Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family

Why I love to travel to China

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It is just in the middle of March but I look already forward to our next trip to China in the end of August. 2013 was the last time we were in China and we also celebrated our Chinese wedding in a small circle of relatives and friends (watch out, sarcasm). Last year we could not travel to visit my in-laws as we had too much on our hands with little Nathan and moving to Germany.

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Got to love the food

 

So why I am looking forward to travel to China or to be more specific to Xi’an? Most people would not really look forward to meet their in-laws again after having their mother-in-law at their place for three months but right now this is just a small minus point in my opinion. In Xi’an alone are so many places I want to revisit, take more video material and pictures. Furthermore I was promised (as so many times before though) to visit the relatives in the country side in Shaanxi. We are also planning a trip to Jeju Island and I really hope all those travel plans will actually work out as none had in the previous years!

But what am I really looking forward to? First of all Xi’an is a great city in my opinion. There are just so many interesting historical buildings within the city center where my in-laws are living which give great opportunities for taking pictures and perhaps also few time lapse shots with my new Flow-Mow. Then there is the food, just thinking about it makes me drool! There are so many restaurants I want to go to such as my favorite BBQ restaurant few minutes walking distance away. Besides when being too lazy to walk few minutes to the next restaurant there are still dozens of street kitchens just downstairs. As you can see, there will be never a problem to get any good food unlike here where we have barely any restaurants around.

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Xi’an City Center

 

But then again there are few things which really do stop my enthusiasm about those weeks in China. First of all is the pollution with all the smog in the city and surrounding area. Back in 2013 we had zero days in nearly three weeks of our stay with blue sky or sunshine. Everyday it was just smog and some more smog. Then there is the general attitude of not using trash bins. Everywhere people just throw their trash on the ground and even litter animals enclosures in zoo’s or nature reserves.  What else is getting sometimes on my nerves is the complete lack of manners of some people. I think I do not need to go too deep into details as the this behaviour has been described more than enough already in other blogs. I know that you will find rude people all over the world but especially in China I have sometimes the feeling that there is an exceptional amount of people with an attitude like “First me and then the rest of you low cretins”.

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Barely can see the mountains which are just few hundred meters away…

 

But all in all I am still looking forward to this trip even though there is still nearly half-year waiting time ahead. For now I will have to make due with the videos and pictures I have from the previous years. Also all those blogs about their travel adventures keep my mind away from the daily boredom at work and the current cold weather. Perhaps also the fact that I just got once again a year older makes me want to escape the routine which we have in everyday life and get out to relax for a few weeks.

 

Are you also looking forward to your next holiday abroad? Do you also think about the negative points during your holidays?

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Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Family, Travels

Terracotta Army

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Back in 2011 when my parents visited for their  first time China we decided to take a look at the famous Terracotta Army.  During the week my parents were in China we tried to see as much as possible around Xi’an. It was certainly not easy as my parents are not the youngest anymore but they tried their best.  The excavation site with the museum is located in Lintong District, Xi’an. As we stayed in the city center it took us about 45min by car to get to the famous place.

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My Dad the Terracotta Warrior

 

During that day we had staggering +39 degrees celsius ~102 degrees fahrenheit. For unknown reasons we had the whole week already blue sky and hence less smog to protect us from the intensely burning sun. Nearly all of my memories from that trip are actually all about getting from one place with air-condition to the next without spending too much time outside.

Before we actually went to see the terracotta warriors we made a short stop at a workshop which focused not only one copying terracotta warriors but also making and reconstructing old Chinese furniture. Even though the whole place was basically a tourist trap we enjoyed it there as we did not go as a tourist group but with some family friends who know some people who know someone so we could actually skip the shops and concentrate on the art and have alook behind the scenes in that workshop. It was really interesting to see how they “copied” terracotta warriors but also how they custom designed few of them by modeling the faces according to some wishes of paying customers. Furthermore we could watch how they made a lacquer table and the many steps were explained to us. The place was filled with wonderful furniture and I actually would have bought tons of it in case money and luggage space wouldn’t be an issue…

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So much furniture and decoration!

 

After that we finally set out for the terracotta warriors. Even though it was so terrible hot it was still filled with tourists. The hardest part for us was the trip from the car, through the entrance, following the near endless path to the main museum buildings. Though in retrospect the way was perhaps only a 15min walk it still felt like hours. To make matters worse there were several places selling stinky tofu. The heat and the smell was near overkill for me and my parents, my wife actually enjoyed it though.

