【爱城购物网征文】中vs西-----白吉姆版的中国印象

个性小西红柿 · 发表于 2011-9-4 00:44

China Chronicles Day 3 - Meet the Family

As most of you know, china has a one -child policy. This affected Wifey's parents generation which is why Wifey is a single child. But the previous generation was under this policy during their child-bearing years, so Wifey has alot of aunts and uncles, and cousins. They pretty well left us alone with the in laws the first night, but starting today and for the next few days I was going to meet the family. Since we were in Jinan, Wifey's mother's side of the family was the the set of relatives I would meet first.

The four aunts and their husbands showed up today. I was greeted as warmly as anyone could be. These are seriously nice people! And, as is Chinese tradition, everyone I met gave me an little red envelope filled with thousands of Yuan! No joke. By the time we had been there 3 days we had managed to collect over N Yuan. I had experienced this on a smaller scale when we got married in Canada. The invited guests who were of Chinese origin or descent gave us little red envelopes filled with Canadian dollars. Our Canadian friends bought us gifts. Different cultural strokes eh? But this was, like everything else in China, giving money on a larger scale seems to be the order of the day. We met friends of the family, who gave us money. We met Wifey's father's ex-boss, who gave us money. Everybody I met for the first time gave Wifey and me literally thousands of Yuan. I was really beginning to like these people. But anyhow, back to the family.

个性小西红柿 · 发表于 2011-9-4 00:46

Cousin BoBo:

Cousin BoBo is an 18 year old college student who is the son of aunt number 4. They live in the same building as the in-laws, three floors up. Now cousin BoBo (it's not his real name - I made it up cause for the life of me I can never remember his name) is quite a character. He is in college taking electrical engineering, and admits that he has no idea what anything they are teaching him means. He is slender, pock-faced, almost girlish in appearance and body language, and as nice as can be. If you acted and moved like he did on the playground around where I grew up however, you got beat up. A lot. Anyhow, I met cousin BoBo at the airport, and he has been in our apartment from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed, seriously. Where I come from we would call him "tache de merde" (Google it).

个性小西红柿 · 发表于 2011-9-4 00:49

The Four Aunts

Wifey's mother has many sisters. They are all very cool people, and it was nice to meet them and their husbands. Today they we ALL over to the apartment ( including cousin BoBo) for a big meal. Now something I was not prepared for occurred, that I have to tell you about, cause it is a funny as it is pathetic. Now you have to understand that I don't yet know why this is, I am just reporting it as it is. In the part of China I am in, everywhere you look, people are yelling at each other. At first I thought that there were alot of pissed of people in China. But when the four aunts and uncles joined the in-laws for supper one night, my mind was almost shattered.

个性小西红柿 · 发表于 2011-9-4 00:50

You see, inside the apartment were 6 women, 6 men and BoBo. And with the exception of me, (who was sitting there dumbfounded) all of them were yelling at the same time. Not talking. Yelling! Apparently this is how people are here. Let me try, though, to give you an idea of what it was like. Imagine yourself in a torture chamber where 11 people are screaming at the top of their lungs at each other and you in a language you don't understand for eight or nine hours. The decibel level was so high that I was nearing the pain threshold. This was insane! I pulled my wife out of the melee and into the bedroom at about 7 PM, closed the door and asked her what the hell is going on. Well apparently this is normal, and that I better get used to it because there are a lot more people I have not met yet. And when they get here it is going to be louder. I almost lost my mind.

Needless to say the next few days are going to be stressful at times, the level of stress being proportional to the number of people in the room at one time. I miss our quiet life back home, sitting around with friends having quiet conversation. But again, they were all very nice, so I took it in stride. One interesting phenomenon: They all asked Wifey (at one point or the other during the food fest) "Why is he so white?" I thought that was obvious - I am a white guy! What more do you need to know. But I was quite a hit apparently; being the first white guy they have ever actually seen or met.

个性小西红柿 · 发表于 2011-9-4 00:50

本帖最后由个性小西红柿于 2011-9-4 01:53 编辑

The family tags along with us everywhere we go. We are never without an entourage of at least 5 family members. We spent al ot of time on the street, and man were people ever taken a back at the sight of me. It was so funny. Most of the people in this part of China have never seen a white person in person. They see them on TV and in other media, but to actually pass one on the street was shocking to almost everyone I passed on the street today. They would suddenly look at me with wide eyes and looks of disbelief, as if they had been slapped in the face with a wet fish. If I looked back at them they would look away and pretend they were not staring (the face thing again) but almost to the last, if I kept looking at them they would do a quick double take and look back, whipping their heads away when I caught them. The children were the best. When they stared I would stare back and make a funny face and they would shriek with laughter and run to their parents, turn around and point. And then their parents would stare - until I stared back. What a cool game!

