summer mom hiatus part one

Sometime mid-April, Mom came to visit, staying with me in my cramped, studio apartment. For the next three weeks we bickered and made up and bickered again as Chinese mothers and daughters are wont to do (especially when they share small confined spaces). Amidst the emotional explosions and home cooked meals, we also took two weekend journeys along the eastern China coast to visit both sides of my extended family.

FIRST STOP: XUZHOU
My mother's side of the family lives in Xuzhou. When I tell people this, they often say, "Suzhou? That must be nice." and then I have to explain that I'm in fact not going to SUzhou but XUzhou.

For those who don't know, Suzhou is filled with sprawling Chinese gardens and ponds covered with lush, platter-sized water lilies, Xuzhou is filled with dirty buildings and coal smog. In the past Suzhou served a favored vacationing spot for the Imperial Court. Xuzhou served as a favored relocation spot for the Chinese Government seeking to punish people they deemed counter-revolutionaries. "You have some thoughts on what the Chinese government might be doing wrong do you? Why don't you and your entire family think about them in this extremely shitty town where you'll have to live forever."

I've included a link for pictures of Suzhou and wanted to do the same for Xuzhou when I came to this site that calls Xuzhou the "City of Joy." A dubbing that would be more apt would be perhaps Xuzhou, City of Coal Producing Factories or maybe Xuzhou, City of Hoteliers who try to rip you off when they see your US passport, or even Xuzhou, City where I always come down with stomach ailments that last through my stay and then some. As if unsure the moniker, "City of Joy," could adequately sell the city to potential tourists unfamiliar with the Xuzhou's charms, the site also has a variety of obviously doctored snapshots of the city

When I was little, Mom bought me a box of Trix. The box promised that the inside contents yielded not just corn syrup enriched sugar pellets but also A MAGICAL COLOR CHANGING SPOON!! An ordinary spoon when dry, this magical wonder would turn a vivid shade of neon pink when immersed in milk (and apparently according to the drawing on the box, it might also emit a bright sunlike halo of light).

I fidgeted impatiently on the entire ride home and even before my mom had taken the key out of the car ignition, I had leaped out of the car, dashing for the kitchen with my prize. I ripped open the box and lo and behold, there it was, AN ORDINARY SPOON. I grabbed milk out of the fridge, sloshed it into a bowl and stuck my spoon in. Nothing happened. I stirred it around and looked...hard. The tip of the spoon had darkened slightly to a sickly orange hue. I dipped the spoon in the milk for a third time. The orange hue spread slightly. Needless to say, it didn't emit a bright sunlike halo of light. A near-euphoric high of expectation was replaced by the heavy depression of disappointment. Tricked by Trix.

Unless you have an awesome grandfather who lives in Xuzhou like I do, going to there armed with only the images and information garnered from Xuzhou, City of Joy website will yield you much the same experience as my Trix spoon fail. That being said, I DO have a lovely grandfather and an aunt who enjoys giving me presents there. These two factors change Xuzhou from a city that I would never, ever, ever, ever want to visit to a city that I don't mind (and actually kind of look forward to) going to...once in awhile (usually when I forget how bad the stomach issues were during the last trip).

My grandmother passed away a few years ago. After that happened, Grandfather moved out of his apartment to live with my aunt and uncle. Never a slim man in his youth, my grandfather has gotten decidedly more vertically compact and jelly bean shaped in his old age. I know I may be a little biased but my Xuzhou grandfather might just be the most adorable grandfather ever. I mean let's just look at the facts - deep baritone voice, shuffling gate, a santa clause belly, twinkly eyes, an insatiable sweet tooth and a strange fondness for giving me old dictionaries and odd promotional pamphlets that other people would just throw away but he keeps = extreme adorability.

And so that weekend, after Mom and I visited my grandmother's grave, I spent quite a bit of time sitting with my grandfather in his room, leafing through a pamphlet on the benefits of bee pollen that he had been saving just for this particular occasion and eating M+M's, one by one.