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One Saturday afternoon when we were young, my sister Emily and I were watching an old WC Fields/Burns and Allen movie on TV. In one scene, WC Fields landed his autogyro at the hotel. At the end of the scene, we howled in laughter and yelled for our dad.
My dad was born in Wuhu, Anhui Province, China. Wuhu lies on the Yangtze River, west of Shanghai. It was a port city and was known as a rice center of China. It has been inhabited for nearly 3000 years. My dad used to tell us stories of his grandfather who was the magistrate of Wuhu and my dad’s great uncle who was the chief of police. No one had ever heard of Wuhu so we would say our dad was from near Shanghai. We couldn’t believe that Wuhu could be mentioned in an old 1930s comedy, especially as the punch line for a WC Fields joke. It’s kind of amazing that we even saw that movie in the first place. International House isn’t one of the more well-known works of WC Fields’ oeuvre.
Here’s a video of Wuhu today.
We’ve had Hua Mei use Chinese names to call us at home. I’m “baba” and Karen is “mama” (okay, maybe I shouldn’t claim that mama is Chinese though the term is used in China too). When Xia Mei arrives, Hua Mei will be “jiejie,” older sister, while Xia Mei will be “meimei” or younger sister. An older brother would be called “gege” and a younger brother would be “didi.” For instance, I am Grace’s didi but Emily’s gege.
The word for paternal aunt is “guma” so the kids call my older sister “daguma,” big aunt and they call my mei mei “sanguma,” third aunt since she is the third sibling. “Da” means big and “san” means three. Here are other names for aunts:
bomu: father’s older brother’s wife
shenmu: father’s younger brother’s wife
yimu: mother’s sister
jiumu: sister’s brother’s wife
These are the names for uncles:
bofu: father’s older brother
shufu: father’s younger brother
gufu: father’s sister’s husband
jiufu: mother’s brother
jifu: mother’s sister’s husband
jiuma: mother’s brother’s wife
Obviously, extended families are a big part of the Chinese culture. When we were growing up, we called all adults either uncle or aunt. The Chinese words for an unrelated uncle is shushu and for an unrelated aunt, ayi.
Hua Mei calls my father yeye for grandfather. My mother would have been called nainai. The word for maternal grandfather is waigong and for maternal grandmother it’s waipo.
btw Hua Mei calls Karen’s mom “mormor” which is the Danish word for maternal grandmother (mother’s mother) while she calls Karen’s dad “Bumpa” which is how she used to pronounce grandpa.
We are putting together a small package to send to Xia Mei at her orphanage. CHSFS has sent us a bilingual letter to the orphanage staff, instructions in Chinese on how to use a one-time use camera, a bilingual list of questions about our child, and an address label that we can affix to the package for mailing to China.
We will be sending a disposable camera for pictures of Xia Mei and her foster parents. When we received Hua Mei, we were given a small photo album with the pictures from the camera we sent to the orphanage in Wu Xue City.
Hua Mei still loves to look at it. We will also send Xia Mei a photo album of us, our home, her room and her grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. CHSFS sent us bilingual labels for the photo album. I can create any additional labels using the nciku web site. We will also send her a small blanket that we bought at Target earlier this year, specifically for this purpose. I had to buy it. It had her name on it.
We’ve washed it a few times so that the blanket may get her familiar to the scent of our clothing. Hopefully the blanket and photo album we send her will prepare her for our first meeting.
The Shen family originated from Hanshan County in Anhui Province. Shen means “state, express, explain.” It is also the ninth of the twelve Earthly Branches of the Chinese calendar. Shen is also a shortname for Shanghai. There was a well known Shanghi newspaper called Shenbao and the Shanghai soccer team is called Shanghai Shenhua. It comes from Lord Chun Shen, a famous high official who administered Shanghai and its surrounding areas during the Warring States Period (475-221 BC). Chun Shen is the name of a river in the region, later known as the Huangpu River or Yellow River which flows through Shanghai.
My dad’s name is Guang Ting.
Guang means “wide, broad” and Ting means “thunderbolt.” Guang is his generation name. Traditionally, all the boys of his generation (siblings and cousins) in the Shen family have the generation name Guang. For instance, his two brothers’ names were Guang Zhong and Guang Pei. Each lineage such as the Shen lineage has a generation poem which can range from twelve to hundreds of characters. The generation name is taken from a character in the poem. The next generation then gets the next character in the poem. Once the end of the poem is reached, it cycles back to the beginning of the poem. Girls’ names don’t necessarily have the generation name.
