Jinan/Dong Ming - Travel Day (11.24): Mark in the Heze

I was up late last night talking with Pat on IM and got to bed around 12:30. That’s the latest I’ve gone to bed in a good long while. But darn my internal clock if it didn’t wake me up at 7:30 anyway. I took a shower, did some preliminary packing and went to go get Wang wei and Jennifer at 8:30 for a final goodbye (hello for them) visit to the Shandong Wushu Team.

But on our way we went to the food alley and got some local food for breakfast. Wang Wei ordered a few items I hadn’t had before and it was all quite delicious. Chinese donuts and Tofu Soup with some bing and wonton soup on the side. It was quite warming too.

Wang Wei loves his Chinese donuts

Our visit to the Wushu Guan was brief but memorable. Wang Wei kept bumping into people he knew ( Li De Hua’s wife, random wushu coaches and athletes, sanda folks, etc.) and in the wushu guan he greeted the coaches and said hello. He was on the team the same time as Li De Hua and Wei Xin so they’re all buds from way back. I didn’t get to chat with the athletes at all, but I said goodbye and waved to everyone. It was sad leaving that wushu guan for the last time, but it was also a happy occasion because I had made some good friends and made some very nice memories. Without a doubt I want to come back to train there again.

Wang Wei says hello to old friends Wei Xing and Li De Hua

We walked back to the hotel and I spent a furious 30 minutes packing all my things up. Then it was to the street to grab a taxi for a shoe store. It was a good 25 minutes away, but the entire complex was filled with shoes. I was trying to find something to wear for Wang Fei’s wedding since my plan to purchase a suit in Jinan had fallen through. They said that people don’t dress too formally for these things so as long as I have a sport jacket and some decent shoes I should be okay.

After buying the shoes (about 200 rmb) we got back in a cab and went back to the hotel. We met Lu Laoshi there and piled everything in his car and got in, ready for the ride to Heze.

As a reminder, Lu Laoshi is not only Wang Wei’s wushu coach, but he’s also his 2nd uncle. He was also going to Dong Ming (which is the town we were heading to, situated in the regional area overseen by Heze. It’s kind of like Heze is the capital of the county, and Dong Ming is a town in the county, so some people refer to the general area as Heze, but you can also say Dong Ming to refer to the specific location in that area.) for Wang Fei’s wedding and offered to give us a ride there too. For part of the ride I slept, and we also went a few hundred KM off our planned course, but it all worked out in the end. We did manage a stop at a gas station/ rest stop along the highway and it was literally in the middle of nowhere. But the really strange thing is that a bus of Japanese tourists came by and stopped there too. While I was in the store buying some grub I heard some of them speaking Japanese and was taken aback. I talked to one of them and it turns out they were a tour group from Yokohama, but the guy I was talking to didn’t seem very forthcoming and so I didn’t press him for more details.

Lu Laoshi standing next to his car in the middle of nowhere

We eventually arrived in Dong Ming and first went to the grandmother’s house. But she had already left for the family house so we drove there and found her just about to arrive at the house.

From there it was a really amazing experience. I’m not exactly sure how to describe it except to say that it was like nothing I’ve ever been through before. First I’ll give you the simple, non-detailed version of what happened. Then I’ll explain a little more about the feelings and experiences of the evening.

After everyone greeted Wang Wei and Jennifer (and myself) at the house the uncles and male cousins, along with Jennifer and myself, went to a restaurant around the corner for dinner.
The food was absolutely top-notch. In fact, I’d say that the Chinese food I ate in Dong Ming that first night was better than the Chinese food I’ve eaten in Shanghai the entire time I’ve lived there. (Yes, it was that good.) We spent a lot of time there and they put me in the guest of honor chair with the 3 main uncles to my left.

The best walnut shrimp you’ve never had, along with a wide assortment of other dishes

Jennifer gave me some help with the table ettiquette in Shandong. Apparently it’s the most complex table ettiquette in China, such that when there are official state dinners, they adopt the Shandong table manners as the method of conducting their meal. So, throughout the meal Jennifer was very helpful at explaining what different things meant and how certain customs came about and what I was supposed to do.

