Bruce Teaching English In China: 9/22/2013-Visit to Rural Hubei, Tsunami Day

So this week I went to see my girlfriend's parents in Hubei and it was an experience

I worked in Yunnan and Shantou, Guangdong before (both places that even Chinese people think are pretty poor) but I have to say that visiting rural Eastern Hubei was definitely different than any other region of China I've ever been too

It was weird because it was the first time since I've come to China where Chinese people were actually following the customs of "saving face" and the like by NOT YELLING AT PEOPLE WHICH I SEE AND HEAR EVERYWHERE IN CHINA!

I came well-prepared for going there too

I knew that the food of choice for Mid-Autumn Festival were moon cakes, so I decided to give her family 6 boxes of them and a plane to bribe the little members of her family into liking me and not thinking I was a blue-eyed devil

So to get to this little town my girlfriend is from, we took a 14-hour train ride in a hard seat from Shenzhen to the Jiangxi-Hubei border (which was as much fun as it sounds)

Then we took a 1 and a half hour bus ride standing up because there were no more seats left to the major township in the area (which was nicer than it sounds after sitting in a hard seat for 14 hours)
Then we got picked up in my girlfriend's father's pimp-mobile which had a top speed of literally 20 miles an hour so I got a lot of time to enjoy the rural scenery

On the way to the house, my girlfriend's dad talked about the importance of giving cigarettes to family members as a way of introducing yourself so he helped me buy the most expensive pack of cigarettes in their town which came out to about 3 USD per pack

At first I felt bad about giving people cigarettes but then I found out that for some reason, people from that part of Hubei will smoke about 6 cigarettes a day (and this is including women) and live until they're about 90, so then I didn't feel so bad

Then I got to see the house my girlfriend grew up in

Two stories and five rooms all for under $15,000

There was originally supposed to be a third floor but then they realized that a flat roof was just so good for drying fish that they said two floors was enough

Here are two pictures of their living room and two pictures of one of the furnished rooms

Because it was Mid-Autumn Festival and everyone had the day off, all of my girlfriend's family came back home and brought their adorable children

When you don't have Pokemon cards, there's always clear duct tape to play with

Her family was really nice

They liked to play Mahjong and Cards with the main rule being that I always lost money

The atmosphere around my girlfriend's hometown was probably the cleanest of any place I've been to in China with the exception of very mountainous Yunnan

And the food was definitely the freshest I've eaten since I've been to China

Girlfriend's mom: "Oh you want to eat eggplant tonight?" *goes to front yard, picks a couple of eggplants* "Alright, what else do you want to eat?"

The all-natural wood oven that my girlfriend's family uses

They have a lot of wood to cook with

That's chives that they put on the floor that we would later eat


Girlfriend's mom chopping up eggplants

Girlfriend with her brother reading a book on his cellphone. Those peanuts were picked out of the ground from my girlfriend's parents' house two hours before we ate them (and they were really good)

My girlfriend's parents are also building a new house (and let's just say that China's version of OSHA isn't as feared in these parts as OSHA is in America)

The footwear of choice for this construction project were sandals


They plan on four families living in this entire complex and the complex will have about three floors (I say about because they could just build two and say "eh, that's good enough")

This is a house being built across the street from the house my girlfriend's parents are building and I think their slogan for safety is "Git 'R Done"

Tsunami Days

So when I was growing up, we would have snow days if it snowed too much and we couldn't go to school
In Shenzhen, they just have tsunami days

On Sunday, September 22nd and Monday, September 23rd, the Shenzhen Meteorological Bureau issued a yellow tsunami warning (the scale goes from white/non-serious to red/your apartment is going to be flooded) which meant that all classes were cancelled

This couldn't have come at a more perfect time because I had just moved and I used those two days off to relax, buy appliances, and do errands
In fact, the tsunami barely got close to Shenzhen as it only rained quite a bit on Sunday and Monday (except for the morning) was nothing but clear skies and warm weather.

So really, it was like having an extra 2 days on what was already a 3 day vacation

I'm pretty glad of the deals I got on my new appliances

Washer-300 RMB=$49.01
Water Heater-300 RMB=$49.01
Water Cooler-60 RMB=$9.80
Refrigerator-free
32" TV-free
Microwave (haven't pulled it out of the box and currently being used as my dining room table)- free