Chinese wedding photography

Chinese wedding photography - always crazy and over the top?
When I first arrived and my new lab mates found out I was married then inevitably we ended up discussing weddings. They initially told me that weddings in China weren’t really that big of a deal, but somehow I think that was playing things down a bit! My impression of Chinese weddings is that they can be very elaborate, and above all, a lot of effort and money is spent on the photography. All my friends here who are married that I’ve talked about this with had a photography session (usually before the wedding – so none of these superstitions about the groom seeing the bride before the big day and being put off), and the photos tend to focus on these staged shots, with several outfit changes, rather than the ceremony itself. And when it comes to dress changes, I'm talking about five or six dresses. Nowadays most brides will have at least a few white dresses, but there will also be some of coloured evening gowns in addition to one in traditional dress.  My friends told me that most of the dresses are loaned, so they don’t incur that much of an expense, but I know that the photography package can be quite pricey, and many start at around £1000.

When you see the photographers going around with a couple in the city and in the parks, it’s not hard to see why. Normally, wedding photographs will be taken at beautiful or exotic outside locations, and there will usually be at least one photographer, and one assistant carrying around capes to keep the bride warm in between the shots, or extra changes of clothing. Sometimes more people make up the entourage, such as in night shots, when someone is required to hold a spotlight to make sure faces are well-lit. I also saw a few photography groups that included bridesmaids, although traditionally, Asian weddings would only have one bridesmaid, or none at all (so this is probably another aspect of Western influence on the young people of China).

So, after this brief introduction, here is a selection of my favourite wedding photography sessions that I’ve seen on my travels:

Posing at the Bund was massively popular throughout the hot summer nights

A brave bride catches a chance lull in the traffice to pose at the famous and romantic Wai ba du bridge

As one of the oldest universities in China, even my campus attracts some couples hoping to get some romantic shots with the help of their entourage

The recently built Century Park is so huge that you can even hold a wedding there

Western style bridesmaids and groomsmen are becoming increasingly popular, as showcased by this group posing at Fuxing Park

The prize for the most adventurous couple has to go to this pair, who drove out to a relatively remote part of the Great Wall, about 2 or 3 hours away from Beijing in order to get what must have been stunning wedding shots

The competition to have better and more unique wedding photographs has driven a highly lucrative market to become more and more inventive. How about underwater photography? Or dressing up in your policeman work gear for a swat-themed wedding shoot?

Chinese Hospitality

   Since I arrived, I’ve been out on to several trips into the city to see the main sights of Shanghai courtesy of the people in the lab who have been very friendly and welcoming. Thanks to them, I am also now up and running on Weibo, so if you’re a member, please come and follow me there! My profile is on Weibo. 
           Generally, one of the things people complain about when they arrive to China is that people are rude. Whilst yes, in public, strangers will often push past you, not bother asking if you're in the queue and generally just go about their business as it suits them regardless of how it affects you, in a country that's so full of people, it can be hard to care about everybody. Conversely, if you are someone's friend or guest, then they will go to the ends of the earth for you, making sure that you are comfortable, have enough to eat and drink, pay for things, give you gifts and carry your bags. 

             In my experience, my lab hosts were of course very friendly from the word go. On the first Friday evening, they took me out into the city centre for a meal (more on that in a later post) and also to see the famous Bund, which is best seen when it is lit up at night. This was especially great for me, as I love making night photos and was looking forward to seeing the real thing in the flesh. The Pudong side of the river was every bit as breathtaking as people describe, and I got some great shots of it.

