Parlez-vous 中文？

I was in Florence last summer for a film program. One late afternoon, after a long day of filming, the three people in my group and I were standing on the side of the road waiting for the bus, or a cab, or something to take us back to our hostel. While we were waiting, a girl rode by on her bicycle, grinning like an idiot. One of the (male, unsurprisingly) members of my group said: “There's only one thing that can make a girl smile like that: getting laid.”

Clearly, he is totally wrong. I just spent the entire night grinning like an idiot, too. You know what else can make a girl smile like that? A fantastic, spectacular meal.

Throughout our adventure-meals in China, Annetta, Jason, and I have perservered on the never-ending quest for good food. How do we know we've found it? Our after-food glow. The name is pretty self-explanitory, but Annetta and I glow like hazardous waste after we've had a tasty, satisfying meal of epic serving sizes. And that was tonight.

Last week, Annetta and I drew up a calendar, listing out our final three weeks in China and where we would eat dinner each of those nights. Clearly the calendar must be subject to changes, but it was important to us to make sure to hit the restaurants we love one last time. The only problem: we wanted to try some new ones. It's a tragedy that for us, there aren't enough calories, nor meals, in a day.

Let's start with Monday: we went to a restaurant called Bellagio's. Despite the rather off-putting name, it supposed to be one of the best Taiwanese restaurants in Beijing. Before then, I'd never eaten Taiwanese food. Boy was I deprived. Let's keep in mind that there were four of us as I list for you our ordered (and entirely eaten) items:

Beef with greens:



Dumplings (though nothing special):



Bitter melon (pretty boring):



Tofu (glorious):



Chicken (I'm-moving-to-Taiwan good):



You will notice that five dishes for four people is exercising considerable restraint and reason. However, Bellagio's is also well known for it's desserts, one of which is a huge mountain of ice topped with beans and sweet syrupy goodies. It would have been enough for all four of us:



But then, the mango sticky rice with ice looked good. I got that:



Annetta wanted a mango slushy thing with coconut milk and sago:



Victoria wanted purple rice sweet hot soup thing:



Jason wanted coffee peanut ice thing:



And then, when we had all shared and finished off every dessert in it's entirety, Annetta decided that perhaps she wasn't totally satisfied, so she called the waiter over and ordered another dessert. You should have seen the look on that waiter's face. She was pretty stunned that we managed to eat what could easily have been a nice dessert for ten people.



Tuesday we went to a Yunnan restaurant. It was alright, but not worth spending time to upload the pictures.

These people own a small store right next to school. I buy Coke Light from them every day:



Wednesday I went to have dinner with the son and girlfriend of my grandparents' friends. He works at the US Embassy here, so I took a little trip to the waiguo ren central of Beijing, though I must confess it's an area with which I am quite familiar, as the Tibetan restaurant is literally down the street from their apartment. I'm so jealous.

Their apartment is fabulous. Anywhere in the world, their apartment would be great, but in Beijing, it's pretty top-notch. They certainly aren't ignorant, quite the opposite in fact; they know they're lucky. The Embassy provides some pretty nice living conditions. Their living room is the size of Tianqi's entire apartment. They have three bedrooms, an office, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a washer, and a drier. Do not misunderstand me and think that I'm trying to criticize the way they live, because I'm absolutely not. I just think it's interesting to see, firsthand, the difference in living conditions. Tianqi's family is not struggling for money, nor are they rich; they're average, and probably a little above. But it's pretty notable what different standards of living exist. I know that even bigger gaps exist, but let's face it: I'm 21, and I'm just starting to grasp the concrete differences that exist between the world's citizens. That's the point of my coming here.

So they took me out to dinner, and it was quite enjoyable. The restaurant was pretty good too; there was a chicken curry served in a bread bowl which was my favorite. It's too bad that I only have two weeks left here; I don't know if I'll have a chance to see them again. I hope I can.

