While I was mildly saddened by the loss of my "twenty-something" wife, we had lots of fun celebrating the big occasion, also known as T-30. It started with a weekend trip to Sanya, which is on the Chinese island of Hainan, in southern China.
Hainan is pretty much the only beach resort in China with year around pleasant weather and is sort of known as the Hawaii of China. The Chinese have a loooong way to go before they have Sanya as developed as Hawaii, but Tiffany and I thought we would go down and check it out for a weekend. It was the perfect recuperative/celebratory weekend. 
We had an amazing room, beautiful weather and hung out by the pool, walked along the beach, and swam and read and ate and drank fuity cocktails poured into carved out coconuts. 
Though you may not be able to read the sign on the right, it warns swimmers of jellyfish, and Tiffany wisely avoided a repeat of her Indonesia experience and stuck to the hotel pool.
Which wasn't altogether safe, as you can see from the waterslide pictures. Tiffany clearly had the edge on form here, while I basically re-lived a childhood nightmare of the time I almost drowned off a hotel waterslide in Hawaii.
We then returned to Shanghai to continue "Tiffany's Week O'Fun", although she actually claimed the entire month for her birthday celebration.
Tiffany's co-workers surprised her with flowers and a "watermelon" ice cream cake. That picture on the right is an ice cream cake cleverly designed as a watermelon. These Chinese are a creative lot, and this may go down in history right up there with gunpowder and noodles among famous Chinese inventions.
Thursday we went to the Blackeyed Peas concert, which was a blast. They are a very popular band and it was a ton of fun to see them live, as they just seemed to be having a genuinely good time up on stage performing. We got two t-shirts, which I made Tiffany wear with me the next weekend so that we could adapt to the local Chinese saying, "Qing lu shan", which is a term to describe a couple that dresses alike. Yes, it is so common here they have coined a term to describe it! 
Friday we took the day off, and when I asked Tiffany where she would like to go for her birthday lunch, maybe the world renowned Jean-Georges, somewhere along the picturesque Bund or perhaps up to one of the breathtaking vistas in one of the hotel restaurants. Immediately she answered, "TGI Fridays!!" and once again, I knew I had picked the right wife. So after a momentous 30th birthday lunch of buffalo wings, mozzerella sticks and hamburgers, we went and got facials at a very nice spa (China price? $32 for 90 minutes.) 
That evening we saw Lion King, which is showing now in Shanghai. Incredible costumes and sets! The creativity and skill of the actors is astounding as they are transformed into elephants, hyenas, giraffes and more.
That pretty much wraps it up for Tiffany's birthday! "Sheng ri kuai le!" as they say in Chinese
1 comment:
@Tiff: Where and when did you get an Irish Lion T-shirt. So jealous. And I'm so bummed I missed you on your birthday. I had it marked and everything. Oh well, sounds like you all had a great time. And I do have an email coming to you soon.
@Zach: Great commentary as always. Love the TGI Friday's bit.
Post a Comment