The Chinese Wedding

My brother got married in China at the beginning of August. Here's an account of the trip

Dramatis Personae

Mairtin: Me
Eimhin: The artist (His animated short has been selected for a film festival in LA), 195cm tall. at least 20cm greater than what is usually seen in China.
Diorraing: The kid. Does not really like chinese food...
Cillian: The Groom. A mathematician.
Jin Xi: The Bride. Generally our interpreter.
David: The Best Man. Astrophysicist. 199cm, 100Kg, can dead lift double body weight; a monster.
Jin Xi's Mother: Encourages Diorraing to eat, giving us a battery of medicines at the slightest indication of a cold, rumour has it prices drop by 20% when she walks into a shop.
Jin Xi's Grandmother: The family matriarch. The Hardy Old Lady. Master haggler.
Jin Xi's Grandfather: Happy man. Missing a middle finger. Delights in telling us stories when we won't understand (always). Looks like he he should be a movie star/celebrity, reminds me of Beat Takeshi.


T-minus 12 days
Went to zoo with younguns.
Molly was particularly taken with the apes and monkeys.

The flight leaving before us at our gate was full of annoying teenagers returning from a language course, I slept on the ground for a while..
In Amsterdam, Eimhin caused his usual delays going through security for our connecting flight to Chengdu, too many pockets and too many things in his bag don't you know...

T-minus 11 days
Arrived in Cheng Du without further incident.
Got a lift from a friend of Jin Xi's family from Cheng Du to Pengzhou not as hair raising as the car trips in Quanzhou in 2005.
Went for a walk around the town, were stared at and had people roar "Hello" at us- as it happens few tourists come by this part of China, well except to see the Panda Reserve... I'll get to that later.

T-minus 10 days
We went to the local park for a stroll.
The crickets/cicads were extremely loud, I'd wager pretty close to the threshold limits for exposure to sound in an industrial setting... Fed some coy/goldfish/carp, beasts of fish! Most were at least a foot long, dropping food into their pond led to the bubbling feeding frenzy generally reserved for piranhas in cartoons.
Jin Xi brought Diorraing skating on the outdoor Roller Disco, here we were subject to more staring, surreptitious camera phone snap shots, ultimately leading to posing for pictures like sideshow attractions... demeaning? Of course not! They were particularly awed when we told them that Eimhin's shoe size is Wŭ Shi (50 European).

T-minus 9 days
Got up early, went to see the Pandas (Xiun Mao). Giant ones and Red ones.
Giant Pandas give birth to twins 45% of the time in captivity. They are shockingly cute and useless, I mean really; Black and White, feed solely on Bamboo (only 27 of the 60 species that they could eat), kids are not independent of their mothers for the first 18 months, take another 3-4 years to reach sexual maturity, stacked odds...
The red ones look like foxes and actually move, I even saw a couple of them scrapping... "Skidoosh"
Continuing with a tradition of large-scale eating, Eimhin and I finished off ten courses at a family dinner, the locals were shocked.

T-minus 8 days
Made my first wantons and jaoza today, jaoza should look like fans or some such- of course mine looked like tied sacks. We made 100s of them though!
Stomach took a beating from the previous night, so I did not have much for lunch... I'm getting too old for this shit.
Learned how to play Mahjong, of the two variations they mentioned I'm not sure which one I know.
Bought 2 bottles of orange juice, 2 of grape drink, 1 of peach drink, 1 of pepsi, 2 of water [all 1.5L volumes], plus some snacks for less than 100RMB, less than a tenner... wow-wee

T-minus 7 days
Played Mahjong for a bit. Lost. Went to see a man about a suit. My disproportionately long arms were remarked upon. In the end, got a suit, shirt and tie for less than 60Euro... Hot diggity. Went shopping again, Eimhin bought imported raisins that cost a quarter of the total shopping bill, a shockingly high ratio considering it was such relatively small amount of it. The bitterest irony of it was that the raisins were shipped from Dublin 15. If he had gone domestic then the price would have been at the most a tenth of it.

T-minus 6 days
Got up early. Took train from Cheng Du to Cha ning, strangely the train is less comfortable and takes two hours longer than the 5 hour bus journey... Went for the first of many hosted 15 course meals.

T-minus 5 days
Went shopping in Chaning, well browsing at least. More open gawking and staring to be had by the locals. Another big fancy meal. Went to Karaoke, all the chinese people were shockingly good at it, at least three of them were classically trained in singing. I thought it best not to partake...

T-minus 4 days
David arrived. Had dinner. A snippet of the conversation during dinnger:
Jin Xi's Grandmother: [unintelligible Chinese]
Jin Xi: [Unintelligible reply]
Cillian: Did she just call me "that foreigner" again? Remind her my name is Cillian!

Oh! How we laughed and fell about the place, the offspring of "Meet the Parents" and "Lost in Translation"

T-minus 3 days
Got up early, went up... and up... to the Bamboo Forest. It was amazing... the first day going outdoors that I was not slick with sweat... I mean the sights were great. All along the cliff faces in the bamboo forest there are carvings from the Three Kingdoms era. People stared as much at Eimhin and David as they did the statues in the area... One asked for a photo with them [Eimhin and David, I mean. They weren't asking statues for photos]

T-minus 2 days
We found out that the locals have been calling us "Wei Go Ren" ["Foreigner" or some such]. Thought it fair to start saying "Zhong Gua Ren" in response.
Went to the local gym. Taekwando and Wushu is taught by a guy named Qibo. Cillian introduced me to him. We did a tiny amount of pushing hands, then light sparring. fast little bugger. He kept kicking me in the stomach, I have 20Kg and half a foot in height on him, so he kept bouncing off of me
I obliged Qibo in a gloved bout of fisticuffs. He got me with a delightful hook that made a good contact on my jaw, it clicked for the rest of the day. I kept stepping on his lead foot, by accident, I assure.
Went for another multi-course meal and then some more karaoke. There were no uber talented singers so I brought the thunder, did some renditions of Britney Spears [her golden age stuff of course].

