We’re in China again, and for the first time, I’m blogging when there are three of us on the road. In fact, the main reason for this trip is for Ada, our 1-year old, to meet her mom’s side of the family.
We landed in Chengdu at 5 in the morning, where Julia’s mom is from. More specifically, we landed to this:
There, we were welcomed by Erjiujiu – literally meaning “Second uncle from mother’s side, who is older than the mom”. He hired a guy with a minivan to pick us up, but we couldn’t find the van in the parking lot. Erjiujiu called him and started yelling at him. This is how you recognize Julia’s mom’s family. They have to either fight with someone or tell them what to do.
The driver showed up and we drove to Julia’s grandparents’ house. Yeye, Julia’s grandfather, made us breakfast: some kind of a fruit and egg shake, which was pretty good, and some cookies. We’ve stayed here in our previous visit, so we know the house, but Yeye and Laolao, Julia’s grandmother, bought two of these fancy toilets since then, and we needed to get debriefed on them. The toilet seats are heated, the water flushes automatically as you get up, there’s a jet stream to clean your butt when you’re done, hot air to dry it, and some more features that we didn’t really get, all available with a push of a button.
A remote control button.
- “Why do you need a remote control for a toilet seat?” I asked.
- “It came with the toilet.”
- “Yeah, but what is it good for?”
- “You can press it for the jet stream after you go to the bathroom.”
- “Yeah, but why do you need it on a remote?”
- “You don’t have to use the remote, there are buttons on the toilet too.”
Yeye’s incredible: he’s a slim man in his 90’s, his thought is completely clear, and he doesn’t even wear glasses. His sense of humor is rather simple, though. He finds jokes about underwear hilarious, but that’s a story for some other time. It seemed pointless trying to make him see how absurd having a remote for your toilet is. What is the use for that? It’s not like a car that you realized you forgot to lock when you’re halfway down the street. Even if you realized that you left your butt wet when you’re already in bed, having the toilet’s remote with you is not going to help. Maybe you want to give the remote to someone else when you’re in the bathroom, and then you yell out:
- “O.K, I’m done!”
- “Cool; what would you like?”
- “I don’t know, surprise me!”
We want to find Ada some nice traditional Chinese clothes while we’re here, and today seemed like a good opportunity. Yeye said Chengdu is second place in China for the number of cars on the streets, so everybody uses alternative modes of transportation. He took us by taxi to a clothing mall. In the taxi, I noticed how much Chengdu reminds me of Tel Aviv. Of course, it’s way bigger and busier, but something about the colors, the mixed-use city development, and the low-key disposition of the people feels very familiar to me.
The mall is a huge matrix of tiny stores, packed with tiny stores, and the children’s clothes are adorable:
But there were no traditional Chinese clothes for kids. We walked around and took taxis to three other mall. As Yeye hopped and skipped between sidewalks, he kept telling me where to push the stroller. That’s how they roll, they have to tell other people what to do. None of the malls had what we were looking for. However, in the last mall, a store owner told us that the reason we can’t find what we’re looking for is because it’s the wrong season, and if we come back tomorrow, they’ll get us some clothes from storage.
We went back home. Not long after we got there, three ladies showed up. They are sisters – Laolao’s brother’s daughters, and they came to have lunch with us. We went to have Hot Pot. The sisters and Erjiujiu sat at one of the table around a pot of spicy broth, and the rest of us sat at the other end, around a regular broth. Julia managed to get me a piece meat that was cooked in the spicy broth, and the sisters looked at me with anticipation as I took my first bite of meat. When they saw that I was handling it, they smiled in approval and started a regular supply of spicy food from their end of the table to our end. We kept a little bowl next to us where we cooled off food that we cooked in the regular broth and did not touch our chopsticks. From that bowl, we fed Ada her first pieces of tripe, duck blood, and shrimp paste balls.
Then, we went back home and succumbed to jetlag.
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