Category Archives: Mom in Law

Crazy Chinese People, Mom in Law

Visiting an apiary

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Last summer in China we visited something like an apiary (bee yard). My mother in law advertised it as an apiary with beautiful scenery she always wanted to visit. Always? No, of course not. After some inquiries by her daughter she admitted that her dancing group got an offer to visit that place, get some food and walk around the country side – for free. We both had nothing against it as it was for free so we decided to join her and the dancing group.

The tour started in early morning hours and we had to hurry to catch the little bus bringing the group to the destination. We needed to hurry, because mother in law was busy packing an absurdly huge backpack full of food and drinks, again, which I had to carry. No words of my wife could persuade her to not pack that much food even though deep down inside she must have known already that the bag would be still full by evening.

The tour itself was nothing out of the ordinary, lots of traffic jams in the city, the bus getting either too hot or too cold depending on the setting of the ac, lots of noise by the dancing group (howler monkeys are paling in comparison when it comes to noise) and their little grandchildren singing children songs through the onboard entertainment system. After a journey which felt like eternity, in an either freezing or burning hell, we arrived at our destination, a collection of some old buildings with some beehives in the yard.

From the locals sitting in the yard my wife learned that this here was just an example of an apiary and it was more like a subsidiary in order to sell the products. Selling they did! The whole dancing group went into a little house where a nice man explained the benefits of honey, beeswax, royal jelly and so forth. The people got excited and bought whatever he advertised (even the pupae which are supposedly very delicious). And who was in the middle of it? Right! Mom in law already calculating how much honey she can eat from that point onwards each day…

After we had eaten in a nearby restaurant for free and were about to be driven to the nearby mountain side for some “sightseeing” I asked my wife why they would offer this whole thing for free.  She told me that she was surprised by it as well in the beginning but after sitting in the sales pitch she learned the reason. During that one hour of selling bee products to around 20 elderly women around 20.000 RMB changed hands! That is no little pocket-money in China and furthermore they had a group before us and still a few more groups coming later on. That is some huge amount of money just for bee products and sadly the local people apparently didn’t benefit much from it. The place was totally run down, the vehicles were on the edge of falling apart so some big boss is earning himself/ herself a golden nose.

Later that day I checked what mom in law all bought and was shocked about the amount she had bought. My guess is that my parents in law are still consuming an incredible amount of honey on a daily basis at this moment. At least she didn’t went on and bought the pupae… All in all it was a nice trip even though I am still shocked by the high price for bee products there (in Finland, one of the most expensive countries in Europe, you pay less than half that amount for honey or any other of those products).

Crazy Family, Mom in Law

Mother in law visiting

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I have mentioned it plenty of times before: Mom in law will be visiting us in February. And as you are a careful reader of this blog you also know it is because her grandson will be born in that month. Basically she will be here to help us out. Basically…but my wife and me know also the other reason, she is especially here to spend hours a day in the shopping malls looking for stuff to buy. However she never buys anything anyways except stealing hours of our lives away…

In the past months we both came up with a plan how to survive with mom in law (the detailed plan can be found here https://crazychinesefamily.com/2013/10/28/how-to-make-life/). But we are not that cruel to think only about ourselves so actually we created also a little plan on how to make the stay enjoyable for her. Here are some of the main points of that plan.

 

Food

She is Chinese, my wife is Chinese = they love food. Problem is that my wife’s mom is not making the best food other than some noodle dishes and jiaozi 饺子.Honestly, I am not a big fan of her food and in my opinion my wife makes much better food (she agrees). This leads to the need of visiting Chinese restaurants on a more frequent level than usual. Because my wife and me did not fear any hardships during the past years in discovering new Chinese restaurants in our area, we have a handful of good ones to visit. They are a bit different from the usual restaurants as they usually two different menus. There is one menu for Finnish people and one menu for Chinese people. The menu for the Finnish people is obviously less spicy, less well tasting and has less variety. Sadly visiting those restaurants on a daily basis is out of the question due to the high costs here in this cold cold country but at least once a week should be possible.

 

Shopping

Mom in law loves shopping. I believe she would even sleep in the shopping mall given the chance. Thankfully we have three shopping malls in close proximity and additional two or three involving 20-30min car ride. Due to these perfect conditions I do not have to worry about the shopping part at all (except the costs involved if she actually finds something she likes…)

 

Snow

According to my wife, she really wants to play in the snow. No problem, here should be plenty of it by then. However I don’t know how long she will enjoy it and furthermore we will need to buy her some good winter clothes.

 

The Baby

Mom in law wants a cute mixed grandson. No problem, our son will be the cutest baby ever (no offence to other babies 😉 )

Great news is that she will help us out with the child, the not so great news is that I don’t really know who might be more annoying at night; the baby crying at night or mom in law snoring as loud as a starting jet plane.

 

Presents

Yes you read right, presents. As any good Chinese who wants to keep face she will have to bring some nice presents for her family and friends. Luckily we have a huge collection of fragrances, make-ups, cremes etc. due to the profession of my wife. So finding presents for her female friends and relatives won’t be a problem. The presents for the men will be a different story. Alcohol here in Finland is incredibly expensive and mostly pretty bad (I would not recommend any local beer to foreigners if they do not wish to feel very sad). This means that those presents are still mostly a big question mark in our plan.

