Sea At Countryside

Kenton’s best friend calls at 8 am, and says to be ready in half an hour. He’s going to bring us to a small seaside town in the countryside. After trying to feed and dress three kids and pack our necessary items in a bag in 30 minutes, we were off. We went to meet other friends and their families. When we arrived at the place, I was a bit disappointed. The sea was a bit murky and instead of sand, there were lots of small rocks. Apparently, it is a favorite local hang-out place. There were three very long covered pavilions. Each pavilion had 20 or so square wooden tables with benches and chairs. Each table had a group of people socializing – eating, talking, or playing cards or mahjong. There had to be around 600 people at this public seaside place. Our group seemed to grow larger every few minutes.

After a couple of hours at the seaside, we all went to eat at a restaurant in the town. We ended up taking three large tables with our group – there were over 30 people in all. Most of the men all sat at one table, while the women and kids sat at another. Kenton, his best friend, I and the kids, along with others sat at another table. The dishes kept coming one after the other - all different types of seafood. There were over 14 dishes served at each table. I couldn’t believe the amount of food that was brought out. We could’ve fed almost twice as many people as in our group. The woman sitting next to me (the wife of Kenton’s classmate who went to Russia to study) told me that in China this is the custom – to order way too much food. She also explained that the norm was for the husbands to go out to eat and drink while the wives stayed at home with the kids. And sure enough, after all of us finished eating - the men kept on socializing, while the wives just patiently waited for them to finish. I told the wives that in the States, we women would go out to the spa, get our nails done, or go shopping. They decided that we should go to one of their homes and play mahjong or cards. The only problem was that there only three who knew how to play mahjong and three others who knew how to play cards. We ended up just waiting for the guys to finish socializing.

They mentioned that Kenton is a model Chinese husband. He helps with the kids, sits with me, and brings the family around with him wherever he goes. I said that it was pretty typical for an American husband to do that, but that I thought he was also a model husband.

It turns out that there were three government officials in our group and they paid for the meal (it was a government business expense). In fact, they were the ones to invite us to eat. I believe that they are hoping that one day in the future, some of the wealthy businessmen in the group would invest in developing and improving their town. The meal was probably around $500. It was definitely the biggest seafood feast I’ve ever seen.

The boys: Kevin and Justin enjoyed the seaside. Brian slept the whole time in Kenton’s arms, while I walked along the waters edge with Kevin and Justin. They caught many baby hermit crabs in their shells, along with several snails, and even a baby fish. Kevin tried to catch a mud skipper, but they kept disappearing into holes in the mud. Kevin also went for a swim. The water was very shallow and people were going far out into the sea to even get to waist-deep water. This was the first time for the boys to catch hermit crabs and snails – they had a lot of fun.

At the restaurant, Kevin and Justin liked using the toothpicks and needles to pull out the cooked snails from their small shells to give to Kenton to eat. After eating, they played with a couple of girls while waiting to go home.