Tag Archives: China

Crazy Family, Dad in Law, Mom in Law

What to do later?

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This is something we have discussed a lot in the past years. “What to do later” actually means what do we do later with her parents when they need help.

Planing ahead on how to take care for your parents has in Asian countries a whole different meaning than in many European countries.

In Germany most elderly people are often pushed by their family into retirement homes rather than taken in by their families into their homes to be taken care of. In China on the other hand it’s the other way around. Even when those families do have money to send their parents to retirement homes, they prefer taking them into their own homes and either take care of them by their own or hire some nurse to help out.

 

I guess most Chinese living abroad have been wondering about the very same question rather much. This is because if they build themselves a life in a foreign country they would need to give it all up just be with their parents back in China. Why giving it all up? Well, the world is a cruel place and many countries make it under normal circumstances nearly impossible to get your own parents to stay with you. Sure there are exceptions, as I know some Chinese in Finland who own restaurants and basically get first either their mother or father to work there for 5 years to get a permanent residence permit and afterwards get the other parent as this one will get a residence permit immediately due to the permit of the partner. Indeed not an easy way.

 

Now back to my story. As we plan to move soon back to Germany it will be pretty much impossible to get her parents to stay with us later. The law in Germany is pretty strict and chances are close to zero to ever getting her parents live with us. My wife pretty much doubts also that her parents would feel comfortable in such a different environment.

They are happy in China and life is so very different in Europe.

So what does it leave us? We have actually no clue at all. We have been discussing this topic so often that it is currently on hold because neither of us wants to think about it anymore. Not only because it is so complicated but also it is just awful to think ahead and imagine your own parents in a condition that they are in dire need of you.The only thing we can think of is either hiring professional help later in form of a nurse helping them out in their own home or somehow finding a very good retirement home (which are often incredible expensive and at the moment out of our league).

 

Many might say “Just move to China!”. It is not as easy as it sounds and you never know when this situation of need might occur. Maybe it is in the middle of your own children’s school education or during important project work for your company, can you just leave everything behind like that and start entirely anew? Furthermore, my wife has no wish to ever move back to China. For her, a month staying for holidays in China are already too much, she hates the pollution, the noise, and the people (the mass of them and mostly their behavior).

 

As you can see, we still have much to figure out. We doubt that the migration law in Germany will change anytime soon in our favor in this situation so we really have to create other plans for the future.

 

Do you have similar troubles when thinking ahead in your life?

 

P.S. as this blog is titled “My Crazy Chinese Family” I did not talk about my own parents who are actually a whole bit older than my parents in law. But do not fear, I have no wish to send them to some retirement home and thus far my wife shares my opinion.

Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Family

Christmas and New Year celebrations

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The Christmas madness is over. Just kidding, there was no madness involved for us this year. We had some peaceful days of doing barely anything besides relaxing. Only on the 24th we made some Christmas cookies again as I had finished the last batch some time earlier once again.

So did we follow-up on our Christmas celebration plan? Certainly not. We skipped the whole music part of the plan due to our laziness and I guess we cut on some edges on the other points as well…besides all of that mother nature didn’t like us and gave us only rain the entire time.

Because my wife sometimes loves to make food, we had a great Christmas dinner and afterwards exchanged our gifts (yes, I managed to buy something fairly useful for her). On the other celebration days we visited some Chinese friends, had hot pot 火锅 and they played some 6 hours of mahjong 麻将(I was pushed to the living room to watch TV as I have no idea about the game).

Now it is just trying to figure out what we will do on New Year except of watching “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”. Maybe we celebrate with some friends or maybe alone, we shall see…

This was it for this year, I hope everyone had a great year or at least managed fine. I bet many of you have once again New Year’s resolutions and barely anyone will stick to it (But I will!).

I wish you all a Happy New Year and see you as lively as ever in 2014!

Crazy Chinese People, Mom in Law

Crossing a Road

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Hi everyone once again

Today’s topic will be crossing a road in China…

You can find endless articles about the terrifying traffic regulation in China, terrible accidents occur on a daily basis everywhere there.  It is dangerous as hell there on the streets!

Now it comes more to my observations over the past years, especially when going around with my mom in law.

First Rule: Chinese drivers will never stop for you if your group is smaller than 10 people

Second Rule: Trusting the rules of a pedestrian crossing (or cross walk) will get you killed

Third Rule: Even if you have green to cross the street, there will be cars, bikes and electric rollers coming from any direction

Fourth Rule: To be on the safe side, don’t go to China 🙂

My mom in law is on a whole different level entirely. For example, she never ever checks if cars are coming, she just walks on the street and wants us to not fall behind (scares the shit out of me every time).

However there are also exceptions, sometimes she does checks if some cars are coming. Whenever a car is far away, lets say you can barely see in the smog ridden distance, mom in law won’t cross the street and will wait for the car/s to pass by. But when she notice that the car/s are just meters away, she storms on the street…

Many cities do have some underground street crossing, especially on the bigger cross roads etc. Those make the survival of the average human being much more likely than the standard suicide street crossing method. I have seen many of those but every time with mom in law they are being ignored and she throws us into the danger of crossing a 10 lane road or something similar, because according to her: “Going down the stairs there is too dangerous!” Well, somehow I doubt that the stairs hold more danger to me than a transportation vehicle coming down the road, only being hold together with duck tape and apparently no brakes…

Another matter is, she also thinks that crossing the street the normal method is so much quicker than going below the road. Yeah, so much quicker, crossing lane by lane can take sometimes 10min or more, depending how many people try the suicide crossing with us. (remember the rule, the bigger the group, the faster the crossing will be in the end)

Problematic with mom in laws approach is that most cross roads with the underground tunnels have some fence or even wall on the street level, intended to stop the pedestrians to enter the road and forcing them into the tunnels. This means that each time we even have to go all around those walls or fences until we reach the end of them, then cross the road, and then walk on the other side all the way back again behind the wall/ fence. So as you can see, I have some reasons to doubt my mom in laws reasoning when it comes to safety on the streets…