Category Archives: Mom in Law

Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family, Dad in Law, Mom in Law

The Love for Food

March 20, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 63 Comments

There are many reasons why I love to travel to China as I have already written once down in this post from last year. There I briefly mentioned food and my favorite restaurants. By going through my pictures from the past years I realized that the food part fell a bit short in that post so I decided to make up for it now. I know that I might bring the wrath of some people now upon me by sharing those pictures but I just can’t help it.

Chinese consider their food to be the crème de la crème of all the world and to be honest I mostly agree with that. Mostly? Because there is always some other food which is great as well (but not in the eyes of my wife and her family…prefering to eat in some run down Chinese restaurant in Germany rather than trying some local specialities, but that is again another story). I only need to mention 小五 xiao wu/ little five in front of my wife to receive death stares from her as xiao wu is the name of our favorite little restaurant in China just 2 minutes walking distance away from her parents home. Let me just tell you that it is surely one of the best foods I have ever tried and also far far away from our current location in Germany hence the death stares. Xi’an, as any other city in China, has tons of food to offer.

Let’s take biangbiang noodles as an example. Not only do they have the supposedly most complicated character but they do also taste superb. Then there are various cold noodle dishes liangpi 凉皮 of which I sometimes even dream of and then of course rou jia mo 肉夹馍 the mouth-watering “meat bread” you can find at so many places around the city. Whenever my in-laws are taking us to a new restaurant I am all hyped, not only because it surely will lead to another weird story due to MIL’s unreasonable character but also because I can experience new food once again. Of course I sometimes face food which I am not the biggest fan of right after the first bite but usually it is something amazing again.

food9 — Have I mentioned nom nom nom already?

One risk though when it comes to going out to eat with my in-laws is that I might end up with way too much food. They know that I love noodle dishes, particularly cold noodle dishes and also rou jia mo. Sounds great at first but when you do suddenly get two rou jia mo, one cold noodle dish and then some other dish it is a bit much for me. This certain flood of food I received when going to a restaurant in the city center famous for these foods. Well, I managed to eat it all but didn’t feel all too well afterwards for the rest of the day. Speaking of over eating. It is so dangerous with dear crazy mother-in-law as she piles up food non-stop on my plate and thus I learned to wait and see where she is sitting so I can find the seat farthest away from her. The thing is, even though my in-laws always order way too much it is never enough in the end. FIL can eat much, way to much for a guy his size. To put it in other words: he eats about triple the amount of food than me which equals pretty much half his body weight in my estimations. I better come now to the rest of the pictures before I start some more rants about my crazy Chinese family.

Do you have places you love to visit due to the food?

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Crazy Family, Mom in Law

Living in a world of your own

February 28, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 49 Comments

Everyone was already in a situation where you thought you did something such as paying some bill but in the end you basically forgot to do it. This can be rather annoying at time because you were at first 100% sure you did pay the bill which makes it even more frustrating to see that you were wrong in the end. Let me tell you there is nothing bad about it as it happens more often than not to me, especially when it comes to bringing the trash out (could be also my mind is doing it on purpose because who really likes to bring out the trash…). However this can be also very aggravating when it does happen to a person all the time and thus not only causes delay in doing certain things but also waste your time.

Who could I possibly talk about? My dear mother-in-law of course! I mentioned in various posts before that she is a rather odd person who is always right. No matter how clear it is that she did something wrong she is always able to blame others for it or it never ever happened. The thing is it wasn’t bothering me/ us so much as we didn’t have to depend too much on her most of the times but this changed a bit over time as she also started to visit us each year for three months and so on. Of course it wouldn’t matter at all in case these things were about trivial stuff but it usually always happens when it is about important or urgent matters.

Last time my wife was with Nathan in China she wanted to take some cash with her to Germany. Okay no problem there as she just had to go to bank with her mother (as the money is on her account) and withdraw some Euros. Now the problem wasn’t with getting the money but to find it again before flying to Germany. Few days before my wife and Nathan were about to fly back she started to pack and noticed that the cash vanished. She went to her mother and asked her where it could be. So MIL told that she gave it to her. Okay no trouble there but my wife couldn’t remember this at all so she asked her again. MIL then explained step by step how she gave the money to her when they arrived in the apartment. She even explained how she was giving it and with which hand. But as my wife couldn’t remember this at all MIL was just like “I gave it to you so it is your problem now!”. OKAY…according to my wife this went on for several hours until MIL finally decided to check her closet for something and voilà: THE FREAKING MONEY WAS WITH HER STUFF!!! Basically dear mother-in-law just created her own world once again and made up this story while she actually put the money to her closet and never gave it to my wife.

Tierpark6 — Just for fun, a big fish (according to MIL)

Another example just to show you MIL’s insanity happened few weeks ago. As you might know both my wife and I have a little business (okay mostly my wife as I was just too ill to get anything done so far but things are slowly improving for me). All of our customers are from China so my wife has to send packages there every week. In case people buy some smaller amount my wife waits for a bit and then sends a big package to her parents containing stuff of several customers who had smaller orders. These things then are being put into smaller packages by MIL and then send to the customer. This actually sounds more complicated than it is because my wife strictly separates each of the items which belong to one customer and attached the name and address of this person. So all MIL has to do is to take it out, put it into some smaller packages (in case my wife didn’t put it already into some smaller boxes), attach the address of the buyer and give to some logistic company. Well well there is not really ever anything easy when it comes to MIL.

Few weeks ago my wife sent such a package containing the items of several buyers but there was one item without an adress as the buyer was just moving to a new place. The customer then sent few days later the new address to my wife and there was so far no problem. But the trouble of course started when my wife called her mother and gave the address for this last package. MIL was like “What package? I sent everything already away! There is nothing here!” WHAT??? How is this possible as there was this one package without any address! MIL was 100% sure that she sent this package but she didn’t remember any longer to whom. My wife then spent the whole day trying to figure out where on earth her mother could have sent this box. Late in the evening MIL then contacted my wife “Oh, by the way I found the missing box, it was with my stuff”. Guess how furious my wife was after wasting a whole day trying to track down where the box could be.

In the end father-in-law’s words ring too true “She is just crazy, she lives in a world of her own” and “She is able to bend reality and thus the truth to her own liking, she is never wrong about anything. Just crazy, you know”. This poor man living with her for so many decades, no wonder he developed several OCD’s over the years.

Do you know someone who creates her/ his own reality when it comes to such things?

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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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My crazy Chinese Family I married into…