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One thing that sets China adoptions apart from other international adoptions is the group experience. For most of us who adopted from China, the transition to parenthood happened as we traveled with a group of strangers who rapidly became intimates. Returning to China as a family was something I had envisioned since my first trip there in 1995, when I adopted Molly. At that time I traveled with a group so that my husband, George, could stay at home with our older daughter, Maggie, who had been born to us in 1991. Although I had initially pictured the return trip as a "once in a lifetime" family vacation, as the girls approached adolescence, our shared family interest in China helped me to expand my vision to several future trips, which I hoped would encourage and accommodate the children's developing sense of China. I figured that, with each trip, we would feel more and more comfortable there, and thus happy to explore it at greater depth. The main hope for this first family trip was that it would lay a foundation of positive experiences and memories of China, upon which to build in later trips. All of this made sense to me in theory, but I was overwhelmed when I began to consider our options for this first family trip to China. Where to go? What to see? How to get there? How would we get a guide? Where would we stay? I looked at itineraries for group tours and had trouble envisioning the children, who would be 9 and 5 at the time of travel, keeping up with a group of adults on the intense tour schedules I found. I worried about how the children would handle international travel, jet lag, touring, and extended time in a family-focused capsule. I also worried about how we parents would handle this time with our children when they were outside their familiar world and had only each other and us for contact, comfort, amusement, and targets of irritation. Feeling desperate and realizing I must not be alone in this quest, during summer 1999 I put out a call for help to the PAC list, which engendered a number of interesting replies. I heard from some families who had taken their daughters back as part of a second adoption trip or a business trip; they reported on these journeys as generally positive experiences for their children. This feedback supported my feeling that a birth country trip would be a feasible and rewarding event for my children. But I still did not know how to put such a trip together. Finally, a message arrived suggesting that I contact China Culture Camp, sponsored by Our Chinese Daughters Foundation. The messenger was right. I searched out the OCDF web site and found a trip that featured travel to five Chinese cities ranging from Beijing to a seaside resort, and which included staying at 4-star hotels with pool and playgrounds, as well as many activities designed with children in mind. Most important to me, however, was the chance to share this trip with other adults and children. Led by the Beijing based OCDF founder and adoptive mother, Jane Liedtke, Culture Camp offers China adoptive families the chance to experience China for 2 weeks as a group of Americans visiting the birth country of their daughters. It is the unique group experience that sets this trip apart. While differing in many ways, the families traveling together share a connection with China through adoption. Parents do not have to explain to each other their decision to adopt. Instead, they can share stories of their adoption trips, compare strategies on functioning as transracial and transcultural families, discuss feelings about and ways to handle adoption, and compare and exchange favorite authors and books about China. For both birth and adopted children, this is a special chance to be in a group where all the families look like theirs, where terms such as "birth mother," "foster parents" and "orphanage" can be spoken without eliciting wary responses, and where they can exchange stories about what they know of their origins. There were many ways in which the group experience of this trip was reminiscent of our original trips. Group travel brings people together even while it creates tension between them. As is the case for many adoption travel groups, ours took on the characteristics of a family - caring, sharing, and delighting in the youngest members, while trying to cope with each other's peccadilloes. In a similar way to family reunions, it was an experience that had its moments of irritation but was, in the end, remembered as very rewarding and great fun too. But there were also ways in which our group experience was quite different from a standard adoption trip. There were more bathroom visits and ice cream stops. More importantly, the children occupied a different role. No longer babies or even toddlers, but people, these girls have voices, personalities and relationships of their own. They are mobile, opinioned and busy experimenting with ways to be. Consequently, group dynamics were more complicated as they