Tag Archives: China

Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Family

Our Wedding in Finland

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In one of the previous articles I wrote about our wedding in China and how I experienced it. Now it is time to present you our wedding in Finland!

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Last summer we had first a “little” wedding in China which was pretty much stressful experience but also at the same time very interesting. About three weeks later we had our wedding in Finland which had been planned for nearly a year by my wife. However unlike in China, we had instead of 100 guests only 50 but at least we knew each single person there! Besides it would have exceeded our financial limits to invite anybody more as Finland is not exactly known to be a cheap country.

Our guests included of course both of our parents and much of my family from Finland and Sweden. In addition my brother was flown in with his girlfriend from Germany. The tricky part was to invite our friends as we had only limited capacities which meant we couldn’t just invite everybody we know but had to be very selective. My wife invited some of her friends she knew for years in Finland and also several friends from her work place. I on the other hand invited several dudes from my swimming years in Finland, one guy from my old swimming team in Germany and last but not least my best friend from my youth who extra came from California for this event.

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The couple of days prior to the wedding were more than just stressful. The location of the wedding reception had to be prepared, people had to be picked up from the airport and delivered at the hotel and of course my wife and I still had yet to start practicing our wedding dance! The night before the wedding we also met at the hotel with some of the guests to have a DIY dinner consisting of potatoe salad, sausages and jiaozi 饺子. This dinner allowed us also to get some dancing practicedone  as my uncle from Sweden used to be a dancer. Not that we practiced alot but at least we learned the basic steps.

Things became even crazier on the wedding day itself. It started very early in the morning, I had to pick up one bridesmaid from Helsinki city center so she could help prepare my wife with hairs, make-up and her dress. My own preparations were a bit less exiting as there is not much to do except to suit up and put the hairs into a less messy state. However there was still much to do at the wedding reception because one of our guests changed plans and would not come, my wife had to invite somebody else and my task was to come up with a new seating arrangement + getting the technic to work for the picture screening. This meant I drove very often between our home and the wedding reception, building up more and more stress as time was running out. I do not know how but in the end we managed to be in time at the church. I believe this included several speeding violations on my behalf.

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Already one year before the wedding we were trying to find the perfect church for us and booked it in advance together with the wedding reception in a manor house near our home (they only had two weekends still free for us at that point, one year before!). Thankfully nothing out of the ordinary happened at the church, not even a crying baby! Our pastor was holding the ceremony in Finnish and in English and in the end we received also a bible in those languages from her.

Once we arrived at the wedding reception it was time for some photo shooting, relaxing in the sun and welcoming all the guests before entering the premises. One of my wife’s bridesmaids was the MC doing everything in English, then another bridesmaid was translating everything into Finnish and one of my groomsmen was translating into German and Chinese, hence we had all needed languages covered. Thanks to the MC there was always something going on which resulted that no one was getting bored. She had prepared a full program for that day and it was planned in a way that it allowed much free time between the sections for the guest to get some rest, mingle and pick up few drinks from our car. We had a lot of games, very good food and a wedding dance which was okay for practicing only 15 min before. The celebrations lasted well into the night and in the end we could get our well-deserved rest in the hotel at the manor house. All in all I can say it was a great day, sure it was exhausting but it went very well and thus was a nice experience.

 

Here are some more pictures from that day. I will still try to find a picture from our invitation cards which we had purchased before from China.

 

 

Crazy Family, Mom in Law

Ideas of my Chinese mother-in-law

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I had big plans to write this weekend of our newborn baby but this plan is currently on hold as the baby is just still too fond of his current residency. I know I know it is disappointing so I have to go with plan B for this weekend’s blog post.

Remember when I wrote about my mother-in-law and her adventures at the airport? For a normal human being this would be already a highlight for some time but not for her, oh no, she just continues with weird things. Now it is not anymore the way she does things but those really weird ideas she gets and proposes to us. Here I give you a short list of only the past two days of her ideas:

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Mother-in-law just loves this UHT milk

 

  • Buy several boxes of milk and take them to China. She trusts the milk more here than the one she can buy in the Chinese stores. When we told her the milk will be expired by the time she arrives she said “It will be still better than the Chinese milk”, well, what should I add except of also the difficulty when it comes to the weight of several boxes of milk in her luggage and not to speak of the customs later on…

 

  • Buy a bread knife so she can cut bread back home in China. This one makes again no sense at all since the only bread she ever eats is the one you usually toast so it is already sliced into pieces.

 

  • Buy a spoon measurement set for baking. This could be useful in case she would actually ever bake something.

 

  • Buy a cappuccino foam maker. According to mother in law this is something rich people have. With this she can make cappuccino from now on when her friends are visiting so everything is very classy. Note: she does not ever drink coffee or cappuccino or any other kind of drink like that.

 

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Similar Ikea cabinet she wants to take to China

 

  • Buy some cabinets from Ikea.  Yep, she really believes that you can fold them so they don’t take any space in your luggage and they weigh nothing at all (the set she looked at clocks in at around 25-50 kg) besides that my parents in law don’t even have any tools to drill holes into the wall to fasten them. But no worries mother in law said, her husband will just clue them to the wall or something like that (reminds me of the non-existing DIY skills of many Chinese I have met so far).

 

  • When you take hot shower the baby won’t come out. The temperature will scare the baby and delay the birth and this is why my wife is already a week overdue.

 

  • Small dirty items you can just put into plastic bags and throw them into the microwave. Reminds me very much of last year when she tried to make rice in the microwave which resulted in half melted Tupperware container and lots of acrid smell.

