In a word, yes. In more words: it’s complicated.
As I said in a previous post, we’ll be tourists with our new child while we’re in China. We’ll be handed our child on day two of the trip. There will be a significant amount of paperwork to do once we’re there, but not 19 solid days worth. So why the long trip?As part of this adoption program, the government of China wants us to have a cultural experience of China, something that we can share with our child. Hopefully someday, we’ll bring our child back to China so he or she can experience it firsthand. They want us to see whatever interests us, and share those experiences with our child.
There are some obvious spots to visit and we’ll probably get to most of them:
- The Great Wall
- The Forbidden City
- The Terracotta Army
- Tienanmen Square
We have some flexibility here. I’m not sure quite how much flexibility (“Let’s swing by Tibet!”), but I think we can get out of Beijing a bit, and we’ll also be spending some time in Guangzhou, near Hong Kong.
We’ve been watching a documentary on Netflix called “Wild China.” It paints a pretty incredible picture of China’s scenic beauty. so I know we’d enjoy that sort of thing as well. The kid will be in a baby-bjorn type setup for the most part, so hiking around is an option.
Does anyone have any recommendations? Has anyone here been to China?
I have, with a big group, although it was about 10 years ago. I can only imagine how much Beijing has changed since with the Olympics!
I think you hit on the big things we did in the Beijing area. I would also add the Summer Palace to the list. We also went to a zoo with panda bears, but I am fuzzy on the details, and somewhere for a tea ceremony. We also did something underground–it may have been related to the Terracotta army, but I’m fuzzy on the details as I couldn’t take pictures.
Our other major stops were Tianjin (a few hour bus ride from Beijing), Shanghai, and Nanjing. We had an extended stay in Shanghai and went to some nearby towns for day trips (like Suzhou). Shanghai was my favorite of our stops, but it would be another plane ride from either Beijing or Guangzhou. If you end up around that area I can provide more detail.