Food for Thought

What is it that people always say about smiling being a universal language? I have definitely discovered that to be true here, but there is something else that is perhaps even more so: Food.

 

"Nice to meet you, have a meat roll."

"Good morning, have a cookie."

"You look sad, have some fried rice."

"You look bored, have some chestunts."

It's a wonder Chinese people are mostly all still so tiny and no wonder that most of my first Chinese words involved food!

 

 

There is a chef who does most nights at the Brickyard and I have started calling her mom, because she always wants to feed me :) She told me the other day that if your stomach is full, you will neverbe homesick. I have to admit that a warm meal can do wonders for your mood -- unless it's tofu that is!

The Bean Sprout Controversy

Apparently I am going to die tomorrow...or perhaps tonight. I'm not too clear yet. My crime, you ask? Eating bean sprouts. Perhaps I should start at the beginning.

I bought lots of veggies on my days off, planning to make 3 or 4 stir-frys but only ended up making 2 because Tana and I went out for hot pot in Huairou instead. So, naturally I had some left-overs. Tomatoes make for good breakfasts and cucumbers are fine on their own, but I pulled out a bowl of raw bean sprouts tonight and Tana and Zhan Li Jie just stared at me. Now I know that most people don't eat them raw, but I didn't think it was that odd. On the other hand, Chinese people cook their lettuce so who knows...

I convinced Tana to try some and she actually liked them...until Johnson and Simon -- two of our chefs-- came in, that is. "You can't eat those," they said (in Chinese). I just nodded and kept eating. Finally they got the message across (through Zhan LiJie and the translation software on her phone) that they believe raw bean sprouts to be poisonous.

Being me, I googled it and kept eating. Apparently there is an advisory against eating them raw, but they are said to be about as dangerous as any other raw veggies. I later learned that Tana and her family have gotten horribly sick from eating raw green beans in the past. That's basically the only way I eat green beans...

I hope it's Chinese people who have an odd reaction and not Chinese bean sprouts...

Why Crocs are a Better Choice Than Flip-Flops

We had our staff outing on Wednesday, when we closed the restaurant down at 3 pm and all of the staff (70 people or so) got on a rented bus and headed into Beijing to a restaurant of the boss’ choosing. There were massive amounts of food and it was all you could drink, so I got to watch a large portion of the staff get drunk -- which doesn’t take much for most Chinese people. Before dinner there were some team building games and speeches and after dinner the restaurant put on a whole bunch of dance performances and had some of the audience get up on the stage. They even got Jim (the big boss) up for a hilarious belly dancing routine. At the end, everyone was dancing on the tables. I sat with Jim, Tang Liang and Julie -- because Jim said he wanted to speak English -- which was quite awkward -- but got to mingle later in the evening. I am currently the only person who doesn’t speak Mandarin, so there was a lot I didn’t quite get, but it was fun all the same. We made it back around 11:30 pm and I was off yesterday and today.

Li Dan invited me to her house yesterday so I got up shortly before 10 and went to meet her at the bus stop. We took the bus into Huairou and her mom came to get us with an electric bicycle truck. We sat in the back and she drove us to Li Dan’s uncle’s house, where we had lunch and then went fishing. We started off with nets in a very shallow part of the lake, catching super tiny fish. I wasn’t actually half bad at it -- until I fell that is. Now here comes the key part: I had been wearing runners when I arrived, so I had changed into a pair of Li Dan’s flip-flops for going into the water. When I tripped, I didn’t actually fall over, but I rammed my foot into a rock while trying to catch my balance and got a small stone stuck under my big toenail. It bent my nail back and there was a fair amount of blood. As you can probably imagine, it hurt...a lot.

We got out straight away and I washed my foot off before Li Dan took the stone out with a toothpick. We cleaned it as best we could and Li Dan thought I should go to the hospital. I wasn’t too keen on this and her cousin said she thought it didn’t look too serious, so we decided to wait for night time and see whether it was going to swell much. It didn’t, so it will probably be okay, but I do think it’s a bit infected.