I believe there are still many more ideas but I simply forgot about them due to the high amount. Whenever something crazy happens I try to take note but mostly I simply forget about it. Now the waiting time continues and I hope to get some baby article done next weekend (surely he wants to be out by then, I mean it can’t be that comfortable there, can it?)

 

 

Have you ever experienced such ideas from your parents, family or friends?

 

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Guest Post: The Day I Proved Myself to My Chinese Girlfriend

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Today it is time for something new: The first Guest Post on this blog.
C. Fernandes is a Brazilian who is currently living in Germany. In 2010 he moved to Shanghai for 7 months where he eventually met the love of his life. When he is not busy doing her favors, working or traveling, he is usually online sharing his knowledge of China. If you would like to read more of his stories and find out more about dating Chinese girls or how to have a healthy relationship with Chinese women, then head on over to mynewchinesewife.com

In December of 2012 my Chinese girlfriend decided it was time for me to meet her family in China. We had been dating for about 9 months and living a very happy life together in Germany.  Like any other couple, we had our share of problems, but there was nothing that suggested that these problems had something to do with the cultural difference between us.  I have always thought that International relationships were a great thing and I have always believed that anybody who is (or has been) in an international relationship had to agree that it is far more interesting than dating someone, say, from their own town. In my mind, globalization had since long taken care of all the differences between cultures and that cultural shocks were a thing of the past.  Boy, was I wrong!

I had lived in Shanghai before for a period of 7 months in the past and I absolutely loved my life there,  so it was with great pleasure and excitement that I packed my bags and followed my girlfriend to China. Upon our arrival in China, we decided to take a couple of days alone in a neighboring city before going to see her parents. While I enjoyed myself revisiting all the foods and sights that make China so special, my lovely girlfriend spent her time making sure that I knew all the do’s and don’ts of meeting traditional Chinese parents. She made me memorize a series of phrases (which sounded all the same to me) and explained the exact moment that they should be used. Only when she thought I was ready for my first “confrontation” with her parents, did we make our way to her hometown.

I will always remember  the exact moment that I met my “Chinese family”. I walked into their living room and greeted Mama with a big hug, to which point she just stood there with a smile not knowing exactly what to do. I then directed myself towards Baba to also give him a taste of my hug, but Baba…well….Baba greeted me with a frown and left me hanging… From that point on, everything kind of went downhill for a few hours. As soon as I had eaten lunch with them, Mama led us to the living room where we began to have tea and talk about my salary, my job, my bank account, my intention to mary their daughter and the current apartment prices in China. For a moment there, I was so apprehensive that I could not help the feeling of being interrogated! I could already picture myself in a small dimly lighted  room, with an old wooden table in the center; Mama and Baba dressed in Red Army uniform; picture of Mao on the wall…

Finally, after my “release” from Mama’s little tea session, I was told to get ready for the big banquet where I would be introduced to the whole family. I still remember walking into that restaurant and having everybody look at me as if I was about to be lynched. Everybody looked very serious, except for the girls of the family who seemed very excited to have me there and be able to practice their English. Eventually, we all sat around a huge round table and I watched as the waitress served us pretty much every dish in the menu. I was “encouraged” to try everything and everybody kept a close look at my hand to see if I was able to eat with chopsticks. Every time I did something wrong, my sweet girlfriend rewarded me with a kick in the shin and went on to correct me before anyone else noticed my mistake.

An hour into the dinner every single gentleman at the table asked to drink a full glass of white wine with me. It was slow at first, but I soon found myself under attack as father, uncle, brother, cousin, friend, neighbor and other family aggregates rushed to my side of the table raising full glasses of booze and screaming: “Cheers! Cheers!” If that wasn’t enough, every 5 minutes someone literally threw a cigarette at me and expected me to smoke with them. Sadly for me, I am not really a big smoker.

After two hours of heavy drinking, I felt too drunk to even be drunk. My face was as red as an apple and I was really very full of everything. I didn’t really want to take part in that little party anymore and I told my girlfriend:

– Bora!

Which is our little secret code for “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

Lucky for me, everybody was already very much out of themselves and my girlfriend and I were able to leave the dinner without attracting too much attention. On our way out, one of my newly acquainted aunties chased me down the restaurant stairs with one last  glass of wine, grabbing me by the arm and refusing to let me go until I finally gave in and shoved down that last gulp of the strongest drink I will ever have.

That night, I was not able to sleep at all. Partially because I spent the better part of the night with my head in the toilet vomiting. Every time I would make my way into the bathroom, the family dog would bark until I let him in with me. As soon as I was in all fours hugging the toilet bowl,  it took advantage of my situation and would then proceed to try and lick my balls through my pajama pants. Now that I think about it, that was actually kind of soothing.

It is funny how things turn out. The next day, Baba actually smiled to me and invited me to take a ride with him. He showed me around town and even taught me how to prepare tea. In the days that followed, I received several phone calls from family members congratulating me on my drinking skills and inviting me to drink with them another day.  I must have taken part in half a dozen banquets, but nobody ever let me foot the bill.

Even until this day, I am still pretty much a drinking legend in my girlfriend’s family. I have visited them other times and we are now all very attached to each other. Who would have guessed that after getting the cold shoulder from the father, being interrogated by the mother, having been drugged by the uncles and finally have been sexually harassed by the dog  that things could take a turn for the better? Through my first contact with my Chinese family, I learned a valuable lesson. Differences still do exist, but they are only there for us to circumvent them. Breaking barriers and reaching out to others, no matter how hard it must seem at first is an absolute must and perhaps a man’s only true mission in life.

 

 

Are you interested in writing a guest post on this blog or would like me to write one? Feel free to contact me through the comment section of this blog (email will follow soon™).