It seems to be genetic

My husband has always had a problem with not turning off lights.  When he comes home from work, I follow him around the apartment for about 15 minutes just so I can turn off all the lights that he somehow forgets to turn off despite my constant reminders.

All his friends who come to visit are very good about turning off the lights when they exit a room, which makes me think this is not a Chinese thing.

About two weeks ago Howie's cousin-in-law, aunt, and second cousin came to visit and stayed in our spare room.  The same thing.  Every light in the house was constantly on.  Okay, so maybe it's only some of the family...

Howie's sister and brother-in-law are currently staying with us.  Same problem.  Lights.  On.  Constantly.  I mean, give me a break!

Our electricity bill is outrageous every month.  So much so that we unplug nearly everything when we finish using it (obviously not the refrigerator).  Blankets and coats are used in the winter instead of the heater and the water heater is only turned on about 20 minutes before we take showers.  Howie can remember all these things, but not turning off a light.

I'm beginning to think I am doomed to a life of wasted electricity.

Meghan's Account of the Dalian Dinner

I stole the following from my friend Meghan's blog.

In which I became a cautionary tale of future maid of honors at Chinese wedding dinners

Su-Mai-En! Su-Mai-En!! As the banquet hal full of chinese people chanted my (Chinese) name, I started to sincerely reconsider the wisedom of my choice to be Maid of Honor at a Chinese wedding dinner.

My ordeal started two weeks before, when a friend of mine asked me to be maid of honor at her Chinese wedding dinner.  Knowing as I did that her wedding involved a donkey parade, jumping over a lit oven and ridiculous Qing-era clothing, I decided that, as maid of honor, I would try to do an american style toast, so some part of her wedding would have a familiar element to her.

Chinese wedding dinners are an example of what happens when cultural traditions and etiquette, originally made to make life more pleasant, becomes an odious process that serves to confuse and exasperate everyone involved.

The Chinese wedding dinners involve "red envelopes" in which the people who are invited must come and are obligated to give a certain amount of money to the bride and groom- if they fail to do this, they lose face.  It's a tacky, antiquated tradition that often puts chinese people into a catch-22 postion,  since they have to come to the wedding dinner and they must give a certain amount of money, which is at least 200 rmb, which is, for most chinese people, a substantial percentage of their monthly paycheck. So they can't not go- they would lose face, but at the same time they can't go, because they can't afford the money.

Anyway- because of this catch 22 situation, the chinese teachers in my school were placed in a cultural conundrum, that resulted in two weeks of wavering between all the CTs not going, all the CTs going, and only some of the CTs going.  I decided to organize an american-style gift- in which all of the CTs going would pay a certain amount of money for one large gift.  This seemingly easy idea caused me much stress as we had to get through all of their "face issues" - and resulted in me dragging an enormous, cast iron "hanging arch" lamp through the labyrinth that is the Dalian IKEA, after my friend decided that since he had carried another, much lighter lamp before, since I changed my mind, I would have to carry this lamp myself. The frantic IKEA trip culminated with the two of us getting into a ridiculous, yet heated argument over the importance of wrapping paper and ribbon for a wedding present.

So, cut to the next day: I discovered that, as a Chinese maid of honor, besides giving a speech, I had to follow around the bride, holding a tray full of cigarettes and candies to give to all the men at the dinner.  I thus became the most sullen maid of honor as the sexist symbolism of the entire tradition was far too wretched for me to stomach gracefully.  Luckily, as the bride was an American, wearing four inch heels, a blue ballgown and a fur shawl, she was with me in the opinion that this was awful. 

Finally, I was able to sit down with all of my coworkers, leaving the bride and groom at the mercy of Chinese wedding dinner games and the malevolent guests who enforce them.  Or at least, that is how I'll try to remember the evening.  In reality, The groom announced that he had written a love song for his beautiful bride, and that, " The guests would like the maid of honor, Su-Mai-En, to dance to the song." 

Have you ever thought that you are in the midst of a nightmare? I have before. The difference between this time and the other times is that this time? I didn't wake up.  As the third round of "Su-Mai-En!! Su-Mai-En!" started up, I realized that, short of bolting for freedom , I was going to have to dance. 

As the groom started singing, acapella, a song that went along the lines of, " Alicia, I love you, love you, love you. Alicia, I love you!" I awkwardly hopped, tap danced and twirled around, doing at best, an interpretive dance, and at worst, my impersontion of a chicken, while 100 chinese strangers cheered (or jeered) and laughed.  I was a scene from bad '90s era teen movie.

My only consolation was that at least, besides my coworkers and my friend, no one I knew would ever see this.  Even this small consolation was taken from me when I was finally allowed to leave the stage, and I discovered that my Judas of a friend had filmed the entire, mortifying ordeal- from my attempt to escape, slithering my way under the table at the beginning, to the end, when I attacked the groom, wrenching the microphone out of his hand. 

wicked Chinese wedding dinner guests: 3,000,000,000
Meghan (aka Su-Mai-En): - dignity

Kim Jong-il came to Dalian

Seriously, he did.  It was all very hush hush that Kim Jeong Il came to China at all.  I had just heard that he went to Beijing to meet with Hu JinTao for some sort of diplomatic thing.

I was tutoring one of my kids one day and he started telling me how his father saw Mr./President/Dictator Kim at the Furama Hotel down by ZhongShan Square.  So here's the story...

My student's dad, Mr. Zhang, was sitting in a tea house in the Furama Hotel (fancy fancy fancy expensive hotel) enjoying ridiculously over priced tea when a very ugly man walked into the hotel surrounded by body guards.  Mr. Zhang didn't really believe what he was seeing.  As he continued to watch this man, he realized this was indeed Kim Jong-il, the horribly oppressive dictator of North Korea.

When I asked my husband if he knew that Kim had come to Dalian, he just looked at me like I was dumb.  Apparently, every Dalianese knew he had been to Dalian.  My husband later told me that the Chinese government had paid for everything while Kim was visiting China.