encompassed two generations. Differences in parenting styles, too, became more obvious with older children. When our family with children from China became a family with children in China, we then had a window into our future, whereby adoption from China is more and more about our children and less and less about us, the parents. Shortly before leaving for this trip, I attended a local FCC-sponsored discussion attended by adult Korean adoptees. As the parent of young children, I am accustomed to being the narrator of our family story; events are described to outsiders from my perspective. However, listening to these young adults, who were so very articulate about their adoption experiences, I realized that, to them, they are the main characters in their family story and that the story is being told through their eyes. In a very real way, children who travel back to China have started this process of developing their own history. For most of the children, before this trip, China was a place for which parents held the memories. Their parents had told them stories of traveling to and experiencing China, and meeting them, their child, there. Now that the children have been back to China, they have an experience that is their own. It may or may not correspond to their parents' impressions, or conform to how their parents want them to think of China, but it is their experience of their own China. Several weeks after our return, George asked the children whether they would be interested in returning to China. Maggie's response was immediate and enthusiastic: "Yes!" Molly's reply was more equivocal: "Well, who else is going?" guess we won't be going back alone. Moving in harmony with nature I'm fascinated by the colorful apparel of the Dai ethnic people who mainly dwell in the southern part of Southwest China's Yunnan Province. Not long ago, I got a chance to spend three months in a group in a Dai village in Jinping County, which enabled me to look closer at Dai clothing. Water Dai When we arrived at the Jiumeng Village, it was a hot afternoon. Waves of heat swept around us as we hurried out of the car towards the shade. After a short rest, we headed toward a bamboo bridge hanging across the cliffs either side of the river. Dozens of meters above the river, the bridge vibrated and swayed as we picked our way across it gingerly. In the flourishing bamboo forest, the village was taking a quiet nap. The Dai women were sitting or lying in their bamboo cottages, wearing white singlets and short black skirts. Seeing us, they stood up to get a better look, their long colorful waistbands dangling around their slim bodies. I was assigned to stay in the home of Liu Deming, the village head. At dusk the daughter of my host, A Fang, led me to the riverside. We were to take a shower in the river just like all the other villagers do everyday. Around us, the young girls pulled their skirts up to their chests and started washing themselves. I followed suit. Just as I was marveling at the pleasant coolness of the river, my skirt got loose and fell into the water. I screamed and snatched back my skirt. Everyone turned around to look at me. "My skirt fell," I murmured, feeling my cheeks burning. As if enjoying a show, the girls around me laughed out loud. As A Fang helped me tighten my skirt, I broke into laughter as well. "There's nothing to be afraid of," A Fang comforted me. "The men take bath in the upper reaches of the river. If a man dared to come down and peep at us, he would never find a wife." After the first few days of excitement passed, I was able to observe the village quietly. The Dai people in Jinping County are noted for their bamboo cottages built near the river, which plays an important part in their life. Thus they are also called the Shui (water) Dai. As the climate here is hot and humid, the women all wear a simple skirt made from one piece of cloth. Tied around the waist tightly, the skirt has a loose end that lets in the wind as they walk. Thus Dai women can move about freely and take frequent baths in the river. The Dai people love flowers. In their neat courtyards, every family plants several kinds of fragrant flowers. In the morning when the women leave their two-storey cottages, they pick a flower or two and put them in their hair. No man-made fragrance can compare with natural flora. Most of the Dai women carry a small umbrella with them, or wear a wide-rimmed bamboo hat to fend off the sun which blazes over the tropical forest. With more and more colorful cloth in different materials entering the Dai community, Dai women's clothes shine more than ever like bright flowers blooming in the green forest. Different to the Dai people living in other parts of Yunnan, women play an important role for the Water Dai. During their Buddhist ceremonies, the women, not the men, play a long drum called the Xiangjiaogu (Elephant Foot Drum) and a gong to accompany the dancers. Wearing black skirts and bamboo hats, the middle-aged women playing the instruments are the