Tag Archives: crazy Chinese family

Guest Post: Fatal attraction within the palace

March 13, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 17 Comments

Today I have a guest post by Weina Dai Randel, author of “The Moon in the Palace”. The Moon in the Palace is the first installment of The Empress of Bright Moon duology. The two books describe the journey of the famed Chinese empress, who survives court intrigues, rebellion, and other tragedies to become the woman who controls her own destiny. She was the first and only female ruler in China who ruled legitimately for almost fifty years. As you can see that such setting creates tons of possibilities of bizarre relationships within the palace.

Fatal attraction within the palace

When the thirteen-year old Mei was summoned to serve Emperor Taizong in The Moon in the Palace, Mei knew a few things about the Emperor, and his ten living sons. What she did not know was how suffocating and treacherous the life inside the palace could be.

Or how messed up the relationships was like inside the palace.

She would learn it very soon that being the concubine of the old emperor, she belonged to him in heart and soul. One glance of hers cast to anyone beside the Emperor would bring punishment and even death. It was the truth, the principle that all women in the palace must live by.

The Emperor, however, made his own rules. He was free to take women, anyone he fancied, which we all understand perfectly – he was the Emperor after all, right?

The problem is, the Emperor’s sons, also had the same idea.

The Crown Prince, who lived in the Eastern Palace, for example, was the ruler of his own household. He had a large retinue of tutors, aides, servants, wrestler buddies, polo players, grooms, and musicians. All bowed to his will and entertain his whims, though in what ways you might never imagine.

(Source: http://www.britannica.com/biography/Taizong-emperor-of-Tang-dynasty

Tang Taizong, detail of a portrait; in the National Palace Museum, Taipei.)

Did I make these stories up? The secrets, the affairs, and the backstabbing? I sure did, but let me tell you, the entangled affairs within the palace was as well-known as the prosperity in the Tang Dynasty. Take Emperor Xuanzong for example. The sixty-year-old Emperor met his daughter-in-law, the great beauty Consort Yang, and forced his son to give her up and took her for himself. Not only that, very soon, Consort Yang’s two sisters also came to the imperial palace to serve the old man.

Messed up? I think so, but wait to read this: the great beauty Consort Yang was not an idle woman either. It was said she adopted a general of Turkic origin, whom many Chinese know as An Lu Shan, as her legal son, but she secretly kept him as her lover instead. The relationship would take a dramatic turn as the general grew powerful and eventually led an uprising against the aging emperor, who, forced to flee, ordered to kill the concubine.

(Source: http://www.britannica.com/biography/Yang-Guifei

“Chinese Beauty Yang Guifei, The” The Chinese Beauty Yang Guifei, ink scroll painting by Hosoda Eishi, c. 1800–20. 43.9 × 60.3 cm.)

So you see, the complicated relationship inside the palace is not just my re-imagination.

But really, when you think about it, messed-up relationships happened thousand years ago and still happen today. It existed in ancient China, in ancient Egypt – think about Cleopatra, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, in ancient Rome – Augustus and his three marriages, and in England. You know the six marriages of Henry VIII. And the story of Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

And I’m pretty sure this entanglement happen among ordinary people as well. It’s just, we, not a member of imperial or royal families, take the cover of being ordinary and often mute our voices.

About the author

Waina Dai Randel

I am happy to have yet another great author providing a guest post. As I am usually rather clumsy when it comes to giving a short summary about other people I just use Weina’s Bio from Goodreads:

Weina is the author of The Moon in the Palace and The Empress of Bright Moon, historical novels of Empress Wu of China.

From Weina: “I love to see how words form an image that transcends the banal reality or how words join together to create a morsel of wisdom that tickles your mind.”

Born and raised in China, Weina has worked as a journalist, a magazine editor, and an adjunct professor.

She received an M.A. in English from Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas, where she was inspired to write about Empress Wu of China when she took a class in Asian American literature.

She lives in Flower Mound, Texas, with her loving husband and two children.

The Moon in the Palace is available on Amazon and furthermore you can follow Weina on Facebook and Twitter or just visit her Website.

Try to check also out other posts about The Moon in the Palace by fellow bloggers such as Nicky Chen from Behind the Story, Amanda from Two Americans in China, Autumn Ashbough at When West Dates East ,Marta from Marta Lives in China and last but not least Jocelyn Eikenburg at Speaking of China.

Crazy Family, Our cute son

The Circus Next Door

March 6, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 31 Comments

One thing which is great about living here again in the same building where I grew up is the huge square next to it. As I wrote before that there are several times a year some events such as fairs or even traveling circuses. Last time I visited a circus here was over 15 years ago and just last September we missed Europes biggest travelling circus as my wife and Nathan were in China and I had to deal with other things. This week once again a circus visited my hometown and we finally had the opportunity to go there together as my wife never had been to one and of course neither did Nathan.

circ2 — The white camel looked rather dumb…

This circus was not the biggest which had visited this town thus far but also not the smallest. So far I have seen really small ones here where the tent could hold perhaps less than a hundred people and really big ones with a capacity of 4500 people! As you can see there are huge differences when it comes to these kind of events. Some circuses have a lot of animals in their performances and do not have any at all. Now I don’t want to go into any discussion about how the animals have to suffer in order to learn the tricks for the performances but especially as a young child a circus is something magical. I still have fond memories when a circus did a march through the city center with various animals such as elephants and giraffes. Of course this is forbidden these days but it left an impression in my memories which I will never forget.

