Tuesday 11/19/2002

It’s nearly 7:30 and Hope is still asleep, she’s just beginning to stir. This is one good baby!

After another enormous breakfast from the Dolton’s buffet we load the babies into Snuglis and head out on foot for the local department store, the Changsha Apollo Commercial City. All together we form a pretty big group - maybe 20 adults and a dozen babies, plus Wendy who is serving as our tour guide this morning. Cynthia is with Nancy, trying to keep her caught up on paperwork so she can hopefully travel with us to Guangzhou. The word is that her baby is doing much better today and should be out of the hospital soon.

Our walk to the department store is about a mile and we only have to cross one street, but that crossing is quite challenging with 3 or 4 lanes of traffic going each way and lots of cars, busses, and bicycles all seemingly oblivious to the traffic lights at the corner. Following the example of the locals we ease our way across through the gaps, trusting that the approaching drivers will slow down for us. After a few hair raising minutes everyone finally reaches the other side without loss of life or limb!

Unlike Beijing, we’re the only Westerners to be seen here, and the locals turn to watch us as we go by. Someone taps me on the arm - it’s an old Chinese woman who motions for me to stop. Hope’s pant legs have ridden up a bit, leaving a few millimeters of ankle exposed and the old woman fusses with her pants and booties for a few moments until everything is covered up again. Then she smiles and continues on, quite satisfied with a job well done. Little does she know that we’ve already made these adjustments several times this morning and her ankles will be exposed once again within minutes. The Chinese (even our guides) seem to be obsessed with keeping babies warm - far too warm by Western standards. And they’re not at all bashful about letting you know if they think your baby isn’t warm enough, or even making the necessary adjustments to clothing and blankets themselves. The scene with the old woman will be repeated a dozen times or more during our 2 hour visit to the department store.

As I’ve noticed with lots of other shops in Changsha, the department store doesn’t have regular solid doors. Instead the doorways are covered by two layers of vertical strips of heavy plastic, dark brown outside and clear inside, which are attached at the top and swing free at the bottom. Once inside we jump on the escalator and head for the 4th floor - baby supplies. This store is enormous! There’s at least one more floor above the 4th, plus a grocery in the basement. The floor we’re on features baby supplies, toys, books, sporting goods, musical instruments, shoes (lots and lots of shoes), hats, cameras, small electronics (PDAs, calculators), and a surprisingly large selection of surveying & drafting instruments.

The store is patrolled by hundreds of salesladies in matching lavender jackets. To make a purchase you hand the item to a nearby saleslady (no need to worry, there’s always one nearby) who writes it up on a three copy ticket. She keeps one copy, along with the item you wish to purchase. You then take the two remaining copies to a central cashier who collects your money, stamps both copies, and then returns a copy to you along with a receipt. The last step is to return to the original saleslady who takes the final receipt and gives you your purchases, all bagged and ready to go. It must take a small army of accountants to reconcile all of the paperwork generated by these transactions. We've noticed anywhere we go (the department store, the airport, the hotel money exchange) that the Chinese seem to be quite fond of stamping paperwork with rubber stamps, always with red ink.

None of the store employees seem to speak much English, but we manage to get by just fine. Fortunately the Chinese make use of the same Arabic numerals that we do, so it's easy enough for the cashiers to ring up our purchases and then simply point to the total on the cash register display.

As I stroll through the store with Hope, I’m again struck by how happy the Chinese people are to see the babies. Anytime I stop moving a small crowd gathers, mostly women but sometimes a few men join in as well. They smile at her, talk to her, touch her, hold her little hands and, inevitably, fool with her booties. Tomorrow we’ll be wearing a one-piece outfit for sure! The celebrity treatment is a lot of fun at first, but has become a little tiring by the end of our allotted hour in the baby department.

We head back down the escalator to the grocery in the basement, which is quite a bit bigger than the one we visited yesterday. At the door they have plastic hand-baskets, just like any grocery back home. But they also have small wheeled bases which the baskets snap onto, making tiny shopping carts - what a clever idea! They have the same Sanlu formula that Hope was fed in the Yueyang orphanage as well as jars of baby food. The baby food is made by Heinz, but these are flavors that you’d never see at the Kroger back home - fish & vegetables, salmon & tomato, bone marrow & vegetables. Not knowing what Hope likes, we pick out a good assortment. We also restock on Coke, snacks, and pineapple beer. We pay for our food and then make our way back to the hotel for lunch and naps.

In the short time that we’ve had her, Hope has become a much less serious baby. Initially all she would do is stare at us, but now she’s beginning to smile, babble, and even laugh a little! She’s beginning to feel comfortable with us and seems to understand that we’ll respond to her attempts to interact with us. I would guess that the caregivers in the orphanage were so busy just trying to meet basic needs, that they had little time, if any, for one-on-one interaction with the babies. Now that she has opportunity for that kind of interaction she seems to be starting to really enjoy it.