The guys in the lab were also very interested to see my photos, so they cajoled me into signing up for Weibo – China’s answer to Twitter/Facebook. There is supposed to be an English version of this, but only about half of the features are translated and of course, none of the text that people post, so I have to make do with guessing and Google translate to get by. Nevertheless, so many of the features are very similar to Facebook that it is not that hard to use. However, the main difference seems to be that it is very heavily monitored. Just these week it was mentioned in the news, as information became available that the Chinese government hires some 2 million people to monitor and vet users on the website. Anything that is deemed politically sensitive is deleted. This crazily large number seems rather senseless, even with having to check on 100 million registered users, but I believe this is symptomatic of a new theory I'm developing about the Chinese political system : the reason why the communist government has been so successful for so long, is that by requiring such an enormous amount of regulation, red tape and paperwork, they are keeping a huge number of people employed and thus managing to support their vast population. This was first apparent to me when I had the pleasure of visiting the Shanghai Exit-Entry Inspection Bureau.  And the amount of porters, guards and even military people around to guard everything is astounding already. It just takes such a huge work force to keep this many people in check. It’s a crazy system, but somehow, it works for them.

                But getting back to the topic of Chinese hospitality. If you haven’t seen the photos, here are some highlights from my first evening out in the city:

Ships passing on the Bund in the evening

                These are the lab people who kindly took me out on my first Friday night and showed me all the lights of the city at night. The guy on the right Yingzhou is the one that is coming to the UK in January, and I keep thinking “What on earth am I going to show him that’s just as good as this?!” There is nothing remotely as spectacular anywhere near Leicester, and I’ll probably just end up showing him round London if I want to be an equally good host.

My new labmates

              The next trip out that we went on was to the Yu Gardens (豫园) a special green garden with rockeries and lakes built in the Ming dynasty. I bet in its hey day, it made a great retreat for the Chinese nobility. Unfortunately it can’t be described as a retreat today, because it is so very, very busy with tourists. This doesn’t detract from the experience though, and I loved the bazaars around it, which had an air of Camden town on a bustling Saturday morning.

              It is made up of winding paths through lakes to temples and houses built on top of the water, teeming with large fish (and some tortoises!) vying for a piece of bread fed to them by the tourists:

 It has some very beautiful parts:

As well as some funny Chinglish signs:

Also some beautiful sculptures:

Although sometimes the harsh modern buildings show through the smog and are a stark reminder of how much China has changed through its rich history:

I sometimes wonder how much more it will change and whether the skyscrapers of today will turn into the relics of tomorrow, and with what they might be replaced.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, afterwards, we went round the bazaars and saw this weird café that has toilet as its theme! It is complete with urinals as wall decorations!

Check out my later visit to this place here.

                   Overall, with regards to friendliness and hospitality, again, China is full of contradictions as usual. It simultaneously manages to have reputations for rudeness but boundless politeness. And certainly, what I've found is that many people in the street seem quite happy to push in front of you and pushy in the street or in the underground, and many staff don't always seem that bothered to help you. However, if somebody is your friend, or host, then they would go to lengths that we would find ridiculous in the UK. For example, even Lu felt compelled to pay for some macaroons which I spotted in a shopping mall, which I'd intended to buy for her to say "thanks for showing me Chinese things, please try some tasty western things", but she insisted on paying and would not take my money. Later, her and her husband paid for a hotel for me, after I declined their offer to sleep in their bedroom, because they deemed the concept of me sleeping on their sofa too insulting to offer to a guest! Also, she would not let me carry my own bags, despite the fact that she's literally half my size (literally, in weight!) Each time, I explained that in my country, this was weird, and she says that in her country, this is expected of a host, and that it's impolite to refuse, so I had to agree..

                Either way though, I've seen so many things and having genuine Shanghai residents as my guides, I feel like I'm getting a really authentic Chinese experience and I'm really grateful to the guys in the lab for being such great hosts. Even if this means that we are sometimes communicating via the medium of the Google Translate app!

