The cheese factor

No, I will no miss the lack of cheese in China...

But I will miss the cheesyness of China. This place does cheesy with pride. What in American cool schools has been labeled as cheesy, uncool, the chinese embrace and have fun with.
All over there are people dressed in matching couples clothes. One of my students came to class wearing his half of the matching black scarf with a bright pink heart ensemble without his girlfriend who usually comes to class. I asked if that was her scarf and he looked down like I had crushed his very spirit mentioning that he was alone in wearing the scarf. He was actually sad that they were not matching together at that moment. If I ever got my husband to wear a black scarf with a giant pink heart I'm sure he'd rip it off the second I was out of sight. Anyway I think its sweet that the guys love matching their girl friends.

wedding photos at St. Sophias

And the wedding photos! Everywhere you go people are taking cheesy wedding photos. They put the couples in the cutest poses and take a million pictures. Not at the wedding, that is a videographer, but months before the wedding the rent outfits and have tons of photos made all over town, in every town across China. I find it cheesy but sweet...signs of love everywhere!

They are sooo cheesy, but sweet

Last year in Shenyang our friends hooked us up with a photography studio and they took lots of pictures of the girls and made them into a board book album of Chenglish. It would have Princess doing something really cute and under the picture would be random words from the English language that made no sense together or in the context of the picture. It was very cheesy, but cute! They used Princess and Teenager as ads for their studio.

The family

So this year we decided to pay for a studio in Harbin to create a cheesy masterpiece for us. I must say they achieved the goal. Although the album is not as Chenglish as we thought it would be....maybe they thought we were french because they wrote Paris New Vision all over.

Virtual twins

My student went with me to supervise the transaction and the photo shoot. The place in Shenyang had been a furnace because it was summer with no a.c. The girls were unpaid models, so we joked about it being a child labor sweat shop. Harbin we were paying customers but there was no heat, it was a complete freezer. They had an entire apartment full of costumes, but only a few for little boys. Most photo shoots involve 100 day old babies and wedding couples.

The family photo

We decided to do a Chinese theme and they had a get-up for the husband. As chics, of course we think Chinese costumes rock so we own a few. Little Guy thinks he should do a show every time he puts his on. Husband is not a fan of dress up, he hated that hat. In fact he took that off so fast that it was lost in the shuffle and the photography studio called after we left and pestered my poor student to find the hat. It was found in the bottom of our bag with Princess's dress and we had to humbly return it to the studio. My student had done 100 day baby photos of her princess and paid the same price as us, 400RMB. When we went to pick up the package- a glass pendant, a silk wallhanging, a poster size print, a wall plaque on fake wood, and The Album; she was amazed that everything for us was upgraded to the largest size available. Anyway, I will miss the cheesy China that gives foreigner upgrades!

That's a pencil not a cigar

Harbin, China