Chinese Traditions: Meeting your girlfriend’s family.
How I spent the Spring Festival in a small village, without speaking Chinese.
As an expat living in China, I get a big dose of culture shock from time to time. Dealing with the ups and downs of this wonderful country, I often find myself in middle of situations that I can’t fully understand until I dive deep in them.
At some point during 2013, I met a wonderful girl that I immediately fell in love with. Countless stories have happened on our endeavors to understand each other in a language that we both struggle with.
Despite the fun in our relationship (here is my blog), we hit cultural barriers from time to time. We try to climb the obstacles, meet halfway through the problem, and try to find a way to overcome it. Of course, I didn’t realize that this trick was not going to work for what happened next.
“You should come with me to my hometown, and meet my family.”
My insides jiggled a bit.
I’ve heard so many rumors and stories about the Chinese New Year, the Spring Festival and the Chinese tradition of meeting the future-parents-in-law.
How can I politely escape from this? I asked myself. I didn’t find any answer in my head, so I followed the next organ with a lot of blood in it: My stomach.
The answer was still “No, I’m sorry”.
What came out of my mouth as a muted “sure, why not!” and an awkward happy face. I wasn’t excited at all. I was nervous, perhaps. Not sure how to describe the shake in my fingers, or the numbing feeling in my neck, or the butterflies in my stomach. The bad kind of butterflies. The ugly ones.
Fuck.
Chapter 1: Be brave.
According to my mom, I am a very brave person. It must be true, because she says so. Well… she also says you shouldn’t shake your head after you drink hot chocolate because you throw up.
I did try that.
I did vomit. On purpose.
I couldn’t let her be wrong.
Anyway. I had to prove again that she was right, so I naturally took my remaining manly hormones and used them to enroll myself into an epic trip to meet my girlfriend’s family for the Spring Festival.
“That is brave” —My friends
“That is stupid. You dumbass!” — My best friend
So there I was. Packing my bag and asking myself if this is the most stupid idea in the world, or if this was a great week away from all the city pollution and stress.
I have an answer for this now. It’s at the end of this essay.
Chapter 2: On the road.
Sitting in a bus for 6 hours wasn’t that bad. Holding my bladder for 1 hour was, though. You can’t stop the bus in middle of the highways. It’s ilegal. You can’t go to a toilet because there isn’t one.
I’m quite happy that I didn’t have to do what another friend of mine did last year. A 9 hour train journey, then a 3 hour bus ride, then a 30 minutes walk to the nearest car hub so he could get to his girlfriend’s village in middle of nowhere. In my case, I was blessed (?) with a 6 hour ride. Not too bad for a first timer.
The imagery of the city seemed to never end. As the bus slowly travelled outside Shanghai, the northern rivers became more evident and a lot of small overpasses and bridges made the trip quite interesting.
There wasn’t much going on, due to the cold temperatures and the heavy pollution that affected the province during that week.
During these bus rides, you basically sit tight and be quiet. At this point I realize that bringing my iPad was the best thing in the world. I read a lot, played a few games and drew a few things.
Before I knew, I was in a service stop where all my pain (and the two bottles of water) vanished.
Once we arrived, the scenery changed magnificently.
In the outskirts of the city, in the rural district of Tinghu, lies a small village with only 2 bus lines, and about a hundred families.
And a chubby Ecuadorian guy, with a small Samsonite bag and an old Fuji.
Chapter 3: Eat & Drink. Rinse. Repeat.
After the initial logistics and introductions, I promptly got invited to sit back and enjoy a welcome meal. I’ll admit this: I’m completely ok with Chinese food. I’ve tried a ton of different things and I knew what to expect. This was quite enjoyable.
A meal is very important in Chinese culture. Most of the multi-million deals that happens every day in China, most likely happen during a business meal. In a similar fashion, during the Spring Festival, every day meals are a great opportunity to catch up with relatives, get to know new sons in law (!) and celebrate another year of wealth, success and fortune.
Sliding a bit on the food topic: It’s interesting how the small portions of Chinese cuisine make it easy for big groups of people to share. The chopsticks keep the food in bite-sized portions, plus allows it to cool down while it travels from the hot plate to your mouth. In overall, it’s a pleasant way of connecting naturally with your food, without the artificiality of the silver cutlery.
It’s also a royal pain in the ass when you drink a lot, while eating.
