Drink Tea

Hello noble readers!  I hope you're all doing well today.  I know that I missed my post yesterday, but as predicted I got back to the hotel later than usual.  It's also pretty late this evening, but I didn't want to keep everyone hanging for another day, so I'm going to do a quick recap of the last two days.

We packed a lot in yesterday, starting with a trip to the former residence of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who is considered the father of the Chinese revolution.  Lots of history there, and some interesting recreations of homes that would be typical of the humble fishing village where he was born in the late 1800s.

On the way home we stopped in at Pearl Land... which is all I'm going to say on the subject at this point.  I really don't think I can fully convey that experience in words alone, so I'm going to give it a its own post once I'm able to upload photos.  Suffice to say that you should all wait with baited breath.

The rest of the afternoon was spent getting ready for our big wedding reception in the evening.  Since Euphy and I opted for the simplicity of a destination wedding we weren't subjected to a typical wedding reception in Canada, but last night provided a fairly similar approximation.  Our private section of the restaurant was packed with Euphy's family, as well her mom's friends.  We started the evening by posing for so many photos that our cheeks hurt from all the smiling.  We then proceeded to toast, and be toasted by, everyone in the room in what I assume is a tradition designed to test the durability of my liver.  Really though, as much as I jokingly try to make it sound like a lot of work, it was a great way to connect with family that we rarely see, and we had a great meal.

Speaking of meals... let's talk about today.  There's a Cantonese expression "yum cha," which literally translates as "drink tea."  While "yum cha" can be used as a command to start drinking tea, the more common usage is to describe a get-together that usually involves a meal.  It's an incredibly popular way to catch up with friends and family, and since the focus really is more on conversation than the food or titular tea, the process can take much longer than it would if your intended goal was simply to have a meal.  Today I drank a lot of tea.

We went down for breakfast around 9:00 this morning with some of Euphy's family.  By the time that tea drinking had wrapped up we were just about ready to go for lunch with some of Euphy's friends.  After we wrapped up that session of tea drinking we took a brief walk before heading to a nice spot for afternoon tea.  It was at this point that I began to suspect that I was in The Shire.  We went promptly from afternoon tea to dinner with more of Euphy's family.  Following that we met up with more of Euphy's friends at, of all places, a tea shop for some dessert.  I didn't get back to the hotel until about 11:30, and in those 14.5 hours I doubt that I spent much more than 2 hours outside of a restaurant.

The flurry of tea drinking activity today was largely due to the fact that it's our last full day in Zhuhai.  Tomorrow afternoon we're going to skip across the border to Macao for a bit of touristy fun and we'll be spending the evening there.  The following morning we'll be flying out to Tokyo!  With any luck I'll have less restricted internet access tomorrow evening and I hope to be able to start posting some of the pictures I've been taking.    I'll check in at my earliest convenience once we're in Macao.  For now though, I've consumed a lot of tea, so you'll have to excuse me...