Yesterday was another crazy day! After trying to recuperate from the big hike up the big mountain, we decided to take it easy. The girls were busy getting started on decorations and cooking stuff for the wedding when the Chinese cleaning lady came running down stairs and frantically telling us in "Chin-glish" something really bad happened to Michaela, whom we understood to be on the roof, where the laundry room is. Jonathon raced upstairs to find that Michaela had had a seizure and was lying in a pile between two washing machines. All told, it was a real blessing that it wasnt way worse, because she could have gone off of the roof easily enough, not a good idea when you are 6 stories up. The Chinese have never heard of the American Disabilities Act, and don't think they would care if they had.
This was potentially disastrous, because often when she has a seizure she loses all her short term memory for about most of a day afterwards. She often sits around remarking that "I think I must have had a seizure!" over and over again. You can tell her over and over what happened and she won't remember you told her anything. Not a good condition for the bride 2 days before the wedding! Luckily, she wasn't in as bad of shape as she usually is in, and after she had about a three hour nap, she was pretty much back to her old self. Praise the lord for that as well!
Things went along quite well without her, and pretty soon it was time for Michaela's personal shower, so it was boys night out; time for a bachelor party, Chinese style!
For the bachelor party, Jonathon wanted to go to a "hot-pot" restaurant. If you don't already know, hot-Pot is a kind of restaurant where you sit around a round table with a gas burner built into it, recessed into the middle of the table. The wait staff then bring out a big stainless steel bowl with three different sections out filled with different broth based watery soups. When they come to a rolling boil, you drop in all the stuff you ordered to be brought out; in our case it was much mutton, beef, pork, and then some veggies, potatoes, sweet potatoes, Lotus roots, cilantro, etc, but could be tofu, fish heads, pig faces, chicken feet, entrails, etc, just as easily. Then you just take whatever raw food you want to cook and drop it into the hot pot, wait for it to cook, and then fish it out again when it is done. It is obviously best done among friends, because the odds of actually fishing out exactly what you put in is pretty slim. It was a pretty clean restaurant, even by our American standards. When we got there and were ordering, I asked if they had or would serve me "go-row", one of the first words I asked how to say in Chinese. The server, who happened to be a student at Sias, was horrified! And told me in good English that they didn't serve dog meat! Shoot, another dream dashed. Jonathon informed me that it was only in the very nicest restaurants that served it.
This was potentially disastrous, because often when she has a seizure she loses all her short term memory for about most of a day afterwards. She often sits around remarking that "I think I must have had a seizure!" over and over again. You can tell her over and over what happened and she won't remember you told her anything. Not a good condition for the bride 2 days before the wedding! Luckily, she wasn't in as bad of shape as she usually is in, and after she had about a three hour nap, she was pretty much back to her old self. Praise the lord for that as well!
Things went along quite well without her, and pretty soon it was time for Michaela's personal shower, so it was boys night out; time for a bachelor party, Chinese style!
For the bachelor party, Jonathon wanted to go to a "hot-pot" restaurant. If you don't already know, hot-Pot is a kind of restaurant where you sit around a round table with a gas burner built into it, recessed into the middle of the table. The wait staff then bring out a big stainless steel bowl with three different sections out filled with different broth based watery soups. When they come to a rolling boil, you drop in all the stuff you ordered to be brought out; in our case it was much mutton, beef, pork, and then some veggies, potatoes, sweet potatoes, Lotus roots, cilantro, etc, but could be tofu, fish heads, pig faces, chicken feet, entrails, etc, just as easily. Then you just take whatever raw food you want to cook and drop it into the hot pot, wait for it to cook, and then fish it out again when it is done. It is obviously best done among friends, because the odds of actually fishing out exactly what you put in is pretty slim. It was a pretty clean restaurant, even by our American standards. When we got there and were ordering, I asked if they had or would serve me "go-row", one of the first words I asked how to say in Chinese. The server, who happened to be a student at Sias, was horrified! And told me in good English that they didn't serve dog meat! Shoot, another dream dashed. Jonathon informed me that it was only in the very nicest restaurants that served it.
