Category Archives: Crazy Chinese People

Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family, Mom in Law

I think my family is crazy

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Over the years I had way too many blog posts about crazy mother-in-law and the rest of her family but something happened this week. After a long long call with her Aunty, my wife R. figured out something amazing as she turned in the car towards me and said “I’m going insane, my mom’s family is crazy, just so crazy!”. Only thing I could answer was “I figured that out years ago Dear”.

My wife R. can be sometimes a bit slow when things are not about our business but I was surprised it took her 32 years to figure out that her mom’s family is crazy. The whole crazy family dawned on me some when around 2013, after being together with my wife for three years. Back then I also started this blog as a mean for self-therapy to deal with all the insanity I had encountered in China and when MIL came to visit. In 2016 I had a rough summary about MIL’s side of the family, describing the different character rather well. However back then I judged Uncle’s character totally wrong as his greed for money showed this summer as he didn’t want to pitch in money for Granny’s medications for her cancer (wasn’t even his money, he didn’t want to give the retirement money of Granny which he always keeps for himself).

Crazy Uncle, unknown extended family, Granny, crazy Aunty

So what happened that  R. figured out about her crazy family? I think the turning point was that call with Aunty as she told her that she cannot pay for the medication any longer as she is basically bankrupt. How is that possible out of nowhere, well she has also a nasty character. She started few years ago a small company for hair products with her best friend and it was doing really well. Things stopped going well when she had a fight with her friend forcing her to leave the company. Aunty ain’t good with money so it was just downhill from that point onward. In fact she is never good with money, she even kind of scammed her other former friends and neighbors into a snowball system leaving all of them without any of their hard saved cash. Due to her lack of money she now forces her sister (MIL) to pay all of the medication pretty much alone, hooray for this great family.

Someone tries to take a picture of my grandson? I need to be in it!

Besides that call from Aunty my wife also had tons of video chats with her dad in the past weeks. He always calls her when he cannot take MIL’s behavior anymore and then they kind of gossip about that crazy mom for an hour or so each time to give their frustration some outlet. There is really some reason why MIL is never invited to any family gathering in China, everyone kind of hates her. Aunty is also on a good track towards getting redlined from the family. When Aunty’s daughter calls from Japan she also only can complain about her mother and was going crazy when she stayed in Japan in the beginning of the year for several months due to having her first child (insanities including pressing the fire alarm button multiple times in the apartment and destroying some of the kitchen).

So yeah, now my wife figured out that there is something not quite right with her mom’s family, let’s see when she starts a blog for self-therapy!

Do you know people who really need a long time until they figure out that there is something odd about somebody else?

Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts. Furthermore there is also my Instagram account in which from time to time some pictures and short videos might pop up.

https://www.facebook.com/CrazyChineseFamily

https://twitter.com/CraChineseFam

https://www.instagram.com/Crazychinesefamily

 

Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Germans, Our cute daughter, Our cute son

Study time for the children

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Here in my hometown we got to know over the years other Chinese-German couples with kids. This town is not big but it is interesting to see how many Chinese leave here by now (compared to my childhood when the only Chinese here were running restaurants). We never really thought much about it until we met last month for a hot pot round at a friend’s place and we had suddenly eight mixed children running around and making some noise. Back then we (okay mostly the mothers) were thinking how great it would be for the kids to come together more often and play and talk in Mandarin.

Some of the kids during the first lesson

Just a week after our eating round we decided to meet several times a month for a little study round for the kids. Actually it can’t be really considered real studying as it is more about having more access to Mandarin for the children such as reading books, learning some about the numbers and characters. As we are no small round it was difficult at first to figure out where to have these meetings but one of the couples are also managing a club home (in fact the very same club I used to be a member in during my swimming days) and there is more than enough space for all of us. Best of all is that the club home is located very close to us so it is just 10 min away by walking.

And another picture in that awful phone camera quality

The children always “study” a bit for half hour, play together for half hour and then study a bit more. Children that young are not really fond of just sitting still for such long time so the playing time helps them to let out some energy. All of the kids are really looking forward to each Sunday as they can meet their friends and play. Our Nathan is the oldest with his five years and the youngest one is just half year old though she is not yet participating and usually clings on her father while we chat. We were always wondering how to get our children more access to Chinese and never thought how many in the very same situation as us are already living here. One couple just moved here from China this summer and they are certainly happy to meet up with other parents with the same background here in this little town.

Did you visit similar “meetings” in your childhood or sent/ are planning to do so with your children?

Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts. Furthermore there is also my Instagram account in which from time to time some pictures and short videos might pop up.

https://www.facebook.com/CrazyChineseFamily

https://twitter.com/CraChineseFam

https://www.instagram.com/Crazychinesefamily

 

Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family, Mom in Law

More Troubles in China

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In my last blog post I wrote all about Granny in China not doing so well and how Aunty terrorized the rest of the family. That situation was already very annoying but things got even worse. Granny is still doing well and does not suffer and aunty did not improve her attitude either. So from those two is nothing different but another player entered the field to make the whole family grumpy. Out of all people Uncle decided to mess up everything!

Uncle was always calm and unnoticeable, taking care of everything but now it changed. The whole family agreed to give Granny a certain medication to prolong her life. It is no miracle cure as she will still  eventually die from the cancer but it can bring up to a year more with the family. This medication is not cheap as it is not covered by the insurance and cost around 100.000 RMB a year. The family has decided to use Granny’s retirement money (roughly 30.000 RMB a year) to pay for the first few treatments and pay the rest evenly by themselves (MIL and Aunty decided on that). However Uncle does not want anything like that and is angry that they want to spend HIS money as the first payment. In his eyes all the retirement money from Granny belongs to him and no one else.

Evil Uncle

There have been dozens of fights now within the family because of that. MIL even recorded all of his Weixin messages as proof in case he will ever state that he never said anything like that. Uncle came up with all kinds of excuses not to pay for the treatment with “The medication does not work at all, I know a guy who knows someone who has some idea about it all and he says the medication is not working and just exists to steal your money”. Yeah, he knows someone who knows someone with some sliver of an idea about medication, what a great reason.  Meanwhile my friend who is the main pharmacist in a big hospital and who specialized in Oncology states something very different about this kind of medication and is positive that it will prolong Granny’s life for at least half year.

As you can see the past weeks have been really taxing on the family and by now everyone decided to burn all bridges with Uncle once Granny is not with us anymore. Hard thing to do though as the whole family decided to move into the very same apartment block last year! Sometimes I wonder how they come up with their decisions, dicing perhaps?

This looks fragile, let ‘s give it to Nathalie!

Alright enough with this family madness and to more “amusing” things in life: My mother-in-law. I have been not so forthcoming with news about her and it is not because she became normal out of nowhere but because her level of madness became kind of normal for us. There is not really anything special for us anymore when she pulls some crazy stunt or has some weird ideas. Writing this just made me realize how my view about everyday life has changed. For example she had some knee trouble before coming to Germany so she put some special Chinese medication on it for several days. Thing is she was apparently allergic to it so she had a firey red, swollen knee upon arriving here. I gave her some “healing earth” from Germany to put on as a paste on the knee. This paste she needed to keep for 30 min before washing it off and thus far everything went alright. However she washed it off in the shower and never cleaned the shower afterwards turning the whole thing into a muddy mess. When my wife asked why she is not cleaning the shower afterwards her only response was “why bother cleaning it today, I will still use it tomorrow so it gets dirty again anyways”. What a great logic she is applying. No wonder her husband has to clean their apartment three times a day and got grey hairs in his twenties.

Besides this refusal of cleaning up her own mess she is also doing really great in destroying stuff in the apartment. Okay it is actually not herself doing the destruction but Nathalie HOWEVER she enables her granddaughter to do so. Some expensive Totoro statue high on the shelf? Give it to Nathalie and leave the room to find later destruction on the floor. A wooden toy hammer? Give it to Nathalie in front of the TV to have later a broken screen. A felt pen box?  Give it to Nathalie on the white carpet to have later a very colorful carpet. The list goes on and on. She either leaves the room with tools of destruction in Nathalie’s hands or sits actually next to her but checking her phone and not realizing the destruction around her. I have no clue why she would give Nathalie these things without paying attention what is happening or thinking about what could happen. Of course I let my daughter play with these things but I am right there to see nothing bad could happen.

By now those little accidents have summed up to several thousand Euros of damage just in the seven weeks she has been here. It is just insane thinking about it and worse is there is nothing we can do about it. My wife tells MIL daily with the same reply “I know I know, I won’t do it again” while handing Nathalie the next tool of destruction. These scenes are reminding be more often than not on some old cartoons. My understanding of a normal life certainly changed in the past years as the complete madness became the norm by now. Also after reading this whole blog again I have to apologize for this long rant.

Any unusual things entered your life which are by now normal for you?

Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts. Furthermore there is also my Instagram account in which from time to time some pictures and short videos might pop up.

https://www.facebook.com/CrazyChineseFamily

https://twitter.com/CraChineseFam

https://www.instagram.com/Crazychinesefamily