Uncle Huang, with his warm youthful smile, opened the hotel door gleefully, standing in his bare feet. His wife was in the bathroom finishing up a shower.
　　
　　You might wonder what they were doing five minutes earlier.
　　I did, especially because it was my hotel room. Mine and my girlfriend’s actually-even worse, I thought, eyeing the real or imagined ruffles on our bed.
　　“This is normal for China,” my girlfriend explains.
　　Well, before your mind wanders too far, it’s not normal to happen upon near-strangers nearly naked upon returning to your five-star hotel room. But if it’s your girlfriend’s family bathing that we’re talking about, that’s a different story.
　　Bathing in China, as anywhere else, is a matter of cleanliness. But it’s apparently not always enjoyable. Without heat in so many apartments, especially in Wanzhou, where I had traveled to meet my girlfriend’s Sichuan family for the first time, it can be an unpleasant affair. That is, unless your successful daughter freshly back from the United States (my girlfriend) is in town.
　　Then, bathing, like a holiday dinner, changes from a necessity to a ritualistic festivity. I was going to have to “be tough and suck it up” as my own American mom is fond of saying.
　　So that’s what I did, tucked away―not literally at this point―in a bedside corner with a copy of Asia and Away magazine, concentrating on the “Away” half.
　　Whatever the opposite of the word “exodus” is, I felt like that was happening in my hotel room. Over the course of a few days, my girlfriend’s stepfather (we called him Uncle Huang), mother (Huang’s wife), grandmother, sister, niece and surely others I still don’t know about would bathe in my bathroom.
　　What is it with us Westerners and privacy? It’s one of our most cherished relationships, even to the extent that I rarely call my own grandmother, let alone allow her near my bathing quarters.
　　In America, a constitutional right to privacy is debatable, so that can’t be the answer. I grew up in a townhouse and wasn’t able to blast my stereo system, so I never had an inherent sense of privacy. I didn’t even have a door on my own room.
　　Still, I have come to expect a certain distance when it comes to relatives, something that is clearly not in the Sichuanese vernacular. Morning calls from mom could begin as early as six, my girlfriend warns. Family lunches and dinners are like lengthy acts in a play without intermission. Even if there’s a TV in the dining room, no one pays attention to it. Meanwhile, I grew up on TV dinners and mom begging me to come to the dinner table.
　　As uncomfortable as I was, though, I felt warm. Maybe it was the beer that I was forced at glasspoint to down like a shot. Maybe it was a cold coming on because of dirty cousin so-and-so retrieving food for me with his used chopsticks. Maybe it was the favorite family dish, pig ear―make that pig tail―that didn’t go through me right.
　　Then again, maybe it was just touching. Grandmom didn’t bathe herself. My girlfriend and her mother helped. That’s three family generations in close contact―certainly closer than I can appreciate―but a clear sign of unity for sure. And family that gathered for meals wasn’t just blood relatives. They were Uncle Huang’s children by another marriage, the family doctor, the maids and well, me. As we gathered around the table, we all were family for a couple of hours, and maybe for good.
　　As I made my way through Yujia, where my girlfriend’s father and grandfather were buried a couple of hours by car from Wanzhou, I suddenly felt privileged to be a part of a ritualistic burning of imitation money to bring them good fortune in the next life. It seemed like a traditional Chinese thing to do wholly different from my own culture. But I noticed my girlfriend seemed, at least to me, to take it less seriously. She bantered with me as her sister and brother-in-law did the burning.
　　What she valued most was her living family, offering them a warm place to clean themselves for at least one day out of 365. And she made plenty of time to regale them with tales from America over hours-long lunches and dinners.
　　I never visit my ancestors’ graves. They have stone markers, unlike my girlfriend’s father, but I don’t even know where they are. Even less impressively, I haven’t been to Texas, where my extended family lives, in many years.
　　It’s funny that meeting your girlfriend’s crazy Sichuan parents and extended family will help you realize about your life and who you are. Everyone would be lucky to have them, wet or dry.
　　They helped me. I finally called my own grandmom today, and I’m at least seriously considering booking a ticket to fly out and visit her. I’ll of course again have my own hotel room.
　　No, what you’re thinking is definitely not happening.
　　Uncle Dallas and the cousins aren’t getting one either.

相關(guān)熱詞搜索：Meet Sichuan Parents Ｍｅｅｔ　ｔｈｅ�。樱椋悖瑁酰幔睢。校幔颍澹睿簦� trick or treat meet the deadline