We had to really work at being cunning about who pays the bill. In Chinese culture, it is the host that should ALWAYS pay, regardless of their circumstances, so he always worked really hard to pay for everything himself, even his own bachelor party. It would be fine to let him do it sometimes, but he had been consistently paying for nearly all my taxi rides, etc, anywhere we go; insisting that he would "lose face" if he didn't pay for everything. That is fine up to a point; I try to be culturally sensitive, but after that point, I think he needs to be culturally sensitive to me as well. I feel like I would lose face in a big way if I, a well established middle-aged American business man, lets a newly graduated, nearly married Chinese guy that is looking for work, pay for my every need. Besides, using Chinese money feels just like using Monopoly money to me... it still doesn't feel like money. And everything is sooo cheap!
And can I say; just for the record, that I am in total amazement that my Father in law is so hip, that at 78 years old, still willing to jump on a jumbo jet, travel across the world to a completely foreign culture and be totally cool with trying and eating new foods, cooked in new ways. Amazing! I can only hope to be alive at 78, and dont have much hope of traveling the world...
So, after the Hot-Pot, Jonathon wanted to take us all to a Foot massage place. I was a little nervous about it after my last massage experience here in China, which I don't think I blogged about. The first one wasn't a bad experience so much, but it was just totally different than anything you would ever experience in the States. We drove across town in cabs and arrived at a kung fu training school. The Kung Fu master was also a masseuse. The rooms were filthy and looked sooo very Chinese; that's not necessarily a bad thing, but Americans just have a much higher standard of hygiene than Chinese. They did put down clean towels over the massage tables, so it wasn't a big deal anyway, but man; for crying out loud, wipe down the walls, or throw a coat of paint on once a century or so. The Kung fu master had a kid rubbing me down to soften me up and it was pretty obvious that he didn't really know what he was doing. And Jeez-Louise, but that room was cold! But when the "master" came and started working on me; Oh Man! That dude knew what he was doing. Man, he put the hurt on me! I got worked on for about more than an hour. Just right for a guy with stiff muscles and bad back after sitting in an airplane for more than a day!
But anyway, the massage place last night was completely different; firstly, it was spotlessly clean and had more of a spa feel to it. You took your shoes off at the door; they provided little sandals for you. Then we walked up stairs but they had to split us up, 4 and 3, as there were 7 of us. I was with Jonathon and Greg, another Anglo friend of his. This place had a TV in the room, hot herbal tea (with chrysanthemums floating in it?), slices of watermelons, and oranges to eat, as if we needed anything to eat after gorging ourselves on hot pot. There were 3 young little Chinese girls doing the massage, and they started out by having us remove socks, roll up pant legs, and immersing our feet in piping hot water, while they started massaging our foreheads and scalps. Then they started applying lotion and massaging our feet. I noticed there was a lot of tittering and giggling going on and I could tell that I was the topic of discussion, because my masseuse would speak, tap my feet, and then the giggling would start. I leaned forward and raised my eyebrows at Jonathon with a questioning look. He laughed and told me that they were pretty freaked out by three things: they had never seen feet so hairy, feet so wide, and they couldn't figure out what my tattoo was, I guess they don't have barbed wire here in China... But anyway, they did a good job and also had a bag of really hot rock salt that they would warm your legs up with, as they massaged them. My masseuse got a little distracted since she only needed one hand for this; started texting. When she got busy with her phone, my leg started scalding the hair off! But again, this American isn't going to start sniveling! Then they had us roll over and put our faces into the face pocket and massaged our backs. They kept this up for 2 hours, all the while people coming in and plying us with more tea, fruits, candy, etc... A little slice of heaven, that. If I were insanely rich, that is how I would spend the last 2 hours of my day everyday! SO relaxing! My crazy tendons and neck muscles that are forever bothering me had never felt so good since I was 8 years old, I think. The crazy thing of it was how much this cost: Seventy-five Yuan, or just under $10.00 per person. Pretty darn reasonable by anybody's standards, I think. You couldn't buy the oranges for that back home!
Our relaxation was short-lived, however... when we came home to home at Peter Hall, a pipe had burst on the third floor and there was water everywhere on the two lower floors! A real tribute to Chinese craftsmanship. Everybody was mopping, toweling, and brooming water into buckets. There were a dozen Chinese workers standing around watching the Americans clean up. The water was just dumping out while they stood around discussing what to do about it. Finally someone thought of turning it off. It was seriously for inches deep in one guys room. That's one thing I've noticed about Chinese construction workers, is they usually have 10 people doing a job that would ordinarily take 3 guys to do in America, with most of them standing around watching. Well, anyway, I'm off to bed! We have an early day tomorrow.
Tony and Jonathon (This is what Jonathon did all week long)
Cleaning up major water.
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