We had a majorly slow morning today. Millie slept in until 8:30 and then after breakfast we spent some time doing laundry and an audit of clothes that need to be left behind and/or replaced. Millie and I ran down to the mall that’s attached to our hotel and got new hair accessories. While there she spent a good 10 minutes on their stage “performing”.

We all dragged our feet leaving the hotel because we knew how hot it was outside. 97 today with a “feels like” rating of 105 due to the humidity.

We took a taxi to Juzizhou Park, aka Orange Isle Park, which is an island in the middle of the large river that runs through Changsha. We had to walk over the bridge to get to it and that brief walk almost did us in.

It took us a while to figure out how to enter the park and get tickets for the train ride that takes you though. Once we were on, the shade and slight breeze was very welcome.

The park was beautiful and I imagined how much nicer it would be in temperate weather. It felt like Central Park, if Central Park was an island.

How everyone was wearing jeans, I do not know. The trees were all filled with citrus, from giant pomelos to tiny kumquats. I understood why it was known as “orange isle”. I stopped to buy a little basket of oranges (or greens?). They were perfect. Easy to peel, juicy, sweet and sour, and not one single seed.

The main thing we wanted to see was the giant statue of young Mao. We walked a short distance and saw him in all his glory. It was huge and very cool, especially against the backdrop of the city.

It kicked off a little history and civics lesson. Millie is starting to understand the concepts of government and war now, and we talked about different government styles and how different people don’t agree on which is correct. She asked “did they use guns or swords in this war?” And “were there girls in this government?” It is always a tightrope walk of giving her enough information to feed her curiosity but not too much to either freak her out or bore her to death.

We didn’t last long and got back on the train to the entrance. Millie got her ice cream for Friday and I tried one that I keep seeing everywhere. It looked very savory but was quite sweet and delicious. I translated the wrapper and it was a mung bean popsicle.

We couldn’t face another walk across the bridge, and the only other way off the island was subway train. So we took the subway. I love public transit but rideshare taxis are so cheap here that this was the first metro train we’ve taken in China. For such a high tech place, it felt funny that our tickets were these little plastic tokens.

We went back to the area we were in last night. This seems to be where all the action and good food is. We had an early dinner at a large food hall. We ordered another Changsha specialty: garlic shrimp. They were more like crawfish, and so, so good. How can anything with this much garlic and butter be bad?

We also had various dumplings, lam skewers, and fried scallion bread things. Not our healthiest meal, but it made up for last night’s stinky tofu.

Outside of the restaurant was an opera performance. China does a lot of things well, but singing is not one of them. I’m sorry, but I said what I said.

The city was LIVELY. Even more so than last night because it was Friday. We looked in some stores on the way home to replace the things we decided to get rid of this morning.

I did the classic “we can’t get that but we can take a photo of it so remember it” trick. These are some of the things we did not get.

Being in some of the stores, especially Muji, made me feel a bit homesick for having “stuff”. This trip has taught us that we can live with very little. I don’t really miss clothes, but I do miss our things—soaps, cookware, art, etc. In the last couple of weeks Nick and I have felt homesickness creep in for the first time. He misses our garden, I miss cooking. I crave cleaning my own house. I wonder how long an appreciation for our own home will last once we’re back.