They've come down for a quiet little chat

I had just finished talking to Peter on Skype and Alex gets the teapot out. He is going to make Chinese tea, so I go out to have some. He has a good quality tea and it is good to drink.

Often in the evenings when tea is made at this time of the day, his cousin and aunt come from upstairs too. Tonight in the room were eight of us.

I was sitting on the couch and Alex was beside me making the tea. It is a bit of a process. On his other side was his little five year old niece. I was watching TV, the English news. The niece had the Ipad going with some program she likes to watch, and it was blaring out in Mandarin.

On my right, in a chair is Alex’s cousin’s husband, quite a nice young man, who is on the phone in Mandarin. To Alex’s left is his father’s cousin, around sixty years old I guess, and beside him is Alex’s father. Opposite me, on a little stool is Alex’s cousin. They are getting settled when the aunty also aged about 60 walks in.

Alex is making tea for all, the ipad is blaring, I am watching TV in English and the cousin’s husband is on the phone in Mandarin.

Making the plans for this wedding seems rather a convoluted affair, and everyone has their tuppence worth to add. I think they are taking about where the reception is and how they are going to get there. They need several cars to get the bridal party etc down there. This entails quite a bit of talking, generally all at once, and in this case in several languages. 

In most cities there is a local dialect which is nothing like Mandarin. So most people can speak several languages, they grow up with it. Alex says the little five year old can understand Mandarin and the local dialect. But Alex can’t understand it at all.

So we have the aunty, cousin and father’s cousin constantly switching from Mandarin to the local dialect depending on who they are talking to. Because there are so many little conversations going on amongst the seven of them, intermittent phone calls coming and going, and my English TV program they have to raise their voices to be heard over the others.

So Alex can understand some of it, the rest of them can understand all of it, and I am sitting there like a stunned mullet and can understand none of it. Also with all the noise, I can’t hear the TV either.  Ah, for a nice quiet little chat.

Planning in advance...not!

Planning a wedding is a stressful business. But when you are Chinese and everything is left to the last minute, then the stress levels are inclined to rise a little.

There are 16 days till it is Alex’s wedding day. He still does not know who will be his best man. The one he has chosen may not be free on the day, so if not he will have to choose someone else, apparently there are several people he can choose from.

The other day Zheng Pin chose her dress, well I think so. I’m still waiting to see if it is red or white. I think maybe she has chosen two, so maybe one white and one red. It is quite common for Chinese brides to change into different clothes 2 or 3 times during the two or three hours of the wedding breakfast.

It is interesting to be an outsider and watch the dynamics of a family. Although Alex’s family is basically he and his father, and his cousin and aunt up one level, there are some interesting moments. There was a slight eruption last night, as happens from time to time with these two. Apparently it is over who will sit where.  I don’t think anything is on paper, and everyone wants everything their own way. Goodness only knows what else has to be arranged, but I foresee some fireworks over the next two weeks. And it seems to take three times as many words to say what we would say. If I wanted to make a statement in English I would make it. But they seem to spend ages saying the same thing, and not always with a satisfactory outcome. It’s a funny old world.  As I write, the aunt from upstairs has walked in and a rapid altercation is taking place. I’m off for a shower and will leave them to it.

The Chinese people generally are noisy, loud, vocal, and stubborn. I have been having a little battle of my own with a window. Let’s face it, you need fresh air, even if it is the middle of winter, you need at least one window in the lounge room fully open. But I get so cold! So I go and close it. When I am not looking, Alex’s father goes and quietly opens it again.  He has this implacable face, inscrutable; there is no way of knowing what he is thinking. So when he is gone, I close it again. We have been having this little battle since I got here. I guess it will go on until I leave.

Ah the joys of advance planning…..

Chinglish cooking lesson number 1

Cooking and eating bacon, eggs and fried tomatoes with chopsticks.

Well, it is to be said that a Chinese kitchen is not what I am used to. Occasionally I had cooked bacon and eggs for Alex, along with some fried tomatoes. So he put in an order for me to do that for breakfast today. That’s all very well when you have the equipment, but not so easy when you don’t.

I had bought the frying pan in Xiamen. It was not big, so I knew I’d be doing a few batches. I’d also found the bacon, which is probably not available here in Putian.

In this kitchen, as with most Chinese kitchens there is one electric hot plate and everything gets cooked on that. They are very fast, a small kettle will boil on it in about two minutes. I guess they are designed for wok cooking.

The cooking utensils consisted of one metal small fish slice thing and chopsticks. I managed the cooking reasonably well, doing it in batches. But I was cooking for several people. There was Alex, and his wife, (they have a strange arrangement at the moment, it seems like she stays here for weekends only, so she was here last night), his father, his 5 year old niece from one flight up, and me. Oh, and his aunty from one flight up who came to check on things.

But then you have the problem of eating the stuff. The bacon is not too bad, you can pick it up with chopsticks and chew bits off. There are no knives and forks to break up the food. The egg is a bit messier, picking the whole thing up and taking bites off it as you go. But the fried tomatoes were really tricky. I suggest you have a go at picking up a slippery half of a fried tomato with chopsticks and eating it without dropping it all over the place and sploshing juice everywhere. They didn’t really know how to go about it, so it sort of got shovelled in the best way they could.

I cheated. Although there are no knives and forks there is one desert spoon and one teaspoon in the house. I got the desert spoon and sort of cut up the egg and tomato with that then ate it with the chopsticks.

Ah well, the dishes are done and they are off again to find her a wedding dress. She took one home that she didn’t like, a white one. He wants her to wear white and she wants to wear red. I wait to see the outcome and who wins this little battle.