touring taoyuan county and adoption update

On the most recent holiday, Qingming Festival (Tomb Sweeping Day), school was out, so we had a chance for our own outing. Celebrants clean the tombs of their ancestors and give food offerings, and it also marks the beginning of spring. We went the easy route and took a shuttle bus that went to various sites in Taoyuan County, a county just southwest of Taipei.

We spent the majority of our time at two sites; the first was Daxi (pronounced Dah-shee). Daxi has an older (baroque) main street akin to some of the markets we’ve been to, populated with food vendors, woodworking shops and various and sundry tourist stops.

There is a lovely park situated high above the river bank with huge trees and performers who land spinning tops onto bottles or play a bamboo flute complete in native dress. Tom did a great video of this. (note, each top is actually spinning; when one slows down, he grabs it and starts over.) topspinner

For us Alaskans, shade is beginning to matter as the heat and humidity in Taiwan rise noticeably. We heard from a native here that the temperatures only rise after Tomb Sweeping Day. An old Baroque style bridge crosses the river, and the pace in Daxi is slow and calm. A few stops later, we disembarked at Chiang-Kai Shek (CKS) Mausoleum and grounds in Cihu. The first thing that jumps out is the over 100 statues of CKS in gray, deep red, army green and black.

They were moved to the site from schools and parks across Taiwan when the KMT (Kuomintang party, the party that left mainland China when the Communists took over) was voted out and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) came into power. It appears that this is recent (last 10 years) and that Taiwanese feel that CKS reflects a dictatorship and that they are a democratic country now. There was a lake with numerous black swans, the changing of the guard at the mausoleum and a small museum type display. At the end of the day, we were wiped out...again-heat and humidity win again!

Adoption Update: We've tried for over a week to do a video chat with the youngest adoptive boy, Han han and had various technical challenges each time. We hope it finally works tomorrow. One side benefit was that a few days ago, I was able to instant chat with the social worker who oversees him for over an hour, so I got lots of information about him and his likes and dislikes etc. That is really the first solid in country information I've been able to get first hand! We also heard that the other social worker from Yunlin County, where the kids are originally from, located the birth mother, but she doesn't return their calls. This has been reported to the judge, so now we see if more efforts at contact are required or if things can progress. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers to this end; even though I knew the process would be bureacratic, it has still been really frustrating at times. (And I know our process has been fast relative to many I've heard and read about).