Wedding Gift Gaffe

Over the weekend, I went to my first Chinese wedding. To prepare for the wedding, I picked out my outfit, bought a card, and visited the ATM for the gift.

At the wedding, I approached the gift table with my card/cash gift. At the table, I gave the card, in an envelope, to an attendant and signed my name in the guestbook. As I walked away, I noticed that the woman looked extremely confused. I saw her staring at my card, with a perplexed expression. Then, she put my card over to the side and got the attention of the woman next to her. She showed the woman my card and they both stared at the envelope and examined it, confusedly. This went one for a few minutes. They finally shook their heads and put the card into a box full of other envelopes. This is when I realized what confused the women.

At all weddings, it is expected that you will bring a gift. In China, the gift is almost always cash. That cash is supposed is to be placed in a red envelope and given to the people at the gift table. Every single other guest of the wedding brought a red envelope with cash in it. I am the only guest who brought a regular greeting card in a non-red envelope. All of the other envelopes were small, rectangular, and bright red. My card was in a large, square, shimmery off-white envelope. It really stood out.

When I bought the card, I knew that Chinese people use the red envelopes to give gifts of money for Spring Festival. I also thought they might be used for weddings but, I didn’t realize just how ubiquitous they were.

Now I know that if I go to another Chinese wedding, I should use a red envelope. FYI, if you ever got to a Chinese funeral, bring a cash donation in a white envelope. This is because white is the color of mourning and red is a happy color.

All of the other gift envelopes looked something like this.

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Photo: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/quizzes/2013/07/130718_royal_baby_quiz.shtml

May I Offer You a Hot Beverage?

Two weeks ago, my class had Cooking Week. During this time, we discussed our favorite foods and I taught the class about 20 food and cooking related terms. The highlights of the week, however, were when my class made and ate some Western style food.

For Cooking Week, I picked two simple foods – cereal and smoothies. My kids are young and we are cooking in our classroom, not an actual kitchen. So, we needed things that are easy and kid-friendly. This is why I went with cereal and smoothies. These foods do not need any cooking, kids like them, and they are quick. Plus, the necessary ingredients are widely available in China.

For the most part, our cooking activities went smoothly. The kids really enjoyed it. I did notice that a few kids weren’t really eating their cereal. When I asked why, they said it was too cold. My co-teacher then said “I forgot about that. We should have warmed up the milk.” I reminded her that the kids were eating Cheerios and bananas on a hot day so, the milk could be cold.

The next day, we made smoothies. Making smoothies is usually simple but, this involved some negotiation. First, we had to hide the smoothies from the school doctor. She believes that milk and fruit are dangerous together. Once that was taken care of, I had to convince the director that the smoothies really did need to be cold. I wasn’t going to use ice in our smoothies because the tap water here isn’t safe to drink. I didn’t want the kitchen to not realize we were going to be ingesting the ice and accidentally make it with tap water. So, I decided to freeze the bananas for 24 hours.

Freezing the bananas was a controversial decision. Everyone believed the smoothies would be too cold and make the children sick. In fact, the director even brought the milk and frozen bananas to my classroom about two hours prior to our cooking time so everything could “warm up.”

When I planned my Cooking Week activities, I made a crucial mistake. I overlooked Chinese people’s aversion to cold drinks. They really don’t like them. In restaurants, I have to specify that I want cold water or the waiter will bring me a teapot full of almost boiling water.

From what I’ve gathered, there are a few different theories as to why Chinese people really prefer hot beverages to cold beverages:

- As I previously mentioned, the tap water is unsafe to drink and has always been. So, maybe the hot water was seen as safer and cleaner.

- Some people believe that drinking a cold drink while eating will cause your body to spend energy warming up the drink, thus leaving the body without enough energy for digestion.

- There is an idea floating around that drinking cold things will cause the fat in your food to solidify and clog up your insides.

- According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, cold water disrupts the body’s balance.

Now, I’ve been to other countries with unsafe drink water (ex. Colombia) and the people there did not drink hot water. They just boiled their water and then put it in the refrigerator to chill. Or, they drank bottled water. So, I’m not completely convinced about this theory.

I really can’t say exactly why Chinese people prefer hot water. I’ve asked a few and all they could tell me was “It’s healthier this way,” or “Cold water gives me a stomachache. “ However, with summer here, I wish I knew.

Sheldon and the Chinese have something in common!

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Photo: http://theprovisionroom.com/2013/06/26/what-shall-i-bring/

Supermarket Scuffle

Living abroad forces a person to reevaluate their expectations and standards. What was once commonplace becomes rare and exciting. Conversely, what was once unthinkable can become common. China has certainly done this for me.

In my neighborhood, there is a grocery store called Wu Mart. It looks like a knockoff of Wal-Mart, albeit a darker, dingier knockoff. However, as a whole, it’s fine. It has meat, vegetables, fruit, milk, eggs, bread, etc.  It doesn’t have a lot of stuff I like but, hey, it’s China. Why would they? Anyway, I used to go to the grocery store and expect to find everything in one trip. Now, I go to the grocery store and expect to see a fight. Going to Wu-Mart is like going to a boxing match.

I don’t know what it is about Wu Mart that makes people violent. But, it does. During my nine months in China, I have seen several fist fights at Wu Mart. I’ve also seen dozens of screaming matches. Yesterday, I saw a crazy woman clutching a stranger’s leg, while sitting on the ground and sobbing. The police had to remove the woman to get her off of the random man.

I’ve thought long and hard about why Wu Mart makes people so angry. I can’t tell why. I’ve even observed a few fights to try and see what set the people off. I usually can’t tell because I don’t understand the language. Wu Mart doesn’t make me angry but, maybe it’s under some power lines or over a magnetic field that affects some people. I just don’t know what it is. Whatever it is, grocery shopping at Wu Mart is always an adventure.

I've got to train like Rocky...

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...to shop at Wu Mart!

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Rocky Photo Credit: http://billcoyne.net/cardio-alternatives/

Wu Mart Photo Credit: http://barfblog.com/tags/wu-mart/

Calendar Magic

Today is Monday. Typically, this means that yesterday was Sunday. In China, however, this was not the case. In China, yesterday was Friday. Well, it was for work purposes at least. The Chinese are magicians when it comes to the calendar. They can change the days and the overall order of the days like magic.

The reason yesterday was a work Friday is May Day aka Labor Day. May Day was on Thursday, May 1st. To give people a little holiday break, work and school were canceled on Friday. Saturday was a regular weekend day. Anyway, to make up for Friday being off, Sunday became a work/ school day for most people. So, we had a three day weekend, which will be followed by a six day week.

The Chinese refer to these special, working weekend days as Makeup Days. Personally, I would rather just work the regular days and keep my weekends off. But, I guess this takes away the magical way Chinese people have with the calendar. Oh well.

Happy Labor Day! Yeah, I'm going to need you to come in on Sunday.

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