Today we got up at about 9am at his teacher’s house and, after getting everything done that we needed to, left by 10:30. We said goodbye to his teacher and his teacher’s husband drove us to Pi Xian (郫县). We met up with his mom’s family. As always, everyone was very nice and treated me well. As Pi Xian was still close to ChengDu, some random people were started to stare, but not too many. The reason is that although there are some foreigners there, there’s not many so it’s something fairly different for them. It wasn’t really his family doing this, but rather just random people on the street or in restaurants.
We went to lunch and ate at a restaurant – however, there were so many people that it required two very large tables for everyone to sit down. I think there was probably about 25-30 people total just in our group alone. The food was pretty good. There was some things that were of course too spicy for me, but given that this is the Sichuan province, that’s understandable – they are notorious for spicier food. It’s important to note, if not already clear, that during almost every meal in China, everyone sits at a large round table and typically 5-15 dishes are ordered. It’s all placed on a very large lazy susan in the middle of the table and the food is shared amongst everyone – just pick up whatever you want. Towards the end of the meal, there was one dish that was supposedly American, but I’d never seen it before. It was basically a huge bowl filled with a fried sugar thing that was yellow. It was very sweet and although good, was completely different than the rest of the food at the table.
After dinner, Justin’s cousin brother drove and we went to visit the graves of several of Justin’s grandfathers. Naturally, there are no pictures of this shown below as that is disrespectful, but I can at least try to describe it. We drove through an area that was very very rural. By that, I mean the roads were mostly dirt and barely wide enough for a car – on either side it dropped off a few feet as a ditch for water for fields that were there. Once we got there, we walked to the grave which was nice. On the front it had a sort of family tree showing all of the children and marriages. One of the graves was quite old (over eighty years ago) yet was in good condition as it was restored many years ago, which is something that is rarely done in the USA. A common tradition that they practiced while there was that they burned fake money and pieces of paper, along with lighting incense and candles. According to Justin, the incense and candles are meant to tell the deceased that people are coming – almost like knocking on a door. The money is then being burned to be given to them in the afterlife. Once this is done, everyone kneels and prays one-by-one. It was a nice thing to watch and I made sure to stay out of the way so that I didn’t disturb them.
Once we were ready to go, we drove some more and went back into more rural areas and ended up at more of his family. We had dinner there which was of course good yet had to leave before it got dark or else it would be very difficult to get out due to the very narrow road. After leaving, we went to his first maternal cousin sister’s apartment in Pi Xian. Her daughter (Huang, Wei 黄薇) gave me a bull stuffed animal which was very nice. 2009 is the Year of the Bull in Chinese tradition. His nephew also gave me a two-dollar coin from Hong Kong. Justin’s mom then showed me a sweater vest that she was making for Corey. This surprised me as I had no idea that she was doing this. It looked like it was about half-way done already too. Where mine was white with some different colored specs intermixed, his was green with a pattern.
Later we went and walked around Pi Xian. We ended up at a store that both his cousin sister and her sister worked at. His mom and cousin sister tried to find me some shoes as a gift, but we found out that that was a futile attempt as apparently my shoe size is too big and I wouldn’t be able to find any shoes in all of China! China goes by European standards and my shoe size is 48. The highest size available in China is 46. We walked around the store some more and ended up leaving without actually buying anything other than a small amount of food. On the way back, we stopped and Wei bought a traditional snack for several of us. It was a little strange, but was actually pretty good. It was in a (probably) 12oz cup and was a mixture that was halfway between being a solid and a liquid. Mine was blueberry flavored with pieces of rainsins. It was also quite sweet but I liked it! After we got back, we picked up some of our stuff and went to another apartment to sleep for the night as there wasn’t enough room in his cousin sister’s apartment.
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