center of the ceremony and guide the proceedings. Throughout history, Dai people have had many strict rules govern their women's dresses. Today, most of these rules have been lost. But on important festivals, women of a similar age from the same village still wear clothes of the same style and color to distinguish themselves. Land Dai In contrast to the Shui Dai, women of the Han (land) Dai, who live in central parts of Yunnan, prefer heavy and splendid dresses predominantly in black and red. Instead of putting flowers in their hair, Land Dai women wrap two layers of a head dress along with exquisite ornaments, which differ region from region, in their hair. Although they also wear black skirts that reach beneath the knee, the Land Dai women all put a piece of long cloth around their legs in the fashion of long socks. In Mosha, Xinping County, Dai women love to put all sorts of silver decorations on their foreheads, necks, the front and back parts of their coats and the lower rim of their short skirts. The pleasant clicking of silvery items often announces the arrival of a beautiful woman long before she appears from behind the trees. In a Dai village in Xishuangbanna, a leader of the young girls told me secretly that although the girls of the neighboring villages have similar embroidery patterns on their clothes, they must obey rules set jointly by the "girl heads," who are the best at singing, dancing, embroidery and possibly great beauties. From the design of their clothes, the girls can easily tell which village someone is from. In Yuanjiang County, the women's skirts consist of three layers of cloth. Each layer has bright horizontal embroidery along the lower rim. The Yuanjiang women also like to wear a golden colored bamboo hat which glitters in harmony with the silvery earrings they wear. Tattoos and black teeth Like many other ethnic groups in Yunnan, the Dai people also have a rich history in tattoos. There is a saying among the Dai people, "Those who have tattoos are Dai people, those who have not are Han people." In the past, Dai people used to tattoo their bodies as a symbol of strength and protection when they caught fish in the rivers. Later on, tattoo designs became diversified to signify different clans, social status and gender. The Dai people also believe that once a man has a Dai style tattoo he will remain or become a Dai person in the next life. For many Dai clans, only men have the tattoos, as a symbol of their manhood and strength. A love song from the Ruili area, sung by girls on festivals, says that "without a tattoo, a man is not a man; without a tattoo, a man can't offer his true heart." In the past, tigers, leopards, deers, horses, peacocks and other animals have inspired Dai tattoos. Nowadays, waving lines and small flowers are more commonly seen on the waists and legs of the Dai people. Another feature of the Dai people is dying their teeth black, a tradition that can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907). To dye their teeth black, Dai people often use a pigment made from the resin of pine, pear or chestnut trees. Another method of blackening the teeth is to chew the fruit of the areca tree. The local people believe this disinfects the mouth, dissolving any poison in the food, keeping humid air out of the body, helping with digestion and strengthening the teeth. When chewing areca, Dai people mix lime into the areca powder and wrap the mixture in leaves. Once the teeth turn black, it is very difficult to make them white again. Not long ago, a friend of mine invited me to her hometown in Gasha Village, Xinping County. A girl in her early 20s, Dao Zhengying left her Dai village to attend middle school in Kunming, capital of Yunnan. She got a job in Kunming after graduating from college. As girls in her village start dying the teeth at the age of 14 or 15 to mark their adulthood, Dao missed out on the ritual and her teeth are white. Not so her childhood friends however. In the few days I stayed in the Gasha Village, I made friends with the villagers and learnt about the meaning of their dresses, tattoos and the methods of dying their teeth. Once a few girls joked with me that since I was so interested in their black teeth, why not die my own? I quickly declined the invitation and the girls laughed. But then a young girl sighed. She said that Dao Zhengying had studied well and gone to the city to live. But she and other girls had stayed behind in the village and had their teeth turned permanently black. Whenever they went into the town, people laughed at them. "Your teeth are in harmony with the environment here and when you go out, your teeth and your dress will distinguish you," I reassured her. On a number of occasions the world's most avant-garde fashion gurus have drawn inspiration from the least known ethnic groups. What one regards as outdated now might be inspirational for others later in life. So let us respect ourselves and each other, and strive to live in harmony with nature, just like Dai people do.