Chaoyang (2/7 - 2/12): Spring Festival in Liaoning - Part 2

Let's see .. where was I? 

Oh, right.  Evening of the 7th.  Wow ... seems like a long time ago now. 

Here are three of the dozens of photos of Wu Di's mom that I took.  Portrait photography is really exhausting.  I can understand why those guys at Sears look so ornery.

Friday - February 8

Friday morning we got up early (around 9:00 a.m. -- early considering that we'd been sleeping around 2 a.m.) and Wu Di drove me to Bei Piao.  (But of course his mother stuffed us full of food first.)As is the custom for Chinese New Years, on the 2nd day we had to visit the Father's side of the family.  (First day is the immediate family you live with, second day is the Father's side...)  Wu Di is originally from a small town called Bei Piao which is located here:

That's right .. just 30 - 40 minutes from Inner Mongolia.This town reminded me of a slightly more hilly version of Wang Wei's hometown of Dong Ming ... except maybe a bit smaller.  (Chaoyang was more like halfway between Heze and DongMing.)  The drive was only about 30 minutes and in no time at all we were driving up to the building where Wu Di's aunt (father's younger sister) lives.She lives there with her husband and son and they run a local restaurant that specializes in Yang Ro Chua'r. (lamb sticks).  The place was really nice and I'm told theirs is the best lamb stick restaurant in town, so they must be doing pretty well for themselves. Next it was off to Wu Di's cousin's home.  This is the cousin that Wu Di grew up with, under their grandmother's care, for several years of his childhood.  She was married now and had just had a son.  Here are some pictures from their place ...

A powerful punchCousin and her child

After about 30 minutes it was off to Wu Di's grandmother's home.  This is his father's mother.  When we were there I also met Wu Di's uncle and father.  As Wu Di mentioned in his blog a while back, his grandfather passed away last fall, so it was sort of a bitter-sweet CNY for this side of the family. This is the home that Wu Di lived in for much of his childhood before starting wushu in Chaoyang.

Wu Di and his grandmotherL-R: Uncle, father, wu di and grandmotherTaking a picture in the house that Wu Di grew up in.Then it was time to go eat.  We went to a restaurant and had a bunch of food.  It was pretty tasty.  It was also interesting to see more Chinese family dynamics, further cementing my impressions that, while I feel relatively comfortable that I understand what is going on in these situations, I also realize that it is a cultural dynamic that is not natural for me.  I'd probably have to live with a family in China for at least 6 - 12 months before I started feeling like the cultural habits and rituals were something I felt at ease with.

In a way, it kind of reminds me of my childhood spending time in Japan.  I more-or-less understood what was going on around me, but at the same time I was still sort of on the outside looking in. 

Still ... both are valuable experiences which I'm happy to have had.

Anyway, I digress. Here is a picture of the food.

After eating we went back to Wu Di's Aunt's home and we all digested our food.  Wu Di took off for a little while with his dad and uncle to go do some shopping while I watched his two younger cousins surf his profile page on alivenotdead.  Amazingly, they already knew about this page.  One thing Wu Di has been really good about is telling EVERYONE about this website.  He's a walking marketing tour-de-force.  If he keeps this up we're going to have to put him on the payroll.

After Wu Di got back, we drove his grandmother back to her home and then bid them all a farewell.  It was around sunset by this time so we drove back to Chaoyang and decided to take a quick stop by the temple and snap a few photos.

Then back to the homestead where we picked up Wu Di's mom and all went to a sauna to shower.  Wu Di's mom was getting a full treatment over in the women's wing so after the shower Wu Di and I drove to a nearby pool hall and played a few games while we waited.

Then we picked up his mom, went back to their home and his mother tried stuffing us full of food before going to bed ...

Saturday - February 9

Every year Wu Di, his coach and old classmates head out to LianHe to have a day (and sometimes a sleepover) in the village.  And when I say "village", I mean it in every sense of the word.  It was a very small town.  Lots of bricks, dirt, chickens and goats.Anyway, one of Wu Di's old classmates is from the village and his father is the Village Head.  I would say "mayor", but "Village Head" feels more appropriate.  If it was any more rural I would have to say he's in charge of the "Council of Elders" or something.First we drove over to Wu Di's coach's house to meet up with everyone.  We also ate some food since we didn't have time to eat breakfast yet.  Then we shoved everyone in three cars and drove the 30 minutes out to the Village.  You can see where it is here:

When we arrived there people split up in to two rooms, but everyone was basically playing games.  Cards or mahjong.  I did some exploring outside and took some photos.  During this time the owners of the home were fixing us food to eat in their very rural kitchen set-up.  You know you're in the country when you have a pile of kindling in the kitchen to stoke the wok fire.

A few highlights from the trip:

First, I managed to do a photoshop of Wu Di, which he had first asked me to do back when he was in Hong Kong.  Here is it.  I call is "Wu Di's Village"

Everyone got very drunk.  Even the man of the house downed a healthy dose of baijiu.  And there was tons of food.  My favorite was the pork dish.  The rice was good too.  Here are pictures of the food eating:

I taught our host a bit of English.  Just a sentence welcoming people to Lianhe.  But I think besides Shahaub and myself, the odds of any more English speakers coming to Lianhe in the near future is about the same odds as Chairman Mao coming back to life and saying "I guess I could have done things a little differently ... ".  Here are some pictures of the English lesson.

