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Sunday, February 4, 2007 | 
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Web only: I have always prided myself in my ability to curl up in a little ball almost anywhere and get some sleep. Especially while traveling.
Still, I was a bit worried about how our vacation to some coastal towns during the first week of October would begin -- with an overnight bus ride.
At 7 p.m. we loaded our kids and luggage into two taxis, drove to a chartered bus and made the transfer. Once inside the bus, I discovered that there were only about 3-4 inches of leg room between the rows of seats.
Fortunately, the bus wasn't full, so our family of five got eight seats. Sophie and Ian could stretch out over two seats to sleep. And, I found that if I lay Isaac on the seat, I didn't have to worry about him rolling off into the narrow gap. The backs of the next row of seats would block him.
The good news is that our kids did surprisingly well for the 10-hour drive.
The bad news is that this happened in spite of the fact that the bus didn't seem to have any shock absorbers whatsoever. Did I mention before that the streets in Tianjin aren't that good? I actually meant the roads in China are just awful!
At one point, I had curled myself across two seats and I was repeatedly jolted into the seat in front of me. I sat up to see what was going on. It looked like we were in a dirt field full of potholes, driving around in the dark.
A lot of us were looking out the windows, trying to figure out what was going on, then we looked at each other and broke the dark silence with laughter, because, well, what else are you going to do in a situation like that?
I am told that even large cities, such as Tianjin, have had paved roads only the past 5-10 years. Before that, the roads were little better than dirt or nonexistent.
The widespread use of cars is relatively new and growing dramatically every year. I don't want to be around to witness the traffic jams that will be created when the masses trade in their bikes and walking shoes for automobiles.
It is an interesting situation, with all of the new roads being constructed and the majority of the drivers being somewhat inexperienced. When there is road construction, there is no posted detour. Drivers just improvise and do what they can to get where they need to go. Drivers in Tianjin make up their own rules.
Early in the morning, we arrived at Penglai, the first of three destination stops for us south of Tianjin in the Shandong Province.
Before the trip, we were given the following information: "The Chinese always describe Penglai as heaven on earth. It is a modern seaside city full of legends and tales." I got that statement in an e-mail, but it sounds like it was copied right out of a travel brochure.
I don't know if I would exactly call Penglai "Heaven on Earth," but I will say that getting off that bus and into our hotel room was like a little piece of heaven.
We had some free time until 1 p.m., so Brian, the kids and I took turns sleeping and exploring the neighborhood in a rotational sequence since it was beyond our luck to get all three kids to go to sleep at once.
Our hotel room was clean and pretty. It had hardwood floors, two twin-sized beds with white comforters, and a drinking water dispenser in the room. The flooring and furniture were light oak. There was air conditioning, and a window spanning the length of one wall with a nice view of the city.
Just outside, the street was lined with food vendors, a grocery store, and a single-level mall. I happened upon a baby-gear store inside the mall. This was a great discovery since I had made up my mind to buy an umbrella stroller to use on this trip.
I found just what I wanted, but the price of $15 was more than I wanted to pay. Bargaining is a fine art in China and once you have mastered it, there is always room for negotiation. I used my limited vocabulary of numbers and sign language to talk the price down to $12. But, at that price, the salesperson stood firm. So, I didn't buy it just yet.
I bought my first street food, three different kinds of "meat on a stick," cooked in hot oil. One was chicken, one looked like a hot dog, and the other may have been pork, but, because of its wide, flat shape the kids and I called it "elephant ears." All of that, plus a bag of popcorn that tasted like kettle corn, cost less than $1.
That afternoon, we headed to the Temple of the Eight Immortals, a gorgeous structure surrounded by gardens on the border of the Yellow Sea.
The temple itself is six stories tall, with sloping triangular roofs and brightly painted pictures of dragons and Chinese folklore. We made our way through surrounding buildings displaying intricately carved furniture and then climbed all six stories of the temple, which was filled with statues of gods. It was impressive.
We paid a few cents to try to land special coins onto an ancient brass turtle for good luck. We also spent a dollar for everyone to take turns ringing a giant bell.
There was an area where we paid a small fee so the kids could feed fish to sea lions. This wasn't your Sea World experience, where you drop the food a few feet down to the animals. Here, you could walk right up and place the food into their mouths with tongs. We were enjoying ourselves and Brian was snapping photos for posterity, when Ian dropped a fish on the ground and tried to pick it up while a sea lion barked anxiously just millimeters away.
Still, it was a fun memory and we completed it without losing any fingers or toes.
As we made our way through the grounds, Isaac rode in the baby backpack on Brian's back. Sophie walked, stopping at intervals to grant requests to be photographed by Chinese visitors. And, Ian who was tired and experiencing pains in his foot, cried for me to carry him. This, I mostly did, for the whole four-hour visit.
Suddenly, $12 for a stroller sounded like a great deal.
We were the only ones in our group with children, and we were having a hard time keeping up. Then, I noticed a rock path off from the main sidewalk that wound around through the gardens. We decided to peel off and take things at a slower pace along the path. A sign along the walkway bore the English translation, "Cherish the Trees."
We see a lot of interesting and humorous translations and I know the intended meaning was to "Keep Off the Grass," "Stay on the Path" or "Don't Disturb the Gardens," but "Cherish the Trees" became our mantra as we slowed down and took our time soaking in the beauty of the gardens.
Then, we saw another sign that said, "Staff off the grass." So, we chuckled and made sure we "staffed" off the grass and "cherished the trees" and cherished the moments and the memories and had a great day.
That evening, we went to a restaurant where our group of 20 was seated around two large, round tables in a private room. We were served a dozen selections of seafood, including escargot, spicy clams in hard shells, and squid, on a rotating disc to make for easy access to the food. I had a taste of everything no matter how exotic it seemed to my palate.
Back at the hotel, we got the kids to sleep easily, and since Brian was recovering from bronchitis, he went to bed early, too.
I got directions to a spa down the street where several from the group had gone for massages. A Chinese girl took me into a room and seated me in a big, comfy chair.
In China, it is the norm to remain fully clothed for a massage. She soaked my feet in some bright purple hot water infused with tea.
After a short rubdown on my back, shoulders and hands, she went to work on my feet for an hour. It was very relaxing. At the very end, she brought in some small glass jars, sprayed them with some sort of flammable liquid, lit them on fire and then stuck them to the bottoms of my feet so that the hot air created a suction against my arches.
It was really bizarre having the skin on my feet all sucked up like that. After a few minutes, I was sure I was going to have huge bruises.
But, then she popped off the jars, my feet felt fine, and it was over. I am told this is a method to "release the toxins" from the body after a massage.
At about 10 p.m. I walked outside to head back to my hotel, all happy and relaxed. As soon as I got to the curb, I tripped and fell right into the road! One minute I was totally relaxed, the next minute I was lying in the gutter, mortified while the workers from the spa ran outside to see if I was OK.
I picked myself up and hurried back to my hotel for a good night of rest, mostly unscathed except for my pride.
The next morning, I ran to the baby-gear store and purchased the umbrella stroller for $11.50 before we piled onto the bus and headed to Weihai, our next destination.
Amy Nicholson is writing a weekly column, posted each Sunday at www.standard.net, about her family's experiences living and working in Tianjin, China.
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