Day 8

We arrived in Disney in the evening.  The reason I say Disney is when we arrived at the hotel, which is located on an “island,” it looks like an older town located on Main St USA.  It was built by the English one hundred or so years ago and the place has been restored.  This part does not feel like China.  The hotel room is small but very modern.  It is a change from the “five” star hotel that we stayed at in Jinan.  Since it is late, we did a quick stroll down several streets and decided to call it a night.  We had to get up early enough Saturday morning to go to the medical clinic so that we can get the kid a final check out exam and a TB test. 

 I am renaming this place from Shamian Island, to “Adoptive Island” since most all the tourists like us are adopting kids.  There is a second name I will call this place and that is “Wedding Photo Island.”  On a strange side note, there have been at least one hundred different couples that had their pictures taken here since we have been here.  I have learned from watching the movie the Incredibles that when the bad guy says that when “everyone is a super (hero), then no one will be.”  I hate to tell them this, but if everyone gets their special wedding pictures taken here, it is not special anymore.  I would think that the muddy waters of the Pearl River would have more meaning at this point.

Once we left the clinic I noticed what appeared to be thick dark smoke coming above some of the buildings, so my first thought is one of the smokestacks from a nearby factory.  Then as I further examined, I realized there were sirens in the distance and traffic stopped all around.  After convincing Renee to walk faster, we finally came upon a strange scene.  There was one of the buildings at the market on fire, and hundreds of onlookers staring at the burning building literally a few feet away from it as the flames were trying to be extinguished.  Once again, be thankful for our fire departments across the US.  This place just burned and burned and the hoses were barely making a difference in stopping the flames.  There were apartments attached to the building so you would think an evacuation would be in order.  Silly me, this just became the hit ticket item with box seats looking down at the rising smoke.  Who would have thought that so many people would be entertained by this, but it was free.

Once the fire started to die out, we kept walking around the island.  It is surrounded by a moat so you are isolated from direct traffic.  When the lights go down the streets are still well lit and you are in an area where it seems nice and safe to walk around.  There are also many shops here where everyone wants you to come in and look.  It is fairly reasonably priced compared to what we would pay in the US.  Not much else happened this day, but otherwise fairly straightforward, for China….