Sunday morning I naturally woke up at about 6:30 AM, which was fortunate

The Happy Couple

since I had forgotten to plug my phone in and it had died overnight, meaning no alarm. After showering and putting on the best clothes I had with me, my father and I headed down to the lobby to meet up with Yu Yang. She had made me repeat to her at least four times (in Chinese) the night before as to when and where I was supposed to meet her. Tomorrow, 7:30 AM, hotel lobby. She was there, waiting when we came down the stairs. We set out walking north a few blocks as I listened to her and my father talk about what our hotpot dinner and KTV the night before (at least that’s all I could understand anyway). About 10 minutes later we stopped off at a small cafe of sorts. The cafe was really just a large garage type area with the typical short tables and stools spread out amongst the area, it was the only place open that I could see and therefore quite busy! I had a bowl of noodles and a 肉夹馍. We even saw a few other people there that I recognized from the previous day, this was clearly a popular place!

I found out why the cafe was so popular amongst the family. It’s literally less than 100 yards from the bride’s parent’s home and that’s where everyone was converging. It was 8:15 AM and there were already a 8 or so friends and family of the bride at her home, and the crowd was growing steadily. Yu Yang introduced me to the bride, as she was putting her make-up on in the bedroom. The bride actually said we had met before, and that she remembered me. I felt a little bad, I’m certain she met me at the big family dinner right before Tianyu left for America, but I didn’t really remember her. I said hello, congratulations, and told her I was pretty excited to be here for this. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect in a Chinese wedding, but I’d soon find out. I relaxed for awhile, drank some tea, and my mother showed me some extended-family pictures that were around the house. A picture of my mother and her sisters 20 years ago, a picture of the cousins maybe 10 years ago, as well as a picture of laolao as a young woman. We took the downtime as an opportunity to take our pictures with the bride-to-be dressed in her white dress before the groom would arrive. The men of the family were relaxing in the living room, drinking their tea, smoking and watching TV. Shortly before 9:00 AM we heard a loud explosion, and then many more in quick

Watching The Fireworks Below

succession. Everyone streamed out to the balcony to look down at the street where a 20 foot string of firecrackers was rattling off, creating a billow of smoke and echoing off the surrounding buildings. This was the groom telling us “I’m here!”.

The younger cousins then ran to the apartment door, closing and locking it tightly. The groom wasn’t getting in here! At least not without a little bribing. It’s Chinese tradition that the grooms family brings gifts for the bride’s family when the groom comes to take her from her home. The gifts start with the “hongbao”, little red envelopes with money inside. We opened the peephole

Let us in!

slot, it was just big enough to talk through and shove small red envelopes through. The male cousins taunted the groom and his friends, telling them we needed more hongbao, all the cousins gathered in front of the door, including myself, received at least 3 or 4 envelopes with money inside. Generally it was only 2 yuan, but occasionally ten, always a multiple of two. After everyone received some hongbao the groom was finally let into the apartment, his friends and family streaming in behind him, carrying gifts for the family. The bride’s family was gifted with 2 large boxes of baozi (Chinese steamed bread), 2 bottle of baijiu, 2 boxes of chocolate, 2 boxes of tea, and 2 cartons of “Double Happiness” cigarettes. Everything in pairs. The groom ran into the apartment, only to find the bride’s bedroom locked. He carried a bouquet of flowers, looking a little anxious he knocked on the door asking the bride to come out. She didn’t come out, and he kept knocking. He slid a couple hongbao under the door to the bride’s close friends, and shortly thereafter the door opened…enough to get his foot in. Finally after pushing (and a little help from his friends) the groom managed to get inside the bride’s bedroom.

