We got up early in the morning, packed quickly, and got a taxi that took us to the railroad station. From there, we took train to Xingxian. It’s not the bullet train – it’s just the regular train, and the ride to Xingxian takes 4 hours. That’s still better than our last trip. Back then, two and a half years ago, the train didn’t even go to Xingxian, and someone had to pick us up by car from Taiyuan. Still, there’s room to complain: the seats are incredibly uncomfortable, everyone stares at me and at Ada, and loud noises are coming from every phone on the train. I really don’t get it – they keep the volume on both their notifications and their media on the highest setting, to the point movies and music play in terrible distortion, and when they are on an active chat, the notification sounds just keep on going. Now multiply that by every single person in a space at any given situation: how do they not lose their minds?
Luckily, halfway through the ride, as we were getting deeper and deeper into the mountains, the train was getting pretty empty.
When we finally got to Xingxian and got off the train, it was immediately noticeable that the air is colder and thinner. Tize, Julia’s dad, and one of Tize’s brother who I call “Sanda”, literally meaning “third uncle on father’s side”, were waiting for us at the train station. We timed our trip so we could be here for Nainai, Julia’s grandmother’s 85th birthday, and the entire family is coming together to celebrate. Sanda, who is a taxi driver, drove us to a hotel that Tize booked for us to drop off our stuff.
When president Trump talked about shitholes countries, he has never heard of Xingxian, just like you. If he had, he would never have called them that, because Xingxian sets a different standard. As evidence, here’s the decoration of our hotel room:
Other than that, the town is cold and smells from coal, a major industry in this area. It often smells of feces, since many houses don’t have indoor toilets, so many people use the overflowing public toilets that are scattered throughout the town. Even houses that do have toilets avoid using them, since due to the limited rainfall, water is rationed.
After dropping off our stuff, we continued to Nainai’s house. There, already gathered, were Nainai, Sanda’s wife and his daughter Mare, Erda (second uncle) with his wife and daughter Doudou, and later joined Sida (fourth uncle). We had lunch.
In the back room of the house, we discovered, were more than 30 packages that Julia’s mom had shipped from all around China to Nainai’s house so that Tize can traffic them to the U.S. on his way back. She does this every time when either she or Tize travel to China, regardless of the inconvenience that it causes whoever has to store all these packages for her. One of the packages was for us: it’s a suitcase that Ada can sit on. We already told Julia’s mom that we have no intention of taking this thing with us so she better not order it, but she did it anyway. We put Ada on the suitcase just for fun, and she had a blast. It looks like the suitcase is coming home with us after all.
Tize said we’ll open the rest of the packages in the next couple of days. I can’t wait.
After lunch, we went to the hotel to take showers and nap, and we walked over back to Nainai’s house for dinner. Everybody was trying to pick Ada up, but she doesn’t really get along with strangers.
Until Sida offered her a date-like fruit that grows around here, and then picked her up in the most casual way. From that point on, Ada prefered being held by Sida over anyone else, including Julia and me.
Sida also noticed that Ada is always happy to be near Nainai’s cat and dog, so he takes her outside to hang out with them, or corners them inside the house so that she can pet them.
Tize felt a little bad over this, since Ada wouldn’t let him hold her, but we told him that he should do what Sida does and bribe her with food and proximity to pets. Tize asked what Ada’s favorite food is, and we told him that his best bet is grapes. He promised to bring her grapes tomorrow.
And then there was the drinking. It’s cold here, and there’s nothing to do, so they drink Baijiu, which is a clear liquor. They remembered from our last visit that I’m good at drinking, so they bought extra. As we drank more and more, it became clear to me what was going on: Sanda likes to drink, but he’s not really good at it. Erda, on the other hand, just likes to meddle, so he keeps encouraging Sanda to drink with me. What he actually wants is to see Sanda fall. I’m happy to see Sanda fall as well, but Ada was tired, and we had to call it a day.
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