For much of the month of June, I traveled through China with Mama and Papa Fung, as well as with a friend/colleague with whom I was sharing some travel funds that facilitated the trip. The last time my parents were there was almost thirty years ago, and they had to drive my cranky ass around. (For real, they had to buy a stroller for me-- a frickin' five-year-old with perfectly functioning legs-- simply because I refused to walk. 80% of the photos from that trip show me either asleep or scowling.) So I guess it's only fitting that, thirty years later, after I've grown to be a far better traveler, that I take them to visit the ancestral homeland. My colleague and I started in Hong Kong, where we attended a conference. We also had a conference in Shanghai, where my parents met up with us and stayed for a week. We took an overnight train to Xi'an, where we spent two nights. Then we took a bullet train to Beijing and spent eight nights there. My dad returned home while my mom and I spent four nights in Taiwan, where she spent her childhood.
To real-time blog this trip would have been awesome, but I never had the energy to write after our long days of sightseeing. Also, anything Google related appeared to be blocked in China, so I couldn't have even if I wanted to. So I will just settle with recreating the most memorable moments of the trip gradually now. We had some precious ones, given that we basically spent every moment together for three weeks. Overall, we did very well-- Nobody yelled at anybody, and nobody cried.
So the best anecdotes from Mama and Papa Fung's trip to China to follow!
