Early morning, people on the train started waking up to the sounds of the same two songs playing in a loop through the train's speakers. We arrived at the train station in Taiyuan. We found our way out to the plaza, where we were greeted by Tize's youngest sibling, Tuti, whom I'm supposed to call Sida (pronounced "SIH-da") - "fourth uncle". He flew in especially for this gathering from his home, near Shenzhen. We had breakfast at a small restaurant and walked over to a junction where Sida arranged for a car and a driver to pick us up. Driving through the city we also picked up Ergugu ("Second aunt", pronounced "ER goo-goo"), the younger of Tize's two sisters, and then we started heading to Xingxian, where Julia's grandmother lives.
After about four hours of driving, we arrived at Nainai's (Grandmother's) house. There I met Nainai; Sanda - Third Uncle, who lives with Nainai along with his wife and Mali, one of his four children; and Dagugu, the elder of Tize's sisters, who came with her husband. Needless to say, none of them speak English, so the encounter was a little awkward, but they were happy to see Julia, and seemed happy to meet me.
We had just concluded about thirty hours of travelling, so we could really use a shower. It turns out the water supply here in Shanxi is in a pretty bad shape, and water runs for only a short amount of time every day. Because of that, residents take advantage of that short window to fill their bathtubs with water, which is then used throughout the day for cleaning and "flushing" the toilet. Now, since the bathtub is full of water, showers must be taken elsewhere, and a number of business places around the city supply that service. Tize took Julia and me to one of these places, and paid the 25 Yuan fee for our showers. The owner just assumed we were together, and led us to a room that had a bed and a shower with two shower heads. I'm sure this place is used not just for showers.
We came back to the house and collapsed for a nap. When they woke us up for dinner, Erda, Second Uncle, had already came in from a close by city. All six children of Nainai were now there. We had dinner, and Julia and I managed to pull through until 10PM or so, when jet-lag hit us again.
I woke up at 2AM. I was wide awake, extremely cold, and had to take a dump. The toilet, in contrast to what I was told by, well, everybody (I asked Tize in confidence, and he, of course, asked everybody if it's ok for the white awkward dude to take a dump in the toilet) did not handle it well, and got clogged. Surprisingly, filling a small tub with water and dumping it into the toilet did not help. I used a plunger to no avail. I gave up and went back to sleep. I got out of bed twice more over the night from having a need to urinate mixed with guilt, and tried unclogging the toilet again. Nothing helped. I finally fell asleep, and when I woke up in the morning, I saw a big blister on my hand, that I got from a night of putting everything I had on that plunger. As we were watching the aunts clean the bathroom, Tize recommended that from now on I use the public restroom down the street.
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