Asian culture at its finest!
Of course, I am not going to waste an entire blog entry on juicy info on how I landed a completely self-absorbed Chinese arrogant, but rather reveal a small piece of the agonizing scenarios I was forced through being with him.
One would automatically assume that if you travel 10 hours by plane to the Eastern hemisphere of the globe and you come to visit your future in-laws, that you would be somewhat relieved of the insane amount of pressure placed upon your dainty shoulders as you set foot inside the car ready for you at the airport. You would think that after 4 months of being absent in your beloved's life, that you would be greeted with hugs and kisses.
I was.
But then quickly escorted to the center of town where we were supposed to meet the dreaded in-laws.
In-laws in most European countries mean your beloved's parents. But in China, in-laws mean the entire goddamned family.
For the most part I would be thrilled to meet native Chinese people and show them the wonders of Europe, such as napkins and proper dining etiquette, but seeing as I had spent the last 18 hours of my life boarding planes and trying my hardest to avoid airplane food - I was looking like a drowned and beaten up bag of kittens and could hardly think of anything else but eating food.
And here were the people, dying to meet me and become impressed with the glory and beauty that my Chinese fiancé had promised them.
In-laws' hopes of the future bride
So after the many hand-shakes that they were all so proud to show they had practiced, we got to sit down in a private suite at a fancy hotel, with a giant turn-table at the center of the table. Within seconds the table was piled up with food of any size and shapes.
Being as hungry as I was, eating barely cooked chicken feet and fish eyes was a battle easily won. Hunger over sanity.
So imagine what they eat for breakfast
It soon dawned on me, that when I was busy gobling down the rice that I figured would be the best thing to fill my empty stomach with (safer than the fried doggy, right?), that I had become the center of everyone's attention. The men were busy raising tiny beer glasses at me while the women were all whispering to each other, their eyes easily trimming off my clothes and skin.
And then, when I decided it was safe for me to offer them all a polite and somewhat awkward smile (probably with seaweed stuck between my lovely front teeth), hell broke loose.
The women would fight over which one was allowed to turn the table and hereby offer me the nearest available dish to me.
I politely refused. (Insert an inevitable Disney gasp of distress sound)
To be honest, I had eaten my share of the food within the first 10 minutes, only to realize that the custom in this region of China, was to spend the next 4 hours eating food.
So I did...
'Damn you, ever-so-dilating-stomach!'
Needless to say, the dinner party was a disaster. I had a hard time understanding the few sentences in broken English thrown at me and the endless ramblings in Chinese, that, obviously, all concerned me. And I was feeling sick to my stomach from eating so much food.
And to top it off, I have been told afterwards, that some of the aunties there considered me somewhat a pig for eating so much food.
Well you offered it to me with a cultural gun pointed at my brain, so what did you expect woman?!
Sitting in the car with only my actual in-laws in the back-seat, I was ready to vomit as we drove through the heavy polluted fumes that surrounded the city. Even at night time.
I was exhausted to the point where I couldn't care less about the stain on my shirt that I was so incredibly embarrassed about at the dinner party. Nor did I care if I did disappoint a few of the uncles for not thinking Mao was the greatest man ever. Or the aunties for not already being pregnant with five healthy Chinese communist leaders..
Oh well. At least we would be going home and enjoy a quiet evening, right?
Wrong.
We took an immediate trip south of the city, to the country side where we would hook up with some even more distant relatives that were apparently also excited to see me.
I will spare the details of the long drive there and just let you know that I actually slept a good long 4 hours in the car before we got there.
If you have ever had the stereotypical image of a village in the country side where people practically live in small huts surrounded by overly harvested farms and had goats inside their cottages - you were right about this one.
They slept on a fucking slab of rock!
And so did I.
Until the return of the dreaded Chinese dinner.
The long haul from Denmark to Fuzhou in Northern China, the lack of hydration to my body and the insane amount of acids stuffed into my belly within a couple of hours would naturally strike my body like lighting does a silly, lonesome cow on the top of a hill.
Needless to say, the cow died.
Along with my pride as I had to escape the rock I was sleeping on, stumble over a few goats and crash into a wall that wasn't quite the door I was looking for - until I made it outside in complete darkness and pouring rain. At least out here no one could wake up from the horrible moaning of my digestive system.
I was only wearing a thin pajamas and wielding a tiny flashlight as I sauntered down the small steps leading to a, by now, very muddy trail that led to the back of the garden.
You are quite correct in your assumption. There was no bathroom. There was a corner of the garden where they would usually have a big hole and squat over this to do their business.
A luxury only the richest farmers can afford
Now imagine that a 'bathroom' like this is in a cold, insanely dark and very rainy garden and you will picture the horror painted on my face and the glee of my bowels.
So as I squatted there over the mud-hole to do my business, I could suddenly no longer feel the rain soaking my pajamas. I looked up only to find the not-so-easily-disturbed-grandma who had decided to come to my rescue after hearing me crash with the goats in the house and she was holding an umbrella over my head.
How convenient. Thanks grandma.
I tried to fend her off as I was finding it all rather embarrassing, but she was insistent on helping me to the extent of holding my pants.
Once I had convinced her that everything was alright, we walked back inside the house where she was so nice to offer me to sleep there on the floor with her. I tried my best to motion to my sleeping fiancé there on the rock bed looking irresistible in my current state of mind, but she grabbed my arm and dragged me into submission.
And there I was..
Somewhere approximately 300 km from Fuzhou in Fujian province, in a tiny cottage that would probably be swimming in mud by the time of morning, surrounded by smelly goats and snoring Chinese farmers and with grandma's arm neatly tucked over my waist with her hand strangely resting on my left boob.
And the last thought that occurred to me before I fell asleep was: God I'm hungry..
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