“What do you eat?” – Part II – Food in the outside world

     So what do I eat when leaving the safety of the campus? Well one answer is dessert! Since the campus canteen never serves any desserts (my first thought of “Oh my god! How will I live?” was quickly replaced by “Oh my god! I’m going to lose so much weight!”), I have to look elsewhere for my sugar fixes. There is a small store near the canteen selling ice creams and sweets, but nobody really seems to go there except for drinks. And whenever we go out for meals, there is never a question of “shall we have dessert or no?”, so I thought for a while that maybe Chinese culture just isn’t that into desserts (especially when you compare British culture, where many women admit to not being able to go one day without some chocolate passing their lips). However, a quick venture into any food area of a shopping mall quickly dispelled this theory. There are in fact plenty of sweets, and the Chinese are very good at making them. They even have their own version of custard tarts that are available here, and can be bought for the great price of 35 p. There are also many French dessert counters serving traditional patisserie type cakes, and I’ve even seen two stores selling macarrons in all the traditional flavours! However, it is not French cuisine that I’ve come here for, so I’ve made it my mission to get through as many Chinese cakes and bakes as I can while I’m here. There are so many things coming in a multitude of colours and shapes that I don’t have a clue where to start.

Array of multi-coloured sweet balls

So after the custard tart, I tried one of these purple balls above (I think it was made with tapioca flour). It was great.

We also had this delicious “bell cake” which was kind of like a bell-shaped waffle but with a hot custard filling inside – so delicious! Definitely going to have this again.

The range of sweets varies from ones where the flavours I can recognise and describe at a fairly accurate level, to the downright alien, but nevertheless tasty:

Ground black sesame and some other nut with some kind of sugar pastry strands?

At the other end of the spectrum, there are the familiar brands, but with a slightly different twist:

To be honest, I’m surprised they didn’t print “Oreo” on the cookie in Chinese characters as well! But hey, if they can come up with great flavours like strawberry and peach cream for the Asian market, I’m all for it!

There is also another version and I think this is mint ice cream flavoured:

Or is it green tea? I’m not sure, but it has a bit of a funny aftertaste, think I’ll be steering clear of this one afterwards.

I have also now tried the milk! I decided to give it a go because there were some pretty reliable looking fresh milk cartons, and there were loads of adverts around so I thought it was worth a try. Also I just missed it too much!

           Really I’d heard a lot of bad things about the dairy industry in China, and I wanted to see for myself how bad it really was. Overall this milk wasn’t actually so bad. It only tasted slightly watered down (at least, I hope it was water they diluted it with!) and had more or less the flavour of UHT milk, which is tolerable. Obviously it wasn’t going to taste exactly the same as back home (heck, there is even a difference between Hungarian and British milk), but it was milky and refreshing, and tasted infinitely better than that vile excuse for soy milk they serve at the canteen, so I think I’ll be getting this more regularly in future for my calcium hit.

            I also had a moment of madness and decided to try this:

              "What’s chicken doing in a blog about desserts?” I hear you say (or quite possibly also, “how much longer is this blog post going to go on for?”). Actually, this isn’t chicken breast, but the flesh of the infamous durian! Ever since I heard about durians I thought they sounded so funny, I just had to try some. Typical foreigner noob, I didn’t really know what I was letting myself in for. Affectionately known in Asian countries as a fruit which smells a bit funny but tastes delicious, I wanted to see for myself what all the fuss was about. Wrapped up in a neat little package, it seemed fine on the way home, but when I opened it, boy did it smell! Not only did it smell very strongly, but it tasted very weird, so I only had a tiny bit and left the rest in my fridge to tackle later. My Chinese friend said that many people don’t like their first taste, but grow to love it, and it was said to be especially good for women, and helps with our complexion. However, my second taste the next day wasn’t getting much better, although it was becoming more tolerable. The smell in my room was definitely breaching unignorable levels though. For such was the strength of this fruit, that despite being kept in the fridge, it filled the room with an air of slightly rotting bananas/sour milk/sweaty gym clothes. I just couldn’t get rid of it for days, even after trying to finish most of it off, and parting with the packet in the bins outside. Worse still, the fridge still smells of it, and I don’t know how long it will be til that dies down, if ever. Perhaps I’ll try again in a few weeks, and maybe like Lu says, I’ll have grown to like it.....

