Ayi's hometown

We had the incredible experience of going to our Ayi's hometown for four days and three nights. The term "Ayi" means "aunt" in Chinese and among other things, it is used to do for the hard-working women who work as a combination of nanny-maid who care for the kids, clean, cook, go shopping, basically whatever you need that they can help with.

Background: Ayis are part of a larger migrant worker population in China... some 300 million workers (that's the entire U.S. population!) from poorer provinces who come to the big cities to work manual labor jobs: making your "Made in China" toys, clothes, etc, working construction/mining, pretty much any manual labor job. The lucky ones get jobs working as Ayis.

Editor's note: These migrant workers are the background of China's economy and unfortunately many of them way underpaid and dangerously over-worked. They live in workers' dormitories or in overcrowded apartments and leave their families behind because of a societal system that grossly discriminates against them... only people from Shanghai have Shanghainese identification cards, which entitles them to enroll their kids in school here, use the hospitals, etc. It is impossible for migrant workers to get citizenship in the big cities, thus ensuring that these migrant workers will eventually be forced migrate back to their home provinces at some time. Contrarily, college students from outside of Shanghai who study at universities here can get Shanghai citizenship very easily. Hmmm....

Most Ayis are employed in the larger (richer) cities, but come from outside the surrounding, poorer provinces. Most of the Ayis in Shanghai, including ours, come from Anhui province... a mere five-hour bus ride, but a world apart. Both our Ayi a nd her husband live in Shanghai... her husband is a driver here in Shanghai. They have a 10 year-old son who is being raised by her husband's parents... Ayi and her husband see him for about 30 days spread throughout the entire year.

One note however, this is not actually their hometown. They moved their parents and son from their village to this larger town for better educational opportunities for their son. Their future welfare depends on their only child's future employment.

We have developed a great relationship with our Ayi... she is really part of the family as anybody who has stayed with us can attest to. She worked with us back when we went to our Chinese tutor's hometown (very small village) last year and she wanted us to visit her hometown as well, so we accepted the invitation.

So away we went on our adventure!

During our bus ride out there, we saw many construction projects, including this bridge-in-progress...

Side note: anywhere you travel in China, and I do mean anywhere, you will see just incredible construction going on... new big buildings, roads, train tracks, airports, bridges, etc. One thing that China has been doing right is investing in infrastructure. I wonder if this was the U.S. was like during the New Deal or the Eisenhower years.


Getting off the bus... we got a kick out of seeing the taxis here...
Arriving at their home... their place is on the third floor.
The view out a front window, overlooking an area where they do some small-scale farming. The pond area also serves as a trash dump for residents unwilling to walk around the corner to the large trash containers.


Ayi's husband's parents are actually raising two kids. Ayi's 10-year-old and a 17-year-old cousin of his whose parents are also in other cities working. In Chinese tradition, they were not called by their names, but rather by family terms. Thus the two boys were called "xiao gege" and "da gege" by our girls, meaning "smaller/younger older brother" and "bigger/older older brother." Here's a picture of Adayla and "da gege."
Ayi and Ryann...

Dinner with the family... right-to-left (not including our kids) are: Ayi's husband, Ayi, his father, their son (xiao gege), and his mom...

Morgan and Ayi's father-in-law chatting a bit. He loved talking with Morgan...

Tally being spoiled by Ayi while Adayla colors with her husband. You can start to see how simple the place is... concrete floors sealed with a sealant...

Out in town center to shop for some food...

The supermarket... Tally was super-excited about the small shopping carts

We wish we had a better picture to show how everybody in this supermarket just stopped and stared at us. If you ever wonder what a Martian would feel like if he walked around your hometown, you can come here and experience it for yourself. We were the first foreigners many of these people had actually seen in person. You can kind of see the small crowds in the distance just watching us as we checked out...

Downtown life...

When we walked by this clothing store on the way to buy groceries, these gals just stared. On the way back they enjoyed waving to Adayla.

Lunch appetizers... shrimp, tomatoes topped with sugar, and... chicken feet!

Both Adayla and "xiao gege" loved the chicken feet... Adayla will be able to gross out her elementary school classmates with the things she'll eat without flinching. That's what you learn growing up in China.

"Da gege" took me out to the playground to play basketball with his friends while Adayla and "xiao gege" played on the exercise equipment.

While the kids took naps one afternoon, I went out to go to the Internet cafe. On the way in the small downtown area I stumbled upon a promotion by Haier appliances for their products. I'm sure the pre-teen kids went home to tell their parents they want a new Haier washing machine after this event...