We decided to play it safe after that and fish with a rod from the shore. I didn’t catch any fish that way, but we had a nice relaxing time. Li Dan taught me some more Chinese words and I helped her with her English. In the evening, we headed to her mother’s home, where we had a huge meal full of wonderful food. An old colleague from university came as well and he practised his English on me. After dinner, we went to Li Dan’s house and reviewed my new words before going to bed. She is a very good teacher.

We got up around 9 this morning because Li Dan had to work. She only gets one day off a week because the glass shop has shorter hours. She made us noodles for breakfast and then we headed back towards Mutianyu. I had a quiet day today, cleaned my toe with Polysporin when I got back and made some pasta for dinner.

Broken Telephone (No Pun Intended)

My cell phone ran out of minutes the other morning, as it sometimes does, so I planned to go to the store after work to buy one of those little pieces of paper with a number on it that you call to add more minutes. At the end of the day, while I was waiting for the car back to the residence, I thought it might be a good idea to ask someone to write down what I needed for me so I would have an easier time in the shop. Juliette (who speaks a small amount of English) was sitting there, so I asked her. After gesturing and trying to explain a few times, I thought she understood because she started to write something down for me. She decided to double check on her computer, typed in some characters and asked me if that was what I meant: "You need to repair your phone?"

I then tried to explain again. She turned to Alice (who speaks a different small amount of English). She nodded vigorously as though she understood and told Juliette some buttons to push on my phone. I got confused here because there is no way to add minutes from my phone since I have never given them a credit card number, but I though maybe there was a code she needed. Juliette seemed to get a bit frustrated and passed the phone to Alice who continued to attempt the proceedure.

After a couple minutes Alice turned to me triumphantly and told me exactly how much each call I makes costs me if I am in Beijing or Huairou. Apparently they hadn't understood...I tried one more time and she said, "oh! Just give your phone and money to Johnson and he will do it on his computer. Why didn't you say that in the first place?"

Now that was a real game of broken telephone!

Beijing Adventures

Pam and Marie-Eve arrived around 7:30 pm on Monday and I met them at the Brickyard where they had some soup before checking in. I knew that that evening was going to be my only time off while they were there so I rushed to show them around Beigou village. They got to see inside 3 of our homes (Mumanyu, Stone Forest and Big Rock House) as well as get an idea of the village. I let them go to bed and headed back to my room to pack before heading to sleep myself.

I got up early to have a proper breakfast (the best meal we serve) with them before work and saw them periodically throughout the day. As it was raining they decided to wait to go up the wall, but had a nice walk between Mutianyu and Beigou on the way home. I worked night duty and thus got to spend lots more time with them at night even though I was constrained to the Brickyard. Once most of the guests went to bed we curled up on the comfy chairs and did some travel planning.

On Wednesday Marie-Eve, my mom and I headed to the Schoolhouse after I finished the morning shift of night duty, where they stayed until the early afternoon as it was still raining. They did make it up to the wall -- but not the toboggan. I finish work at 6 so we aimed to take a bus to Huairou and then another to Beijing. However, guests were late checking in and it was about 6:30 by the time I was done. The last bus to leave Huairou was at 7 so we were in a crazy rush. Alice was amazing and organized a car to take us to the bus and we just made it there on time. Ma Hombin came with us and we got stuck with our backpacks and suitcases in the seats because the driver didn't want to open the bottom of the bus. It was quite squished, but we eventually made it there. We checked into our hostel, had a so-so dinner in a hole in the wall and went to bed.

We got up quite early on Thursday since my mom and Marie-Eve were still fairly jet lagged and had a lovely free breakfast at the hostel before heading out to Tian'men Square. We decided that Marie-Eve didn't really need to see the Forbidden City, so we just showed her the front gate before heading to a nearby park from where she got an aerial view of it. We walked all around and even took a paddleboat on the large lake in the middle.

