Over the Chinese New Year, it was my obligation, nay, my duty, to visit the parents of my girlfriend. And to add a bit of spice to the mix, we were also going to meet the grandparents, which was a first for me.
However, coming from a somewhat broken family as I do, the idea of family gatherings seems very alien. In fact, it's hard to imagine more than 2 family members including myself ever being in the same room at this point. So when I was told I would not only be meeting grandparents, but maybe a cousin or two, my brain started to feel a bit overwhelmed and anxious.
As the days unfolded, arriving, being picked up, settling in at the grandparent's home, this news of a gathering unfolded worse and worse. What I was once reassured would be absurdly impossible to happen, say, a large round-table gathering of 18 people, something I said as a hyperbolic concern, slowly unfolded to be an actual thing that was going to happen the very next day. Cousins, babies, grandparents, aunts, uncles... what a huge family!
It was all so hard for my brain to process and it plagued and poisoned my mind right up until it happened.
Long story short, it wasn't so bad in the end, which I guess is always the case. The build up is the worst part. But I certainly did feel uncomfortable as I was the only foreigner, and everyone was mighty curious about me.
It was truly... eye opening... to experience a family who, though certainly have problems, are still together in large forces when it all comes down to it, even though many hadn't seen each other in up to 10 years!
I have grown up accustomed to my family being whittled down into smaller and smaller factions, groups, and then individuals, so that just seems kinda normal, I guess.
What very much isn't normal for me, is waking up to two parents having a cooked breakfast waiting on the table, or a 3-hour drive with non-stop chitchat between my girlfriend and her parents. Don't get me wrong, this was admirable and comforting to experience, but oh so strange and new.
Anyway
I learnt a lot about my girlfriend's life and past simply by experiencing it all, which again, was mind-blowingly eye opening, but I am not here to indulge private affairs beyond this. More, I wanted to share a few pics of the trip.
Distinctly Chinese countryside to me, but it's always a lovely experience getting up top and getting those big views. Still, it's no England countryside XD
I just love this kinda stuff, nature dominating man's best work. In this case the tree was being somewhat considerate really!
This area of Ganzhou had apparently only recently figured out they're in a perfect position to start a booming orange industry!
I can't understate how massive this project was. We drove for hours and the entire landscape was what you see here in all directions. Apparently the people's wealth multiplied around 5-fold as a result of this new initiative.
Girlfriend decided to cook sweet potatoes and yams on the stone fire pit in her grandparent's old abandoned home. They have since moved nearby to a huge, 4-story place but they like to keep the old place at least in tact.
While visiting the old place and the newer place (we were staying in their third, posh apartment place a few hours away), I jumped on the opportunity to help out in the garden! Me, the dad and the granddad harvested a whole ton of green onions, yams, lettuce and sweet potatoes. Again, you'll notice that wall of orange tree netting in the background.
I insisted on carrying the massive sack of potatoes, but it was clear the 80-year old grandad was almost magically more than capable of doing it himself.
Here's another abandoned room, littered with recent Chinese New Year celebratory firecrackers and other red stuff.
I'm not sure what the machines were used for, but the grandad demonstrated a tofu-grinding machine which, when I tried, found it really quite difficult, despite just seeing this 80 year old do it...
Here he is again weighing out 10kg of oranges, half of the total 20kg he was shipping back to us in Shanghai! I love the old fashioned style measuring system, seemingly using little more than a stick and a changing centre of gravity to get it right.
We went to fetch some natural spring water down the road somewhere. It was quite beautiful and somewhat unusual in China to see, close to civilisation, water as clear as glass flowing down the mountains.
I was informed that this river, and indeed the entire village was to be razed to the ground in the coming months or years, as a dam-building project was planned in order to redirect the good quality water down to Hong Kong. I'm not sure why Hong Kong gets dibs on it but there you go. Shame, but not too surprising.
Downtown
Back to the more central town, the two of us went for a walk to find anything open such as a cafe. There was no McDonald's, KFC or any known franchise, with a few exceptions of Chinese milk-tea stores and a few regional supermarkets.
We found a total of two coffee shops, one of which quite... Shanghai-style, which had only just opened and stood out from the rest of the town as a quite modern looking place. Their schtick was quite unique; coffee imbued with fresh fruit. I got the banana one. My girlfriend got the gross Durian one. We walked separately afterwards for obvious reasons.
I Just thought this funny English sign was funny, as if they accidentally copy-pasted [image custom] from a website.
Last pic, we thought it was interesting that the entire town's residency had its windows barred up like a giant prison.
We never figured out, despite asking some locals, why this was. It's normal to see this on the first or second floor here in Shanghai, but every single apartment up to the top seemed like overkill.
Perhaps a high crime rate, high suicide rate, or high child mortality falling out of windows rate, or perhaps something else. Either way, a pretty depressing way to live.
There was so much more that went on over the 5 days, from fireworks to exploration, cooking and family stuff, but as usual I know I tend to ramble. I want to write a more introspective piece another time on how this trip changed the way I think about life just a little bit. Maybe later!
Goes back and cuts out large chunks of text before posting