27 February 2007

The Dining room Proudly Presents... Your Dinner

And now, finally, in the post you’ve all been waiting for, I present to you my first big(ish) foodie post. Yvonne, this one’s for you.

Last night I went back to the jiaozi fanguanr. It’s good. I’m glad it’s so close to school. But anyway, I went with seven other people, one of whom is a Chinese roommate. Since none of us know what to order, she did all the ordering, and my mouth and stomach are grateful. I forget the names of pretty much everything I eat, so I will instead describe the pictures and then let you lick the computer screen and get a taste for yourself.

With Chinese meals, first you have the liangcai, the cold dishes that are like appetizers. First we had this slimy noodle-y thing. I’m not sure if they’re actually noodles, but they’re clear and slimy and very hard to pick up with chopsticks. There brown stuff is a sauce that’s a bit salty with a hit of peanut. Quite good.



Next liangcai was this tofu, served cold with what I believe to be garlic and gelatinized soy sauce. Also quite good, also quite hard to pick up with chopsticks. I’m sensing a trend.



We also ordered this egg soup, but since I don’t do eggs, I didn’t eat it. It looks pretty though (doesn’t it Yvonne?). It's probably also rather hard to pick up with chopsticks:



Look, I found a fellow food voyeur! (His name is Jason. Later that night we had a conversation about film and cameras and computers—in Chinese, by the way—and I found out that in Chinese, when you develop a picture, you ‘xi zhao pian,’ which means ‘wash a picture.’ Makes sense in a strange way.)




Then came the jiaozi. Here’s our fuwuyuan (waiter) bringing them to us.



We had four kinds: jirou (chicken), qiezi (eggplant), one with eggs and spices, and another with eggs and carrots.



We also had these. I’m not sure what they’re called, as they are also dumplings however they have a more bread-y skin and have some oil in them. Also very good.



Tonight Tianqi is taking me and a few friends to her favorite Sichuan fanguanr, and she says that the food is especially hot, meaning, made for ellis.

The other night, Tianqi and I played cards. She taught me how to play some games, and then I taught her how to play Spit. It was so difficult to show her how to play, since I don’t know how to stay “stack in ascending or descending order then slap the pile with the fewest cards.” However, since I’m good at making charade motions and she is very smart, she picked it up quick and loves it now.

I’ve also figured out how to send text messages in Chinese. It’s fun.

Yesterday I went with a friend and her roommate to Xidan and into this big building.



Inside there are infinite floors of infinite cheap tchatckas and low-quality clothes. There were tons of people there (of course).



I saw this sweater with a picture of the Olsen twins on it. I tried to take a picture but was thwarted by the woman who owned the stall. It was really quite amusing.

During a class yesterday we had a debate about marriage and having kids and whether it’s an individual problem or a societal problem (think over-population, single-parent homes, government regulation of children etc.). The teacher seemed rather taken aback by the fact that we all thought that these were individual issues rather than societal ones. All of us agreed that the government shouldn’t say who can marry and how many kids one can have or who can have kids. I guess when you live in China where there’s a single child policy and a horrible overpopulation problem, you’d be used to that kind of control. It’s interesting how the students and teachers can relate so well, and then you talk about policy and societal issues and suddenly our differences become very apparent. We as students and Americans think that our teachers seem rather westernized, and I think they think they are too, but really their values are quite Chinese, and it’s a little surprising for the people on both sides when that’s realized.

That's China for you-- full of surprises.

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