Monday, October 19, 2009

From Beijing

Deng Deng's Family in Nanning

Old Man at Summer Palace

In the Forbidden City

For our fall break, we took a trip to Beijing and later to a very small village town (3 million) called Nanning. Nanning is not a tourist town in any way but we had been invited to attend a traditional Chinese country wedding. A former AYI (domestic helper 23 yr old) of ours was getting married in her hometown. We got tickets for our trips and made all necessary reservations. The week before we left the wedding date was changed and no longer fit into our plans. Why change the date? They told us it turned out that it was a bad day to get married. The mother-n-law gets to choose the date. We are not sure that was the real reason as many people were getting married on the original date, if fact there were at least three different weddings that evening in our hotel.

We were able to see places that few foreigners have ever been. This was evident by the number of stares that we got. Also the number of pics taken of us by the few that had a camera. Many Chinese believe it is good luck to have a picture taken with a foreigner or to touch a foreigner.

So the pics here are of the two families that we visited and of the area around Nanning, which is close to the Vietnam border, only maybe 60 miles but we were told about a 8 hour trip!

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