Jinan.
A tiny village just two hours by train from Beijing. I don't mean "tiny", do I? There's still 10 million people living here. But let me tell you, I've never felt more alone. Might as well been a chicken farmer's hut in the rural wastelands... Imagine that Airbnb ad. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Jinan. It's beautifully located, surrounded by mountains, soaked in the eternal wisdom of Confucius. There's even a gorgeous Franciscan cathedral called Sacred Heart ( 洪家楼耶稣圣心主教座堂) in the city center, built around 1901.
Here's my beef. As those of you who read my previous post know, I am a new father. In order to fulfill my fatherly and husbandly duties as well as I can, I am staying here in my wife's hometown for a few weeks. It's now been about 12 days and I want to MURDER someone! For your reading and happiness over my suffering, I will outline the issues I am currently having:
My wife comes from a traditional family that requires her to go through something called "Sitting the month", or 坐月子 . Coming from a western country, I wasn't sure what to expect as far as childbirth went but this was definitely not one of them. Apparently, my wife is not allowed to shower, go outside or barely even leave the bed! And the food? Tasteless concoctions of whatever can be consider "healthy", soaked in hot water (because of course it's hot water). Now to be fair, we're bending the rules a bit on the eating and showering, but it doesn't change the fact that we are unable to leave the house!
I haven't had a proper night's sleep for two weeks! It's either diaper changes, water heating or some other god forsaken thing that just happens to pop up at that time.
I have no one to speak with! My Chinese language skills are fairly limited which means that I am unable to speak with grandparents, uncles, cousins, aunts or the maid for most of my time here. This leaves me sitting like a dumb-dumb and smiling in the general direction of whoever is speaking at the time. Or drinking, Drinking helps.
It's Christmas in two days. A tradition not celebrated here. This means I have to order a 1m tall plastic tree from JD to put in the corner of the living room and then hunker down nearby by myself whilst gently humming Christmas carols to my whiskey bottle.
There's a finite amount of things to do here during winter. 2nd tier means polluted. Winter in the north means cold. Put those two together and you get me hunkering next to my pathetic tree, humming Rudolph the fu**ing red nosed reindeer.
Should i venture outside for whatever obscure reason, I will be showered in weird looks and pointing. "Laowai, mama, Laowai!". Jinan is definitely not uncivilized, in fact it's quite westernized. But no matter how much that might be true, there are still a large amount of people that just can't believe that an alien from some place in Farfuckistan managed to find his way to their tiny village of 10 million people.
...anyway. All is well. Emilia is growing. Cryptos are going up. Merry Christmas everyone!