Every family has at least one odd person. In case of my wife’s family there are actually many of them and they all hail from her mother’s side of the family. Last year I introduced in this post Granny, Aunty, Uncle, little sister (cousin) and little little sister (cousin) and that there is certainly something weird going on in that family. The problem for my wife is that no matter how far away she is from them they can always contact her thanks to modern technology.
Nearly every day someone from her family is contacting her. No, it is not about asking how her day was but about buying stuff or asking question about things they had bought in the past. The two worst of the family are MIL and Aunty. Those two seem to have no ability at all to actually to use their brain before asking certain things. The way they both think can not be understood by anybody else. Father-in-law gave up on that probably over thirty years ago as he does not care about anymore.
About two years ago Aunty bought some hair dye from Germany (we bought it for her and send it to China) and few weeks ago she starts asking questions about that hair dye. For one why the expiration date is so bad as it was only till end of 2016. Well, easy to answer for my wife as “Why haven’t you used it before?” and Aunty’s answer “I wanted to sell it here but no one wanted it”. Too bad for her but still why asking us about the expiration date…However the whole story went on as Aunty wanted to know how to use it exactly. Of course she expected my wife to know immediately how to use that certain kind of hair dye she sold two years ago. So my wife asked that Aunty takes a picture of the instructions. First two pictures where showing only a table and the third picture had the instructions in them but taken roughly from the other side of the apartment so you could not read anything. Aunty blamed then that the camera in her phone is not good enough. Then she wanted that my wife returns that hair dye and gets a new one. Really, she thinks that it would be for free to send it from China to Germany and that any shop would just return some expired product two years after it was bought? To this day she still does not understand why my wife is not doing it.
Then let’s move to my favorite topic in this blog: My dear Chinese mother-in-law. Her stories are already legendary but there is always more. I mentioned in this post already briefly her interesting dressing style which is similar to a Circus performer. Recently she tortured contacted my wife about buying clothes. Apparently she was in some store and tried on several clothes. Some friend of her took pictures and those were sent to my wife so she could say which one was the best. As you might imagine the clothes were certainly very special. My wife’s comments where basically like “You look in this one like a begging monk from some mountain temple”, “You look like the clown we saw in the circus last year”, “Why would you wear a carpet?”, “How could they fit that much Brocade in that dress?”. MIL did not understand at all why her daughter didn’t like the clothes because “They cost each at least 1500RMB (~200 Euros), they are all great!”. Yes a high price always equals in her brain that it is great. Then my wife send her pictures of normal clothes she could buy but her concern was “What should I do when the clothes don’t look as good on me as on the model?” That was reason enough not to buy the clothes my wife recommended and she ended up with one of those weird dresses. Really I do wonder why she asks her daughter for her opinion when she does not really care about it at all.
Do you know someone asking stupid questions all the time?
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Crazy Chinese Family 
Technology has a hand in this misery. Before cell phones and even phones, you couldn’t expect an immediate answer for every little question. Sometimes you had to engage your brain and think stuff through yourself.
The number of times I’ve sent an email that actually answered the question some idiot promptly asked me — instead of READING the email again, carefully — is probably close to 1,000.
Don’t remind me how often I had similar happenings when I had my internship in customer support back in Finland, gosh what a nightmare (online music platform and at least one person actually asked if they can use the online platform without internet access on their old Nokia phone from 2003…)
Years back when it was expensive to call to other countries such calls would have probably never happened but these days it is insane as if people lost all brain function
Love the Aunty story. You pour things having to endure these questions. Ha ha.
Just today Aunty had again some stupid ideas/ questions. Seems sometimes she tries to compete with her Sister (my mother-in-law) who can drive my wife more insane
That is incredible to hear of a suggestion to return an unused product after it has expired to the shop after you bought it so long ago. The world just does not work like that, and you’d think it is common sense to throw the product away, or even use at your own risk.
When I worked in customer service on the phones, I had to help callers login to their accounts online. They’d ask me how to log in and before I can say anything they would talk themselves through how to do it and get where they want to on the computer, and then hang up 😛
I had also some joy when doing customer support years back with similar experiences. Thing is things didn’t improve when I moved to middle management here at the bank back in 2015, somehow the questions just got more ridiculous.
I just wish sometimes a few people would take 5-10 min and really think for a while before asking such things/ calling a hotline/ sending email or voice messages
Agree with you. Some people just never think, never read or don’t even use common sense to save everyone some time. Reading is the worst – sometimes people refuse to read simple instructions.
Omg it’s starting to become clearer and clearer to me why you started this blog! haha. Imagine if you guys lived near your wife’s relatives! That’d be insane I think. Surprised that you wife somehow has patience to deal with such kind of completely unreasonable behavior from her own relatives. Aunty sounds equally crazy as MIL.
I think your MIL craves attention and approval..even if she seems to brazenly, absurdly claims she’s right, in control, etc.
Yes, we also believe that she craves attention. Afterall she always tries to be in the center of everything
If she was a model in her career, then it’s not totally surprising. Wish your wife especially knew what would make her mother feel “special” that wouldn’t result in energy-sucking centre of attention behavior. I mean it consumes the energy of other family members to respond to her tactics..some of it she may not be aware. Sometimes it’s best to politely walk away from stuff that helps no one, not even herself.
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Love it! My husband is of Chinese decent, but my in laws are very normal compared to yours!! (Then they don’tblive in China either). It helps m.
Somehow my wife’s family has some wicked genes. All (nearly all) is fine with my father-in-law but her mother’s side of the family can drive anyone insane. Even my father who doesn’t understand any Chinese was going crazy with them last year when we were in China
Had me smiling all throughout.. Aunty has the spotlight here. 🙂
Aunty knows how to drive us insane :p