Day 10 - Farewell China

It is hard to believe that it is our last day in China. This trip has been so enjoyable there were times it felt like it might last forever. We woke up this morning and did one more yoga session. We started packing and got breakfast before it was time to meet Lele. We only had a partial day before we had to catch our flight so we only had a couple of activities planned for the day.

We started by visiting the Reed Flute cave. There are caves all over Guilin. This is one of the larger caves and it is accessible to tourists. They have created a path through the cave and put all kinds of lighting around the stalactites and stalagmites. It was interesting. The more interesting part of this experience was that as we explored the cave we had a chance to talk to Lele. He had lots of questions about America for us. We would answer his questions and then he would compare our answers to China. He asked us about many topics including if it was difficult to be a movie star in America, why Kim Kardashian is so famous, and about our religion. We told him we were Christian and then proceeded to tell him a little bit about the LDS faith. We told him there is an LDS temple in Hong Kong, but otherwise, the church does not have much of a presence in China. We also told him about missionary work and how our church is a worldwide organization. I do not envy the missionaries who are sent to China when it finally opens. They are going to have their work cut out for them.

Another interesting conversation we had with Lele was about wealth and income disparity in China. Despite its communist leanings, China has a fairly similar wealth distribution to the US. A small percentage of individuals are wealthy, a large portion of the population is middle class, and the remainder is poor. As we had this conversation we pointed out some of the main differences we saw between the US and China. Lele then told us that he thinks the biggest difference between China and the US is education. He explained that in China education focuses on indoctrinating students to love China and the government. The way he explains students are taught is almost fanatical. He pointed out that we have more freedom in education and our thinking than in China. This is a perspective we could not get from touring China. It was interesting to hear this from Lele.

After we walked through the cave we went over to one of the lakes of Guilin. Guilin did not have a city wall, rather there were a few lakes and rivers that created natural barriers to entry into the city. These lakes and rivers were considered the city moat. One of the lakes was right by our hotel. We visited another lake. It was a pleasant place to spend some time. At this park, they had a model of an archway from Paris and the Golden Gate bridge. Lele had us take pictures in front of both of them. Lele was great with taking our pictures and loved pointing out good picture locations. In this park, they also had a giant banyan tree, which was hundreds of years old and very large. It was an impressive tree.

While we walked we told Lele a lot about Utah. He asked us about national parks and we showed him pictures of Bryce, Arches, and Zions. He was very impressed. He also asked about the economy in Utah. We told him about the growth of technology in this region and mentioned we had some great universities. When we told him BYU was in Utah. He said he knew about BYU, which surprised us. He knew it because there is a BYU exchange program in Shanghai and he has met some students. That was cool. Lele has been our only guide who really knew anything about Utah. When we first told him we are from Salt Lake City he immediately recognized that SLC hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics. We told him that if he ever comes to Utah we would love to be his guide. He told us that it is very difficult for Chinese citizens to get visas to the US, especially if they speak English because both governments are worried that Chinese citizens may not come back to China when the visa expires.

We returned to our hotel room, changed our clothes, and checked out. We had one final meal in China. We ate at a restaurant near our hotel. We had goose, chicken, fried rice, and yams/green beans with passion fruit juice to drink. It was great. The food in China has wildly exceeded my expectations. We have not really had a meal we did not enjoy and we loved most of the food.

Lele dropped us at the airport. We were sad to say goodbye. Lele was a top-notch guide. One thing that has been kind of cool is that our guides have been around our same age. We have really been able to relate to them and become friends.

Our flight from Guilin went to Shanghai. There are no direct flights from Guilin to the US. In Shanghai, we had a somewhat tight connection because we had to pick up our bags, recheck them, go through security, and get on our new flight. We really did not want to miss this flight because the next flight would be the next day. As expected it was pretty tight, especially because the guy checking our bags acted like it was the first time he ever printed boarding passes and bag tags (it seriously took him 30 minutes). To make life a little more interesting, while we were trying to text our bags we got a text from Delta saying they moved the up 20 minutes. We hustled and in the end, we made it with plenty of time. It was just a more stressful experience than it needed to be.

The flight from Shanghai to LA is about 12 hours. It turns out this Delta flight was at least half empty so Alison and I each got an entire row to ourselves. That made the flight a little more enjoyable. We slept quite a bit, which may not have been the wisest decision as it going to make jet lag that much worse.

We got to LA and quickly made our way through customs. We signed up for Global entry a while back. It is totally worth it. We made it through customs in no time at all. There was an earlier flight from LA to SLC, but there was basically no way we could make it to the earlier flight, except it was delayed. We found an incompetent Delta employee, who despite their best efforts to thwart our plan, was able to get us on the standby list for the earlier flight. With the delay, we had enough time to grab dinner at shack shake - yum! At shack shake, we ran into Rob Etherington, who was the bishop of one of the Stanford singles wards when I was on my mission there. Funny enough it turns out he was on the same flight from Shanghai as us. He was in China for business. It was good to see him - it is such a small world.

We ended up getting on the earlier flight and ended up at home almost an hour earlier than we planned. It was great, except our bags did not make it onto the flight. They were put on the later flight. The Delta employee who helped us had assured us our bags would be on the earlier flight, even if we weren't able to get on. Delta made it right and agreed to deliver our bags the next day. As long as we didn't have to wait at the airport or come back that was fine with us. Blake and Debbie picked us up. While we were talking to baggage services Blake brought in Tex to see us. He was so excited. It is good to be home. Unfortunately, jet lag is the worst and after 21 hours of travel Alison and I were not at all tired. We slept about two hours on Thursday night. We are going to pay for that sometime very soon. We made it home and we are just happy to be here.