You’ll find a traditional Chinese medicine establishment, where you can get acupuncture and massage. You’ll find a coffeehouse called Blendz, where you can get espresso and check your e-mail. You will find scores of Americans strolling the leafy boulevards with their new Chinese daughters and sons.

And if you’re there in December, you’ll find every hall and palm tree decked with boughs of holly and jingling Christmas bells.

This year, some 6,000 American families adopted a child in China. We were one of those families, spending two glorious and intense weeks there with our 3-year-old, whom we adopted two years ago, and meeting our new daughter, who is 13-months-old.

China is a big place _ roughly the same size as the U.S.

On Dec. 2, we flew from Newark across the North Pole to Beijing, where the temperature was in the teens. From there, we boarded a plane for Guangzhou, which enjoys a climate not unlike Miami’s.

When adopting from China, Americans first visit the capital city of their new child’s province, where all the local adoption paperwork is finalized. Then every American family travels to Guangzhou, where the U.S. Consulate General issues visas for the children to enter the U.S.

Because Guangzhou is also the capital of our new daughter’s province, we spent the entirety of our trip in that city.

The White Swan Hotel on Shamian Island is a popular destination for adopting families, and this was our second stay there.

Judging by the questions we fielded before our trip, it’s clear most people think China = rice paddies and grass huts or factories and Communist dormitories. People were consistently surprised to hear about the five-star resort hotel with marble floors, three floors of boutique shopping and three-story indoor waterfall that awaited us.

And although we have been there before, even we were surprised to find, right next to the lobby waterfall, a three-story Christmas tree glimmering with lights and shiny bows.

The exterior of the hotel, which towers more than 25 stories over the island skyline, was decorated top to bottom. On one side, the lights created a tower of Christmas trees and the words "Merry Christmas" in English. On the other side, there was a tableau of holiday candles.

We were there for two weeks, and every morning we noticed some new holiday decoration in the hotel lobby or along the avenues of the island. One morning, garlands of pine and glittering ornaments the size of cantaloupes obscured a screen we had admired a day earlier. Another morning, we realized that a porcelain Buddha in one of the shops’ elegant displays had been replaced by a foam snowman.

Unlike the tourist shops and the tater tots on the breakfast buffet, the Christmas decorations were not for the sole benefit of Western visitors.

Christmas is big in China.

Celebrated as a secular holiday, it’s a time when families get together and people splurge on fine dining. The White Swan restaurant hosts a $100-per-plate Christmas dinner that is sold out weeks in advance _ and not to American and European tourists.

China is nothing if not surprising. We were almost sorry to say goodbye before the big day. But we were happy to return home, where, ironically, we had not decked a single hall or unwrapped a single ornament.

And we are happier, still, to greet a new year with a new daughter.

Elizabeth Trever Buchinger is a freelance writer who thinks everyone should visit China at least once. She can be reached at Villagewordsmith@hughes.net.