Ross and I saved our poppies from a previous Remembrance Day in Canada and brought them to China. Here is Ross at a diner in Beijing with our son Gus, wearing his poppy. We saw one other girl with a poppy that day.
And at 11:00 am Beijing time (all of China is on Beijing time, btw) on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, we were just about to exit the beautiful Summer Palace grounds. The Summer Palace was a resort on the outskirts of Beijing by a beautiful lake for the Emperors and their Empresses and concubines to escape the sweltering summer heat of the Forbidden City. Now it's open to the public. We stepped off the pathway and huddled together with heads bowed to observe a moment of silence in this unlikely setting.
At any rate, I'm glad that Ross remembered the 11th hour and that we shared a moment as Canadians, far from home, to remember the soldiers who died fighting for us. We can revisit and regret causes and outcomes, but never forget the valor and the sacrifice.