Thursday, we had a chance to visit the Imperial Palace in Shenyang. Steve never had a chance to visit the Forbidden City in Beijing, so this visit gave him an idea of what that is like. Shenyang became the capital of the Manchu empire in 1625, so the Imperial Palace here was the residence of the emperors. It is second only in scale to that in Beijing, being comprised of over 300 rooms.
The thresholds of the rooms are high as a result of their belief that evil spirits can't jump very high. The high thresholds, therefore, keep them out. There is a meaning to just about everything that is done. Even the colors they choose. Of course, gold is the color used by royalty. Black apparently symbolizes water so when they built the library in the Palace, they used black ceramic tile for the roof. The greatest threat to the books is fire, so they used the color symbolizing water for the roof to protect them.
There is so much to see here, but we are so glad we finally get to travel to Guangzhou today to our last pre-US destination! We miss our girls, we miss our dog, we miss our home, we miss our friends, we miss our food. We have discovered that Zach likes KFC and have eaten quite a bit of that lately (there are lots of them here, Kelly and Ryan!). It is very hard to eat around the hotels we have stayed at in Dalian and Shenyang. The menus are understandably not in English (and without pictures, we just don't want to guess what we are ordering!), and the people do not speak enough English to trust that they understand. That will be different in Guangzhou, since every adoptive family has to travel there, it is easier to find people that speak English.
We are looking forward to not being stared at so obnoxiously. We are so different as we walk the streets of Shenyang and Dalian that people will turn around at street corners and just stare at us. It is a mission of Steve's to win the stare downs. It obviously makes Zach uncomfortable, since the look on their face as they are staring is not often nice.
We met an 89 year old woman at a park we went to recently. We climbed many stone steps to reach a little pavilion and she joined us soon after we got there. As she entered, she proclaimed her age in wonderful English! She has 4 daughters and 1 son, and her husband, who was a doctor, died 9 years ago. We enjoyed talking to her! She learned English many years ago in Shanghai through a Christian school. Then she proceeded to sing "Jesus Loves the Little Children." She also shared that she thinks the young people have horrible manners. The old people still have manners, she said, but she is saddened by the young.
The three children are Zach, Hannah and Hannah's brother, Andrew.
The furnishings are in the living quarters of the Emperor's family, and of his throne.
There is a picture of a cradle which would be used for the Emperor's child. It hangs from the ceiling. I thought this was really interesting.
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