On this trip, your agency’s people in China will have coordinated your hotel reservations. In many cases you will not be staying at the brand-name Western chain hotels you’re used to.
There are several good reasons for this:
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•Especially in the poorer provinces, the Western chains have not yet expanded out that far.
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•Cost. The high-end Chinese hotels you’ll be a guest in charge much lower rates than the multinational chains.
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•A floor full of wailing infants and toddlers who’ve just been uprooted from everything they know, stuck with Westerners who just met them, at 2 in the morning, is not the experience a business-class luxury hotel is trying to sell to its guests. The hotels your agency uses are typically quite familiar with the needs of adoptive families.
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•Most importantly, acculturation. You’re in China to bond with your new child, and that is a two-way process. By putting you in a setting you’re not quite as familiar with, you’re being drawn out of routine habits. You’ll pay more attention to your surroundings and your child. Also, you’ll be learning more about your child’s culture as you interact with local, everyday people to a higher degree.
In this section, we’ll talk about your hotel and its amenities, and how to get around your room. You’ll be living here for about two weeks; you’ll need to know how to work the controls...
