Next day after visiting the local historical sites – we went shopping. With the help of Aunt Zhou I went on a pearl buying spree. Aunt Zhou knew one of the pearl merchants and we got a great deal! I bought 6 strands of shell pink colored pearls and 2 light lavender strands. They raise pearls locally but unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of the pearl ponds. If you are ever in China and see a pond with a bunch of floating soda bottles, that is a fresh water pearl farm. We took a taxi to Maggie’s parents house for dinner. Photo above is the Maggie’s Mom, Dad and Nan Nan.
This house was similar to the Aunt and Uncles house in that it was built for the entire family. There was a floor for the grandparents a floor for Maggie and a floor for Maggie’s bother Cai and his wife Xia and their son Nan Nan. Her brother and wife work in HangZhou and Maggie’s mother watches the son Nan Nan during the week. This is fairly common in china where the grand parents are the main caregivers. The parents work in the city where they can make more money then they come back and see him on the weekend. When I asked my students about day care centers in China. I got that “blank look” from the majority of my kids. After a little investigation we figured that a lot of the students were raised by grandparents.
We walk around Maggie’s neighborhood which is a small village. There were rice patties outside of her house along with a duck farm. There were a couple of people taking clumps of young rice and separating them and replanting them into rows by hand. Maggie said that there are machines that do this now but most people with small plots still do it by hand.
