Brief updates: weather, friends, TV, movies, transport

WEATHER: June serves up pleasant weather where I live. July and August are unbearably hot and humid, but June's [usually] mild rains, known as the plum rain season, make for bearable temperatures. I'm trying to get out as much as I can before it becomes too hot. Today we had torrential rains instead of mild rains, but that's not common.

FOREIGN FRIENDS: Most of my foreign friends in town are leaving for the summer, but will be back in the fall. Chinese friends will still be around though, most of them anyway.

TV VIEWERSHIP: I get CNN International and Fox News on satellite TV, so for the most part, I hear the same news you do. I usually watch CNN in the morning (Anderson Cooper, et al) and Fox and Friends in the evening. (I'm in a different time zone, remember?) The toxic, argumentative political atmosphere bothers me though, so lately I've had have to turn off the TV often to maintain peace of heart and mind.

MOVIES: I don't watch movies much, but I watched the movie "Lion" on the airplane a few weeks ago, and I loved it. It is about an Indian boy who ends up being adopted by a family in Tasmania, where I once lived. The boy arrived in Tasmania the same year I did, in 1987. The movie is a tearjerker.

TRANSPORTATION: Bamboo Forest is opening more and more subway lines, and it makes life easier. When it rains and I have to get out, I stress out trying to plan the best way to get where I'm going and back. Taxis fill up with passengers during rainstorms and vacant ones can be hard to find; e-bike travel is not a great option; I'll get wet walking to and from the subway station, and sometimes at the other end, my destination is too far from the subway station. Buses seldom go where I want to go, so they are ruled out quickly. If you've always had a car, you've probably never had to think about this kind of thing.

Hope you've enjoyed these random updates!

Miserable bus, lovely hotel room

I had a miserable bus ride yesterday.* A 3-hour trip took 5 hours. We were crammed in like sardines and I couldn't move my arms for all that time. It was filthy, hot and muddy. The windows were fogged up and I couldn't see the gorgeous countryside. I tried to block the entire wretched experience out of my mind even as it happened. It reminded me of the good old days of travel in the Middle Kingdom, and made me realize that some of those good old days were really not good at all. Some were very third-worldish. My mind had done me a favor by helping me forget, but I blew it by reminiscing via re-enactment. There was no other way to get where I was going though.

But today* is better. I'm in a coastal city now. I can see the Pacific Ocean from the window of my gorgeous, clean and spacious hotel room.

I ran next door to meet someone at Starbucks this morning in the pouring rain. When I got back at lunch time, it was still raining hard.

When I stay in a nice hotel, I am always torn between seeing the sights of the city or spending time in the hotel room to soak up a relaxing environment...to get my money's worth.

Today, God made the decision for me. The rain was too hard to go out. I put on my pajamas, got my Kindle, and read nearly 300 pages of a 550-page novel. Heavenly. I can't remember the last time I had time on my hands to relax like this.

I'll be back in my own place soon. After weeks on the road, I am ready for some clean outer clothes. The ones I have must be filled with enough germs, dirt and bacteria to infect a major city.

___
*When I say "today," I am talking about the day I wrote this, not the day I posted this.

A friend's wedding, part one

I was invited to a wedding a few weeks ago. A friend of mine called me on a Sunday afternoon and invited me to her wedding the following weekend. I didn't know she had a boyfriend (none of the others in her group of friends knew either). So we were surprised. But it is not a surprise that we were surprised. People around here keep things to themselves. Even big things like that.

Since the wedding would be in her hometown an hour away, and she didn't want me to suffer on the public bus that would manage to make the one-hour car trip into 2-3 hour bus ride, she arranged a ride for me with one of her friends. 

I was worried her friend would drive too fast. He didn't drive fast, but he did stop in the middle of a highway a couple of times -- even backing up once -- because he wasn't sure which exit to take. Nearly had a heart attack when he did that!

I expected the ceremony to be held in a hotel like most of them are. There are two broad categories of weddings. City weddings held in hotel banquet halls and village weddings held in the home village. I was surprised when we drove into a neighborhood that looked like this.

Turns out, this is the girl's home "village." It was a village wedding.

Here is the gate to her village. The two "scientists" (one an engineer, one a lab worker) with whom I rode to the event are about to enter. 

 Here's the view from the front gate.

The big black cauldrons sat outside the front gate. The multipurpose food cookers/glove warmers look a little out of place in the fancy neighborhood. Looks a bit Granny Clampett-like. Made me smile.

I hate the mere sight of these firecracker strings. It portends future discomfort for my ears.

Water sloshed all over the entry walkway is a clue that despite the luxurious exterior, this really is a village. I found out that the government took the valuable land these farmers owned and in exchange built them these huge houses. Made of concrete with no insulation, the houses are just big empty concrete vaults. The furnishings inside are generally not up to the same standard as the house. Look how closely together this concrete mansion is to the next door neighbor's. You may or may not be able to put a 12-inch ruler between the two.

This kitchen is right by the main gate ... not inside the house itself. In Chinese villages, it is typical to have the kitchen separate from the main house. And to leave the energy efficiency sticker on the refrigerator forever.

When I got inside the house, the bride's mother decided I should walk up to the third floor to see the bride's bedroom. I'm not sure why that was so important. Maybe because I was the only foreigner at the wedding, I would be less of a distraction tucked away on the upper floor.

So here's the bride's bedroom. The bedding is a gift (probably from the groom's family to the bride, I'm not sure). Those big dolls wouldn't likely be a part of an American wedding. 

Here are a few cold dishes that would be served during the wedding feast. There were 40 tables with six people each, or so I was told. I didn't actually count.

This is the room on the 3rd floor where the bride and groom's parents would eat the wedding banquet separate from the other guests. The furniture in this room was exquisite and expensive. The rest of us sat on saw horses. After all, this is a village wedding, and no one expected them to have 240 individual chairs for their guests.

The symbol for double happiness was cut out of red paper and pasted on the windows. Double happiness signifies a wedding.

On the third floor was a living room area where some women and children waited for the festivities to start. They watched Winnie the Pooh or some such program on the flat-screen TV up there near the bride's bedroom.

Here are photos of the bride and groom in hard-bound photo books that they had published prior to the wedding. These wedding photo shoots remind me of Glamour Shots, because the photographs look nothing like the actual people. When I finally met the groom, I didn't recognize him -- except for the build, he looked totally different than this photo of him. He had eyeglasses, a different hairdo, and different clothes as you might imagine. The clothes used for the photo shoot are borrowed from the photographer. The bride does not have a white dress for her wedding, it's all for the photos.

I'll tell you the rest in part two, coming soon.