Week 4 Zhejiang - part 2 (english)

My visit to the province Zhejiang, has almost come to an end. Tomorrow (monday) I will departure from Wenzhou-airport to Beijing early in the morning. Now you might think: Why is this bastard typing his shit in english. Well, that is because of some people (I mean you!), who are too lazy to learn the great Dutch language. STFU!

I spend the past couple of days in Wenzhou. When I left Qingtian, I first visited my grandma's grave (my mother's mother). I bet you are picturing a graveyard like in those hollywood movies, where all the graves are nicely aligned and the place is well accessible. Well, that wasn't quite the case. My trip to the grave was more like an episode of Rambo (If you don't know him, you suck). Struggling through the wildest jungle of China. Most of the time, I couldn't see a path. Luckily, my grandpa (the brother of my mother's father) escorted us all along. Like the other grandpa, who I mentioned in my previous message, he was a die hard too. While my nice (Yimei from Italy) was slipping all the time because she was wearing flip flops, grandpa was already far ahead of us. Waiting for our damn western spoiled brats to keep with him.

Did you get the picture? So, finally we arrived at our grandma's grave. Like the grave of my great grandma (I mentioned about it in my previous Dutch posts, you damn native english speakers) this one was as big as 80m2. After we had burned some money, lighted some candles and incent (don't know the spelling), fired some fireworks and took some photos, we headed to Wenzhou. As much as I know, the population of this city is about 10 million. I wouldn't have guessed that in a million years. This means, that this small city (in chinese terms) has got as many inhabitants as 2/3 of the whole Dutch population. Is that crazy or what?

Anyways, I am staying at the parents of my sister in law (my brother's wife). Their appartment is very big and clean (this I mean by western standards). Especially compared to my father's first residence, which was more looked like a bunch of wooden boards nailed together. The first evening in Wenzhou, my family in law (mother, father and sister) took me to a fancy restaurant. Every dining table is placed in a seperate private room and there is a large hall where all the dishes are placed behind a window. This means the restaurant doesn't got a menu. Instead of this, a waiter is accompanying you through the hall, where the only thing you need to do is to point at the dishes which you would like. Besides this, there also is a semi-fishmarket.. All the animals were still breathing, swimming and jumping, so you could pick your own winning horse for dinner. My sister in law asked me if I wanted to taste a snake, then she pointed at the big ass 6 meter long snake. I said, only if its delicious. Then she said that the taste was "OK", so unfortunately I had to postpone my culinair sensational encounter with mr. snake to the Beijing-insect-eating-market.

After dinner, my sister in law took me to a fancy Wenzhou club. I didn't expect Wenzhou to have any fancy clubs. That was pretty naive of me, while a knew that Wenzhou got 2/3 of the Dutch population. We went there with my sister in law, some of her friends, my nice from italy and her Italian friend. At the entrance, there were a whole bunch of Wenzhou showgirls (wearing short pink dresses) standing in a row along the stairs. They greeted me as if I was the last emperor. This felt pretty cool. Then we got escorted to a lounge area with a big ass fancy table and a big ass leather lounge couch. My sister in law ordered in the Wenzhou-way. This means alot of beer (Heineken of course), large plate with fruit, plate with fish and meat (pretty strange in a club, isn't it?) and alot of nuts and other shit. At that evening, I learned a typical Chinese drinking dice game. I will show it to you in person some day. Anyways, It was my first time playing that game, this means that I lost alot. Of course I didn't wanted to loose face, so I drank and drank. Which in the end, resulted in me sleeping for an hour on the big ass soft lounge-couch. Despite of that, I think i enjoyed most of the night.

The next day (actually, a couple of hours later) we (my sister in law and her father)went to the Yan Dong mountains. This is quite well known through China. They rented a nice airconditioned leathered car, which made the trip quite comfortable. It was a one hour ride, with alot of bumpy roads. At the Yan Dong mountains, there were of course alot of mountains. Besides that, also a couple of waterfalls and very nice springs. There were some nice rocky sceneries, which reminded me of the cartoon "Dragon Ball Z". In total, it was a exhausting but a great experience to see China's nature at its best. Especially, while I'm used to the boring flat ass scenery of Holland.

At nighttime, my sister in law took me, my cousin and her friend to a karaoke bar. Actually it was more like a karaoke hotel. Everywhere single rooms and a big ass supermarket-look-alike, where you could buy all the beverages and food for your karaoke adventure. We sang some crazy songs, got some Tsingtao beer and played the same dice game. But this night it seemed that my dicing skills were improved alot. Which resulted in, me leaving the building without any red marks on my face. Haha!

Ok so, now we its the morning after. I wonder what kind of adventure is waiting for me now. I will keep you updated. Ciao.

Ow, I forgot to mention that in Qingtian, I got a nice 1 hour full body massage for 25 yuan, which is 2,5 euro! Ok bye.