With all these new citizens, it's all to easy to forget about the wedding photos. Now we're up to the transporting of Joan from her parent's place to Nick's (well, their hotel, anyway). Nowadays, most people use fancy cars. We decided to go old-school. The first photo shows Joan getting into the palaquin. Pretty much as soon as the bearers set off, they started up with the traditional rocking of the bride. This involves making the palaquin swing wildly from side to side, all the while singing songs about brides up-chucking. It's more fun to watch than sit in the palaquin...... apparently.
The second shows our little procession making its way along the side street near Joan's parent's place. It seems there is one, just one, rule associated with traffic in China; give way to weddings. Our little procession went straight down the middle of the road, getting in pretty much everyone's way. All the cars and buses were honking, not in annoyance (as we first thought) but in congratulations. On one of the buses we stopped (driven by one of Joan's more distant relatives, it turns out), everyone got out their mobile phone cameras and proceeded to snap away.
The final photo shows the reason why we didn't proceed right up the middle of the main street, just like we did on the side street. It's a police motorcycle. The palaquin bearers were all ready to march wherever they damn-well pleased. The fact that there were four lanes of traffic in the way didn't even slow them down. However, the policeman had rather different ideas, and waved us to the pavement. I'm sure our bearers were quite put out by this flagrant breach of the one rule in the Chinese traffic code. Fortunately, we were at the hotel soon after, where our friends and family were waiting with explosives. That's a story for next time.
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