The Internet cafe was 25 cents per hour for a very fast connection. The one funny thing, though, was when I was on espn.com I got the following message... this was hilarious! "[Internet Explorer version 6] is after all '7 YEARS OLD' which in internet years is like 212. You might want to try a more standards compliant browser such as Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, or at least IE7."

Speaking of which, how many people are still using Internet Explorer 7? IE8 was released a couple of months ago, not to mention Firefox and Safari. We have all three browsers because some sites here in China are compatible with one or the other of the browsers... weird. For example, Foxnews.com and Internet Explorer is a no-no.

After a fun, but long day, it was time to get ready for bed. Showers aren't an everyday occurrence out here. Instead you wash your face and wash your feet before going to bed...

But the girls did get baths!

Sorry Adayla, this picture will resurface sometime in your future...

See the buckets of water next to the toilet in the picture above? That's the water that was used in these baths and foot baths or from cleaning the floors. This water is then the first-choice to use to flush the toilet.

Winding down for the evening... Every evening Ayi's in-laws invited different family members and friends to come and see the foreigners, I mean, guests...

Shopping for strawberries... doesn't China have the coolest bikes?

...and coolest carts?

and coolest, um, what would you call it?

Lots of games being played on the street, but look at Morgan... that's Tally on the back and Ryann in her arms

Buying our fresh pork for dinner. You probably can't see it, but this guy's scale was pretty slick...

One of the paths we walked down on the way to/from the downtown.

It was an interesting dynamic to watch, as Ayi interacted with her son that she sees every couple of months and with our girls who she see practically every day.

If you have bricks, and you have concrete, you can build!

Another occassion of walking back from downtown. If it were possible for a 4 1/2-year-old to have a crush, we would say that Adayla had her first crush on a boy. She could not stop hanging around "xiao gege."

"Xiao gege" is a very cute boy. He is well-behaved and funny. He was wonderful with our girls. If you can see, here he and Tally are walking hand-in-hand...

Here we are piling in one of those three-wheeled taxis...

We went to see a new Buddhist temple being built. The taxi got us there most of the way, but we had to walk a bit as our taxi's water broke, I mean, the taxi's radiator blew. No matter, it gave Adayla plenty of time to find the perfect weeds, um, flowers.

Here's Adayla modeling her flowers. Adayla moves different than American kids do... she has a Chinese rhythm and style that is hard to describe but totally noticeable when you see it. She even poses for pictures like Chinese gals do...

This new temple and pagoda is being built by a newly-rich businessman from Shanghai.The statues are mostly still in the plastic...

One of the reasons for locating the new temple here is a popular cave attraction about a 5-minute walk away. See the cave there to the right?

After entering the cave, we winded around a bit, then went down a flight of stairs...to get to a boat... to take us to the area where we could walk...

If anybody can help me with how to take this picture. I could take it wonderfully without people...but he shutter was too slow with people so it blurred. But then using the flash wiped out the colored lights. I have a lot to learn about photography...

Some more cave pictures... Back at the ranch...

Interesting slogan painted on the wall... it reads that "women are also heirs," referring to China's focus on having a boy, especially with the one-child policy, making families feel they need to put their girls up for adoption, or worse, in their effort to get a boy...

Next day... went to another mountain area and another cave... we read that this area of Anhui province alone has over 1,000 large caves.

Morgan and Adayla showing how "local" they can be...

"Xiao gege" posing for a picture while waiting for the girls...

Beautiful caves, beautiful mountains and these people want to take pictures of... us. Like I said, if you ever want to know what it would feel like to be a Martian visiting your hometown...

Cave entrance

Inside this cave...

Again... any help on taking cave pictures with people?

Taking a snack-break after the cave. Well, Ryann needed a diaper change so the people who were watching us started coming over to get a closer look...

"So tell me about your trip today." "Well I saw a foreigner changing a diaper..." There are much more interesting things to see here...

But then again we're used to seeing some things, while they're used to seeing other things. Like this for example. Look at this picture and see if you find what we found funny...

One thing about China, there is no shortage of women wearing high heels. It doesn't matter if you're going mountain climbing, put those heels on and go!

It was a rather warm day, then all the walking and stairs we did, and with a two-hour taxi each way as well. At least that gave Adayla an excuse to snuggle with "xiao gege"

Farewell picture... we had a wonderful time. It is so fascinating to see this side of China...

Walking to the bus...

The scene outside of the bus was chaotic. People pushing for position to get on the bus. I'm still not exactly sure what happened. We had confirmed seats, but the rest of the folks were playing lotter to find where the open seats were. If they were lucky enough to sit in a seat without a reservation they stayed on. But all the other got kicked off. I could think of several ways to improve the process, but then again, it would destroy the fun of traveling in China...

Excellent trip, great experience, glad to be home!