I've had food on the brain this week.
The apples (pin-guo) here are delicious! They are so sweet, they're almost like candy. I'm not certain what kind they are--they might be fujis--but whatever they are, they are tasty. Sadly, the peaches (tao-zi) are not great--at least not the ones I've tasted. It's a very white, crispy variety of peach. More like an apple, really. My favorite treat to buy is watermelon (xi-gua). I can buy them for 1 Yuan per jin (1/2 kilo) at the corner fruit stand. One half of a round watermelon comes out to about $1. I've taken to eating a quarter of a watermelon nearly every nite for dessert. (Good for minimizing calories. Not so good for staying in bed all nite. It's like being pregnant!) Also, I had a little orange (ju-zi) the other day, and as I was eating it I thought, "Wow, this tastes just like those little, canned...um...mandarin oranges." I guess it probably was a mandarin orange.
I've also been on a noodle craze lately. I have searched and searched (and by searched and searched, I mean I've looked in one grocery store and one restaurant) to find some good lo mein noodles. I have realized that I love noodles. We finally bought what seemed like the closest kind of noodles we could find to make some at home. And the lo mein was pretty good. We stir-fried the noodles with some cabbage, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and flavored it all with oyster and soy sauces and sesame oil. But the noodles were the wrong shape. And I don't know about you, but noodle shape and texture make a big difference in flavor to me. These were flat and thin. I wanted them to be more like thick, squarish spaghetti noodles. Well, I've got approximately 10 months left to figure it out.
I had to write a rough draft of this Dispatch on paper because I forgot to recharge the electricity card for my apartment in time. Now I have to wait for the maintenance office to re-open after lunch so I can buy more kilowatt-hours. (Note from later: That ended up being an adventure. First of all, I think I put waaaay too much money on the card. I think I bought us electricity from now until 2011. Then I couldn't figure out where the card needed to go so I could turn my lights back on again. I found my Chinese phrase book and came up with the phrases "Wo bu ji-dao" for "I don't know" and "zhen-me" for "how" and ""zai-nar" for where. Unfortunately, my phrase book didn't include useful phrases like "Please tell me how to use my electricity card." I seemed to get thru to them because they showed me what the meter looked like and then, after not a little laughter when I told them I didn't know where to find this meter, they sent a guy up to show me. But now my lights turn on, and now I can use the internet again. Back to the other story!) So where was I? Oh, I had to write my Dispatch on paper. Fortunately, I just bought myself a notepad which advertises itself thus: "This is the most comfortable notebook you have ever run into. You will feel like writing with it all the time." And you know what? I do! It is pretty comfortable. And I did actually find myself wanting to write something in it today. But then, I've always had a love for writing on paper. To this day, I feel like first drafts of anything should be handwritten. It feels easier for me to think with a pen in my hand than with a screen in my face. Then I feel that my final drafts are more complete because I can really evaluate and reevaluate everything as I type it. (Which is what I'm doing right now. I hope this is one fine Dispatch!)
And so, happy Chinese Autumn Festival/60th Anniversary of the Current China. Oh, I should probably mention here that everyone's cell phones have been surreptitiously reprogrammed to play Chinese patriotic music when you call them. Somehow, that's pretty awesome and yet a little, well, disturbing at the same time.
I will leave you with these few pictures of...another week of Carson in Beijing. This time, romping in the water fountains at The Village with his friends.
E
4 comments:
I feel the same way about pen and ink. I almost hyperventilated when I read a news article claiming that in the future you will only use computers at every school desk and libraries won’t have any books to hold, but you will access them on the internet. Gasp! Hopefully it is in the FAR future or never at all. I think you do your brain a favor when you use pen and ink, and read from a hard copy of a book! um, where was I? Good job on navigating life in a foreign language. I never had to cook or fill meter cards in Russia, but I did learn how to say "I don't know" in Russian and used that a lot. ah the memories!
I can hear you talking as you write. And you are both a good talker and writer and getting to be quite a good Chinese speaker as well!Amen on the fruit, and enjoy it while it lasts, because at least when I've been in China, they only eat fruit in season, so you only get it when it's good and then it's gone so you can miss it for a long time. I guess we do that with some fruit here, i.e. apricots and cherries, but it's disturbing to have xi-gua available all year because then it's not quite as rewarding to eat. Yes, thanks for the memories. (I think the noodles you are looking for are the Japanese variety, but then I never mastered the noodles there either. But because you care, I'm sure you will find them there in the next 10 months.) Half the fun is in the finding. When we were there 15 years ago we had go to a chemical shop to find baking soda and cocoa powder.
I really enjoyed your article! Made me feel like I was right there with you to experience everything. However, I dont think MY pronounciations of those words are anywhere near correct! Seamus says hello, he's been a bit tired lately by playing outside ALL day. He is really enjoying the cooler weather!
For "I don't know" the Ji should be a Zhi.. and I'm pretty jealous your there and we're not! On NPR there was a report about how the government was trying to restrict people from viewing the trial runs of the planes. Did you notice anything like that? Oh, and glad your not in jail for hacking facebook!
~Jason
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