What you can't always realize in the beauty of a picture, can be felt in the reality of the experience!
What most Chinese don't know, is that just outside the beautiful city known as Kaifeng, where the ancient ruins of the Northern Song Dynasty lie on the edge of the lake. Where fisherman fish and vendors sell their delicious food and couples stroll and children play at the park, not too far from the edge of the South wall of the town, there is a dark, sad scene of abandoned children lined in cribs, whose only wrong in this life was to not be born without any visible signs of a health problem.
What any tourist wouldn't know when walking the busy streets of Kaifeng, and buying animal balloons for their child on the street, and enjoy what seems like a lively carnival-like street, is that the countless rows of bicycles lining the streets, all donning a child seat strapped somewhere to them, are not here for pleasure. Actually, only ten steps from the street, hides the South entrance to the local Children's hospital where approximately 90% of the medically needy children are abandoned in this ancient city.
Unless you entered the park that so easily caught your eye on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th day you passed it, you would not smell the foulness of it. You would not then be enticed to investigate where the stench of what has the vague sense of fecal matter originates from. You would not find this river of sludge, which runs directly down the center of the park, flanked by flowing, Weeping Willows and intricately carved decor, arched by numerous bridges. You would not find couples and friends alike, paddling their boats through the grotesque gray matter that foams at the bends. The filth can hardly be seen in the picture, but breathe the air and you cannot pass without notice.
The hard work and manual labor in China is seen everywhere you go. From the heavy loads, boar on the scrawny backs of hard-working men, to the archaic jack-hammer, a.k.a. the hammer and chisel, to the crushing weight of the crops carried in from the fields by the women and children, there is no way to leave China without realizing just how hard they have to work for what little they have, and how little we have to work for what great amounts we seem to just be lavished with.
You know how your kid does something too strange and so cute, and you race to grab the camera.....but by the time it's in-hand and ready to snap, it's OVER! Well, I did it; I caught the picture this time!!!! Pat was playing music, I was dancing, and Lulu thought she'd just be the Girl in the Plastic Bubble for a while. I love these kinds of pictures, and they'll hopefully make for fun memories in our future! I am so thankful to be in such a different place than I was this time last year. God is good!