 

Travelling

She will be three months here and spending that much time only in one apartment and few shopping malls will even get boring for my mother in law. However due to the baby we won’t be able to take her to any nice places or countries. But my parents came up with a solution! We will take a ship cruise to Germany, stay few weeks with my parents and go back by ship to Finland in April. With this mom in law will experience some other country she hasn’t been visiting yet, my own parents can see their grandson and even better, we can buy some presents which are still required so mom in law can keep her face.

 

This is our “Big Plan” thus far. Additional points might be still created or other parts changed (and no, the cutest baby part will stay). Have you ever made similar plans when your parents in law came to visit?

 

 

Crazy Family, Dad in Law, Mom in Law, Travels

You can overdo it sometimes (Mount Hua)

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Most people say that you can never be prepared enough for a task ahead. I found out the hard way that you can be over-prepared.

Last year we were once again for a few weeks in China, visiting my wife’s family. As usual we had some plans regarding which places we would love to visit. Number one location was Jiuzhaigou 九寨沟 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiuzhaigou. This changed after we arrived as my wife got too lazy (it is just too tempting for her just to hang out on the sofa, watch TV and eat snacks whole day). So in order to not disappoint me too much we agreed at least to go to Mount Hua 华山as it is just an hour or so away from Xi’an, my wife’s “hometown”.

HuaShan
Foggy Mountain

The Planning begins

I had watched some information about Mount Hua before so I was excited to go there. My parents in law were shocked. How could we visit such a dangerous place (as if crossing a street in Xi’an is any safer than climbing the mountain…)

It took some time convincing mom in law but we were “allowed” to go there in the end. Dad in law wasn’t so happy about it. He said it is too dangerous. After some time we got to know he had been there several times. Even using the infamous Plank Walk before any security measurements have been installed (Check out http://www.wherecoolthingshappen.com/huashan-crazy-plank-walk/ to see more about the nice little path). Him using that path strikes me as fairly unusual as he is more the safety first type. Actually he is more the type not to do anything remotely dangerous. But then again, he was just 20 back in the days, trying to proof the world something.

The day prior to our climbing adventure arrived. With is also the preparation started. I received some huge backpack from some friend of the family. This backpack was filled with food, much food and a huge vacuum flask. I estimated that the weight exceeded 30 kg easily. Sure, you need some things when climbing a mountain. But that much? The whole duration on the mountain would never exceed 5 hours in our planning and yet we had food and drink for a whole week. Yet, I agreed to it, to make parents in law happy.

Seven Heroes
The heroes of the mountain

We left next morning and went to a village nearby the mountain. The in-laws got themselves a little hotel room, because they had to wait for us (they didn’t want to join us). In the little hotel we had some food which was enough to sustain me for two or three days. They said that I would burn much calories on the mountain and I need all the food. They also advised us to eat something every 30-45min, or we would be too weak. Mom in law also wanted us to wear thick jackets, as she was afraid we would get sick due to the low temperatures in autumn. Low temperatures are in her opinion everything under 28 degrees Celsius so the 25 degrees in the morning were life threatening. I didn’t complain and after that we set out to the entrance where we said our goodbyes.

Chinese really like it red
Chinese really like it red

Up the mountain and the suffering

The view was great, you could see the smog layer covering the countryside around the mountain. And fresh air, so wonderful, finally being able to breathe normally again. Basically I was happy, my wife not so much.

Another Peak
Another Peak

Now I don’t want to tell you all about the great mountain, as you should go there better yourselves. But in my opinion it was worth the high entrance fee + cable car fee. Cable car as we didn’t want to climb up the whole mountain and back again, due to our limited time and my wife’s fear of getting big leg muscles….

The climb to the different peaks on the mountain were manageable (we only went to two peaks). The main problem for me was the backpack which was getting heavier and heavier each hour. My in-laws said that we needed all the food and drink so we tried to use it. We really tried to eat and drink much, seriously but there is just so much a body can fit. In the end I still had roughly 9/10 of the stuff left when arrived at the base of the mountain in the evening again. I still wonder why we had so much mantou and meat with us. With all the food I could have fed probably half the tourists on the mountain.

The whole trip was a struggle for me to take the next step and the weight was dragging me down. Remember the jackets mom in law wanted us to wear? Oh, I was so glad we didn’t take them. It was so damn hot going up with all the weight that I might have melted with some jacket. The worst part was the way down. Due to the high weight I had to carry up my legs were a mess when we arrived the south peak. They were just shaking. Each step on the way down again I was afraid to just collapse.

Those stairs are no joke, perfect for getting nice leg muscles
Those stairs are no joke, perfect for getting nice leg muscles

All preparation was not for naught

Yes indeed, all the stuff prepared found still a use. Nah, we didn’t sell it or gave it away but we actually used it. Mind you, not the very same day but two days later we went to some zoological park. It was useful because mom in law didnt had to prepare new food and terrible because I ended up carrying everything once again. Another surprise, we didnt manage to eat everything this time either so mom in law gave it to her friends who came with us. In the end I was carrying supplies, meant for one mountain climbing adventure, over two days just to give it all away.

And before I forget, I got my revenge. When they came to visit us, I made sure that they have enough food to carry :=)

P.S. I must excuse the poor pictures, but back then I only had my Nokia N8, resulting in pictures with rather much noise.