A Sunny Stroll in the Square...

Our whirlwind tour of Jiangsu province ended today with our early morning (ughh!) flight to Jiangxi for the 3rd leg of our journey. We had a quick 1 hour flight to Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi province where Hannah was born. Nanchang is situated about 65 km south of the Yangtze River on the Gan(jiang) river, and has a population of approx. 4 million. The 2, 200 year old city is rich with history, is surrounded by beautiful mountains, hills and plains, and is noted for its porcelain from China's famous porcelain capital Jingdezhen.

Hannah is very excited to be in her birth province and is looking forward to her orphanage visit on Thursday of this week. Our excitement is also mounting as we get closer to meeting our son on March 10th. He turned 3 on March 2nd - we will enjoy celebrating his brithday, along with Jane's and Steve's who both turn 32 and 33 respectively within the next 2 weeks :).

After arriving at the Nanchang airport, we proceeded to Nanchang, a short 20-25 minutes away. The drive seemed much shorter than we remembered back in 2000 - our guide suspected that there have been new roads built since then, offering a different route. We rested in our hotel rooms (Jin Feng hotel) for about an hour before venturing to the Civil Affairs office to apply for permission to visit Jiujiang Social Welfare Institute on Thursday. They were expecting us, and we completed the necessary paperwork and received a keepsake welcoming banner from the Civil Affairs office. Hannah hugged the banner to herself and couldn't wait to get out of the office to open it and read it. We received our itinerary for the day on Thursday and will look forward to visiting the orphanage.

We (including Flat Stanley and Flat Jessica) visited the People's Square in Nanchang, the second largest square in China next to Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The Square honours the famous August 1, 1927 uprising led by the late Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and other Chinese leaders. The day has since been celebrated as the founding day of China's armed forces, the People's Liberation Army. We walked around on a beautiful sunny day, taking in the sites and sounds.

We enjoyed a delicious lunch of dumplings and hot pork buns - Hannah, Steve & Jennifer were in heaven, and Jane even enjoyed the pork buns.

We then went on to the porcelain shop to do some shopping. While we would have loved to purchase more, the thought of having to carry lots of porcelain in our hand luggage, with plenty of shopping still to do in Jiujiang, Beijing, and a "new city" in Wuhan, helped us to escape without blowing our budget. Jennifer wanted to bring home a 6 foot porcelain vase, but we managed to talk her into settling for a photo with it instead :-)

Tonight we are laying low in preparation for a visit to the Teng Wang pavillion tomorrow morning, some lunch, and then off to Jiujiang until Saturday.