I saved a post I started a month ago, but I couldn't figure out how to edit it (I also had to sign in in Russian today-- censorship blockers have their glitches) so this is the continuation of the below. Sorry again for the lame postage. I've been busy! I'm thinking about continuing this after I get back and we'll all just pretend I'm still in China. But with, you know, better toilets.
Hmmph. I also just realized that my picture doohickey isn't working. OK, well, quick summary of the rest of Wulongtan. If the censors let me post pics again at sometime in the future, I will post a montage. maybe with accompanying perky music.
So we, along with 8000 of our closest Chinese friends, climbed up the many steps to the almost top. Along the way, we crossed a suspension bridge that everyone thought would be hysterical to jump up and down on. This involved a lot of lurching and a 4 foot tall Chinese grandmother grabbing my chest in an attempt to stay upright. We also stopped to eat our KFC at a little pavilion where a man sold tea and sodas. There was a dog there, and they were going to throw him the bones--when I said Chicken bones were bad for dogs and explained why, they listened seriously and said, "well those are American dogs. Chinese dogs are tougher."
BTW, a few people had asked me about the KFC quality here. In general, it pretty much tastes like KFC (i.e., it's no Bojangles) and I haven't seen any biscuits, but they have AWESOME fried Chicken wings. Also, they offer a side of the most disgusting corn, pepper and carrot chunks bathed in mayonaise. I know this b/c when Tony was here we ate at KFC (and McD's and Burger King)and got the delicious corn-aise. Also, completely not what we thought we ordered. Somehow we ended up with one chicken sandwich, one corn-aise, one chicken leg and a bright orange drink. Since we were pointing at pictures, I'm not sure how that happened. Also, speaking of mayo, the Chinese are oddly fond of it. They'll make salads with just mayo on them (the Chinese don't really get the concept of salad--eating raw veggies is kind of gross to them) and I would swear that sometimes the cafeteria serves seafood with a heaping side of mayo)
We were going to go all the way to the top and see the "ancient temple," but somehow we got turned around and started down the pah. But Jane and I really wanted to go to the top, so we left Nina and Professor Wang (he's an older guy who they are friends with. He's really interesting: he was a championship runner and ballet dancer during the cultural revolution and has taught english and gym for many years. Oh, he also now has a labrador puppy (dor-dor) who is the cutest thing ever)and booked back up the path we had just gone down and up, up, up to the ancient temple. Which was a big pillar made of concrete. Yeah. Apparently it had been restored about 7 years ago. It was still pretty neat, though. There was a big candle holder set up in front of it for prayers/messages to the gods and the usual cushions set up in front for kowtowing. There was also a great view of the surrounding mountains, all terraced for farming, and down into the valley of the river. Pictures would be exciting here, wouldn't they?
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
My birthday was a little pushed away by all of this and let me tell you, I’m a person who makes a big deal out birthdays—other people, and mine. I had, 2 weeks before, announced to my class that my bday was coming up, so my sweet babies got me a cake!!
Chinese birthday cake, by the way, is a take on western traditions. The cake is a nice light sponge cake with preserved fruit between the layers, and a thick layer of whipped cream. The top is covered with various fruits. In china, tomatoes are firmly classified as a fruit (let me tell you tomato-strawberry-pineapple juice? Not good) so it was my first birthday cake with tomatoes on top.
Afterwards, I’d arranged to go out with Nina, Jane and Maggie to hotpot. For the uninitiated, hotpot is like a fondue, though no cheese of course. Instead you get boiling broth, either spicy or plain. We get a dish shaped like a yin-yang sign with spicy on one side, not spicy on the other. It’s called two ducks pot because ducks mate for life and stay together. The first time Jane, Nina and I went we ordered so much food that the waitress yelled at us—and the Chinese can seriously eat. The Chinese for big appetite is “dai wei”—big belly—and when I told Jane who weighs about 18 pounds and can eat me under the table that by American standards I had a big appetite, she looked at me in shock and said, “Americans must not eat anything.” This time we toned down our ordering—“just” lamb (oh, and also 3 orders of lamb skewers to start), fish sausage, Chinese “bacon” which pretty much tastes like bologna, seaweed, spinach, a zucchini like melon, tofu skin, rice noodles… -- here we are after dinner.
Nina and Jane had also ordered me a cake—what a thing of beauty!
The horse (yes, that is a horse), by the way, is for my Chinese zodiac sign. This is not common for bday cakes, but last week we were hanging out watching Jane Eyre (apparently loving it as a trans-cultural nerd girl trait) and eating an epic lunch prepared by Jane and Nina (one more food listing! Spare ribs, turnip and beef broth soup (we sucked the marrow out of the bones), stir fried broccoli and carrot, bok choy and mushrooms, shaved cucumbers with ginger and garlic, salad, and two shaotsai or small dishes—pickled veggies and seaweed bought premade) and I was showing them pics including my bday party last year and the moose cake Tony designed for me, so I think they thought animals were de rigueur on western bday cakes. I also got a lovely birthday crown.
It actually says “Happy Bistday.” The card my kiddies got me is another great piece of chinglish btw—it says happy bday and has a poem in Chinese, but up in the left hand corner, it also, perplexingly, says “best wishes on your retirement.”
So it was a good birthday. The next day I went out with some Americans here and had a hamburger…a good one…yum. I also had my triumph of directing the taxi home completely in Chinese. I mastered the name of the school last week, but no taxi knows how to get to our residence, so you always have to direct them from the gates of the school. I practiced ‘turn left” ‘turn right” “go straight” the entire mile walk home the day before with Jane and Nina, and, lo and behold, it worked!!
This weekend, Jane, Nina, and I, along with a friend of theirs, Professor Wang, went to Wulongtan, or 5 dragon pools. The legend is a sort of Leda and the sawn, with dragons, and the dragon impregnated mother and her 4 children (can’t understand why they wouldn’t believe her story about fire-breating conception after the third time!) were shunned and all turned into dragons, each of whom got their own pool. Anyways, it’s about 30 km away from Ningbo, but we took the bus, which involved taking one bus downtown, stopping at KFC to get food for the picnic (here’s Nina looking excited about the future lunch!)
Walking around till we found the other bus which proceeded to barrel through villages and around windy mountain roads with the usual Chinese high speed and disregard for other cars and niceties like watching the road. I wish I had a picture of the driver casually turning his head to chat with a passenger as we took a hairpin turn. In a bus, people. But we got out to this:
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