Wuxi with Jesse and Ben

This weekend Jesse invited Ben and I to travel with her to her hometown, Wuxi, and celebrate a local holiday with her family.  I asked her several times what the holiday was but the best answer I could get was, "Just some food festival." So on Tuesday morning the three of us met at the train station early in the morning and took a train to her nearby city.  Then we stood on a crowded bus for 45 minutes and traveled to the small town on the outskirts of Wuxi.

 Jesse was very nervous about bringing us home.  She warned us over and over again that we are the first foreigners to come to her town and that no one in her family speaks any English.  She was worried that everyone was going to gawk and make a big fuss over us.  We told her not to worry about it, we get this everywhere we go and we're used to it. And of course it's no problem for me because I love attention ;)
Her family did fuss over us and her relatives wanted to take pictures with us.  She was horrified when they finished their meal and then pulled their chairs up around our table to watch us eat.  (And in truth being a foreigner in China can sometimes be like living in a fish bowl. Which is unsettling, but Jesse's family was just excited and curious.) Sometimes she outright refused to translate between her family and us because she was embarrassed.  It didn't matter, I know she's proud of her family and her home and was excited to show everything to us.

I've never eaten so much food in my life.  Chinese hospitality = force feeding your guests at all times.  This is a photo of the first meal we had which included about 20 different dishes.  We stupidly ate everything, not realizing that we would have to continue eating like this for the next 40 hours.  Every time I turned around a snack or a drink was being pushed into my hands! The food that Jesse's mom made was amazing.  I never ceased to be impressed with Chinese food.  How can there be so many things I haven't had? So many things that seem gross that are actually tasty? I loved almost every single thing I ate.  Of course this included like fifteen types of fruits and vegetables I'd never seen before and strange things like pork stomach, beef stomach, a super fatty pork that they'd been curing for two months, and...water snake.  Jesse tried to convince me that it was fish but when I saw these snakes swimming around in a bucket at the market the next day and asked her if it was the same thing we ate, she said yes.
Me- "It's a snake!"
Jesse-"Yes...I guess it's like a snake."  
Blech. Seeing them swim around gave me the heebie jeebies but I'd probably eat it again because it tasted pretty good.
Another note, nobody at our table had their own plate everybody just eats out of the main dishes. Our drinks were served in our small bowl (mine later got rinsed and filled with rice.) Also, it's normal in China for bones, fruit peels, prawn skins, nut shells, anything you want to spit out of your moth, to be discarded onto the table.

Jesse's parents had bought tons of sugar cane to snack on. You chew on the pulp until the sweet juice is gone and then you spit it out.  It's messy but yummy.  It's one of the many snacks that was offered again and again. I'm sure I have five new cavities. 

 Jesse's father! I liked him so much! He is an attentive host and avid Mahjong player.  Later that evening he came home in the middle of the night from playing with his friends.  He got confused about which rooms we were staying in and, in the darkness, crawled into bed with Ben.  Jesse was mortified but it was pretty hilarious.   

 After lunch Jesse's brother and six year old nephew drove us into to see the city (about 40 minutes away).  There we visited the wealthy area of Wuxi which included the Long Wish Hotel which claimed to be "The World's Tallest Building in Rural Areas"

The hotel displayed an impressive collection of art pieces and you could pay to go up through various decorated floors and all the way to the top.  Jesse's family refused to let us pay anywhere.

Super beautiful, intricate jade carving.

 Jesse's nephew didn't speak a word of English, but it didn't matter he played with us and held our hands everywhere we went.  Right as Ben knelt down so I could take a picture of their matching plaid shirts the little boy said, "He has a big nose!" in Chinese.

 Gold sculpture. Apparently it's a big deal.

 We watched a film in a u-shaped room about the wonders of Wuxi.  I was sold, Wuxi is awesome. 

Walking on these gold tiles "means you'll have better development and a promising future."

 View of greater Wuxi from the top of the fancy hotel. 72 floors in a elevator that rises at 8 meters per second, or ears we popping!

 After the hotel they took us to a nearby mountain where Wuxi had built a mini replica of The Great Wall for hiking. There was also a fake Tienanmen Square, fake Arc de Triomphe and fake Statue of Liberty.  Jesse and her brother thought is was weird too but it was a beautiful day to be outside so none of us minded.

He's learning Kung Fu so he spent a lot of time showing us his moves.

 The tall building in the center is the hotel.

 Tired from a full afternoon out in the sun!  So sweet!

 We returned to Jesse's town and we walked over to the main shopping street which was bustling for the holiday.  People were everywhere eating street food, selling things and playing mahjong.

 Jesse insisted on taking us to her favorite hole-in-the-wall noodle place where we ate a delicious bowl of super spicy soup with cilantro and peanuts.  Jesse said, "But you can't tell my mom I took you here because she'll be mad that we're eating out when there's so much food at home."  Eating there was a mistake because when we arrived back at the house there was a bunch of relatives and a huge meal waiting for us.

Family portrait! Jesse's mom in the green and the others are her aunts and uncles.  They were so nice, and very excited to eat with us.  They were eager to talk to us about China and to tell us about their lives, and of course to tell us about different people they know that have gone to America.  Jesse did a lot of translating that night! All of her family told us to come back again and her aunts hoped that we would visit their houses too ;)

Jesse's house was fantastic and I was most excited that is was surrounded by rice fields that her family owns.  They harvest the rice in the fall and it feeds them for the entire year.  After dinner we sat outside and talked for a long time and the weather was perfect.