So we pigged out today. Dumplings. The four aunts and ma in law churned out 1000 dumplings for supper, not to mention cucumber salad, cooked greens, potato strings in vinegar and a ton of other stuff. It rocked. I pigged out and feel pretty stuffed. So that is it for today. More tomorrow.

albertabeef · 发表于 2011-9-4 05:59

... The decibel level was so high that I was nearing the pain threshold...I almost lost my mind.
1 n3 ~9 T; ^% a5 \. A4 ]# @* I个性小西红柿发表于 2011-9-4 01:50

Oh, poor Jim!

费莫 · 发表于 2011-9-4 07:31

本帖最后由费莫于 2011-9-4 08:32 编辑

Jim, you know, nothing is free in this world, right?:) You got lots of little red envelopes so you have to suffer the loud talking several hrs. The sissy BoBo is so funny! Yes, you have to stay with him for hours and hours and hours. That is so fair.:)

lu_guo · 发表于 2011-9-4 08:02

Jimmy, enjoy! btw, why are you so white? hahahah...

qingyuan · 发表于 2011-9-4 20:15

看到那段描写很多家人在一起screaming at the top of their lungs, 我笑的眼泪都出来了，太形象了。

眼镜腿 · 发表于 2011-9-5 16:19

家里聚会能有多么吵呢？难道是在猜拳？要不就是我实在是太高估了JIM的噪音耐受阈值？

不过这哥们没有念叨济南有多么多么多么热，俺佩服地不行不行滴！

菊花变成向日葵 · 发表于 2011-9-5 18:11

路过

依玛尔 · 发表于 2011-9-5 21:43

写的很好啊

飘飞的精灵 · 发表于 2011-9-5 22:35

My husband really enjoys reading this. he told me by reading it brought back lots of memos. He spent 3 and half years in China. when we took taxis in China, he had to hold my hand each time.

菊花变成向日葵 · 发表于 2011-9-6 01:08

我只是一个专业打酱油的

mirage99 · 发表于 2011-9-6 20:09

yeah, standing chicken house. I would like to call you SCH,can I? You can call me FO,then. What do ya think about White jim's essay?8 G2 F L- _; V0 i
费莫发表于 2011-9-1 20:16

standing chicken house, haha, you guys kill me!!!!

个性小西红柿 · 发表于 2011-9-26 19:27

A Wedding, Uncle Wang and Instabuzz

It turns out that Wifey's cousin was getting married in Puyang the first Saturday after we arrived, so off we went to Puyang in a minivan for a 400 kilometer trip. This was my first exposure to the Chinese highway system. The highways in china are all toll roads, so when you leave any city to go to another city, you stop at a toll booth and get a card which identifies the location where you entered the highway system, and when you get off it at your city of destination, a toll booth officer takes your card and charges you according to the number of kilometers you drove, number of passengers and type of vehicle. Our 400 kilometers cost 30 Yuan - pretty Cheap for us, but alot of money for the average working stiff in China.

The highway system in China is amazing. The roads are smooth and well maintained. Let me explain to you what I mean by well maintained. Let me preface by saying that if I had not seen this with my own eyes I would never have believed anyone if they told me what I am about to tell you. In Canada, if there is sand or rocks spilled on the highway by trucks somewhere, and they send a crew to clean it up, they would put up 2 kilometers of warning signs and barriers, close off traffic and reroute it while the cleanup took place. Not in China. In China you are barrelling along at the speed limit (130 kph) and all of a sudden there is a person dressed in phosphorescent red uniforms with a broom and a large, long-handled dust pan, sweeping up the dirt and litter. No warning signs, no barriers, just a person every few kilometers walking against traffic sweeping the highway clean. The highways are for the most part carved through mountains and do not have shoulders and ditches like the country roads in Canada ( think Calgary trail ). Every kilometer of highway in China has sidewalks lined with ornamental trees and bushes, decorative rocks and are clean clean clean. I was amazed. It was by far the smoothest 400 kilometers I have ever ridden. I have driven and ridden in all sorts of countries, and china's is by far the best. If you think the clean-up people are a surprise, every now and then, all of a sudden, you come upon a little old lady sitting behind a little pile of fruits and vegetables, right on the edge of the highway, trying to sell her crop to make a living. Dangerous to my mind, but apparently part of the way of life there. Amazing!