Some major hen-scratching there.

As we were outside watching the goats our Host (who's name I don't know, obviously) fed them a bunch of brambles and bark.  Wu Di said something like "They really eat that?  Isn't it just wood?" and the man said that from 1958 to 1960 his family was so poor that brambles and bark were all they had to eat.  Talk about living the hard life!  Here are some photos of the livestock and area around the home.

LOTS of corn

The main drag in Lianhe

I was watching the goats because I thought they looked interesting.  I don't see many goats in Hong Kong.  But I think the host thought I was hungry because he told me "next time you visit we'll eat them!" 

Sorry goats!

This is the bathroom.  Just a hole in the ground along one side of the house.  Not even a door.  Not a problem with a family of 3, but when you have a dozen people hanging out, it made for a few "whoops!" moments.

After a while it was time for everyone to get going.  We took some group photos and then piled back in the cars and headed back to Chaoyang.

Wu Di, his coach and her husband

It reminded me of Idaho

When we returned to Chaoyang we dropped folks off and Wu Di and I went to get massages from a Blind Guy massage place.  Actually, Wu Di got the blind guy's massage.  I got another guy.  We both pretty slept through it all though since we had gotten so little sleep the night before.

Then it was back to home for some more over-eating and stuffing our face.

And then we had another photo shoot.  I ended up taking over 100 photos of Wu Di's mom this time around.  They look pretty similar the first set so I'll spare you this time.

Sunday - February 10

Due to a miscommunication, we were only able to get bus tickets back to Beijing for Monday morning instead of Sunday.  So we had another day in Chaoyang to hang out.  In the morning I spent time working on my computer while Wu Di and his mom went out to run some errands.  Mainly, they went to go print out all of the photos I had taken of Wu Di's mom.  She was VERY happy.

In the afternoon Wu Di came to pick me up and we went around the corner to a restaurant where we joined an already highly inebriated group of former classmates and Coach Zhang.  They were SUPER drunk, which was sort of interesting to watch.  I picked at some of the food, but wasn't all that hungry considering how much we had been eating.

She is on the National Sanshou Team.  Would have probably gotten first at world's if not for a knee injury.

Then Wu Di and I drove around and picked up his mom from the photo place and then checked out another condo/apartment that she had purchased.  It was a nice place.  Especially when you consider that you can get a 1,000 square foot apartment for less than $40,000 USD.  Sooooo cheap.  We also got the car horn fixed.

Then it was off to a nice restaurant where we, once again, stuffed our faces.  This time it was crabs.  Here are some photos

Then we went to the sauna for showers and went back to the home to pack and get ready for our early morning departure for Beijing and Beyond ...

Monday - February 11

We got up super early (around 6:30) and said goodbye to Wu Di's mom.  Sad to say goodbye, but I was also looking forward to heading back home.  I had done so much socializing and eating during the vacation I would need a week of fasting and isolation just to get back to normal.

The bus trip was uneventful and by 2 p.m. we had returned, once again, to Beijing.  Here are some photos of our journey.

Sunrise in Chaoyang

In Beijing, we caught a taxi thought the main drag in town over to Xi-Dan to pick up my plane ticket for Shenzhen.  The flight wasn't until 7:30 so we had some time to hang out.  We dropped off Wu Di's luggage at Shi Cha Hai (a bunch of the staff remembered me, even though I hadn't been there in over a year.  Although ... I was there a LOT in 2005-6 ... at least a dozen trips.)

We went back to Xi-Dan and ate some sushi (soooo good) and then walked to the travel agency stores so I could catch the bus to the airport.  Just 10 RMB or so for a trip all the way to the airport.  Why would I ever take a taxi again?

Here are pictures from our quick afternoon in Beijing ...

as seen in Allan Wu's blog

A familiar sight for anyone who trains at Shi Cha Hai

I checked in to my flight and flew the 3 hours down to Shenzhen.  Unfortunately I arrived at Shenzhen airport too late for me to get across the border.  The ticket counter for the buses had closed and my cell phone was out of money so I couldn't call anyone to crash for the night, so I figured the best thing to do would be to get as close to work as possible so I could get there the next day.

I also figured that even if I could catch a bus to Hong Kong, the total travel time from the Shenzhen airport back to my home in Tung Chung would get me to bed around 3:30 a.m.  So I decided to stay in Shenzhen overnight.

I headed to Shekou and checked in to a small hotel not far from the Ferry Port. 300 RMB for the night.  Not cheap but not too bad considering I had no reservation.  It came with a free breakfast too.

Tuesday - February 12

In the morning I missed the first ferry so had to catch the noon ferry back to Hong Kong.  But managed to make it to the office.  Which is where I am now.  And it's about time to say adios to this blog entry.  It's been a very very long one, but glad it's out of the way now.  I've been sort of adding to it each day, but had to wait until today to get all the photos uploaded and added.

Anywhere, here are some more travel photos.  Nice to be home!

And thanks to Wu Di and his mom for their hospitality.  It was great to experience a real traditional Chinese New Year so I owe them a lot for that.  Thanks!

I'll try to post up some videos from the trip later when I have more time.  The rest of my photos are in my photo gallery.