The Parents are Coming!

Jianshui Old Town

Photo by Jayve.

Well, I got a call from my mom last night. She’s never called me here before, so I knew something was wrong. Thank goodness, it was only that their flight was delayed 24 hours. It’s bad news, but they’re still on their way. Mom sounded pretty upset last night (my Fri night, her Fri morning), and I just called her again (my Sat morning, her Fri evening) and she spent a lot of the day trying to confirm that everything’s been rescheduled. Air China seems to be unable to reconfirm the last leg of their flight from Beijing to Kunming, even though their American carrier, Continental, gave them a document with the new Air China flight on it. Weird, but they should be fine. Damn the weather in Newark!

We have exciting plans to take them to some spots we’ve never seen before. Although the Dali and Lijiang route is reliable, we thought we’d try something different. My friend April has helped us enormously. She used to be a tour guide and loves to give travel advice. So, the plan is to go to JianShui (建水) and hopefully on to YuanYang (元阳). JianShui has an “Old Town” (Xin Jie) and a “New Town” (Nan Sha). Supposedly the Old Town has some great old architecture. And the Confucius temple is supposed to be quite lovely. In YuanYang, I’ve heard that the terraced rice paddies are incredible. Hope we get to see it all!