Tag Archives: Chinese food

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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Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Family

My Parents first trip to China

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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.

Crazy Family, European Mom in Law

Guest Post: My Finnish Mother-in-law

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Hello everyone, I’m Ruowei the wife of Timo and the guest blogger for today. I will tell you about my weird mother-in-law. No my MIL is not some crazy Asian woman but an elderly European woman who acts pretty strange sometimes.

 

So this is how an European MIL is through the eyes of a Chinese girl. My MIL is an old and weird lady, I guess you can use weird for every MIL despite the nationality. She is a very kind person, not getting in middle of our marriage life which is very good compare to many Chinese MILs, however, my MIL sometimes can be really–how to say, funny in a way? Here are just some examples which make me laugh every time I see it.

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MIL at our son’s baptizing

These are some of the basics about my mother-in-law that you should know. She is a quite stubborn lady, she doesn’t want to learn anything new, especially when it comes to electronics. The worst nightmare for her is that the old remote control is broken and she needs to switch to a new one. It is not simply about changing to something but also to learn all the different buttons ones again even though she only uses three buttons on every remote control : On/Off, Volume +/- and Channel +/-. Really, these are all the buttons she needs but whenever she has to use a different remote control it is like the end of the world for her. Then there is the matter that she does not want to learn anything at all about modern technology. Let’s take a mobile phone as an example. All she can do for the past 20 years is to type in the numbers and dial them and also she knows how to answer a call. Phonebook, text messages, calender etc. are as alien to her and strange as flying pigs are or Mämmi to me! To this day she writes down what she wants to say in a text message on a piece of paper and her husband has to type it in.

Every time Timo’s father is buying something big, like a tv, he always tells her a much lower price so she wouldn’t start complaining about that the old TV was still working perfectly even though the picture was only half visible…Whatever somebody buys, she always complains how expensive it is and this resulted that everyone tells her a much lower price these days whenever she wants to know about it. Timo got a new racing bicycle last summer  from his dad. Both were struggling on how to tell my MIL about it so what they did is not telling the her about the bicycle until she saw it in our apartment this spring. As she started to complain about it, Timo and his father told her “But you know, we discussed this already last year”. This is enough to confuse her and after a while she even believes it….my poor MIL always gets tricked by the evil husband and son.

A group picture
MIL hiding behind my mother

Then there is the matter about food. She just does not want to try out any new food (just as new technology). So just imagine how hard it was to figure out what to eat when my in-laws visited for their first time China for over a week! It was not easy this I can tell you. Even MIL’s sister said to us how impossible it is to find anything nice to eat for MIL. You might think it is because of the strange spices in Chinese food but no, she also doesn’t like/ wants to try any German or Finnish food she hasn’t had before. This results in very standardized dishes we get served whenever she makes food. Boooring!

As a last story I have still my favorite. It is both funny and sad so I never really know how to think about it. The one sentence MIL is using always and with always I mean nearly everyday we are over at her place and are about to leave “This might be the last time we can enjoy this together you never know when I’m dying!” According to Timo she has been saying this as long as he can remember, so at least 25 years now. Great way to cheer up your son MIL!

I hope this gave you a small idea about my mother-in-law. I can sum her up as kind person who is against anything new may it be technology or food. I tried to find better pictures of her but she always runs away when I appear with my phone pointing her direction.