When we planned to go to the circus performance we were not sure in the beginning whether Nathan would like it or could sit still for roughly two hours. But all our worries were for naught as he was so amazed by everything that he didn’t want to leave at all in the end. As the circus is one of the smaller ones they had only few people performing and all of them had several acts. For example the “announcer” was also playing his part as a clown and as a fire breather. Besides performances by the artists there were also some with animals such as Camels and various horses. In between they also had a short break in which children could ride those animals. The overall theme of this circus was “Frozen” (the Walt Disney movie). Right after entering the tent the kids were greeted by Kristoff the Snowman and during several performances the artists were dressed up as characters from that movie. The clown also did a great job by involving some people from the audience to do some things in the circus ring. Even though the program is rather slim compared to the bigger circuses it is still entertaining and a change from the everyday life.

All in all I must say that I enjoyed it a lot and also Nathans enthusiasm was really great. I hope there will be some big circus coming here again in the next years as we just missed last September the biggest traveling circus in Europe (Circus Krone). Anyways I am glad that we went there and now I am just hoping that Nathan didn’t learn anything stupid from the fire breather and starts eating up some lit candles….

The line is getting shorter after half hour…

P.S. The quality of the pictures is rather low as they were all taken with a mobile phone

Have you visited a traveling circus before?

Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts. Furthermore I also have a YouTube Channel in which some videos might pop up from time to time

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Crazy Family, Mom in Law

Living in a world of your own

February 28, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 49 Comments

Everyone was already in a situation where you thought you did something such as paying some bill but in the end you basically forgot to do it. This can be rather annoying at time because you were at first 100% sure you did pay the bill which makes it even more frustrating to see that you were wrong in the end. Let me tell you there is nothing bad about it as it happens more often than not to me, especially when it comes to bringing the trash out (could be also my mind is doing it on purpose because who really likes to bring out the trash…). However this can be also very aggravating when it does happen to a person all the time and thus not only causes delay in doing certain things but also waste your time.

Who could I possibly talk about? My dear mother-in-law of course! I mentioned in various posts before that she is a rather odd person who is always right. No matter how clear it is that she did something wrong she is always able to blame others for it or it never ever happened. The thing is it wasn’t bothering me/ us so much as we didn’t have to depend too much on her most of the times but this changed a bit over time as she also started to visit us each year for three months and so on. Of course it wouldn’t matter at all in case these things were about trivial stuff but it usually always happens when it is about important or urgent matters.

Last time my wife was with Nathan in China she wanted to take some cash with her to Germany. Okay no problem there as she just had to go to bank with her mother (as the money is on her account) and withdraw some Euros. Now the problem wasn’t with getting the money but to find it again before flying to Germany. Few days before my wife and Nathan were about to fly back she started to pack and noticed that the cash vanished. She went to her mother and asked her where it could be. So MIL told that she gave it to her. Okay no trouble there but my wife couldn’t remember this at all so she asked her again. MIL then explained step by step how she gave the money to her when they arrived in the apartment. She even explained how she was giving it and with which hand. But as my wife couldn’t remember this at all MIL was just like “I gave it to you so it is your problem now!”. OKAY…according to my wife this went on for several hours until MIL finally decided to check her closet for something and voilà: THE FREAKING MONEY WAS WITH HER STUFF!!! Basically dear mother-in-law just created her own world once again and made up this story while she actually put the money to her closet and never gave it to my wife.

Tierpark6 — Just for fun, a big fish (according to MIL)

Another example just to show you MIL’s insanity happened few weeks ago. As you might know both my wife and I have a little business (okay mostly my wife as I was just too ill to get anything done so far but things are slowly improving for me). All of our customers are from China so my wife has to send packages there every week. In case people buy some smaller amount my wife waits for a bit and then sends a big package to her parents containing stuff of several customers who had smaller orders. These things then are being put into smaller packages by MIL and then send to the customer. This actually sounds more complicated than it is because my wife strictly separates each of the items which belong to one customer and attached the name and address of this person. So all MIL has to do is to take it out, put it into some smaller packages (in case my wife didn’t put it already into some smaller boxes), attach the address of the buyer and give to some logistic company. Well well there is not really ever anything easy when it comes to MIL.

Few weeks ago my wife sent such a package containing the items of several buyers but there was one item without an adress as the buyer was just moving to a new place. The customer then sent few days later the new address to my wife and there was so far no problem. But the trouble of course started when my wife called her mother and gave the address for this last package. MIL was like “What package? I sent everything already away! There is nothing here!” WHAT??? How is this possible as there was this one package without any address! MIL was 100% sure that she sent this package but she didn’t remember any longer to whom. My wife then spent the whole day trying to figure out where on earth her mother could have sent this box. Late in the evening MIL then contacted my wife “Oh, by the way I found the missing box, it was with my stuff”. Guess how furious my wife was after wasting a whole day trying to track down where the box could be.

In the end father-in-law’s words ring too true “She is just crazy, she lives in a world of her own” and “She is able to bend reality and thus the truth to her own liking, she is never wrong about anything. Just crazy, you know”. This poor man living with her for so many decades, no wonder he developed several OCD’s over the years.

Do you know someone who creates her/ his own reality when it comes to such things?