Afterwards, when I was walking myself from the metro back to school, I had some time to myself just to think and reflect. I felt like I was watching myself from the tops of the buildings, seeing Ellis In China from the outside. Mentally stepping outside of myself, I realized just how sad I will be to leave Beijing. In many ways, I feel like I've just started here: with Chinese, understanding the city, eating, understanding a little slice of the world. But in two weeks, I'll have to abandon my progress. This isn't to say that it will never come back, but it won't be the same, and it will probably be slower in coming. It really frustrates me that it takes an end to make me understand how far I've come and appreciate just how I've changed. One one hand, I'm angry that time is so short; on the other had, I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to come here AND that I reached some important realizations at all. Some of the people in the program here seem to be living a rather ignorant existence; I like to think that I try to maximize new opportunities, step outside myself, and be adventurous. Perhaps this is why, at my core, I don't consider myself a waiguo ren.

Tonight during dinner (which I will momentarily extoll), I was telling Annetta and Jason how, though I love my independence and would never give it up, sometimes I wish I had been born into a culture with a close-knit community just so I would have somewhere to belong to. Annetta pointed out that it's lucky that I was born an American. If I were a pineapple seller's daughter in China, I likely wouldn't have the opportunity to travel the world, let alone eat different kinds of foods. Point: Annetta. She also pointed out that belonging to a community could also leave me feeling more lonely, as if I were me, I probably wouldn't fit in and feel like I didn't belong anywhere.

But here's my problem: I feel like I belong everywhere. Everywhere I've gone, I feel like that's where I could live the rest of my life, or where I should have been born. My problem is I want to be everywhere and everyone at once. Therefore, I feel left out when I can't be. I have my own culture. I suppose it's appropriate that no one in China can guess where I'm from. I look like I'm from Russia, France, Germany, Italy, Canada-- very few guess the US.

Which, slightly awkwardly, brings me to tonights dinner. We were originally scheduled ( according to the aforementioned calendar) to eat Xinjiang food (Xinjiang is a region in northwestern China, right next to/above Tibet). But we changed it a little and went instead for Muslim food. You may or may not recall that in Tibet, we happened upon one of the world's most fabulous restaurants, which was also a Muslim restaurant. So when the menu arrived, we were unable to contain ourselves. Not only were we not at all hungry (due to a fabulous, greasy lunch), but we were hoping to recapture some of the Tibetan magic.

And boy did we. First, each person got his/her own bowl of perfect yogurt:



Then roast beef buns, flaky baked bread with meat in the middle:



Then Chuar, or sticks of fatty, tender, juicy, perfectly spiced meat:



Then long, chewy noodles in a slightly spicy beef sauce:



Then some chewy, dense bread:



Then stewed beef and carrots served on top of the bread (which soaked up all the sauce and grease—spectacular):



This was already more than enough. But then came our chicken dish, a huge bowl full of chicken, potatoes, and peppers in a slightly spicy sauce:



This was utterly fabulousness. That's how the after-food glow comes about, folks. The food made us really thirsty, so we were chugging tea, but the tea was hot and so is the weather, so we were sweating. Leave it to us to make eating the equivalent of a sport.

Afterwards, I bought a nice-sized tub of strawberry ice cream. And then we had a mini candy party in Jason's room. The one good thing about leaving in two weeks is that we have a new excuse to justify eating so much: we have two weeks left, so we better eat as much as we can. I think that's a good reason.

The other day, I went for a walk in the park and sat by the lake to be pensive, as lakes are generally good places to be pensive. By the lake was a rather rotund waiguo ren. He came up to me and asked me where I was from. He was French, and his English wasn't too good. I told him, in French, that I spoke a little French (I studied for four years). The thing is, every time I tried to speak to him in French, Chinese came out. Even when I spoke English to him, Chinese kept slipping out. Ha. Whoops.

This weekend we are going to a rural suburb. On Sunday we're going to a high school, and each one of us has to give a report in Chinese to the students about some aspect of American life. Mine is about how American students can study abroad. Let's see if they understand a word I say.

And so, stomach full, aura aglow, I bid you adieu/ wanan/ goodnight/