Notice the buttons

In the process of sorting through boxes and boxes of photos looking for garden photos for the BJP, I'm finding all kinds of things I'd forgotten about. This photo of HWCH and myself is one of them....

In the fall of 1998 I saw a tiny ad in the newspaper for a guided group tour to China. It was $999 a person for 9 days and included airfare RT from Seattle, all transportation in China, visits to Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, and Suzhou, all hotels and all meals.. We went in January and this was the best travel bargain of our lives. We were the only ones signed up for January (and it was a bit cold) so we had a van, a driver and a guide just for us.. And because we were the only ones there was extra time so we got to see lots of extra stuff. We were flown from Beijing to Shanghai but the rest of the itinerary was cross country in the mini-van...

Also because this was going to be a total language barrier I made buttons of myself and granddaughters and my dog and wore them on my coat....hoping they would be an point of interest to Chinese women. And they were as many times a woman would point to the buttons in understanding and give me a big smile or ask questions through our guide. I wore picture buttons traveling on all trips thereafter.

Walking on the Great Wall was one of my life's ambition and it was so overwhelming. You can see that there weren't many tourists in January and the ones that were there were Chinese.