The cousins and friends of the bride all packed into the room to watch the show. The groom was on his knees, begging the brides friends to let her come with him. They said they’d let her go, as long as he could answer a few questions. So they quizzed him while one of the other friends hid one of the bride’s shoes. “Tell us 10 reasons why you love her.” was one of the requests, so the groom, on his knees did his best to appease the bride’s friends. Once the friends were happy, they rleased the bride to her groom, but she couldn’t go anywhere without her shoe! A couple hongbao to the bride’s friends and the shoe magically turned up, how lucky! It was now the responsibility of the bride’s brother (or oldest male cousin) to carry her out the car waiting outside. By that time I had grabbed my coat and was prepared to follow along. The bride’s cousin carried her down the stairs at a break-neck pace, I could hardly keep up, let alone manage to get a picture! I finally got a decent picture as her cousin placed her in the backseat of the car. What happened next, I didn’t really understand. The groom arrived at the bottom of the stairs and his friends just attacked him with silly-string, and some kind of red paint. They did their best to just harass the shit out of him, spraying him, tearing his shirt, and ripping his pants before he managed to get in the car. I mean, it was all in jest, but it just seemed really overboard. This was just the beginning.

The Groom Post-Assault

A 15 minute cross-town drive in the motorcade and we arrived at the home of the groom’s family. There was a large assortment of fireworks exploding in the courtyard in front of the apartment to signify the arrival of the bride. Once again, as soon as the groom got out of the car he was assaulted. The sprayed him with paint, silly string and practically ripped the clothing off of his back. I followed my cousins inside where we all sat around the dining room table. There was about 14 members of the brides family, including my father, my cousins, some other aunts and uncles, and the bride’s parents. We were served 2 poached eggs in a very sweet, surgary soup. It definitely wasn’t bad tasting, but a little too sweet. Then we were all given larger red envelopes, “da hongbao”; the big payout. These larger red evelopes were given to everyone

in the bride’s family sitting around the table, incluing me, and contained 200 yuan each! The cousins were all pretty happy about this, I mean, poor students like free money, right? Seeing the groom eat his eggs and soup was almost appalling, his clothing had just been torn to shreds and his upper body and parts of his face painted red. I didn’t get it, but clearly this was okay with everyone else. Twenty-minutes after we arrived at the groom’s home, we left, and the motorcade proceeded to the Mandarin hotel in Xunyang, the same place I had just left 3-4 hours earlier.

Upon arriving at the hotel I saw that the groom had cleaned up a bit, and changed into a new suit. He looked respectable now at least. Well, funny thing, that didn’t last too long. Quickly after stepping out of the car, he was quickly assaulted with the silly string and red paint. This time I was prepared, so I took a video of it so everyone can see what kind of assault I’m talking about here. Definitely not something I’d ever expect to see at a wedding in America.

Finally the groom was allowed to go into the hotel, where I hoped he had another suit to change into as this one had also been ripped apart in the span of two minutes. Once inside the wedding hall, we simply relaxed and discussed the mornings events while waiting for the rest of the bride & groom’s family and friends showed up to the banquet hall.

The wedding ceremony started shortly before noon; in northern China its good luck to start the wedding before noon. The only people on the stage in front were the bride & groom, and the master of ceremonies. The groom had clearly changed into a new suit again, his third one of the day. I was sitting right in front so I had a great view of everything that was going on. Which was pretty good for me, because I certainly couldn’t understand anything they said. So instead I took a lot of pictures. Every once in awhile there’d be someone shooting confetti at the couple, as well as some bubbles floating around. At one point, the groom’s parents came up on the stage, where it beame quite apparent that the even the groom’s parents weren’t safe from the

No One Was Safe...

red paint and silly string. In fact, as soon as the bride and groom said I do, there was a flash mob headed to the stage with more paint and silly string, now spraying the groom AND his bride! Talk about crazy. Near the end of the ceremony a few family members came up to say something about the couple, including my father. I’ve no idea what he said, but it must’ve been good, as everyone clapped.

Following the ceremoney everyone began to enjoy their wonderful wedding lunch, with many courses ranging from pretty typical to pretty delicious and expensive. The bride then came to our table giving Yu Yang the bouquet, it

The Next Bride

was then that I found out that her boyfriend is actually her fiance and they plan to have their wedding on May 10, 2010. (another wedding? Hell yeah!) The lunch continued with much livelihood, people talking, laughing, as well as coming around to toast their friends with a shot of baijiu. I even toasted laolao with a shot of baijiu and she was happy to have one with me.

Following the wedding we stopped by laolao’s home to collect some things and say goodbye. It had been a wonderful weekend and I had met quite a few great people! On the ride home we took a different route to avoid the 6 Km from hell. My ride was filled with some beautiful scenery, a nice nap, and telling some really lame jokes. I seriously can’t wait for the next wedding!