My generation name is Sheng and my given name is Wei.
Sheng means “flourishing, abundant.” Wei means “great.” My younger sister Emily’s Chinese name also has the generation name and is Sheng Ming.
Ming means “bright, clear.” My older sister Grace’s Chinese name is Ji Mei.
Ji means “season” and Mei is the same character as with Hua Mei and Xia Mei, meaning “beautiful.” Our grandfather gave us our Chinese names. It was said that the meaning of Grace’s name was “the fourth of the generation and born in America” with Meiguo being the Chinese name for America.
According to the Chinese Zodiac, Xia Mei was born in the Year of the Pig; Hua Mei, Year of the Monkey; Karen, is Year of the Horse; and I, Year of the Sheep. Hmmm, based on the descriptions of their signs, we could be looking forward to some “interesting” times watching Hua Mei and Xia Mei interact. Perhaps it’s good that Hua Mei is the jie jie. Fortunately, I don’t believe in these kinds of patterns. At least not if they’re inconvenient.
Year of the Pig
A pig is not as smart as a dog in understanding human thought. It likes sleeping and eating and becomes fat. Thus it usually features laziness and clumsiness. On the positive side, it behaves itself, has no calculation to harm others, and can bring affluence to people. Consequently, pigs were once regarded as wealth.
People born in the Year of the Pig are honest and frank. They have a calm appearance and strong heart, but they lack patience and independence. As they do not like to talk in a roundabout way, they are thought to be unsociable. Luckily, they are tolerant and optimistic, so not until they become your friends can their virtue, advantages and fidelity to friendship be found.
Best match: sheep, rabbit; avoid: snake, pig, monkey
Year of the Monkey
The monkey is a clever animal. People used to compare it to a smart person. During the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC – 476 BC), the dignified official title, marquis with the pronunciation ‘Hou’, was the same as the monkey’s. The monkey was thereby bestowed with auspicious meaning. It appeared on pictures pasted on the walls and doors to predict good fortune in officialdom.
Most people born in the Year of the Monkey are lively, flexible, and versatile. They love moving and sports. To help others they put their own business aside. When communicating, they do not like to be controlled and have a strong desire to present themselves. In their work, they will show amazing creativity. If they are not impatient and mouthy, they can gain more achievement.
Best match: rat, dragon; avoid: tiger, snake, pig
Year of the Horse
The spirit of the horse is recognized to be the Chinese people’s ethos – making unremitting efforts to improve themselves. It is energetic, bright, warm-hearted, intelligent and able. Ancient people liked to designate an able person as ‘Qianli Ma’ (a horse that covers a thousand li a day).
People born in the year of the horse have ingenious communicating techniques and in their community they always want to be in the limelight. They are active, clever, kind to others, and like to join in a venture career. They cannot bear too much constraint. However they are interested in only the superficial level of an object, neglecting the essence. Once they suffer from failure, they become pessimistic.
Best match: tiger, sheep, dog; Avoid: rat, ox, rabbit, horse
Year of the Sheep
The sheep is among the animals that people like most. It is gentle and calm. Since ancient times, people have learned to use its fleece to make writing brushes and skin to keep warm. As it is white, people describe delicate and precious white jade to be ’suet jade’. Thus it is close to the meaning of good things.
People under the sign of the sheep are tender, polite, filial, clever, and kind-hearted. They have special sensitivity to art and beauty, faith in a certain religion and a special fondness for quiet living. They cope with business cautiously and circumspectly. In their daily life, they try to be economical.
Best match: rabbit, horse, pig; avoid: rat, ox, dog
Last week I was getting directions off of Google maps and noticed that they had the street level view of our house. I guess that’s kind of cool but it’s kind of creepy too. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to see all the houses that I lived in. First, I tried New Jersey. Weird. There were no street level views for anywhere we lived. Oh well. At least it was cool to see the co-op that I lived at in Ann Arbor is still there and it still sits next to the purple co-op on State Street. The house where I rented an apartment in Atlanta has been torn down and replaced by another building. Our original house is St Louis was also torn down and replaced by a parking ramp for a shopping mall.
