September trip to Xiangyang

My allergies are acting up. Sneezing fits. Itchy eyes. Not sure what is causing it. Maybe it was the beer last night.

We board the high speed train from leaving from Beijing and get off seven stops later in Sabrina's hometown of Xiangyang. The train reaches speeds of 305 kph and it's the stops that take the most time. Our first long trip since the end of the first covid wave so we are careful to wear masks. At least at first. Not so much for ourselves but as a social standard and because of security checks. But the mask wearing doesn't last, at least not for me. There is very little virus, covid virus, in China these days. For these days.

We go from the train station directly to the hospital to see Sabrina's mom who had a stroke three weeks ago. Sabrina's mom looks about the same to me and if anything, her skin had a healthier look. She's diabetic and before the stroke walked slowly and didn't say a whole lot. Now shes's lost strength on her left side, arm and leg. Over the next week we would visit the hospital every day and Sabrina would help her to walk down the hallway with either me or her father holding the other arm. Mostly her father. The hospital wants to send her home but we are unsure how to care for her there.

When we arrived at Sabrina's apartment we had to register as out of town visitors. We got inside, got settled (ie, use the toilet), and went out to grab some food. About an hour after we returned home there was a knock on the 31st floor door. Community representative with a policeman. Wanted to see my passport. Check the passport stamps to see when I had entered China last (December). Satisfied, he left. The concern is almost all new covid cases in the China over the past few months have been imported.  This caused some discrimination against foreigners a few months back. Unable to check into hotels. Unable to eat at certain restaurants.  The twist is foreigners haven't been allowed to enter China since March. It's not my passport the police should have been checking; it's Sabrina's.

We had planned this trip before Sabrina's mom had the stroke. At that time we planned just a half week and after the stroke we extended the time to eight days. We had planned to come here during Chinese New Year but virus concerns had us cancel the trip. Which was lucky, for if we had gone we would have been stuck in Xiangyang for a couple of months. Xiangyang is in Hubei province, about a four hour drive from the providence's capital of Wuhan were the virus first broke out. The two cities are connected by the Han river, which Sabrina's apartment has a nice view of.  People know of the shock of Wuhan being locked down. A day or two later, Xiangyang, a city of nearly six million, was locked down too.

Sabrina's apartment is really nice. 31st floor, view of the river, modern fixtures, clean complex, near downtown. Her parents live there and keep it tidy. They lack a few things, like spoons. For two of the mornings before Sabrina went to the hospital we looked at new apartments being built by the same builder of her apartment. The first one was a 10 minute walk away. The second one was a 15 minute drive across the river and into the hills. There was a first story, two floor unit that appealed to us and we ended up buying it. It will be ready in about two years. What appealed to me about it was the connected kitchen, dining room, and living room on the first floor. And the small yard. And the builder since they did such a professional job with Sabrina's apartment. And if we do move there in six or so years, we would have a place separate from her parents.

It's not that I don't get along with her parents, they are fine, we just don't share a language and I'm not one of those foreigners who talk through that. Her dad was from a small village and a few hours away from Xiangyang. He had a peasant hukou and joined the army to change that. At some point he was introduced to Sabriana's mom, who's from the Xian area. They worked in a factory. A factory embedded in a mountain. China did this back in the cold war days when they were afraid of either US or Russian attacks. It's not like the factory made anything top secret, they mode cigarette rolling machines. Sabrina's first 12 years were spend in this factory town. A factory town where kids played on the small road that ran thought it. A factory town with shared toilets and a small school. When she was 12, the factory moved to Xiangyang and Sabrina's family moved with it. The history is fascinating to me although I'm not good at capturing the details.

We ended out trip with another train trip after lunch with Sabrina's uncle's family. The local specialty is a kind of crawfish which I'm sure would be great if I actually ate it.