Then we headed off to Nanloguxiang, a trinket shopping street where we bought lots of scarves and some other cool stuff. Instead of heading back near the hostel for dinner, we took a cab to the red lantern street (I don't know what it's actually called, but it has a gazillion red lanterns) to try to go to a restaurant where my mom and I had our best meal last year. However, there was a 40 minute wait so we went next door instead and had a fairly decent, though perhaps not particularily memorable, meal.

On Friday we went to a couple of markets for more shopping and some more good hole in the wall food. We ended up at Quianmen -- a restored famous old Hutong (Alley) street -- at night since the  markets all close early and got even more shopping in before what was perhaps the best Beijing duck I have ever had.

Yesterday we decided to be a bit more cultural and went to the Capital Museum. We all decided it was a very poorly arranged museum, but Marie-Eve and my mom enjoyed a number of pieces they saw. It was supposed to show the history of Beijing but was sadly lacking in text and cohesion. On the other hand, I'm really not a museum person so I may be too quick to judge. We were all very hungry by the time we finished so we decided to try the reasonably priced buffet at the museum. It was by far the worst meal we have had. We didn't realise it was closing soon and assumed they would be refilling the mostly empty trays. The pasta tasted like it had ketchup on it and the Chinese food was very North American. We headed back to the hostel for a nap and bought some buns and pastries on the way, which were much tastier.

After the nap we headed out for an acrobatics show. It was perhaps not as good as some of the ones I have seen here, but the highlight was a motorcycle act. There was a giant metal ball and a man on a motorcycle rode in and all around -- including upside down -- in it. That might have been very impressive for someone who knew little about physics, but when they added a second motorcycle, nobody could deny the skill and fearlessness they must have had. We hardly dared watch when they added a 3rd, 4th and 5th rider, all crisscrossing paths and going at crazy speeds.

Apparently we were also part of the show because we had half the audience trying to talk to us -- especially my mom -- before the show started. They fed us chips and dried meat, played peek-a-boo and exchanged e-mails with my mom. One of them even asked me if all Canadians talk as much as my mom does. That made Marie-Eve and I laugh for a good long time. We had dinner with a guy who had come with us from our hostel and he is studying Chinese so he was explaining some of the characters to me. It was quite fun!

Today was a bit more of a lazy day. We switched hostels this morning and then headed to Yashow market to buy some fake LeSportSacs -- of which my mom bought many. We had a wonderful lunch of dumplings and buns at a hole in the wall place my mom and I discovered last year and headed back to the red lantern street for an early dinner at the same place we tried to go to the other night. They told us again that it would be a 40 minute wait, but we decided to stay. They were used to the large crowds so they had had bowls of sunflower seeds, water and even popsicles they were giving out for free. 40 minutes turned into 2 hours, but eventually we got in. We were very disappointed to find out that they no longer makeour favourite dish from last year, but ordered a number of others that mostly turned out to be far too spicy. It wasn't exactly what we had hoped for given how long we had had to wait, but we got some kebabs on the way home so it was all good.

It has been crazy hot and humid here, but somehow my mom seems to have a cold. We're planning on visiting the 798 art district tomorrow and then going for a cooking class on Tuesday.

40 Hours in Inner Mongolia (Part San)

When we got up on Thursday morning we had our last wonderfully tasty breakfast before heading out to do some shopping. Tana got some dried meat and beautiful Mongolian earrings before we both found the candy aisle. I managed to control myself and only bought 2 bags -- I had to get more than one kind to try and share around!

We headed back to have an early lunch of fennel and spinach soup and then Tana had a nap while I read for a little while. After she got up, her mom decided that the dumplings we had had for lunch and dinner weren’t good enough so she had to make some of her own for us for dinner. They were amazing! Did I mention that I have never had better meat?

