Tours around China

Day 1 (Jan. 2):

We arrived in Nanjing w/o any problems after 5 hours of smooth ride. The bullet train traveled at around 100-120 miles per hour. My sister Ling picked us up at the train station in Nanjing. It was so good to see her.

We went to the Confucius temple, Fuzi Miao, a modern version, I might add, to browse around. It was so beautiful.

Jan. 2, 2009

Then, we went my sister's house in Dagang, 1.5 hours south east of Nanjing. She has a car and a driver at her disposal when she comes to China (about 2-3 times a year, but others in the office use the car, I'm sure). We drove to their house in Dagang that night. Wow, holy cow, I thought our house in St. George was nice, until we saw Ling's. They even have a built-in smoothie maker in the kitchen. It's totally amazing. The apartment complex here has a security guard out front. The buildings are brand new (Dagang is a newly designed town in Chiangsu Province), with single homes, duplexes, and condos. Ling has a condo on floors 3, 4 and 5. In China, when you buy a condo, or a house, it's just a building. You have to go in and do everything, including drywalling, electrical wiring, and anything in between to make it a place to live. Stan is a detailed man, so he took care of every detail. It has recessed LED lighting in almost every corner. The dining room is right next to the living room and has the circular thing in the back with lighted glass look. Around the circle is hand carved wood with Chinese characters and flowers, animals...everything is exquisite. The house is cold, but didn't take too long to warm up. Each room has a heater built-in, so we slept comfortably. They have a wooden bathtub on the top floor which is beautiful. The picture of the bamboo tree was weaved together (a real tree) into a topiary. The pond is in the entry way with vines. It's been interesting to see all these things.Living room

Dining Room


Best of all, their office is only across the way in a different building. The maid does all the cleaning and cooking. Each meal we ate here was cooked by Xiao Ping. Boy, she is a good cook. We'll share some of her cooking in the next blog. There are about 8-9 people working in the office, so she cooks a 9-10 course meal for lunch. Then she does special orders for us depending on what we would like to have for dinner. We can get spoiled very quickly. I'll post the recipes shortly.