Tonight we got together with all of Tao’s cousins from his mom’s side. There are 5 of them including my husband. 4 boys and 1 girl. We were meeting at a meat stick restaurant. I didn’t know what to expect, just meat on a stick that’s for sure. When we arrived at the location it was in a run down “mall” where the escalator no longer moved caked with a thick layer of cigarettes, debris and dust. We walked up the broken escalator to the 2nd floor to a rinky dink looking elevator and took it to the next floor. The doors opened and it was like stepping into the twilight zone. The restaurant was full of life, clean, colorful, full of people, and good smells. The opposite of the outside.
We were directed to our room and most of the cousins were already there. The boys were bestowed gifts; mini electric fans by 2 cousins and a lego set. I was given an old fashioned hand powered fan. It immediately went into my purse for the next hot outing!
I recognized the oldest cousin as the one who first picked us up on my first trip to Japan after we were engaged. It was memorable because it was very late and he ran every red light. He could do that, because they didn’t have that many cameras and they didn’t have a way to look up out of state license plates. He said they can’t do that anymore, too many cameras. His wife and 2 daughters age 19 and 13 live in Singapore so the girls can study English. They said their school is mostly Chinese and other south Asians. The oldest is going into college and the younger is in 7th grade. They have been living in Singapore for 6 years and miss the cold. Their summer break is about a month long so they came back to China to visit. So they basically go year round to school, but their school days end at 1:30. Besides learning English mostly they also learn 4 other local dialects too.
My huband is the next in line. Tao enjoyed getting to get her with his cousins, they haven’t gotten together since my first visit to China 14-15 years ago.
3rd in oldest I didn’t get to talk to, he sat on the very far end of the table, he drove a motorcycle and wore a sleeveless shirt. When we went to leave he pulled out sleeves to cover his arms. These separate sleeves are very common, though people normally don’t wear at night. They usually were when out in the sun, cooking or gardening to protect the arms. Before they were always cotton type. Now they have a lot of athletic material type sleeves.
4th oldest is the cousin who drove us to the Great Wall, who went to Japan. His wife was here tonight. She also speaks some Japanese so I got to speak with her too. But unlike the rest of the adults she also knew some English. But we didn’t sit closer until the end of dinner.
The youngest, we had already met at the Great Wall with her daughter and her husband came too. The mom and daughter are so genki, you can’t help not smiling at them. The daughter wanted to play with the boys again.
It was so nice seeing the boys talking and playing whith their cousins. Plus if they couldn’t understand each other the older girl cousins translated for them. This was the best family time of all of our visits. The kids are old enough, not acting shy and using their Chinese.
The food! There was so much of it, you order sides separate like for hot pot. We were in a separate room and a table long enough to have 3 cooking pits. After we ordered they brought in the charcoal and put it in the bottom of each pit. Then the food started to arrive. Skewers of meat, bread, cut enoki mushrooms rolled up in bacon. It was on metal skewers with a little wheel at one end that you line up in the slots on the cooker so they rotate by themselves. Some stuff they brought already cooked liked more meat sticks, eggplant, more mushrooms, clam shells, rice pyramids(spicy and fried) and cold dishes like vegetables, edamame, boiled vinegar peanuts in the shell, cucumbers, a cold mushroom dish. The table overflowed with food and it kept coming. They had a Korean BBQ sauce(sweet and med spicy) and 3 different levels of dry dipping seasoning. I ate the whole time. Sitting between watching the kids interact, asking the girls a few questions and watching all the adults talk. So I ate. And ate. And ate. At the end I ate a piece of raw daikon it was like a carrot. But it gave me heartburn. Too much or not enough sauce on it to stop the heart burn.
It was after 9:30 when finally left all smiles and promises of seeing each other again. This is what family is supposed to be like. This felt normal to me.
Kids home and in bed by 10:30P.M. Poor us we need to get up at 3:45A.M. the next morning!
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