Category Archives: Chinese Wife

Chinese Wife, Crazy Family, Our cute son

Our Chinese New Year 2016

February 14, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 42 Comments

I know I know I am a week late with this post but I didn’t manage to finish it until now due to all kind of silly reasons. In the whole past week I could read from so many bloggers how they celebrated New Year so here I go with our tiny “party”.

This was the first time since 2013 that we actually celebrated again as we had just no time for the past years. Even before that we usually never did anything special so we always ended up watching the CCTV New Year Gala. Only once we participated in some bigger event and it was just a few weeks after we got together in 2010. Back then we went to the Chinese New Year Festivities in Helsinki. Let me just tell you that it was very very cold back then and not the most enjoyable experience I had in my life (due to the weather!). A couple of years ago I even wrote a little blog post about it which also shows that not much (nothing) has really changed on how we spend New Year.

CNY8 — A bit of food for watching the New Year Gala

So what happened this year? First of all we kind of messed up the actual date for the New Year. My wife and all her Chinese friends here in town thought it would be on Saturday the 06.02.2016. Imagine the surprise when my wife heard from one of her customers on that Saturday that there won’t be any New Year Gala as it wouldn’t start until Sunday… this shows pretty well what living abroad for so many years does to someone when it comes to such big festivities. Anyways after a disappointing Saturday we started Sunday with preparing for the overeating day. My wife prepared several dishes while I was busy entertaining our little Monkey/ Nathan. Pictures were taken, food was enjoyed, the CCTV New Year Gala was watched and many video chats had to be endured during that day. As you can see it was a pretty calm day for us especially as my wife didn’t had to work and thus we spend the entire day together. Besides that Nathan was finally able to wear some of the clothes my wife bought for him in China last year. Only bad thing about the dress was that the hat didn’t fit anymore, Nathan just got too much brain inside.

CNY2 — Calling his grandparents to save him from the New Year Gala in TV

For the next year I hope that we will be either able to travel to China for this event as I would love to witness it once in my life personally or to celebrate with other people together. Sure it is nice to spend the whole day together as a family but to have some bigger gatherings once every few years wouldn’t hurt either.

Do I really have to stand here in these weird clothes?

Where there some Lunar New Year events near your home?

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Chinese Wife, Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family, Mom in Law, Our cute son

First Contact

January 17, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 42 Comments

Last autumn we visited China for the first time together with Nathan. I stayed only for a few days however Nathan and his mother haunted Xi’an for nearly a whole month. During that time Nathan made his first contact with the other members of the Crazy Chinese Family.

For me as a grown up it was already much to get used to when I met them for the first time several years ago. Not that they are as crazy as my mother-in-law but they still are related to her so what can you expect! There is Granny who spawned crazy MIL and seems more often than not to be even more stubborn than her daughter, there is Aunty who always does everything wrong according to MIL, there is Uncle who lives with his family together with Granny, my wife’s little sister (cousin, daughter of aunty) who is still trying to find some rich guy but in Japan (but he shouldn’t be Japanese of course), and the little little sister (youngest cousin of my wife, daughter of uncle) who needs two hours to eat a soup but can finish a burger in seconds. Alright,nothing really crazy about this all but imagine them all bunched up in one room with their whole attention on little Nathan. Yep, all attention on that tiny little Nathan who just wants to run away from them all.

I guess you can imagine how Nathan reacted when seeing them all, crying and trying to get as far away as possible from them/ into mommy’s arms. Of course they all mean no harm but when all of them try to squeeze and feed him snacks at the same time it just can be too much for such a little human being. I mean I could barely survive each encounter when we went eating with the family and every person just piles up more food on my plate. I have the strong believe that they tried to create a new Jabba the Hutt out of me. Nathan is usually the kind of baby who is too trusting and not afraid of strangers at all but with his own Chinese family he turned into a crying mess.

Though all craziness poured into him in one go he managed to survive. He even calmed down and played with the crazy Chinese relatives but this was only achieved with a lot of bribing via fruits and snacks. Guess how many people it takes to get in China a baby to sleep? Nearly the whole family!! I am not joking but it seems that every female of the family has to be present when trying to get Nathan to sleep. As they all are pretty noisy when being together it takes a long time for him to fall asleep, long enough that they get hungry and need to make some food in between…but that is again a story for another time.