                   Despite these weird experiences, I have to share with you guys an excellent trip to a proper ice-cream parlour style dessert shop called Honeymoon Dessert. These stores are dotted all around Shanghai, and specialise in Hong Kong style desserts, and they’re quite famous throughout Shanghai, and I’m sure in other parts of China too. There’s everything from Durian to mango with sago or jelly, or other classic Asian flavours, with or without ice cream, custard and a whole range of other tasty things. I opted for this blueberry dish:

At 30 RMB, it wasn’t cheap, and cost more than some mains in some restaurants! But it was a special one-off treat, and it was so delicious! In the bowl were some blueberries, a scoop of blueberry ice cream, a sweet Thai rice ball all swimming in a vanilla-flavoured iced milk liquid. It was one of the best desserts I’d had, and I’d definitely go back for more! Next time I definitely want to try the green tea flavoured ice cream too.

  So, it seems like there is plenty of choice for desserts in China, and I probably won’t lose so much weight after all!

Setting up for life in China........passport please

The first few days after my arrival went by in a bit of a blur. Of course there was some adjustment to the time, and I was tired from the long journey, but there was much to be done to get me settled at the university, and since I arrived first thing in the morning, there was a full day’s work ahead.

                In order to help me get settled, I had one of the boys from the lab, YZ, was assigned to help me get set up in China and settle in. He will be the second guy from the Shanghai side to take part in our exchange, and is due to come to the UK in January. He is a bright, young boy of 24, and I think he was assigned to help me, not only because I will inevitably return the favour when he comes to Leicester, but also because he has by far the best English out of anyone I have met here (that includes the professor). And thank goodness, he has been such a great help.

                During my first day YZ took me round such an array of places, I lost count! Basically, we got my student card, which is the general currency on campus, paying for everything from food to showers, went to go top it up, went to the accounts office, went to the Bank of China to set up a bank account so that I can receive my scholarship from the government, got a new Chinese SIM card for my phone, went to get basic food shopping, and generally help get me settled in. What most of these steps basically involved was going to an office, having a photo taken or needing to procure a passport photo, showing them my passport and some vital piece of paper, or going to another place and photocopying a vital piece of paper.

Generally, I was surprised at the level of bureaucracy, coming from a place where I could easily pop into any Phones4U, and come out with a new pay as you go sim card in about five minutes. Here I had to show my passport, and residence details, and so much more problems which was all said in Chinese between Yingzhou and the staff, that it seemed like an age. And they gave me loads more bits of official paper. I also couldn’t even order water for my water cooler without giving my passport number down the phone to the water company! (Well, Yingzhou did that, since the water company didn’t even have any English speaking staff, despite supplying the international student accommodation with water!). The bureaucracy level reached its craziest heights at the visa centre, but more on that later.

Settling in to my room I have to say was a very pleasant surprise. Having heard about Chinese university dorms and seen the pictures from Chinese friends and also Monika on her exchange, I had pretty much expected the bog standard desk/bunk bed combo shared with a room-mate. Before I arrived, I was informed though that actually I would be getting a single room, and I thought this may be because I was staying in the international student’s building. However, I was genuinely surprised to get a spacious room with a nice big bed:

The massive bed all to myself, next to my desk

              Not only that, but it has been equipped with a TV, mini fridge, microwave, lamp, working AC system, water cooler (on account of the Chinese tap water having dubious quality standards) and telephone!

My water-cooler, microwave, fridge and TV

 

(Although I'm not sure what is the point of having a TV, since all the channels are in Chinese anyway).  Despite not having my own sink, we have a shared bathroom on each floor. This might not sound much like luxury, but the home students in the other dorms don’t even have bathroom facilities in their building, and they have to go to an outside building for showers, and even this is only open between the hours of 3 pm till 10 pm, so if you've missed the time, you've missed your shower for the day! I have heard that one fifth of Shanghai’s population still does not have indoor plumbing and they use bed pans at night, so I think I've gotten very lucky here! I am most surprised to find that I don’t have to share, since I've seen that some of the other rooms on my floor have two international students in. But I guess I just have to be thankful for the special treatment. Although there is a funny smell in here that my lab friend seems to think might be a fungus that would be very difficult to remove.....ah well, swings and roundabouts!