Saturday, we’d just be spending time in Xunyang, and hanging out with family before the wedding. I finally got to sleep in for the first time in awhile, I slept until 10 and it was wonderful! Following a quick shower, my father and I hopped in the car and drove around until we found Yang Fei. From there we
headed up to the highest peak in the city. This is a rather famous and beautiful lookout point, I’ve seen pictures of this view before, I just never knew where it was. The view of the winding Xun river, the city situated on both sides of its banks, meeting the larger river is a pretty impressive site. Unfortunately for us, the day was rather cool and drizzly so the pictures are rather gray, but I guess that’s to be expected in December.
Following our photography expedition, we headed back to Yang Fei’s house, where her mother and my mother had been making dumplings for lunch. I really enjoy the dumplings so I had a good amount of them at lunch, in the soup they were absolutely delicious.
It always seems to come up that I know how to play Mahjong, I should be pleased, my parents are probably just very proud of the fact. But my mother thought I should play with laolao, who as my mother puts it “plays everday, every hour”. So yeah, of course I’ll play with her! I’ve got some money, let’s see how much she can take! It wasn’t too serious of a game, but turns out, I’m not that bad. After maybe a dozen or so games, I was up 4 yuan! It was then that the other cousins arrived, 二姐 or second oldest cousin named Yu Yang, and 四姐 or fourth oldest cousin whose name I’ve forgotten. They, along with my parents, wanted to take me to see the old part of the city, not far from where we were.
A short walk later, and I’m walking between what looks to be tiny ancient homes, on narrow winding going up and down the side of a hill. It looked dilapidated, but still very charming at the same time. It was nothing like I had seen before, yet, everything I expected it to be. Please check out the pictures to see what I mean. My parents, who I had just discovered were both Xunyang natives, showed me some significant icons from their sweetheart days. Including Haohan Po, “good man road” a stairs
Childhood Sweethearts
built with many large flat rocks from the river that clearly took “good men” to carry and place. At the bottom of Haohan Po is where their middle school used to be located, and apparently they’ve been sweethearts since, first holding hands while walking up Haohan Po.
After an incredibly interesting tour of the old part of Xunyang, we headed back to the house. Here I played a few more rounds of Mahjong before heading out for dinner with the cousins, who after spending the afternoon with, had gotten to know quite a bit. Yang Fei, Yu Yang, and He Yang (Yu Yang’s boyfriend) could actually speak okay English, and combined with my basic Chinese, we could talk about most things that weren’t too complicated. We took a 45 minute walk, chatted and made it to the best hotpot place in
town. It wasn’t the traditional “family-style” hotpot I was used to, but each person got their own individual hotpot. It still tasted the same, but it was just different. After hotpot we headed to the KTV, after my nice buzz I actually had no problem singing! They sang a few Chinese songs and I sang some Backstreet Boys, and Westlife (it’s slim-pickens as far as English songs go). By 10 PM we decided to wrap it up, and get some sleep for the wedding the next day. I had to meet Yu Yang in the hotel lobby at 7:30 the next morning. So much for sleeping in. However, I was soon to find out, getting up this early was totally worth it.
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