#39. Cousins (Saturday, August 24, 2002)

What was your best day…of spending time with your relatives?

Up until this summer of 2002, the concept of an extended family had never really existed to me. It was just my mom, my dad, and my brother. Sure, my grandparents dropped in during the years after my brother was born. But just the fact that halfway across the world were two other guys (relatively) close to my age, and related by blood, was one that I did not fully realize until I touched down in Shanghai two weeks earlier (#75).

On this particular Saturday night, the whole group of us – my grandparents, my parents and brother, my uncle’s family (with my eight-year-old cousin Kang Kang), my aunt’s family (with my eighteen-year-old cousin Zhou Ling) – were all gathered at my grandparents’ house doing our own things. All of us had just gotten back from a big day trip: to the Oriental Pearl Tower (3^rd tallest in the world at the time), to this picture place to have all these family photos taken, then to this restaurant to have the usual big Chinese dinner.¹

My aunt’s husband and my dad are sulking on the side as usual². The other adults are flipping between the usual cheesy Chinese drama (which always features a lot of incomprehensible yelling and, once you actually understand them, are terrifyingly addictive³) and this Chinese Weakest Link ripoff that was really popular at the time (and had pitifully small cash payouts⁴). My uncle and Zhou Ling are busy playing Contra on the old NES⁵. My brother is off in the corner doing what four-year-olds do. And Kang and I are deep in a game of Luzhanqi, aka Land Battle Chess.

Luzhanqi was basically Stratego, but better. Each player had hidden pieces of different rank, and your goal was to defeat your opponent’s pieces and ultimately capture their “flag” – which was always surrounded with “mines” that could only be removed by the lowest-ranking “miners”. So the first half of the game was getting into a good board position for one of your three miners to defuse a mine without dying to literally every other piece. The second half was trying to get through that hole with some other piece to capture their flag. It was a brilliant game.

So I’ve got Kang pinned in a bad spot. I’ve defused his mine and am about to capture his flag, when Zhou Ling, my grandparents, my uncle, and my mom have decided this is must-see entertainment. So they watch intently, trying to give Kang (unhelpful) advice…and when I’m about to win, my uncle jokingly switches the flag piece with another piece. Which Kang does not find so amusing…so he throws a giant tantrum about how all the adults are annoying and picking on him. But I’ve technically won, so that’s made my day.⁶

A short while later, Zhou Ling tells me that he, Kang, and my uncle are heading over to my uncle’s place to stay the night. And I, obviously, really want to join to them. So I ask my mom, and she lets me go, with surprisingly little resistance⁷.

So it’s a sleepover. Me, my two cousins, and my uncle; four (immature) guys hanging out for the night. Pretty freaking awesome.

Us three cousins end up chilling in the living room until late at night. I play an intense game of Luzhanqi with Zhou Ling; he barely beats me when both of us only have a few pieces left. Then Kang and I play again, and I end up winning because Kang – in his infinite wisdom – puts his strongest piece in one of the two designated flag spots. (The piece you put there doesn’t move for the entire game; it’s there so the other player doesn’t know the exact location of the flag at start of game.) And for the last hour, Zhou Ling and Kang tell me all about the competitive school culture in China, while I explain to them the totally foreign concepts of ice hockey, Gifted classes, and game shows that pay out real money.

So, all things considered, a pretty ordinary, yet pretty special night.

I’m not sure how all twelve of us were able to fit into my uncle’s minivan to get to all of these places, but I do recall Zhou Ling holding both Kang and my brother in his lap in the front seat. All this was not helped by the fact that my uncle, like most drivers in Shanghai, drove like a maniac.
My aunt’s husband is busy smoking his two packs of cigarettes a day.
There was one that I ended up getting hooked onto during my visit in 2011 (#61). Basically: Girl meets guy. Girl marries guy. Guy leaves for the U.S. to become rich. Girl is pregnant. Girl raises son with help of crazy mother-in-law. Girl divorces guy. Guy comes back after new wife in U.S. runs away with all his money. Girl doesn’t remarry guy, but instead marries childhood friend who was there all along.
Each episode had one winner, who had a chance to win about $3,000 (Canadian dollar equivalent)…if they answered five questions in a row correctly.
And for my uncle, it was serious, serious business. Zhou Ling had to be told on more than one occasion to get out of there because he kept dying after one or two moves.
I had lost to Kang the last two times I played, and gave the excuse that I was going easy on him. No one was buying it.
At first I thought she was going to say no. So, I prepare a whiny threat: “If you don’t let me go, I’m going to take all of these Luzhanqi pieces and throw them onto the ground.” Before I get to tell her, Kang – in his infinite wisdom – helpfully tells her, but replaces “Luzhanqi pieces” with “you”. I quickly try to clarify, but my mom just says sure.