个性小西红柿 · 发表于 2011-9-26 19:28

We made it you Puyang and we were guests of honour, having come all the way form North America and attending the wedding , we were given special red flowers to wear identifying us a VIPs in the wedding with a stature close to that of the bride and grooms parents. We were treated very well. Her cousin is a real cutie. Her wedding gown was very nice and the ceremony was very cool. The wedding ceremony consists of the groom having to come and fetch the bride from inside a tent, ask her father for the bride, and listen to the bride's fathers speech advising him of, I imagine, what he will do to the groom if he deserts or hurts his daughter. I don't know because of my limited Mandarin, but that's what I would be telling the groom if I was the father so I might be wrong. Then there is all kinds of ceremonial stuff like bowing, fireworks, firecrackers, speeches, let's just say it was quite elaborate.

After the ceremony it was time to eat, drink and be merry. In the part of China we were in, the men go to one room, and the women to another. I thought that was weird. And since I am not very fluent in Mandarin, I decided that I would hang with Wifey for a while so she could introduce me to all the women and do some translation. We ate for about 20 minutes when I told Wifey that I was going to go join the men. She volunteered to come with me, but I told her not to worry, when men are drinking together, there is no such thing as a language barrier. She laughed and wished me good luck. So off I went.

个性小西红柿 · 发表于 2011-9-26 19:29

The men were just finishing the food and getting down to drinking. As with most traditions I have encountered in China, the drinking and celebration is a highly ritualized affair. Wifey has a cousin who lives in Calgary who had flown in for the wedding, so I grabbed him to come do some translation for me while I introduced myself to the men. Well wouldn't you know it, the father of the groom's brother lays down the law. He actually got up and told me (as translated by the cousin) that the father of the bride was the first in order of toasting. If I propose a toast it must be with him first, and then laid out the pecking order for toasting all the way around the table. Then he told me I was expected to toast everyone. I found out later he was playing a joke on me, but at the time I figured, when in Rome do as the Romans do.

So my first toast was was with Uncle Wang (not his real name cause his real name is a bitch to pronounce and write), father of the bride. Meet Uncle Wang. Uncle Wang is a really nice guy. He is a really friendly, calm and happy person who used to teach high-school, but is now a local government director in the school system. We liked each other right off the bat. Now when you toast in China, you are given a little shot glass (about half an ounce) full of the most powerful corn liquor you have ever tasted. It tastes like crap, and is 50% alcohol. You are expected to say "Gambai" and down the glass while the person you are toasting does the same. So since I was in the middle of the hierarchy of toasting, I was getting toasted (literally) and toasting up and down the chain of stature until I had had about 20 shots, and realized I was getting toasted (figuratively this time), and we were not done. After about an hour and a half of steady toasting and being toasted, the 10 of us had gone through 4 bottles of this stuff. I found out later that they were testing me to see if they could get me drunk (testing the mettle of the white guy), and I had figured as much because I was being toasted way more than anyone else, What they didn't know is that, although I do not drink normally, I am French-Canadian, and we have made drinking an art. I prepared myself by eating alot of meat and carbs before drinking, and when I realized they were testing me, I decided to take on Uncle Wang and Wifey's dad (he was #2 in the pecking order). Whenever someone would toast me, I would fill two glasses and toast Uncle Wang or Baba. By the time things wound down, Uncle Wang was comatose (he had to be carried out), and Baba had to be supported, by two uncles and slid into the minivan. I was fine. I was joking around with Wifey who has never seen me drunk, and who thought I was too funny. I kept her entertained all the way back to Jinan. Everyone was surprised to see me still standing, and I got slaps on the back of approval from everyone we said goodbye to when we left. I passed the test. Uncle Wang remained comatose for about 2 hours, drooling on his shoes, Baba slept for a while, woke up and giggled to himself for a bit, and fell back to sleep again, repeating the pattern all the way home.

个性小西红柿 · 发表于 2011-9-26 19:30

I decided I liked this wedding ritual. I had a blast and was treated like royalty. The people I met at the wedding were warm and embracing, and made me feel so welcome. They all spoke to me through my wife, and welcomed me to the family and to China, and to a last told me they were happy for us and wished us good health, long life, and great wealth. I felt honoured.

Puyang is a city of about 2 million. Smaller than Jinan, it is as crowded and polluted. On the way back to Jinan, it occurred to me that we had driven 400 kilometers through farmland for hours and hours, and the pollution never abated. Jinan was so polluted that you cannot normally see more than about 1/2 kilometer in any direction, and it was that way all the way to and from Jinan and Puyang. I really fear for the health care crisis that is occurring in China right now. there is an epidemic of pulmonary disease that is going to get worse if things do not change. I fear for the long-term health of the population. More on that in another post though. Uncle Wang and I became good friends. He and his wife travelled with us for a few days. Uncle Wang, Instabuzz and a cool wedding.

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