Taixing: PreWedding Festivities

Bill and I received the honor of attending a Chinese wedding ceremony this past week. The bride was Yolanda, she working in HR at Summit Nanjing, the groom doesn’t have a western name and I honestly have no idea how to spell his name. We will refer to them as the Bride and Groom.
Bill, Mary – another Chinese coworker and I drove to the Bride and Grooms home town, Taixing, which is about 2 hours east of Nanjing. Bill drove, which went well, mainly interstate style driving. When we were on the outside of the town which we were told was a small town, we were met by Mary’s Uncle to escort us to the hotel. Uncle drove like a maniac. I believe he thought he was in a NASCAR race, zigzagging through the mopeds at a crazy speed. I held my breath as Bill tried to keep up with him. We nearly ran into a man on a tryke with a full load of bricks. Bill decided that we could find our way to the hotel at a much more reasonable pace and Mary called her Uncle to tell him to slow down.
Taixing is a smaller town then Nanjing however; it is not a small town. Shorter buildings, less cars but still a million people and most of them have scooters. The only thing I can compare it to is a flea infestation or a swarm of bees. Organized chaos. The other interesting component to Taixing is that foreigners are rarely seen in the area. It is not exactly a tourist mecca. After checking into the hotel which was nice by the way, Bill and I decided to take a walk to a grocery store to pick up snacks just on the off chance (see: more than likely) the wedding food was less than yummy. We picked up some drinks and crackers and paid the cashier. People were watching us, peeking around the shelves trying to see the crazy American people. When we walked out there was an older gentleman following us, he kept repeating something, not like I could understand but he was insistent. Bill finally picked up one word, Foreigner. The old guy wanted to know where we were from.
Bill replied, “USA.”
The old guy, “USA, USA, USA” as he danced around all but doing a jig in the middle of the food court outside the grocery store.
We just smiled and walked off. Since we had some time to kill before the wedding we decided to take a stroll down a few blocks to see what else the town had to offer. Not Much! However, while we were walking we passed a construction crew working on what I can only guess to be a sewer line. It stunk like poo. I was a little startled when one of the guys came running around us and stopped a few feet in front of us while messing with his phone.
He was taking our picture with his cell phone. I glance around and realize that he isn’t the only one. We got our own paparazzi. Bizarre. So Bill and I just smiled and waved and tried to keep walking. The Chinese are now required to take Basic English in school but in previous generations no English was taught so the only word they may know is Hi and Bye. Bill and I spent the next few minutes exchanging hellos and byes with several grown men and finally were able to return to the hotel as the sounds of men giggling faded in the background.