Chinese Sixth Sense

This is one of the more odd rather than crazy stories. I reckon that everyone had at least once some strange feeling that something bad or good is happening and reacts according to that feeling. This story is about one of these feelings.

Last year, about two months before our trip and Wedding in China, my wife had a bad dream about her father. She woke up with an uncertain feeling, no memories from the dream itself but that it was something bad and had to do with her father. Like the good daughter she is a phone call was done to calm herself down. Well, it did not calm her down as no one answered on her dad’s phone so she called her mother. She picked up immediately and they talked a bit. My wife did not want to ask her mother directly about father so she wanted to see if MIL would act differently than usual. No, her crazy mother behaved same as usual so my better half asked if she could talk to her dad.

 

“He is not here right now”

“Where is he?”

“Outside, somewhere, getting something…from the store.”

 

As you can guess this answer was not really satisfying, it was actually making my wife worry more. Furthermore she heard then a voice in the background and after asking who it is her mother said its fathers good friend who is visiting. My wife knows this man so they talked on the phone for a bit, of course she asked him about worrisome father but he only told her that father will be back soon.

Just as my wife was finally calming down she heard a very strange noise in the background. A noise she knew was not from her parents home but from a hospital.

 

“Mom, where are you? I know that you are not at home, please tell me where father is!”

“Oh, we are outside taking a walk.”

“You just told me before that you are at home, and that sound is from a hospital!”

 

From this point onwards her mother admitted that they were not at home nor outside walking, but in a hospital. So my wife continued asking about her father but her crazy mom would not tell her anything but that he is fine. Then her very crazy mom gave the phone again to the friend of her father and he also tried to calm her down. Everything is fine, no need to worry was the standard thing she heard.

 

After what felt like ages, even to me listening to it all next to my wife, fathers friends finally said what is going on.

“Your father can’t speak right now, they just removed a good tumor from his throat. He needs to rest a bit before you can talk to him.”

 

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FIL at our Finnish Wedding

Father-in-law always had this big knot at his throat and the doctors decided to remove the tumor as it became uncomfortable and before it would turn “bad”. My wife was very exhausted in the end and few hours later her mother gave the phone to father so he could grunt a few words of comfort to his daughter. FIL was moved to tears how his daughter had been worried about him and promised to tell her next time if something happened.

 

These days FIL is of course still in good health and only a damn huge scar around his throat is a reminder of the surgery.

 

The whole thing makes me wonder about two things. Is there really something like a sixth sense, a feeling that something is happening good or bad? And second of all, why they tried to hide the whole thing from their daughter? This seems to be not that uncommon in China as this story from London Olympics 2012 is proving.

Shopping Frenzy

It is week three in my old-new hometown and nothing is done yet. Our apartment is still under construction, German bureaucracy is killing us and still no job on the horizon. To take our minds away from all the troubles we decided to go to the Designer Outlet Center in my city for some shopping frenzy.

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This Designer Outlet is a pretty interesting thing as it does not fit into the image of my hometown at all. Neumünster is, lets say, a very boring town with nothing at all to do there. The only good thing so far is the fact that it is located in the middle of the state of Schleswig-Holstein, thus making trips to the nearest cities like Kiel and Hamburg very short. But apparently something big happened in 2012, the Designer Outlet opened and attracts ever since then a huge amount of visitors and tourists from other cities and countries. I had been at this place already before but didn’t pay so much attention to it but now, as we need pretty much everything new in our home, it feels like heaven to have this outlet center here.

 

WP_20140927_014There are not only all kind of brands people desire (at least this is what I heard, I have no clue about clothes and kitchen ware) but there are also few restaurants and Starbucks. Okay, Starbucks I will never enter as I just don’t like the coffee there, but actually seems to be a tourist magnet on its own. The Outlet Center has been build to resemble an old middle European town with each building housing at least one store. I wonder why they chose to create this little town in this certain style but I must say that it looks pretty neat. I believe it takes half day to visit actually each store but I will never try this unlike my wife who seems eager to stay there from morning till evening closing time.

 

WP_20140927_006When we visited my wife asked me why we didn’t go there with her mother during Spring time when she visited for three months. Well, actually she did not remember that she did not want to go to there with her mom because of MIL’s insane shopping frenzy. As I know MIL by now, she would refuse to leave the shopping area and camp there to be the first to enter at opening time. Nobody would be able to drag her away from that place so it was pretty smart by my wife not to mention the existence of the Outlet Center. Yes, I have indeed a crazy Mother-in-law but at least she is not spending (yet) every penny on such stuff.