I actually knew that this had happened. Every few years I return to St Louis to catch some Cardinals games and hit a Steak and Shake for a chili mac and orange freeze. One summer Karen and I visited with my parents. One morning we were reading the Post Dispatch and Karen noticed a picture of our old house on the front page of the metro section. There was a story that all the houses on the street would be torn down. That was pretty bizarre. Talk about a very strange coincidence.
They say that a great way to remember things is to visualize the house you grew up in. Suppose you want to remember a list of items. Take a tour of the house and associate items on the list with rooms, furnishings, whatever. Then keep going through the house and remember where all the items on the list are located. Soon you’ll be able to recall the list by thinking of your house.
Not sure how well this works but I know that I can vividly recall all the houses that I lived in. That’s kind of cool.
One of the famous sites in Nanchang is the Pavilion of Prince Teng. It is one of the three Great Towers of Jiangnan.
It was first built in 653 AD. It has been destroyed and rebuilt many times over the centuries with its latest incarnation completed in 1989.
The Yellow Crane Tower in Wuhan is another of the Great Towers. When we received Hua Mei in Wuhan, we visited the Yellow Crane Tower.
Interestingly, the corner towers of the Forbidden City were built to imitate the Yellow Crane Tower and the Pavilion of Prince Teng.
The third Great Tower is the Yueyang Tower in Hunan.
We don’t plan to adopt another child from China. We’ll just go visit it someday.
Okay, so what does baseball have to do with adopting Xia Mei, or for that matter Hua Mei too? Well, back in 2004, I somehow managed to get tickets for the World Series. Being a huge Cardinals fan, it was a dream come true.
Watching the Cards play game 3 in St Louis couldn’t get any better. So, Karen and I flew down to St Louis and on a rainy evening on Oct 26 watched the Cards drop game 3 of a four game sweep to the Red Sox.
Flash forward about eight months and we receive Hua Mei’s referral. Hua Mei was born on October 25, 2004. She was found the following day on October 26. We’ll always know exactly where we were when Hua Mei was born and found.
As we were getting the paperwork prepared for Xia Mei toward the end of 2006, it occurred to me that the timing might coincide with Xia Mei being born in 2006. What a nice symmetry that would be. The Cards ended up winning the World Series in 2006. It’s cool finding patterns (odd coincidences?) like these.
Unfortunately the adoption process for Xia Mei was much slower than what we experienced for Hua Mei. But we finally have gotten the referral and as it turns out, rather than being born in 2006, Xia Mei was born in 2007.
As my sister Emily, the long-suffering Red Sox fan, would be happy to tell you, Boston won the World Series in both 2004 and 2007. I’m glad I’m not a Yankee fan.
Karen thinks I’m a loser for even thinking about stuff like this. I tell her it’s part of my charm. Professionals call it OCD. Fortunately it’s not so bad that I’m into conspiracy theories. On the other hand, what is it about freemasons? …
It was kind of odd to hear her called Wan Jin Run. When we adopted Hua Mei in 2005, we had originally asked for twins (what in the world were we thinking?). We decided on two names: Natalie and Olivia. So, Hua Mei is Natalie and her little sister would be Olivia. We’ve been calling her Olivia for over three years now.
Natalie’s original name was Xue Fu Yan. She came from Wu Xue City in Hubei Province. Her surname of Xue comes from her city of origin. Others in her cohort from Wu Xue also had the name of Fu which is likely her generation name. Natalie’s given name from the orphanage is Yan. So, Olivia’s surname of Wan likely comes from her place of origin, Wanzai county. Similarly, her generation name is Jin and her given name is Run.
My sisters and I have Chinese names for our middle names. My generation name is Sheng and my given name is wei. We were named by our paternal grandfather. Karen and I asked my dad to give Chinese names to Natalie and Olivia. My dad named Natalie Hua Mei and named Olivia Xia Mei. He said that both names mean born in China and raised in America. The word huaxia is an archaic name for China. Meiguo is the Chinese word for America. So, Hua Mei and Xia Mei could also be translated as Chinese American. Hua also means splendid, illustrious; xia means great or grand; and mei can be translated as beautiful or good deed. So, that’s what’s in a name.
