric than we have in the States.

We climbed up and over a hill that felt like a mountain and visited a replica of Suzhou street. Then we headed home at about 4:30 in an attempt to beat rush hour. We got back around an hour later and headed to dinner at Donna's University (the Capital University of Business and Economics). This time we chose the Muslim dining hall. I had spicy chicken and a vegetable mixture. The university subsidizes the food so it cost about a dollar per person for a meal. After dinner we went back to the apartment where the kids disappeared  into their video games, Andrea posted to her blog. I should have written this post but was just too exhausted.

Around 9:00 Li Feng and Andy returned. We all had some fruit, watermelon and lychees, before bed.