We took a 2 weeks China trip and came back last Monday evening. A bit exhausted, and at the end of the trip, our daughter got sick, she said she got tummy ache, and needed to go to restroom (lavatory) every 10 min. The fun part of being parents.
Some more serious thoughts
1) My parents are getting older, just as I am getting older. At one morning, my mom asked my dad: did I take the blood pressure medicine. She is not in her 70s yet, but she forgot about it.
2) Money and money: obviously this is a hot topic and it seems my family can not escape it as well. The thing makes me a bit annoyed is when they ask me how much I make in the states, as one of the very first question. It seems money is an important yard stick to measure if a person is successful or not. Btw, it seems everyone back home has more money than me. Interestingly, I read about this article yesterday, it mentioned something similar to that extent.
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/mark-kitto-youll-never-be-chinese-leaving-china/#.Ub54LvmThBH
3) Environment. Not so good. The air quality, and the noise is obvious. One thing a bit interesting is Serenity was curious why the car/bus beep (honk) at each other, or at pedestrian. The air at my hometown is not good due to all the container trucks (18 wheelers), and heavy industry.
4) Hard to get coffee, I mean real coffee, not those faked cappuccino ones made by machines gas station here. It’s more easier to find in Shanghai. I got my black/bare ice coffee (Mei Shi Ka Fei 美式咖啡) at Christen bakery 克里斯丁饼屋.
I will talk more later. Btw, I am seriously thinking about wrote something like my memory.