Dumpling Party!

I apologize for the laxness of my blog posting. I’ve actually been pretty busy, which is good, because it means I have things to write about, but bad because I have no time within which to write them. All of which sort of assumes that people are sitting around with bated breath awaiting my blog posts, which is super narcissistic.




So last week was both the lead up to the 60th anniversary of the founding of New China (ie, China becoming communist) and the Mid-Autumn festival. Usually Mid Autumn is justa 2-3 day holiday, but we also got 2 days for National Day, so we had Thursday-Thursday off. On the big Chinese Holidays—New Years, Spring Festival and, to a lesser extent, mid-Autumn—everyone in China travels. Apparently the wait at airports and train stations can be over a day. So I did not take any big trips, but explored Ningbo and got to get to know people better.



Sunday night, before classes let out, my students invited Mike Milam, the other English teacher, and I to a dumpling making party. I’m sorry, but how cute are these kids? Can you imagine American College juniors a) spending a night making dumplings and b) inviting their professors to join them? I talked to my assistant later and she said one of the kids had asked her if it would be appropriate to ask me to make dumplings with them . The party was in one of the cafeterias, and the staff had prepared big vats of dumpling filling and stacks of round dumpling skins. When we got there the kids were all hard at it.

in this picture I've joined them. Now, none of them actually knew how to make dumplings. Firstly, dumplings are actually more of a Northern thing, as in any wheat based food item. The South, where I am is rice based. There is plain rice, of course, and bunches of variations of rice noodles. The fried noodle vendors have maybe 10 different kinds of rice noodles ranged in front of them from thread thin strands, to the big dense ovals I mentioned before—I just love these. In fact, I used them to make chicken and dumplings tonight and I think, they may even have been better than Mama Dipp’s dumplings. I’m looking around the room waiting for God to strike me down, now, but I think I’m in luck because China is a religion free country.




The other reason no one really knew what they were doing is this is indeed, women’s work. On holidays, Leo, who’s the departmental vice something, told me, women will sit around, chatting and making tons of dumplings. These kids had obviously not yet been initiated—I got the impression that this may be a dying activity—but they were having a good time trying out different shapes and putting peanuts into random ones—it’s good luck to get a dumpling with a peanut. My favorite was Eric, who’s sort of the class clown, who was flitting from table to table, occasionally attempting a dumpling. He’d then throw it down proudly on the tray, announcing “wonton” or “eggroll” or whatever shape he thought he’d approximated. One of the cafeteria workers came and showed us how to actually make them. Winnie, one of the students, very studiously worked at it and then showed me how. Here I am with my first successful attempt:

Now I’m doing a thumbs up because I’m proud, but here’s something you should know about Chinese kids in picture: they all throw a peace sign. No idea why. Some of the kids wanted to take pictures with me, so here we are:

and here I am with the whole class, again with the peace signs. I'm just surprised there were no rabbit ears.



Apparently this trait is engrained very young: here’s a picture I took at a wedding a few days later (that story is to come). The man in the pic, btw, is Ron, the accounting professor from UIndy:

So that was my Sunday night. Once we had assembled enough dumplings, the cafeteria women whisked them off and returned them boiled in broth; we ate lots of dumplings, we went home (This arty shot, by the by, was taken by one of my students, John, who loves photoography and wants to work for "The Chinese National Geographic." He can stalk dumplings with the best of them.)

.
Oh, wait, we also ate mooncakes. Mooncakes are the traditional mid-autumn “treat” The scare quotes are quite intentional and this is not just a Western thing—most Chinese aren’t crazy about them anymore, though I hear haagen daz makes a fine ice-cream one and the Satrbucks was selling its own, Starbuckified, version. Anyway, the traditional mooncake is a very dense, multigrain cake with a sweet or savory filling. I can handle the ones with just fruit fillings—think like a fig Newton, but many have delicious things like preserved egg yolks tucked in as well. Yum. However, they are the traditional gift of mid-Autumn and the boxes they come in are beautiful—you also get a nice gift bag in red with lots of golden decoration. I got a box at the foreign teacher’s lunch that I wrote about and my students bought me a box as well, so I am stocked for life. I also think that mooncakes, much like fruitcake, last forever, so I can regift them at some point.




After that we did head home, and I got a chance to know Leo a little better. We were talking about the Chinese’s attitude toward foreign language study as opposed to American—it does make you feel embarrassed that pretty much everyone in China can speak some English—not just the university kids, who are required to take a few years, but even the street vendors know enough to haggle in English. And, when you think about it, in a sense, all Chinese have two languages from birth: there’s Mandarin, the official language and also the dialect, or fangyan. While the written language is the same all over China, the spoken dialects are so different that people from different areas will not understand each other—that’s why all Chinese movies and most TV shows have subtitles in Chinese. Leo was talking about how his wife’s family was from a different province and spoke a totally different dialect and he called himself the family dog—the only words he understood from his wife’s mother were “come,” “sit,” and “eat.” To some extent I think the dialects are dying out as people travel more and there’s a greater need for a standardized language, but Leo is careful to speak his family’s fangyan to his son at home so he does not just learn his maternal line’s, so they may hold on for a while yet.



By the way, it is very common for the in laws to live with a family and care for the children. While the Chinese talk less about feminism, the majority of women do work outside of the home from necessity and the kid are raised by the extended family. Because of the one child rule (though a large amount of families have found a way around that, esp in people my age, when the policy was just going into effect) grandkids are a hot commodity. I think it gives the daughter in laws a lot of power—if you’re not nice to her, you’ll never see your only grandchild, which is nice considering how badly daughter in laws were traditionally treated in China.



Another interesting fact about child-bearing in China (I’ve gotten these last few paragraphs of info from my Chinese friends Wang and Yang, or Nina and Jane—we’ve taken to going out, ordering way too much food, and chatting about Chinese and American life): women are supposed to do nothing after giving birth. They stay in the hospital for 7 days and during that time are not even supposed to wash themselves or brush their hair, just eat lots of chicken and milk. The point is to build up strength and encourage lactation, party by returning to a primal state. Even after returning home, the mother is supposed to lay in bed for 3 more weeks: guess it’s good that all those doting grandparents are available!