The first contact with his Chinese Family went rather well despite him being afraid like hell in the beginning. I wonder how it will turn out next time when going to China. I have no idea yet when there will be a next trip but I hope it will be soon and that I will be there as well. Not because I am so eager to meet the family once again but the food, the food!

Do you have people on the family with the ability to scare children away?

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Chinese Wife, Crazy Chinese People, Travels, Uncategorized

The time we actually travelled somewhere in China (Jianmenguan Pass)

December 6, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 32 Comments

Remember all the times I wrote we never managed to go anywhere outside of Xi’an during all of our holidays there? I must admit that is not entirely true as we have visited many places around the city such as Mount Hua, the Shaanxi wild animal conversation research center and the Zoological Park. These places are not that far away from Xi’an however once we managed it even into another Province: Sichuan! I had nearly forgotten about it but untill I stumbled upon the pictures. This particular trip was at the Jianmenguan Pass which has much history behind it (like nearly every other place in China…).

mt5 — Jianmenguan Pass with the fortress

We got to that mountain area by bus which we took from Xi’an. I don’t remember anymore how long the trip was exactly but I guess it was round 6 hours. It was a small bus filled with many other people from our tourgroup, nearly all of them were in their 60s to 70s. As many of you know some Chinese can be rather noisy when traveling and this meant no sleep at all during the entire trip. Thankfully the bus had a small TV and the bus driver was so nice to play some Stephen Chow movies which helped to forget about all the noisy non-stop chatter and food throwing around. Sadly we didn’t had the best weather during that time but at least it wasn’t raining when we reached Jianmenguan Pass. There we had the option to go straight to the fortification by walking for 30min or take a cable car half way up the mountain and walk from there 45min to the fortification and the little town behind it. Of course there was also an option to get to the mountain top where now also a viewing platform made out of tempered glass is crowning the top but that would have costs an additional 30 Dollars per person and there was simply no time in the schedule for it (tour groups rarely leave space for going around on your own).

Nearly the entire tour group decided for the option to go half way up the mountain and then walk to the fortification with only few people deciding on the shorter way. To our surprise there was a little extra for the more adventurous people after the cable car ride, the Birdsway! Me and my wife took it of course as we had no desire to walk on a normal street around and I quickly regretted that decision. First of all this path went up some stairs, bazillion of stairs to be precise. But that wasn’t the bad thing yet, not even when the stairs started to go straight up the mountain side with only a chain to hold onto. No…it wasn’t the worst part though it was very exhausting. The worst part for a person like me with Acrophobia (fear of heights) was when the small path leading up the mountain became suddenly 30-40cm wide with only a chain protecting against falling down the cliff side! As I am so afraid of heights I can’t really say how high this cliff side was so it could be anything between 30-100m. Even though the view was stunning I was terrified up there and it wasn’t helping at all to see other Chinese tourists leaning over the chains to take some crazy selfies. I was just so relived when the path ended and the normal way around the mountain started again. Mind you, it was still exhausting as there were still hundreds of stairs going up and down but no more cliff side craziness.

mt10 — My nightmare (of course I don’t mean my wife!)

The rest of the hike was going through a beautiful landscape full of old cypress trees and from time to time some small bamboo groves. Needless to say the wonderful landscape and peace was always interrupted by some food stalls standing in the middle of nowhere clustered with dozens of tourists enjoying their 10th cup noodle (must be some kind of challenge to stop at every food stall and eat noodles!). Funny enough people always assumed there that I am from Xinjiang, don’t ask me why. In the end we reached the famous fortress at the Shu Road which enabled small forces to hold against huge armies due to its strategic position. Afterwards we still had to walk for a few minutes until we reached a little village located there and have our lunch with the rest of the tour group. What I still remember about the food is that the tour guide “prepared” us for 15 minutes during our trip to the mountain that every dish will have tofu and is super delicious, repeating tofu and delicious about 100 times. But yes, it was indeed delicious!