 

cropIt seems also that the Outlet Center is an attraction for Chinese Tourists.There is even one Chinese tourists organization doing bus trips to Neumünster to go specifically to that one Outlet Center and furthermore two big Chinese restaurants opened in the past two years as well. I can’t say much about the quality of those restaurants as I still have to visit them but there are certainly many Chinese in the Outlet Center.

 

In the end I can say, or actually my wife that it is just great to buy some needed kitchen ware from certain brands so much cheaper than usual. I doubt that I will be there too often in the following years but I bet my wife will be there especially after our apartment is done to purchase all kind of (weird) things.

 

 

My Parents first trip to China

In the year of 2011 was my first visit to China. Nothing too special about that but it was also the first time (and only time thus far) that my parents visited China. Through this Guest Post by my wife you learned already few basics about my dear mother. As you can imagine the whole idea of visiting China was not a dream of my mother. She was scared of the country itself, the many people, the food, the hygiene, the plane, getting lost at the airport and did I mentioned the food before? My father on the other hand was really excited about this trip. He pretty much didn’tt care at all about all the things my mother was scared of except one thing, public toilets in China. My old man is not the youngest anymore, meaning that any kind of “squatting” his pretty much impossible for him.

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Picture at the Drum Tower

Everything started during spring time when we had the great idea to have our engagement dinner in China, together with the whole family. As a joke my wife suggested that I should invite my parents as well. I kinda didn’t get the joke and actually asked my parents. My mom was shocked, and said she wouldn’t even board the plane and my father wanted to know the details already on the phone. Three months later my wife and I were waiting in Xi’an for my parents to arrive at the airport and of course my parents actually arrived without any harm (just a bit exhausted).

The entire trip to China was already an adventure worth writing a very own article about. Lets just say it involved them not being able to park the car at Helsinki airport, hearing their names mentioned through the airport announcements about gates being closed, having very noisy people on the plane, arriving at Beijing and being lost, mobile phone without service and thus not being able to call us for help, not being able to ask for help as they only speak German and Finnish,  a changed gate to Xi’an at Beijing airport and running all over Beijing airport…

 

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Arrival in Xi’an

Anyways my parents arrived during late afternoon and were welcomed by my in-laws and family friends. Already during the first evening we had a program planned for them (even though they were pretty exhausted). We visited the fountain show at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda with a short tour around the surrounding area and of course a big dinner. As you can imagine dinner time meant horror time for my dear mother and MIL was not exactly helpful in this situation either as she just piled up more food on my mothers plate. Mom ate always bravely the plate empty, without having a clue what food it was, and MIL piled up more…

 

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During the one week in Xi’an we visited together most of the main attraction such as the Terracotta Army, the Tang Paradise, Tang Dynasty Dinner & Show, Drum and Bell Tower and also the Muslim Quarter. My parents both got a new hairstyle plus massage at a hairdresser, a full body massage (my father with cupping) and a lot of food. For my mother at least one dream got fulfilled, she got a silk shirt tailored, something which is of course also possible in Europe but usually very very expensive.

 

Import_020I am not sure anymore what we all ate but it was very much. The engagement dinner was interesting as we had also Camel served which I didn’t mention to my parents until the dinner was done. Otherwise it was pretty uneventful, probably due to the exact planning by my wife who had an “activity plan” done already weeks before the trip. In the end we also spent one day in Beijing and did a little sightseeing tour. Beijing has mixed feelings when I think back due to the fact that we never could get any taxi and then we a wild “black taxi” trip back to the hotel.

In the end I can say that it was a nice trip but a bit too exhausting for my parents. We had too much in the program and it all involved walking around a great deal. To make it worse it was during Juli, meaning temperatures to make the asphalt on the streets melt. Furthermore my mother couldn’t handle the air-condition and ended up getting sick in the end and suffered the last day when flying from Xi’an to Beijing. For the next time they come to China (my mother doesn’t know about her luck yet) we have planned a much more relaxing holiday for them with trips to the nearby hot springs and it will be either during spring time or during autumn to escape the hot summer.

My crazy Chinese Family I married into…