Home Update: I've arrived on a jet plane!

Driving down I-75

AFTER WHAT felt like a lifetime in the air, I'm finally back in Atlanta for a short 2-day stop by before I drive down to Jacksonville with my parents. No work and unfettered, internet freedom means (drum roll) HOLIDAY UPDATES! (Cue applause and enthusiastic screaming)

PART ONE: The trip across the ocean

My flight in one word: Long.

First thing: Delta stopped running direct flights to Atlanta (thanks economic recession!) and so that meant a 2 hours stop over in Detroit which made the trip nearly 20 hours in total. Second thing: for the last five years of shuttling between the US and China, I've had phenomenal luck in getting seats in rows that have been partially or fully empty. The flight I just had definitively marks the day when my. luck. ran. out.

First leg (SH->Detroit)
Being short is definitely a handy trait when it comes to air travel. Normally, I get a window seat and promptly curl up and zzz my way through the trip; however, this time (horrors!) I was stuck in an aisle seat. For tall people aisle seat = more leg room. For a person with short, little legs, aisle seat = sitting with your body angled like a half open lounge chair as your ass simultaneously turns numb and sore at the same time. Also, being in the aisle seat meant that I had the annoying task of getting up for the people sitting on the inside.

It could just be Atlanta pride but I normally feel like Delta is like the Singapore Air amongs American airline providers. I mean it's main competitors are providers such as airTran (infamous for no frills flights) and United Air (which for awhile affectionaly dubbed 'Unsafe Air') so competition isn't exactly stiff. But still, when I book a Delta flight, I feel like it should bring some assurance of quality.

Not this time my friends. Not. this. time.

The attendants were totally surly. One in particular was on some sort of Headmistress Trunchbowl power kick, totally abusing the speaker system (which conveniently linked to the headphone system and paused whatever on flight program you were watching at the time) to bark out orders at the same 3 passengers who couldn't sit still. Obviously, it's annoying dealing with people who don't have the common sense to keep seated as the plane was buffetted around like the salad inside a McSalad Shaker (remember those?) but it would have been a lot more practical and a lot less disruptive if he just told the people directly to sit themselves down vs gunning it for the intercom. Then again, it's probably more fun yelling in stereo at an entire plane.

The food was abysmal. Airplane food has a bad reputation and Delta's culinary offerings this last trip did little to reverse that stereotype. My "roasted chicken" (off the "Western Choices" part of the menu) was pallid, stringy and obviously boiled. It was served with a tomato slop and chinese rice. That in combination with in-flight snack (a waxy cheese and turkey sandwhich) and the bland, leathery omlette taught me a valuable lesson of getting into the habit of packing my own meals when it comes to long flights.

The cherry on the top of this 13 hour flight came when the woman in the seat in front of me, while rifling through overhead compartment, dropped her purse on my head. Wonderful.

The transfer - Detroit Airport
We landed on time which meant I had a little bit under two hours to go through immigration, find my bags, go through customs, recheck my bags, get my boarding pass for my connecting flight and go through security. I'm already incredibly nervous when I travel and was reduced to quietly doing deep breathing exercizes in a pathetic attempt to not panic when we ended up sitting at the gate for an extra 30 minutes because the airport attendants NEVER REALIZED WE LANDED. How you manage to miss a massive, Boeing 747 ?

After finally getting off the plane and going through immigration, I found myself frantically trying to locate my two bags as the aiport obviously decided it wanted punish everyone traveling alone by splitting up the luggage between two carousels. Welcome home!

Second leg - Detroit to Atlanta
Miracles of miracles after a hectic run through the Detroit Airport, I managed to catch my flight just in time, snagging a window seat to boot. I promptly folded my body into my normal sleep position and passed out for...10 minutes. That's when the child behind me began to wail the mantra in long, drawn out sobs, "QUEEeeeEEEEEeeeee LooooOOOOOOOOOOOOO EEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeS mAAAAAAAaaaaAAAAAA AIEEEEEE!" It reminded me of both terrible, warbling karaoke and "Ken Li" which might have funny had he not continued unremittingly for the next THIRTY minutes until he basically passed out from lack of oxegyn getting to his brain.

During the height of his distress my seat neighbor, a large boned, solomn faced woman with short brown hair leaned over and whispered to me in a strong Eastern Europe accent, "Vy doesn't ze mother just HOLD heem?!" As she said the last part, her eyes widened and she made a motion that resembled a wrestler choke hold. That part of the ride was pretty cool.

After I landed in Atlanta I met up with an old college friend who's just finishing up is third year of medical school. During the drive over, I told him about the wailing kid whereupon he mused why they don't give children sedatives on planes. It was a statement that defined why are such good friends.

summer mom hiatus part two

NEXT STOP: DAN YANG
My mother's side of the family, the Chen clan of Xuzhou, was always a neat and compact group consisting of one aunt, one uncle, one cousin, one grandfather and (up until a few years ago) one grandmother.

