Sunday Snapshot: Fuling Tomb (Shenyang)

This weekend, the team headed to Shenyang for our annual team retreat.  It seems a bit counter-intuitive to pack it up and head out of town during one of the busiest seasons of the year, but the trip has proven to be year after year just what we need at just the right time.  It’s easy this time of the year to get lost in papers to grade, exams to write and give, and final activities and parties to be held.  It’s easy to heap importance and significance and stress onto tasks that, when you take a step back and look at the grand scheme of things, really don’t matter all that much.  And so we take a long weekend to get away, to enjoy each other’s company one last time for the year, to reflect on where we’ve come from and where we’re going, and to eat lots of Western food unavailable in our city.

This is what it’s all about.  I go four or five months in between caramel macchiatos, which makes them that much sweeter.  There are few things I enjoy more than curling up in a comfy chair, with a scone and macchiato, a journal and the word.  Now that is retreat to me.  Starbuck*s is the same the world over and there’s something extraordinarily comforting about that.  Well, mostly the same.  This venue did feature cuttlefish cheese bread and red bean scones in the bakery.

Our first morning in Shenyang, we all headed off to the outskirts of the city to visit the Fuling Tomb.  It’s the tomb of the founder of the Qing dynasty and his empress, dating from 1629. Yep, that’s older than the founding of the great United States of America.  Problem is, after living in China for five years, I don’t even bat an eye at dates like that.  And the tomb complex?  It looks a whole lot like other old buildings in China.

Which is why I didn’t take a single picture that had an entire building in it.  I have an unhealthy addiction to my 50 mm lens.  It’s a problem, I realize.  But I love it.  I love it’s ability to capture details.  And really?  I promise I have enough pictures of whole Chinese buildings.  I took them before I got my 50.

The visit was more about enjoying each other and the great outdoors than examining cultural relics.  Us Chinese city dwellers cannot get enough of green.

There were walls to climb.

And trees to climb.

And pictures to pose for.  As a “family” of thirteen, we don’t often get a picture of all of us together.  And I’m rarely in the pictures…I prefer being behind the camera.  Here we’re just missing one person.  Sonny didn’t make it to the retreat.  He couldn’t leave our city because of some issues with an expired visa.  Now there’s a long story that we don’t need to get into here, but just suffice it to say: don’t let your visa expire.

And here are the lovely ladies of the team.

And the kids.  Hard to believe there will be five kids this time next year!  Lucy will be with us by then, and there’s a new baby Wu on the way.

Speaking of kids, aren’t they just precious when they’re lovin’ on each other?  Will and Sam constantly vacillate between best of friends and worst of enemies.

Like I said, most of us have seen our fair share of old Chinese buildings.  But we’ve found ways to entertain ourselves.

Yes, jumping pictures at ancient cultural relics.  We’ve got the whole respect for antiquity thing down pat.

Well, maybe not.  But we sure do love spending time together.