Julia's Adventures in China: Sunday, June 17

Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

"I love you, Daddy"

We were stirred from our desultory Sunday morning by some very loud drumming—running to the balcony, we can see a band in red and gold, playing the drums: a wedding!

The festive band, seen from our window

So we dashed outside so as not to miss the bride; good thing too, because she didn’t arrive for another ½ hour! So we had lots of time to watch the preparations. There were dragon costumes, confetti cannon, long strips of firecrackers, red carpet, balloons, drummers—the whole regalia set up in the middle of the driveway of our community. Cars drive through periodically; the band has temporarily moved to the side. Children and grandparents come out to see and touch. When finally the bride arrived, things exploded—literally. The long strings of firecrackers are the first things to be touched off—loud, loud! And so much litter! Then the bride exited the car, the confetti began, and the dragons performed. The dragons appear to be ‘blessing’ the bride and groom. Eventually the whole group moved to the balloon arch for formal-ish photos, before moving toward the apartment building door. The groom ‘overcame’ the dragon by picking up the bride, spinning her around in his arms, and defeating the dragon.

Preparing the cannons!

Neighborhood onlookers

A dragon!

More preparations and the balloon arch!

Final dragon preparations before the bride arrives

And the bride! Complete with confetti!

The dragons got very tall!

A final group moment with the wedding party

It was fun and lovely.

And such a production! All ready-made to be bought from the company. The dragons are great looking (and the performers seemed nice; they made eye contact with me and my camera and smiled and posed), but the young men were wearing tshirts under the costumes, which are visible much of the performance! And the cannons etc are all clearly props that get hauled out for event after event. There’s a schedule which is being implemented by these 20ish year old guys! It was very funny! Probably not that different from American weddings, either. When the bride got inside, the whole thing was folded up and taken away—the balloon arch was stripped of its balloons in less than 2 minutes! And the band all climbed inside the mini van—like a clown car!

A bush full of confetti!

Happy inheritors of balloons from the dismantled archway

Surprisingly, there was someone sweeping up the trash immediately, too! I fully expected that it would be left to blow around the community. The limo was huge! With the prettiest heart spiral on the hood—the photo totally washed out; sorry!

Sweeping up (you can just see part of the heart on the limo here)

What an event; a cool way to start the day.

Next up: climbing a mountain. We had a date to climb the mountain outside our apt. window, with Rich and Luwan, who live upstairs, and are moving to Beijing tomorrow! By the time we left, it was noon, humid, sunny although with mists moving in and out. We started on a cement road, smooth, nicely edged, heading up, but with a gentle slope. But soon we reached dirt road, dirt path, narrow dirt path! And we were into the mountain. Julia complained a lot, some nervousness and some lack of desire to climb. We sweated a ton—humid and sunny, remember. And we scrambled a bit here and there; enough to make it seem adventurous. The views were successively fabulous. We could see our community, we could see through a gap toward the downtown where we drive every day, we could see, off to the right, the gigantic sports complex, built for the Olympics which is now a public gym site. It was cool to spot these things from up so high. And to get a sense of the extent of the city. We were looking at just a section of the city on this side of the mountain—most is on the other side, and spread up and down the coast. And yet, there were SO many apartment buildings in my view! Rich estimates that the skyscrapers are about 25 or 30 floors high each, so not gigantic, but they make up for that with quantity.

Starting off with Rich and Luwan

Scrambling up the rocks

We hit the top after about an hour—a decent climb, enough for us for sure. I crossed the ridge, and gasped to see the ocean and the other side of the mountain. Right below us is about where Maci’s family lives, much closer than I had expected! It was quite cool to see both sides of the mountain at the same time. At the top, one could buy a cup of tea from a vendor, complete with white porcelain tea set! Imagine! Right up there was also evidence of terracing and someone’s gardens flourishing.

After a rest, we started down, a little more anxious because the footing wasn’t always sure, and the path a bit narrow. Julia vetched a lot but kept going. We finally reached the area where there are several German bunkers from about 1905. They built caves into the granite, complete with gun slits. There was a tunnel through at one point, in which a climbing group had camped to play cards and drink beer! And part way down the mountain, the paved roads, stone steps and granite plazas began again. Strange; but lovely. The photos were totally washed out, darn it all, because I couldn’t get enough of the rocky tops, medium brown and craggy, impossible to climb without equipment. Yet, there at the highest point, we could see three people atop one! Even from that distance, it was clear they were proud of their accomplishment.

Heading down - a little bit tricky!

A German cave!

The tunnel we found - you can just see the car players silhouetted in the background

I am so glad we did this; we would never have pushed on past the end of the road without the encouragement of Rich, who had been and done this before. Now we can say we’ve known the FuShan mountain.

We came down determined to shower instantly; it was a really sweaty experience! But instead, Julia talked me into taking her to the SPAR store where there is an indoor playspace for kids; for 30 yuan, she jumped, slid and bounced while I read a novel on the iPad; not a bad way to regroup, actually! We have been meaning to make use of this play space but I had forgotten it, frankly. It was more fun for her than I had expected, at her size. The thing is, her size belies her age, so she gets more use outing things like this than is to be expected.

Alice and Nick have an extra suitcase to pass onto us, a helpful thing as we will have more to take home than we brought. So we went over to their new apartment, which is right next to the new school, to pick it up, see the apartment, and go out for a bite. Rich and Luwan joined us; they are all 4 leaving Monday at 6 am for trips. We ended up at a ‘hot pot’ restaurant: in the middle of the table is a pot of boiling broth—the flavor of which is key, and varies from spot to spot—into which one adds vegetables, meats, eggs, noodles, to cook and then eat with sauces from the condiment bar. It was an adventure! An active eating experience, since of course there were only chopsticks! And a steamy one, as the broth is quite hot and one is reaching over the pot constantly. Julia was pretty cheerful about this meal, given that really she didn’t want to eat any of it! She had glass noodles and soy sauce—no nutrition! And she tried a bit of sweet potato, peanuts for her sauce, and sausages. I think she liked the entertainment value. As Rich said, why do I want to cook when I go out to a restaurant? It’s a decent question; I wouldn’t need to do it regularly, although apparently the Chinese love it. But it was tasty and fun, and very nice to spend some last moments with these 4 people who’ve been so nice to us both.