In the end we managed it to reach the main area. As my mind was badly effected by the heat and the stinky tofu I can not tell you anymore the exact layout except that there were several buildings and pits. We visited first the biggest building which was a museum with a collection of the artifacts found in that area. Needless to say it was packed with people and it was hard to take any pictures without any head poking into the camera. The best part for me was of course the fact that the air condition kept me away from the melting point. There were so many rooms to visit in that building that it took us a long time to go through it. In this case a tour guide would have been nice but it was also nice to be more flexible and set our own pace.

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Pit 1

After watching countless of artifacts we managed to go to Pit 1.  There are several Pits in various sizes but Pit 1 is probably most famous as it is just huge and has rows after rows of the terracotta warriors standing guard. I only have a few pictures as I was more concerned on video taping everything with my other camera while trying to survive the heat, yes the heat, as there was no air condition in that huge hall resulting also that we tried to hurry around and be done with it.

All in all I can say that visiting the terracotta army is a must when staying for some time in Xi’an but it is certainly not my favorite place. All the information you can get there about the past is certainly great but somehow I just could not enjoy it, it might be also due to the fact that I was near a heat stroke and thus my recollection of that day is messed up.

For more information about the Terracotta Army simply check out what Wikipedia as to say about it.

 

Have you visited the Terracotta Army already? What are the places you would love to visit in China?

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Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Family

What is an interracial household?

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The reason I am writing about it today is that we are basically still in process of making our apartment a homely home. We have done much already as you could see few months ago in this articles about our new apartment. But still, it seems something is missing. I am perfectly fine as it is and also my wife usually doesn’t miss anything but it is just not as cozy as it used to be in our old 40m² apartment.

DSC02814I have been living together with my wife now for  five years. During that time we visited many other couples WMAF (White Male Asian Female) with all kind of different homes and decorations. But there was never any household were one could say that this must be a typical interracial household when it comes to mix the best of those two different cultures. Sometimes it was just too overloaded with cheap looking Chinese decoration and sometimes the exact opposite. In the end it depends of course on the taste of the individual person.

 

In some of the homes we visited it totally looked European. I mean there was sometimes nothing at all that might suggest that a Chinese woman was living there. For example here in Germany we visited one couple with two children and basically everything was just German, the woman even talked only German to the little kids as they did not know anything about the language and didn’t like it  same as Chinese food…I am not trying to say that this is bad but it is also very weird as in Finland we never encountered something as drastic as this one.

 

Since we have been here my wife tried to find her spot here in the little Chinese community and always heard the same thing. The DSC02811children do not speak any Chinese, just German. Sure they knew some of the basic words you learn also in a Chinese language course in the first couple of lessons but that’s it. The main problem so far here as been always that in kindergarten they only speak German. Okay that is itself not a problem but they do not have any possibility to learn any Chinese except when the mother might talk to them few words in her native language. In Finland for example we never saw that anyone had this language problem as they offered in many Chinese communities for the children Chinese classes, both writing and talking. This however is most likely different here as my hometown is just too small and that the few dozens interracial couples are not enough to start such Chinese community center.

 

DSC02796Now I am wondering how our son will fare with his language skills. As I wrote before it is very hard to get into a kindergarten here so we are still on various waiting lists. Furthermore we speak to him in Chinese, English, German and Finnish. This is surely much to handle to such a little brain but without a doubt possible if we stick to our roles and each one of us talks only in one language to him (my wife Chinese, my mother Finnish, my father German and last but not least the most important person: ME in English).

 

So what have we managed so far when it comes to create some mixed household? Well, we have some Chinese decoration still from our old apartment which we spread out all over our home. Then there is of course the wonderful Chinese food my wife is making plus trying to make good contacts with the few Chinese here. Furthermore we are planning to buy some nice artwork in our next journey to China such as a big wall scroll for the living room. Even though we try to get our home more homely we also try our best to maintain a modern design at least for most of the rooms (Nathan’s room will be a total different matter as we will try to stick to a very certain theme and once it is done I will of course write about it). In the end we have right now a mostly European designed home with few things here giving a hint that there is someone from China living here.

 

What is in your opinion typical in such a household? What are your experiences?

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My crazy Chinese Family I married into…