I politely refused to drink Baijiu during the meals, especially because it’s around 50% ABV, and makes me go from zero to hero in 5 minutes. My girlfriend’s parents understood and were already prepared for this scenario. They also heard stories about foreigners disliking the strenght of their alcohol, so they prepared around 40 cans of this tasty beer.
The meals in this fashion happened over and over again during the next 5 days. A non-stop rain of food and alcohol in the table. It’s quite common for people to also smoke during a meal, so that wasn’t a shocker when they offered me a cigarette.
Most of the topics discussed during meals were about the new factories nearby, the government, the kids in the family, people getting married, relatives in trouble, rich people, poor people, food, etc. A vast array of normal discussions that would happen anywhere else.
-Me, drunk.
Food itself was pretty good. It’s similar to Shanghainese food. As my friend says, it’s basically meats in oil and vegetables in water. Simple and humble, but very tasty.
People often got drunk towards the end of the day, but there wasn’t any drunken uncle, clumsily bouncing on the walls, trying to get out of the house and yelling at people around him. This is quite common in Ecuador, so I figured, alcohol would offer me a similar view here.
As for the hangovers, I didn’t have any. Probably because of the special Chinese medicine I was taking for hangovers. It’s actually a compacted mix of Vitamin B, some Liver enhancing herbs and ginger. It works, I guess.
The only brutal part of every morning, was waking up at 7am, to prepare our own breakfast. With our bare hands.
Aside from all the food experiences, the highlight of the trip was definitely the family gathering and the peace that it brought to the trip.
Before this day, all I knew were stories of all these characters in my Girlfriend’s life. Meeting them in person helped me to understand a lot of things about her life.
Chapter 4: Origins.
Quite often, great things come from unusual places. I guess that applies to people as well.
After meeting my girlfriend’s parents, now I know where she comes from and why she is the person I know, and love.
She comes from a very humble family, dedicated to grow small crops in the field, assembling engines for farm vehicles and creating spare parts for heavy machinery.
After studying Environmental Science in a nearby city, she moved to the crazy metropolis of Shanghai. Once she met the urban world, she fell in love with the combination of nature and man-made structures and became the interior designer that she is now.
By chance, we happened to meet at the right time and place, and things just clicked. Like the machine that her dad uses to cuts steel rods. I moved something and it clicked. I promptly got scared and apologized. I think I screwed up something.
After meeting her parents at their home, now it was time to meet the whole family at her grandparent’s farm house.
I read before that grandparents are the ones who enjoy the most during the festivities.
Perhaps because their kids finally have a break from their jobs and dedicate some time to the family. It’s a saddening realization how similar this is with my own life, considering I’m living 13 timezones away from my parents.
After the initial introductions and brief explanation of what I do, I felt like I became invisible to them, and I became one more person sitting in the family table. While my mandarin is almost zero, most of these people I was meeting didn’t really speak mandarin, but a local dialect that differs a lot. Even if I’d be fluent, it wouldn’t have helped me that much.
Funny thing is, nobody really understood what my job was. Explaining design, user experience and web/mobile apps is challenging. It didn’t impress anybody.
Someone handed me a piece of paper and asked me to draw.
Chapter 5: The environment
Day 3. At this point, I realize I’m basically boarding the marriage boat as soon as I step into my parents in law’s hometown.
I did step in their town. I did step in their yard. I went inside their house. I ate their food. I stole a candle that smelled awesome.
Now I think I’m deep to my knees into this. It’s funny how it feels.
One of the biggest contrasts between Shanghai and my girlfriend’s hometown is the environment. The air quality is known to be one of the purest in the region, and although there was a bad cloud of pollution that came from the north west in the previous days, the night offered me a view of stars that I haven’t seen in years.
The night also offered a ton of noise, coming from every direction.
Chinese invented the gunpowder, so they take pride of it and shove it in your face (ears?) through firecrackers and fireworks.
The tradition says that you have to scare away the old governor of the year (The Rabbit/Dragon/Pig, etc) and make even more noise to attract the new god into the year. This is the year of the Horse. I imagined they thought the horse was deaf, so they went overboard this year.
“What did he say?”
That was me. All the time.
Once you land in China for the first time, you are protected by an invisible shield. You can’t read, you can’t understand. You can’t listen, you can’t get it. You become aware of nothing other than your own thoughts. And maybe some ambient noise. Back home, it happens the opposite. You’re too busy processing the endless information being fed through radio, tv, billboards, signage, conversations, and so on.