T-minus 1 day
Went back to the gym again. Played around with a Jian this time, tried butterfly kicks, failed. Did sanzhan for Qibo, realises why he was so out of breath during sparring yesterday, while i was hale and hearty. Got to palm one of his round house kicks.

W-Day

Kidnapping and Making Away with a Brother's Prospective Bride

Aside: Context aside, the wedding day is representative of the The Siquan trip, flying blind with last minute instruction or miming.

Got up early, had a shave. Put on a my "Sunday Best", Spirit Level cuff-links are a must.
The wedding started at 0830Hrs. Irish contingent, with compulsory interpreter [xi-xi, the bridesmaid] were talked through the in-and-outs of chinese wedding traditions accrued over the course of centuries.

1. We have to push open the door of the Bride's home a crack.* 
2. Once opened, we throw in red packets of money, to buy admission for Cillian. 
3. He promised to wash the dishes and love her, etc.** 
4.  Jin Xi was won over by the promises and left the home, with red silken veils hiding her face.
5. Cillian piggy-backed her down the the four flights of stairs as far as her palanquin awaiting in the apartment block courtyard.
6. The groom's family and friends stand around the palanquin ensuring that Jin Xi does not pull a runner before we can get the wedding started.
7. Cillian mounts a mighty steed.***
8. We paraded a circuit of the town, a marching band in tow.

The only point of note was that the horse fell under Cillian's weight about halfway through the parade, david and I had been staring at its kinking rear right in fascination for quite a while.

*At a combined weight 350Kg we had to take care not splat the troupe of slight Chinese women against a wall.
**Well we assume so, since he was parroting phrases from Xi Xi
***a horse not that much heavier than he.

Receiving The Guests
Once we arrived at the hotel for the wedding actual, the palanquin was jigged for a while so that the palanquin bearers could get more money*. The impendingly happily married couple went up to their suite. The Irish milled around outside aimlessly, forgotten. Within, Cillian removed the silk veils** with his teeth. They were left to change from traditional Chinese red robes to a Western white ensemble. Only just remembered, Eimhin and I were left at the mercy of the Women Relatives, subjects of the size of our family, marital status, tastes in [Chinese] women and Eimhin's height were discussed.
The couple and their righthand-people stopped the guests at the hotel door, forcing sweets and cigarrettes onto them- seeing as they seemed to miss the 2m tall white guy with a tray.

*Probably a tradition based in mercenaries extorting additional money for the acquisition of a nubile woman
**Representing the Red Sack of Pillaging of yore, I reckon

Two Become One
After about 2 hours of stopping guests the ceremony began. They had a 9 tier wedding cake.* The two walked up the middle of the dinner hall, showered in sprays and streamers, Cillian's carefully styled hair was devastated. A cabaret singer was mistress of ceremonies. David gave a brief speech. The crowd went wild when he opened with "Ni Hao", like a rock concert. Some candles were lit and rings were exchanged. Jin Xi's grandmother [her father's mother] gave a lengthy speech. The richest women in town gave a speech too. JIn Xi's mother gave a speech. The two drank tea at her feet, presumably as an induction into her family. Next there was food. Here the Hardline Mrs Doylian Philosophies took a monstrous turn, Eimhin and I were forced at glass point my pushy Chinese person after pushy Chinese person to drink, one old chap made us have some kind of rice liqueur which burned my throat.

*"9 is forever!", Jin Xi informed us

T-Plus 1
Were woken up early for a trip to the "Siquan Karstic Geopark". Being from the "Gateway to the Burren" I thought I knew Karst regions, this was pretty cool though. There were some limestone structures that looked like pigs and bunnies. The cliff faces have holes in them where coffins were placed, sometimes they were hung on the cliff face. Then, the heavenly cavern. A gigantic cave that you can take a slide down to its lower level. Steps lead you to a very fancy looking stalactite/stalacmite area called the heavenly fairies [or some such]. Some more anthropomorphized rock formations, with a 2mx8m skylight 80m or so overhead. We went into a really really really dark cave, armed with flash-lights; no mole-men or morlocks to be found. The final stage in the heavenly cavern is traversed by a paddle boat across an under ground pond, I saw an eel in it. My local pride was injured by a little known attraction in China being orders of magnitude more entertaining than the tiny Burren equivalent, the Allwee Caves. Had one last dinner and did some shopping. Haggle master #1 stepped in and got us knock down prices, although I was worried that Cillian and her would come to blows over who was going to pay, Doylian to the core.

T-Plus 2
Got a surprisingly comfortable bus back to Cheng Du followed by a cramped van ride back to Peng Zou. On the bus, Jin Xi's Mother's Mother gave me a measuring look an eventually decided I was worth waving good bye to, Ice cold!

T-Plus 3
Got a comfortable trip into Cheng Du airport. Paid 10Euros for a banana split, with 3 standard sized ice-cream scoops, not even particularly tastey. Unimpressed.
On Plane: watched Kung Fu Panda [fantastic!] & Iron Man [Yay for Robert Downey Jr!] & Batman Begins [Ready for the dark knight]
Got back to Ireland. Tired.