By Forrest Adams

I was in Beijing, China from Nov. 13 to Nov. 19 with a group of four friends from Chanhassen and Chaska. I was the fifth traveler.

This was my fifth trip to China and first as a short-term tourist/guide/friend. The other journeys were to study for three months, teach for six months, teach for 18 months, and visit family for 10 days.

Six days in China, five if you exclude November 19, which really should be excluded because it is the morning we left, is tiring. I don’t think any of us really adjusted fully to the time zone change. China is 14 hours ahead of us. Take what time it is here, add 14 hours, and that is the time in Beijing.

We arrived late on November 13, went to our hotel, and hit the ground running the next day. We never stopped running until we left. Our days were filled with taxi cab rides, subway rides, van rides, visits with students and old friends, and visits to famous sites. We would leave the hotel at about 8:30 a.m. each morning and get home between 8:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. at night.

Our first day was quite interesting. After a van ride to a McDonald’s, where our host wanted to grab breakfast, we ran down to the subway, took it through a couple stops, went above ground, and then met some Chinese friends in a Kentucky Fried Chicken. What? Two of our first three stops were at American fast food restaurants! Is this the capital city of China or a big American city? Neither restaurants was full, but what would you expect early on a Saturday morning? Past experience taught me young Chinese people in China love fast food. We talked to our new Chinese friends at KFC, and they brought us about one hour north of Beijing in a large van to visit an orphanage called Living Hope International.

Living Hope International (LHI) emerged from a seed of suffering, the experience of a young fatherless boy who lived through the dark days of China’s Cultural Revolution (http://www.livinghopeintl.org/index.asp). Families murdered by jealous relatives left sole survivors in at least one child here, little girls abandoned in the countryside because they weren’t boys… the stories of the orphans that we met could fill a book. They were tragic, but at least these orphans have been taken in and given hope for a brighter future. The orphanage is for kids ages 11-19. It focuses on helping them learn about the arts and develop a vocational skill.   Dancing at Living Hope International: These dancers show off a performance they will give in early 2010 in the United States at several locations in Pennsylva, North Carolina, and Virginia for Chinese New Year's celebrations.

Chinese folk masks: Dancers at Living Hope International north of Beijing, China, dance with traditional Chinese folk masks recently.

Craft time: Young people who live at the orphanage enjoy craft time on Saturday afternoon.

Red Ribbon Dancers: Dancers at the orphanage practicing a dance they will do this January in the United States

Yellow cloth dancers

Boys at the orphanage: Members of my team split into small groups, allowing the kids focussed time to practice their English. These were the boys in my group. They are seen listening to one of two people sitting on my right respond to a question the boys asked.