Early morning, Julia and I, the parents, Lili and his wife (everyone keeps calling her “Lili’s wife”, even though she has a perfectly valid name which I don't remember) and Erjiujiu and Erjiuma, drove to see the Dujiangyan irrigation system. Like any other day, I got stared at a lot, but this time, one family insisted to take a picture of me with their toddler. There were a few seconds of commotion, me and the toddler just facing each other in confusion while swarms tourists threatening to trample us both down, so eventually the mother just stuck the toddler in my hands. It wasn’t happy.
The irrigation system itself is an incredible engineering endeavour, built around 2300 years ago to control the water supply for agriculture in the Chengdu basin. I have to admit, I still don’t fully understand how it works.
Then we went to a hotel for a big family reunion over lunch, to celebrate Yeye’s 90th birthday.
As I explained a few posts earlier, Chinese family members call each other by their relationship, like “Erjiuma” - wife of the second maternal uncle. Therefore, a significant portion of time was dedicated to figure out how each one of the 30 or so family members should call all the other ones. Also, being politically correct, polite, or tactful are not qualities recognized by the Chinese people, so people feel free to comment on other people’s weight, or touch their bellies and ask if they’re pregnant. To put it in other words, I’ve seen Julia in a better mood.
Lunch was great. Once again, my drinking capacity was challenged by one of the uncles, which was fine with me. Then we had cake, which was decorated with fruit, including some cherry tomatoes. Julia protested, while Lili’s wife claimed it’s legit, since tomatoes are technically fruit. Hours later, out of nowhere, Julia exclaimed that eggplants are fruit too, yet “nobody puts a fucking eggplant on a cake!”.
Then Erjiujiu drove Tize, Julia, me, Lili and his wife to the old city of Dujiangyan, where we just hung out. When we came back, all the aunts were sitting and gossiping in one of the lobbies, while the men were playing Mahjong in the Mahjong room.
Julia’s parents left to the airport, to go to Tize’s college reunion, while Erjiujiu drove us back to Yeye and Laolao’s place. After he left, the four of us had dinner and sat down to play Mahjong. Back in the days, they would shuffle the pieces by hand. Now, of course, the table does it for you.
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