Good Morning!  We had rice porridge and some drinkable yoghurt for breakfast, plus some leftover meat and vegetables.  I really had no room for anymore food, but how could I refuse? They have a room with big windows where they hang laundry and we sat up there and had tea.  All day neighbors and relatives kept dropping by to say hello, it was nice to feel like we were in a small town.

After breakfast Jesse's mom asked us to come with her to the market.  Little did we know that she was buying MORE food especially for us to eat.

 Bought big bags of mangoes, oranges, tomatoes, and dragon eyes which we realized later were gifts for us to take home. Dragon eyes are kind of like a grape with a peel and a pit. Jesse warned me not to eat more than ten of them because, "They are too healthy, they'll make your nose bleed."  Um...ok.

We went into a huge indoor market with long counters where venders were selling all kinds of foods.  Here Jesse's mom is buying meat that she had ground up for dumplings.  (I took this picture mostly to scare my sister. Nikki, quit freaking out.  They shop here every day and eat this meat EVERYDAY.)

Jesse said that this market has been here her whole life with the same vendors since she was five years old so she knows all of them. 
Jesse- "See that man over there? He used to be very handsome. Now he is old."
Since everyone there knows Jesse it didn't take very long before the curious staring to turn into small groups of people surrounding us and talking at us excitedly in Chinese.  Who are these foreigners? Are they your friends?  Jesse hated this and quickly whisked us away.  I told Jesse not to worry about it and to just relax.  But I have to say it's nice that Jesse is not the kind of person to invite her foreign friends home so she can parade us around like status symbols.  She wanted us to come home with her because she is genuinely our friend and wants to share her life with us.  Love her.

On the street there were all manner of things (mostly animals) being sold for Chinese Medicine.  Lizards, tortoises, goat heads, snakes, scorpions and a bunch of other scary stuff.  This is the only picture I managed to snap. Illegal wildlife trade is a huge problem in China so I didn't dare take a photo of anything else, plus seeing animals sold like this gives me a very creepy feeling.  

Back to the house we helped make dumplings for lunch.  Jesse and her dad showed us how to fold them the Wuxi way.  Her dad was amazing at it.

Cooked and covered in her mom's homemade spicy sauce plus some vinegar.  Delicious. Of course they weren't happy until we'd each eaten like 10 or 15.

After lunch Jesse's mom decided she wanted to take us to a hike up a nearby 'mountain'. This meant that Ben and I climbed onto the back of motorbikes with Jesse and her mom to ride for the ride.  Several things about this:
1. I've decided I love motorbikes and I want one when I get home.
2. If you think you get stared at walking into a market in Wuxi, wait until you're a foreigner riding through town on the back of a motorbike behind a middle aged Chinese woman. I saw jaws actually drop open.
3.  Jesse is terrible at driving motorbikes.
Jesse's mom tried to keep pace with her but Jesse drives so slow that her mom kept getting frustrated and just driving off.  More than once she forgot how to use the breaks and almost lost control.  She asked Ben if he wanted to drive and he said, "No way, I don't know how to drive this thing and I so do not want to be responsible for crashing your parents' bike."

This is a pic I took from the bike, behind Jesse's mom, and below are some photos I took of the countryside.

 Mountain was, as expected, a paved road that we quickly strolled up.  But the hill was covered in beautiful tea fields.  Here Jesse is showing us which part of the plant is picked.

 At the end of the path was a temple that Jesse's mom frequents.  Jesse isn't religious but she said her mom comes here on holidays to pray for her family.

 The temple was super beautiful, one of nicest ones I've seen. And an incredible view!

 I always feel weird taking photos at temples because it's a religious place, and it seems disrespectful.  But believe me it was lovely. 

Throwing coins and granting wishes.

We rode back to the house and once again Jesse was going too slow so her mother speed off.  We arrived at the house and Jesse and Ben were no where to be found.

We waited for about five minutes before Jesse's parents and her brother started looking at each other nervously.  Where were they? (I think they were most worried because they know about Jesse's quality driving skills.)
Jesse's brother said to me, "Are you...." he trailed off, paused and started again. "I am speaking English."
Me- "Yes, I know."
Another pause. Brother- "I don't speak English." 
Me- "Oh."
Then he just opened the car door and pointed for me to get in so we could go look for Jesse and Ben.
We drove half way back to the mountain and we couldn't find them!  Turns out that they were delayed because they ran into a bit of a problem.
Jesse had pulled to a stop but she forgot to put her feet down. Immediately the bike started to fall and as they went down Ben realized that with his weight on the bike it was going to crush Jesse's leg. So he bailed, diving/falling off into the dirt on the side of the road.  Jesse was able to catch herself but Ben looked like a total spaz flying off the back of the motorbike. When he got back and told me this story I said, "Please tell me there were a ton of people watching."
Ben- "Oh yeah, there totally were. There were a whole bunch of cars going by.  I just made a lot of peoples' day."
Me- "No kidding! They are gonna go home and be like, 'You'll never guess what I saw! Some foreign guy just fell off the back of a motorbike! HAHAHAHAHAHA!"
They didn't tell Jesse's parents that it happened, but everytime I think about it makes me laugh out loud.
Bwhahahaha!