Wedding Family Photo

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 intown. 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.

As of Thursday I hadn’t planned on anything exciting for the weekend; maybe

Navigating the 6 km from hell

go downtown, have a beer, watch a movie, whatever, a relaxing weekend. Well that all changed Thursday evening when my Chinese father texted me asking me if I wanted to go with them to visit 姥姥 or “laolao”. After a couple messages back and forth I gathered that we were going to visit my mother’s mother (apparently that’s what laolao means, as 奶奶 or “nainai” is father’s mother, who lives here in Xi’an) since we we’re going to be gone from Friday to Sunday, we must be going far away.

Either way, I was rather unclear as to what was going on, but I had wanted to meet my other grandmother since I got here, so now was a good opportunity. I wasn’t sure what to expect, I wasn’t really told why we we’re going to visit, just that we were. So I prepared, threw a couple videos and an audiobook on my iPod in case I needed to kill some time, fortunately that time never came.

My father came to pick me up on Friday afternoon at about 4PM and we headed to my mother’s office to pick her up. I wanted to ask him why we were going to visit laolao this weekend without sounding like I was complaining; I just figured there must be another reason. So I asked. Then he tells me, Tianyu’s 三姐, or “3rd sister” (read: cousin) was getting married! Heck yes, another wedding! And this time it was a family wedding, I was pretty excited.

Arriving at the Xi’an Le Garden Hotel where my mother works, I discovered that we’d have a full car, Yang Fei, my mother’s oldest niece, and the second oldest niece’s boyfriend were riding along with us. Being the tallest amongst them I always get to ride shotgun, though I do feel guilty about it sometimes. For the first 150 km or so, we were on the highway. The highways in China are an interesting concept, they’re pretty much all toll roads, so there aren’t many big construction trucks, no motorcycles, no motorscooters, nothing to slow down traffic. Not to mention, it cost nearly 100 yuan to drive this route, so the highway wasn’t exactly busy. Yet the speed limit is still 80 KPH, or 50 MPH, which is super slow for an empty highway! We may have been speeding some of the time, but not by much as there are many speed cameras along the highway as well. What would take us two hours to drive in the US was going to take about 5.

For the first couple hours, the drive was rather uneventful. It took about an hour to get out of traffic to the actual highway. By then it was dark so there was nothing to see on the drive. That is, until we got to the tunnels, there were sooo may tunnels through the mountains, there must have been 20 small tunnels, and what I was told is one of the longest tunnels in Asia, an 18.3 km monster tunnel! Granted, the inside of a tunnel looks like the inside of a tunnel, it was cool how it just kept going. Finally after turning off the highway we’d have to take a county road another 76 km, I thought it’d be quick like the highway, but I now understand why it’s not. The road is wide enough for 2 cars, but there’s small villages and building clusters lininig the road every few kilometers, along with construction trucks parked on the side of the road, people walking along the road,along with rubble and building materials piled on the shoulder. Not to mention this road was quite windy as it followed the Xun river all the way to Xunyang. With all the turning, speeding up, and slowing down; there was no sleeping now. It’s a good thing I didn’t, because I would’ve been woken up by the next part. It’s totally normal here to have to drive through the middle of a construction site, but since they’ve been building the hydro-electric dam on the Xun river, there’s now a 6 km construction site where the road is simply terrible. The ruts are deep, there’s deep water, we’re constantly scraping the bottom of the car, wouldn’t have been so bad in an SUV, but we’re in a Buick sedan here. Eventually all of us end up getting out of the car and walking along the road, in order to identify

Huge trucks, no patience

the best path for my father following in the car. It wasn’t impassable, but it wasn’t easy, and definitely took some maneuvering to get through the crappy road, the whole time while being hassled by huge construction trucks wanting us to get out of their way. It took an hour to go 6 km. Think about that for a second, it’s a little under 4 miles. One. Hour.

Finally after escaping the 6 km from hell, we quickly arrived in Xunyang where we went to Yang Fei’s house, which is also where laolao happens to live, and had some dinner. After dinner, it was late and my father and I headed to the hotel where we would be staying, while my mother stayed at her families home. Already an interesting trip, and there’s still 2 days left.