My mom turned 80 on Sunday, and she was here in Beijing to celebrate. She and a bunch of other people. In honor of this special occasion, I decided to host a week-long “Birthday/Vision Tour” for any family and friends willing to make the trek across the ocean. 11 showed up! We spent 8 days seeing the sights, meeting friends, getting a feel for the work I do here, laughing, and of course eating! The laughing and the eating came together especially well one night when my mom suddenly held her chopsticks high in the air and said, “why are both ends of my chopsticks dirty?” The waitress brought her a fork.
We also had fun singing Happy Birthday to her everywhere we went. At the Temple of Heaven, we got a group of senior citizen tourists from Qinghai to join in. And whenever we sang to her in a restaurant, everyone would join in and then the manager would suddenly show up with a bowl of long life noodles.
Happy Birthday, Mom!!