We ate quickly before heading off to the bus station. Then came my next big surprise: A bus with beds! I thought those only existed in Harry Potter! It was actually quite comfortable and practical. We chatted for a good part of the way back and I really felt like I got to know Tana better, which was very nice. About two hours before we arrived in Huairou, the bus stopped outside a restaurant so that everyone could get out and have dinner. We weren’t particularly hungry so we just sat outside on the curb. Some girls came over to ask if they could take a picture and they were quite surprised when they found out Tana spoke Chinese... On the other hand, a guest at the restaurant told me my English was quite good the other day :p

We made it back to Beigou at around 12 (about 7.5 hours after we left) and headed straight to bed.

New recent words: North, South, East, West, keys, kitchen, fried bread, noodles

I have also started Teaching Tana French :)

Chinese Math

Once again I found myself with no idea what to blog about today, so I will follow my dad’s suggestion and write about math.

His first question: "If you took the entire population of China and divided it by the prime number that corresponds most closely to the population of Shanghai and then multiplied it by the log of the current Yuan/dollar exchange rate, what would the answer be?”

The answer:
C= Population of China=1.35 billion
P= closest prime to the population of Shanghai= 14,009,999
R= Current exchange rate= 6.28073
L=log of current exchange rate=1.83749

Answer=C*L/P=1,770,060.07 (Thanks to wolfram alpha for the data)

This lead to me having to explain what a log is, but anyways...

Other numbers of interest:

Hours I typically work in a week: 54
Price of my favourite stuffed buns in Beijing: Rmb 0.8
Number of new Chinese words I learned today: 3 (wind, door and tree)
Days I have been in China: 85
Pageviews on my blog so far (including the old blog): 619+475=1094
Days until I go to Inner Mongolia: 1
Number of e-mails I wrote today: 16
Current number of interns: 2 (William arrived today)
Number of digits in a Chinese phone number without area code: 8
Temperature today: 35 degrees with 51% humidity
Number of times I said “Sorry, do you speak English?” today: Too many to count...

Chinese numbers: I have never found a language with easier numbers than Chinese. As soon as you can count to 10, you can count to 100. 21 is literally 2*10, 1 (er shi yi) and all the numbers work like that.

yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi

Now you can do it too!

Chinese also has a hand gesture for every number...unfortunately they are not the same as the ASL ones (which I know).

As for the characters, I know the first 3...1 horizontal line, 2 horizontal lines and 3 horizontal lines. I guess it would be a little tedious to continue like that. Oh, and 10 is a cross...

Great News and a Resolution

I caught a ride into Beijing with Mona this morning and had to say goodbye, which was very sad. Once Wang Jing (the driver) let me off, I walked to the visa renewal office, which was a lot easier than last time since I actually knew where I was going. Here comes the great news: They told me it was impossible to get a 4 month visa, but they gave me a 6 month one! This not only saves time and possibly having to leave the country to renew it again but about $100!

I walked around the area for a little while searching for a post office -- which I found -- so I can now send my postcards! I then had lunch at Subway, which was weird because my chicken was cold. Otherwise, it was pretty much the same as in Canada

I made my way to the bus station and travelled back to Huairou without spending very long in Beijing because I wanted to catch one of the mini-buses to Beigou and they stop at 6. Once I got to Huairou I did some grocery shopping and then made my way to the mini-buses where they tried to charge me Rmb 80 instead of Rmb 5 ($15 vs. $1). I knew what the price should be so I didn’t go for that, but it’s still annoying.

I made eggplant, onion and zucchini for dinner, but it wasn’t as good as yesterday’s food.

I have decided that I need to work on my Chinese more so I am going to learn 2 new words/phrases every day. I doesn’t sound like much, but had I been doing that from the start, I would have 180 words already! Today’s are “I don’t understand,” “what are you saying?” and “work” -- yes I realize that’s 3 but I had to make up for only having one yesterday (“How much does it cost”).