We headed back to the hotel, packed up all of our many pounds of STUFF, and our guide picked us up at 2:00. Our flight was not until 7:00 so we did a little touring at the Nanjing Brocade Institute. If you are going to Nanjing I HIGHLY recommend going to see this. It is like the university of weaving in the ancient way and it is absolutely incredible. The training that you have to go through to do this is unreal and the way they do it is like a dance... synchronized and choreographed. It takes 2 people to work each loom (they are HUGE) with one person holding the big long lines at the top and one person doing the individual knots at the bottom. They do not talk to eachother at all... they both know exactly what they need to do and they work in perfect harmony. If they are really good the can do 5cm in a day... yes FIVE! It can take 10-13 years to make one garment... CRAZY! We really enjoyed watching this, especially since it is the only place in the world where you can see this kind of intricate weaving (it is a World Heritage Site).
The weaver making his knots from memory (he actually does this on the back of the fabric)
The underside as he is weaving(which is actually the top of the fabric)
A whole room of working looms (you can kind of make out the 2nd weaver on top of the loom)
The ride to the airport was long (why so far out of the city???) but the airport is "nice" by Chinese standards and our flight was uneventful (none of this like last time thank goodness!). Catherine got really excited on takeoff and she watched out the window saying, "Oh!". I was afraid her ears might bother her but she did okay. She held it together pretty well for most of the flight (2 year old on cramped plane is HARD!) and just like ALL of our children have she fell asleep about 5 minutes before landing :(
Catherine's first flight
This is what traveling can do to a 2 year old...
We are all settled in at the White Swan now and we are looking forward to a good night's sleep.
I am so glad to see miss Catherine sleeping soundly in the White Swan crib...I wonder how many of us have had the same crib (we should figure out some way to write our names in some obscure place :-)
ReplyDeleteI love, love, love the picture from your Nanjing walk (made me cold reading about it!) of Catherine on daddy's back blowing a raspberry on his neck. She looks so settled and comfortable.
Have some fun in the warm sun in GZ and keep us posted, it is so fun to follow your story.
sue