The language barrier in China allows you to spend more time with your critical self. Most people go through this phase on their first year, and the effect usually vanishes after that period of time. Even if you don’t really learn mandarin Chinese, you most likely identify the basics of it, and suddenly your protection is gone. You know when they talk about you or when they tell you something important.
In my case, this trip reminded me of that same feeling. Suddenly, nothing sounded like mandarin. The local dialect made it impossible for me to have even the slightest clue of what was going on.
It was interesting. A bit scary, perhaps.
I relied a lot on my girlfriend to communicate, but this didn’t bring any trouble to our daily interactions with her family.
-My Girlfriend
At some point during that week, my girlfriend, giving me a sly grin, took me to the supermarket.
This thing was located just one block away. One large block of wasteland.
The price of things here was enormously cheaper than I imagined. Coming here and buying everything we needed for 3 days, for less than 20 USD, was a big impact. It reminded me of the good old days in Ecuador, when food was cheap and safe.
On our way back, we took an alternative route, with actual roads. She was trolling me when made me walk through the wasteland.
Turns out, this fake Apple Store sells cheap jackets and Chinese Pancakes in the morning. Street breakfast.
Days after we arrived. I was no longer a newcomer. I was feeling a lot more connected to the experience I was living. I enjoyed the walks, the streets, the humidity of the stores and places that use water vapor to heat up the air and moisturize the skin (?), I enjoyed the oranges, the powdered milk in my improvised coffee mug, the quietness of the early mornings, while everybody else seemed to be sleeping, the magic aroma of a clean, new house, in contrast to the old moldy scent of ancient places.
I did miss my friends. I did miss Shanghai a little bit. I missed my own apartment and my cat. I found a little cat inside a kitchen, and I went in with my fuji trying to get a shot of him. He ran away, but I still managed to get a capture of the moment.
I realized I was back into my roots. Walk around. Be amazed. Take a photo. Write a story.
Back in Shanghai, I’m often too busy trying to solve things and I forget how beautiful a place can be. If I strip down all the neon lights, the sky scrappers, the fancy cars and motorbikes, the clubs, the stores, the supermarkets and cellphones, I end up with a very natural and honest version of what excites me the most: Reality.
Big cities are full of fake people and buildings. The more you show, the more your perceived wealth is. The more you talk, the more assertive you’re taken for. The tallest the building is, the higher the rent becomes (despite the fact you can’t see shit on a polluted day).
Take all of that away, and you’re basically in middle of a small place, full of people who live their day-to-day doing very humbling, human things.
They might not be considered wise, or incredibly intellectual, but oh boy, they have forgotten more than I will ever learn.
Chapter 6: Beam me up, Scotty.
After 5 days of asking myself questions like “Did they forgot to put a mattress in this bed? Or… is this the mattress?” or “Am I allowed to do [x]?” I came to the point where I understood that, no matter what you have read before, the Spring Festival during the Chinese New Year is nothing like the horror stories that most foreigners share. It’s actually a very humbling, if not relaxing, experience.
I didn’t have a great time, but answering my own question, I think this trip was a great idea. I admit I had a big dose of patience and booze in my system, and that helped me to get through the week, but if you play your cards right, you can definitely come out victorious, being admired and hugged by every person in the family.
I have with me great memories, new friends and extra pounds.
We had a good week, but now we had to leave and pack. We were departing next morning.
It was time to say good bye.
My girlfriend and her parents see each other once per year, and this time she brought something that made a big difference in their life.
That something was me.
My visit means that her daughter will most likely get married within the next year, or two.
My visit means that she, without asking directly, wants their approval and support to take a life changing decision. Their role, as parents, is changing now.
For most parents in the world, the realization of their kids growing up is, say, when they lose a tooth, or when their daughters cry for a boy, or when their kids go to school, or college.
Or when they move out.
For Chinese parents, this moment often comes late, when their daughters bring their boyfriends, or when their sons bring their girlfriends.
This is the signal for them. The green light. This is when they let go of their daughter’s arm and when they see her crossing the road, holding hands with another person.
I’m very lucky to be that person.
And, I will never let her go.
Not until we’ve crossed all the roads ahead.
January 2014 @ Yancheng, Jiangsu Province
Find me everywhere @manicho
