What China Looks Like: A Pictorial Essay

I'm still getting the hang of this blog, so please scroll to the bottom to read what I had to say to introduce the photos. :-)

View of the countryside outside Nanchang.

The street outside our hotel.

This is a pile of rubbish surrounding one side of the parking lot by the registration office where we received Katie, in a residential neighborhood. Much of the material was broken porcelain, which is produced in this area. There was also just regular trash in there.
A street scene. Many buildings are barely standing or are surrounded by rubble...piles of bricks, dirt, wood, whatever.


Third world. Communism. Cultural revolution. Economic growth. Chairman Mao. Walmart.

I have traveled much of the world and read and watched almost everything I could get my hands on to prepare for this trip. I know the history, but I was not prepared for the present. China is not a pretty country. You can find beauty here and there, but it is nothing like what we have in America. I struggle to think of how I will describe this country to Katie and I think that I cannot imagine a more different life than the one she will have now. For a year, people have told me that she is so lucky, that she will be saved. I always corrected them and said that Katie was saving us, that we were the lucky ones. Now I agree that we're all pretty lucky in this deal.

Here's what this place looks like...