My father's side of the family however, the Ouyang clan hailing from Danyang, are a much harder group to pin down. With my grandfather, my step grandmother, my three uncles, my four aunts, my multiple cousins, my cousin's new son, my cousin's wife, her relatives, other step relatives and, finally on top of all that, good family friends who are like relatives, the exact family members I hear/see/find out about on any one trip to Dan Yang always felt like a nebulous, amoeba-like number, constantly in flux.

Since the Chen clan numbers are so diminutive (my cousin has since moved to Beijing and my uncle often goes away on business trips), family activities in Xuzhou consist primarily of slightly staid, intimately small gatherings. Each time I leave Xuzhou, my memories are filled with Polaroid-like pictures of one-on-one interactions - my grandfather showing me how words are conjugated in his latest dictionary, my aunt and my mom sitting together drinking tea, a simple, home cooked meal.

My times in Danyang are infinitely different. A far cry from the quiet snapshot memories from Xuzhou, my Danyang memories flow in a crazy raucous reel of gluttonous feasting and drinking amid an endless stream of rapid chatter in Danyang-tinged Mandarin. Meals melt into conversations melt into family members popping in melt into family members popping out melting into familiar faces melting into soon-to-be familiar faces. The weekend passes in a fast and frenetic and by the time it comes to leave, I'm enveloped in more or less a perpetual food daze and a good ten pounds heavier.

At one of our last family banquets this visit, my Danyang grandfather was asked to make a toast. A slender man with an angular jaw and dramatically heavy eyes, my Danyang grandfather is the polar visual opposite of my soft, jellybean Xuzhou grandfather. Standing up from his chair, Danyang grandfather is pushing 6 foot, tall by Chinese standards. He raises his glass, filled with a blindingly strong homemade wine,and announces with gravity, "I am very happy tonight. I am happy because we are all together, under one roof. There are four generations here and there will be more to come. I feel lucky to be able to see this day. We have been through much but working together we've made it through them. This is the true fortune of having a family. We are together. We are one." The table top shakes as glasses clink on and above it.

Growing up in the States meant that I saw very little of my relatives from either Xuzhou or Danyang. In the decades I spent in another country, I had visited China only a handful of times and most of my communications those relatives were exchanged by way of my parents. During my visits, I couldn't help but always feel a disconnect between me and the rest of my China family. Sure we were related but in terms of how well we knew each other, we might as well have been strangers.

That night, after my grandfather's speech, I looked around the room and felt a new warmth spread through my body. In the smiling faces, I saw my parents, I saw myself, I saw where I came from - the past generations, the new generation and me. And all those years of my parent's telling me about how family is the most important thing you have in your life finally clicked. I felt something that night that ran deeper than just familial obligation. I felt a connection in that room that ran beyond the erasing grasp of time or distance. I felt the connection of of blood.

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.

climb out the windows, kick down the door

This morning, Jenn found herself in the rather unpleasant position of being locked inside her apartment. Two hours, a hammer, a drill and a new lock later, she is finally out. Yaya, Andrew and I were there for moral support and to hold an impromptu stairwell party because we are such good friends.

simon gets the snip

I HAVE A CAT named Simon. He's a street cat but is perhaps the clumsiest, most un-street smart street cat I've ever encountered. Aside from constantly knocking things over Simon also has the tendency to misjudge distances when he jumps resulting in more than one instance of him hanging awkwardly off a ledge, trying desperately to hoist his fat body up. It's really lucky for him that I took him in because I can't really see him successfully surviving the mean streets of Shanghai. That being said, Simon is an extraordinarily sweet cat and has never scratched me in our nearly 8 months of living together in a small, studio apartment. In fact, he basically lets me prod, squeeze and generally annoy him to my hearts content while he lays there and purrs.

Our relationship has always been a good one, that is until recently when Simon decided that it was time for him to get a girlfriend. I live on the 6th floor of a walk up apartment which limits Simon's prospects of becoming someone's baby daddy quite a bit. Oblivious to this obvious logistical barrier, Simon has determinely yowled and cat called through the last month in a fruitless attempt to serenade a date.

At first the meowing wasn't so bad but during the last week, he has reached a fever pitch waking me up every night with his calls. You may wonder, who could he possibly be meowing to as I live up on the sixth floor. Well, Simon has a number of crushes one of which is a mystery alley cat who also has a very strong set of vocal cords on her; however, the object that holds his highest affection and one which he spends hours doting and pawing at is his own reflection in my mirror.

At the beginning it was kind of funny watching him paw plaintively at the cat in the mirror but at 2am in the morning it's just plain irritating and at 3:30am, it's nearly intolerable. Finally, after yet another sleepless night due to Simon's raging hormones, I decided it was time for the snip. Simon is currently spending the day at the vets getting his goodies removed which is such a shame because I actually think they look quite cute. For those for you who do not know what a cat's cash and prizes look like here's a picture to enlighten you:



This is not Simon. I found this picture on Google which goes to reinforce the internet's reputation for being the Go To resource for lewd pictures. I think there was text on there that invited you quite forcefully to look at the cat's balls but I cropped it off because I just think that's unnecessary. RIP Simon's fluffy pom poms.