Category Archives: Crazy Chinese People

The Madness of MIL Continues

We are now roughly two weeks in China and a lot has happened. The main part was that we were for nearly a week on a city tour with a tourist group. Though I have tons to say about this trip alone due to so many reasons I only have the madness of my mother-in-law right now on my mind.

As I have mentioned far too often is that she is a very strange person who is doing weird stuff non-stop. Besides that she is also a very unreasonable person who believes that everything she is doing is right and everyone else is wrong. No matter how clear it is for a normal person that she has done something wrong she is still able to twist the reality and comes up with all kind of explanation on why she is right. Even my father, who cannot understand a word from her, is frustrated and annoyed after this short time. To use his words “she is the devil in human form”.

Madness family with madness MIL

I know I know I should not force her madness upon you my dear readers but I can’t help it. So I am very sorry but now I start with just a couple of things we had to endure. You know when you are sitting in a long distance bus but the seating space is just too small? In this situation you are always happy when the person in front of you wont put there seat back. Now we were on such a bus with even less space than usual. In fact my dad and I couldn’t even sit in the normal seats and got the front row with slightly more legroom. It was so small that the average Chinese elderly tourist group male had problems sitting there. Everyone, really everyone kept there seats straight except on particular woman. The shouting started just half hour into the journey and I knew immediately who was involved. MIL and the rest of the tour group had a shouting battle as MIL appearently tried to put the seat back even though the knees of the person behind her were in the way. This whole thing was resolved after the tour guide joined the fight but me and my dad tried to pretend for the rest of the time that we didn’t know that woman. You would think that she saw her mistake and learned from it but no. To this day it makes my wife nearly cry as MIL doesn’t see what she did wrong and according to her it is her good right to put the seat back, no matter if the person is in pain behind her or not. She even says that she would let anyone putting the seat back even in case she would be the person crushed. My wife just said “you would scream immediately and kill the person”…

I will fry your brains as well

The other thing is her attitude when it comes to phone calls. It happened now multiple times that my wife called her mother to explain where we would meet in the city or similar things. This is all fine but MIL tends to hang up in the middle of the conversation and blaming then FIL for not telling her where to go or when. The thing is that with their phones there is not this usual “hanging up sound” so my wife never knows when her mother is hanging up. When asking why she is doing it MIL just responds with “why shouldn’t I hang up, you can just call again and ask if I got everything”. Last but not least it comes to eating. At one restaurant they had a chicken dish which was really spicy even for my wife. During the whole dinner MIL asked my wife why she is not serving him this chicken, really the whole dinner.  She just does not comprehend such things at all no matter how often you explain it. Can you even imagine how frustrating such behavior is?
Do you know anyone who is as crazy as my mother-in-law?

Looking Forward to the Future

Perhaps some still remember my blog post about how unforseen events can change your life and that my health hasn’t been the best for a long time. I wrote that about half-year ago and now it seems things are finally looking brighter. With the trip last week to Cologne some of you might have noticed that I am actually able to go on a trip. Ever since the beginning of this year my health has been improving and I could also reduce the med intake. This helped a lot to feel better mentally because you won’t really feel in good shape when you see how much medication you have to take just to get the day started.

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Little Bonus: A squatting monk

This year is still young and already much has changed. I left my job as I wouldn’t be able to really find my way back in after being away for so long time. Now that would make me unemployed again in some sense but I have still the business with my wife in which I started to help out more and more again with my improving health. As things are looking much better again for me we decided to “redo” the trip to China which I had to abort last year. So in one week we are flying once again to Xi’an and stay there for nearly three weeks. To make things a bit more interesting my father is coming with us again. What about my dear mother? When we invited her she just said “One time in China is more than enough for me!”, okay…

 

In China we will spend most of the time in Xi’an but according to my wife we will actually go on some trip again with a tourist group. You know my feelings about those tourist groups but well, at least we will be going somewhere this time. What makes this trip a bit more complicated is that my father is not the youngest anymore with his 75 years and then the issue when it comes to food. We have to schedule everything well so he does not get too exhausted and we have to find a healthy mix for him between Chinese food and some Western restaurants (looking at you Pizza Hut). I hope he will enjoy this trip as it won’t be this time as hot as it was back when he visited the first time in 2011 during the hot July weeks.

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Finally going to Xi’an again

It still feel weird for me to actually plan such things again. There I was half-year ago and things were kind of bleak and now I am going to a three-week holiday in China. Besides that I slowly started with some sports again to get back in shape as far as it is possible right now. Will I ever be back to 100%? No, I won’t be but that is alright. The possible 90% are already more than I have ever imagined several months ago. Now I am looking forward to this summer and I really want to have a proper visit at the beach this year!

How has been your year thus far?

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Going around Zhaohua Ancient Town

Remember when I wrote that I had totally forgotten that we actually did travel once a bit around in China? Back then I wrote about the trip to the Jianmenguan Pass which was actually in the end of a 3 day trip around the north of Sichuan.  Why Sichuan? Because it is the neighbouring province of Shaanxi and just a few hours by bus away. Our first stop was Zhaohua Ancient Town which is in the Yuanba District, Guangyuan, Sichuan. Okay, it was not the first “stop” as we did had a couple of stops during the bus ride at service areas. In one of those service areas I saw a public toilet nightmare but this is just too much for this blog and it shall forever haunt only my memories.

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Looks old but most of the structure is probably new

 

As I explained in the other post we were part of a tour group and hence the entire trip around was very carefully planned and left barely any time to go around on your own. At Zhaohua we went straight to eat at a little restaurant organized by the tour group. It was nothing special but good enough to have nothing to complain about. The tour around the ancient town was interesting but annoying at the same time. Interesting as the ancient town was really wonderful and offered tons of picture/ video material and annoying as the local tourist guide had a very fast pace going from building to building which forced me to run after the group more than just once as I was busy taking pictures or recording some videos.

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So much red

 

Zhaohua is a very old town with several temples, an old city wall with several gates, old governmental buildings, sculptures and also an ancient flag stone road. I read back then in some online source that some thirty years ago the town was much smaller, many temples were missing/ destroyed back in the day but that there were also many wooden structures left from the early Qing Dynasty. Though there were many old structures left it was a bit messed up because ugly new houses had been build all over the town. In that source the author explained also how different the town looked when he went there again several years ago as many wooden structures had been torn down and replaced by these new structures. Now these houses didn’t look like new houses anymore as they got fake wooden house fronts so they looked like the old houses again. So by the time we went there I really couldn’t tell which were the original old houses and which were the new “fake old” houses. Besides that the whole town was pretty much very touristy. Not that I am unhappy that they rebuilt so many of these ancient structures but I really don’t understand why they had to tear down actual ancient houses and replace them with new ones.

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Hello little snake

 

We were in the town for a few of hours before heading to the next destination. Nearly the entire time there was spent with eating and running behind the tour guide. Thankfully we had some 45 min times to go around on our own which allowed us to relax a bit after running for so long time and take a closer look at the buildings. The main street in that town was full of little shops selling souvenirs, local snacks and clothes. It was also there that I suddenly ended up with a little snake in my camera bag. No, it didn’t just appeared out of thin air but a man had it on his shoulder and offered me to hold it myself. It was then that the snake decided it had seen enough people for one day and quickly wriggled its way out of my hands and into the dark and cosy camera bag. The man even offered me to buy the snake but you know it would be a bit hard to get that animal through security and customs at the airport…

How do you feel about rebuilding ancient structures but tearing down existing old ones at the same time?

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 I also have a YouTube Channel in which some videos might pop up from time to time

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https://twitter.com/CraChineseFam

https://www.youtube.com/