Update - Wedding etc

Bit of a gap - still no ability to add photos and to make it more difficult, I have had some sort of bug all week. I will separate the updates below to make them a bit more digestable.

TO THE VILLAGE
The travel to Shasha's village for her and Oliver’s wedding was quite lengthy. We went with the Shanghai contingent, in a comfortable 22 seat bus with tons of luggage wedding supplies, but unexpectedly with one too many people. Having said that, “unexpectedly” does not really apply in China. The journey was 5 hours to an overnight stop, then several more hours the next day. The second day the road got smaller and smaller and eventually we just reloaded everything/everyone into a couple of small wooden boats, rather like Thai “long tail” boats but slower, in order to cross a few hundred yards to Shasha’s village. The village is on a steep slope directly above the flooded valley which was just a small river 40 years ago, now dammed many miles downstream. The people there (including S's family) fish and grow tea, oranges and loads of other stuff. Every inch of ground is used, either for crops or living/working space, or else it is still being built on. Quite simple living conditions - concrete or stone buildings, cooking on a large solid fuel stove, a new outside loo was built specially for the wedding, traditional very hard beds. The extended family have quite a large block of accommodation (like flats), with the grandmothers old house behind and above it. The flat roof of the flats forms a big outdoor area in front of the old house with a view of the river and hills and was used for the wedding but with food eaten inside the old house - unlucky to eat the wedding meal outside apparently. Liz and I were treated royally, with the second best bedroom (best being for O&S of course) which looked newly decorated and bed clothes all brand new - bed still hard!

WEDDING

200 people were at the wedding, mostly relatives, mostly from in or near the village. The ceremony started at 11:18 (lucky numbers) with the bridegroom standing in the street "bribing" the bridesmaid to let the bride out by passing traditonal red money envelopes through the door, then the fireworks were lit (also in the street) and Shasha came out in her white wedding dress. She and Oliver then walked up to the wedding area, with fireworks all around them and got welcomed by the guests. We then had the formal announcements and congratulations - in Chinese, but we got the idea - followed by "speeches", very brief, including mine, so it was not too hard. Liz also said a few words. Oliver's good friend from Shanghai "JD" translated our words into Chinese and got a suitable response. I read out words from my parents and they were also translated and well received. Liz's well travelled (a little battered but repaired) wedding cake was then cut, lots of posing for photos, then down to the serious business of eating and toasting - drinking alcohol is ALWAYS toasting, no sneaking a gulp on your own! - The important guests were given a VIP room to eat in, which was a bit of a shame, since that really meant mostly us foreigners, but we had plenty of time to circulate and toast our hosts while the eating was still going on.

An amazing quantity and variety of food was produced by local hired helpers from the large but primitive kitchen. Nothing too scary, nice noodles and stir fried stuff, but there was also duck feet, preserved eggs, and turtles. All Chinese food is always presented for general sharing, so you load your bowl with whatever you want. They also deliver each dish as soon as it is ready, so the table gets more and more piled up (same in restaurants). I was glad to see the Chinese people ignored dishes and left just as much as we did. In fact it seemed to be a neccessary part of the wedding feast, that loads of food was left uneaten.

Later O&S appeared in Chinese dress and handed out gold and red goody bags, sweets and cigarettes. We also had "moon cakes", which are a key part of the moon festival. They look a bit like small pork pies and have different fillings, sweet or savoury. As well as eating a lot, it is also required for O&S and other key family members to constantly toast each other, usually with "Gambei" meaning "bottoms up" (empty vessel required to be displayed), the drink concerned being "bai jiu" = "white alcohol" (similar to neat Vodka), normally >40% strength. Fortunately the "cups" are only measure sized, but it adds up over several hours! In the hubbub, saying "cheers" was the only form of communication between the 2 families in most cases, so everyone was kept quite happy. Most of the time it seemed that neither family had any idea what was going to happen, but it all happened anyway.

That went on for a few hours, then a bit of a lull during which some guests left and the helpers had their share of food, then it started up again in the evening, and soon became music and dancing on the flat roof for foreigners and younger people; cards and mahjong for the Chinese (quite usual at a party apparently), drinking, smoking and more food, for all. Some stayed up most of the night, but Liz and I collapsed much sooner.

AFTER THE WEDDING
We and the other foreigners stayed a few more days and had a chance to make a little more contact with the family. Shasha's parents are very modest and quiet people, especially by Chinese standards, so it was not easy to break the language barrier, but we did manage a kind of rapport on the last day. Unfortunately Shasha's mother has a long term heart condition which meant she could not join in very much, which was a great shame. Her own mother (head of the family) is over 80 and still very fit. Some of the uncles and aunts were quite chatty and extrovert, but full of surprises - one thing we discovered on the last day was that one uncle was a recently appointed school English teacher, but even then he absolutely refused to say anything in English! I suspect it partly stemmed from the method of teaching, which possibly has little to do with conversation.

FURTHER TRAVELS
Since we left the village we have been moving around a lot. We returned to Shanghai by boat, minibus taxi, then bus - 10 hours, for one night then a 12 hour sleeper train to Xian to see the Terracotta army. "Soft sleeper" i.e. 4 bunks per cabin and quite comfortable. Xian is yet another big city, with the same heaving masses as Shanghai but more tourists - mostly Chinese since we were still at the end of the national holiday - and more down to earth, i.e. more buses, motor rickshaws, motorbikes, less smart cars, smart shops, etc, but generally all the same goods and food on sale. Xian has a nice Muslim quarter, with lots of street stalls selling a different variety of goods. Lots of dried fruit, halva, and other stuff not so recognisable. It had a Chinese style mosque in it, which was a very calming and quiet refuge. Managed to see the "army" but not until we had been dragged into two other "attractions" that were thinly disguised huge souvenir shops. The army was impressive. Not very many tourists at that time, by their standards, since the week long national holiday had just finished, so we got a good look. While we did that O&S went to Hong Kong to get his first proper work permit sorted out. Apparently you have to leave China to do that and HK will do. His employers can now make him a proper Chinese employee and he is allowed to stay indefinitely.

For the last part of O&S's holiday we have met up at Yangshuo, the place with the classic pointy hills or "karsts". It looks like photos will have to wait until we are in Australia in November. Still cant put them on here with the blog sites being blocked.