After dinner we walked back to the house and spent some time there meeting additional relatives. Wang Wei and Jennifer took the grandmother back to her house and then came back and picked me up to take me to my hotel. They had put me up in the nicest hotel in Dong Ming which, by western standards was of course not the Ritz Carleton, but for my standards it was just perfect.

The other benefit of this hotel is that it’s actually owned by the Dong Ming Wushu Institute, which resides just behind the building. If you have a room in the back you can see the training in the school next door. Wang Wei told me that they have about 2,000 students training there, which is both incredulous and awe-inspiring. My hope is to do some training there the following week, but we’ll see how the schedule is.

After Wang Fei, Wang Wei and Jennifer spent a few minutes in my room, they took off and I unpacked and did some blogging. Then I got ready for bed and crashed pretty hard.

Jennifer talking to 2nd Cousin

And now for how this evening really felt …

I think in general that a lot of people in the west have an impression that Chinese families are generally somewhat rigid and formal in their inter-generational, interpersonal relationships. We develop this archetype of the dad who doesn’t really pay attention to their kid’s dreams, but just tells them to go get a good education and job. Or the mom who has an iron grip on the household affairs but doesn’t really understand her own children. Or the grandmother or grandfather who spend their time trying to manipulate the various uncles and aunts through guilt or scolding, while simultaneously spoiling the grandkids who just don’t understand their parents at all. And while they all might love each other, there isn’t really that passionate, heartfelt deep familial teary-eyed hugging expressive LOVE that you see in many western families.

Well, if you came to visit Wang Wei’s family in Dong Ming (and I will admit this is really the first experience I’ve had visiting a family in the true heart of China (i.e. sort of the middle of nowhere)) all those presuppositions and inherited preconceptions would fly out the window.

In my life I’ve never met a family as expressive and heart-felt as this one. There is a genuine love and fidelity here that speaks volumes of the human condition. While I love my own family very much, we’ve never been particularly passionate in our expression of love for each other. Of course I have no doubt that my family loves me, as I do them, but at the same time I’ve never seen familial love expressed in quite this way before. It was a very heart-and-eye-opening experience.

Throughout the evening I saw people brought to tears many times, not out of sadness or anger, but because their hearts so moved them and their love for each other was so powerful that it would seep through their eyes and spill down their cheeks. Women, men, young or old … it didn’t really matter. Appologies weren’t necessary and words need not have been spoken. It was understood that this was how their love was manifest and that was enough.

Jennifer had always ranted and raved about her in-laws in Dong Ming. She would gush about them all the time. And having never been here, or been around this type of environment before I could really only imagine that she must have had a nice time with her in-laws, but beyond that I didn’t quite understand it. But after being here, it all makes sense. After being here, I know what she was talking about.

Aunt and Cousin enjoying the reunion

And the best part of this was that they were as inviting to me, a relative stranger to them, as they were to their long-absent son and his wife. They brought me in to their family and included me as one of their own and while I know I’ve never lived in Dong Ming and have never met these people in my life, I still had a strong feeling of “coming home”.

When you are surrounded by an environment so infused with love and caring, it’s hard not to feel it seep into your own being and become a part of you as well. There is nothing quite so wonderfully weird and oddly wonderful as a group of grown adults crying out of pure happiness. It was only natural that I should do so as well. I think the last time I cried in public was in the 4th grade (crying in front of family or while watching “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” doesn’t count) so you can believe me when I say this sort of thing isn’t a common occurance for me.

The cynic in me wonders if tomorrow will be different. Perhaps it was just the homecoming reaction and tomorrow they will start bickering or being indifferent like many other families I see. Or their other dynamics might kick in.

But I realize that it really doesn’t matter to me what they are like tomorrow, because tonight was enough of a positive, heart-warming experience for me that regardless of what happens tomorrow — even if it’s the darkest day I have this year — I can still look at tonight as being one of the brightest.

In the end, the evening really just comes back to me less as a series of events and interactions with people, but more like a tapestry of emotional colors, each one painting a picture of the range of feelings I experienced throughout the night. It’s a bit of a blur, but I think that this is actually the way I prefer to remember the evening. The details can work themselves out later.

I didn’t have time to hook my camera and hard drive up to my computer so you will have to wait until tomorrow for photos from today. I took quite a few though and I’ll post them up tomorrow (assuming I have time).