When Spring Festival rolled around in 2018 it was pretty clear that we were not going to invite all of Heidi’s family to stay with us. Instead, it was decided by somebody somewhere that this time we would go to stay with them, in Heidi’s hometown of Zunyi in Guizhou province, located far away from Shanghai in the South-West of China. I had been down to Zunyi quite a few times over the preceding years and normally had a reasonable idea of what to expect from such a trip, but this time we had the twist of taking Keira with us for the first time. Previous trips had involved a lot of eating and drinking, either side of a lot of playing local tile game and excuse for substantial gambling majiang; I was unsure if either of these would work so well with a toddler in tow.

       The first change was apparent as soon as we arrived, as we had the luxury of staying in a hotel. This may not sound like much, but on previous visits, family, and mainly Waipo, had taken it as an extreme insult if we suggested that we not stay with them. This time at least, we had our own room away from everyone else; my pleasure over this situation lasted barely a few minutes because as soon as we arrived, both Waipo and Waigong turned up in our room and took up residence on our sofa. There did not seem any grand plan or reason behind this; they had just come to hang out. Not long after, Jiujiu, LaLa, and MengMeng all knocked on the door, inviting themselves. MengMeng and Keira started playing with the hundreds of toys that I had had to carry in the suitcase from Shanghai, everyone else sat around eating fruit and chatting, and I wondered if we would have been better off in someone’s house after all.