This next post comes at the obscene time of 3:30 am local time. For those of you who have made the trip to the Orient, you know all about this early rise into the morning.
Our second day was filled with traveling the local streets of Tianjin. There is not a tremendous amount of history attached to Tianjin because for the most part it is one large textile mill. The haze here is very similar to that which has made Beijing famous. Before leaving our hotel, I soon realized that all the clothes that I had brought for Eddie were much too large. He didn’t seem to mind, but we would need to spend some time out in the streets searching for something that would fit. In Beijing, this would have been an easy solution as we would have headed down to the local Wal Mart. This was not the case in Tianjin.
Our guide Mary started looking for the local shops that would carry the clothes that we needed, but this proved difficult as there were very few children shops (what we needed for such a small child). We finally settled in on a simple shop after passing through the sites and smells of the local food being cooked along the streets up and down the market area. It was here that we traveled by the local fish market and watched the bartering for the day’s food that was going on among the residents of Tianjin. But, our guide was not going to be outdone in the purchase of Eddie’s needs. As we picked out a couple of pants and shirts, Mary informed me of the price which she said was way too much, but this was “No problem” as she promised to get the price down to a more reasonable amount. The “bickering” began and I watched at the game that transpired between shop clerk and determined travel guide. It is at these times that one truly enjoys the sounds of the Chinese language which elevates and descends through various tones, inflections and volumes. When the smoke had cleared, Mary had emerged as the winner as she was within 10 RMBs ($1.50) of her destination price. Eddie was very happy with his new clothes.
We made one more stop in shopping as Eddie wanted to find some comic books to read and some pens to write with. The trip was truly an enjoyable one. We headed back to our room and it was a little past 12. Eddie and I sat in the room for a little while before we both realized that we were hungry. I called Mary and asked where we could find noodles for Eddie as that was his desire. Within 5 minutes a bellboy brought us directions to a local Chinese restaurant where Eddie and I could order by the pictures (not an English word in the place). We enjoyed our meal of noodles and beef with a little bit of soup and some type of lemon drink (I didn’t realize that everybody doesn’t have Coke). As we strode back to the hotel, Eddie indicated that he wanted a watch so he could keep up with his own time so we made the heft purchase of a watch (40 RMBs…about $6). This too required the usual bickering and bartering, but it was a lady from Italy who spoke English who came to our rescue to get the watch to the price that she liked before leaving me to pay.
As we approached the evening, Eddie and I both were tired. We headed back to the room to give Eddie some time to play on the computer and we were up until late 10:30 playing driving games on the computer. Tomorrow we would visit the cultural street of Tianjin. But today, many of the memories are recorded on the Flip camera that Eddie has taken such a liking to (he records TV, billboards, us…whatever strikes his fancy. Some making a lot sense and some making no sense at all to me).
Once again, thank you for your thoughts and prayers…especially to the family back home. You are deeply missed and Eddie and I both are looking forward to the flight home. Please forgive the typos because I need to remind you that it is now 3:57 AM our time. We love you all.
Eddie Fuben and Jimmie
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