I'm still finding new foods to try. Some of them are excellent, for others I have to try not to gag while I talk myself into swallowing. Most of these don't taste bad but their texture and knowing what they are makes them difficult to eat. I never knew how food-biased American culture is. My ideas about what is appropriate to eat override what my mouth tastes; it's all in my head.

They removed the photo caption feature (which is really annoying) so this album includes: black rice crispy treat and meat candy; a truck selling huge twisted fried snacks; rice pillows, which are really like big cold cereal and I was tempted to put milk on them; taro cake, rather pasty; octopus (which I've had before but it never looked like this); Xi'an noodles, the noodles native to the city of Xi'an, a wheat noodle that is cooked into flat pieces (in the round pan in the upper left) then cut up into noodles; and banana, strawberry, and peach flavored microwave popcorn.

One of my friends at work has a three year-old son, Xiao Mo. I've only met him twice, the first time he cried when he saw me and the second time was in the hospital when he had a fever (so sad).

A couple of days ago his dad, Mo Hailiang, told me that they were watching a TV news story about the war in Gaza. Hamas leaders were being interviewed and Xiao Mo recognized they were speaking a foreign language. He mimicked it...blah blah blah...then he said "Lao Bu!" (my Chinese name). I must be the only person Xiao Mo has met who speaks a language other than Chinese, or he thinks I am a Hamas militant!!! We all had a good laugh about that.

I finally started using my gym membership and went to yoga last night. On my way out of the shower room I slipped on the two steps and cracked my head on them. Polished stone floors look nice but are a very BAD idea for showers. My head and arm were bloody so I had to go back up the steps to the sink. After getting dressed I went out and asked for gauze, I could tell that the employees had zero first aid training. My friend Zhou Yan Shi came out and I could finally communicate. They looked at my head and insisted I go to the hospital; three of the employees joined us there. The doctor looked at my head, a guy came in and shaved around the cut, then the doctor cleaned my cut and stitched me up with five HUGE sutures. I could feel the needle on the first two but eventually the local anesthetic injections he gave me took effect. He put a mesh cap on my head to hold the bandage in place, cleaned and bandaged my arm, and gave us some paperwork. They did an xray of my arm and it was fine. I got some antibiotic tablets to take at home and an injection of antibiotics in my butt. It all cost 416RMB, about $60. I didn't sleep well because my head was throbbing and the mesh cap was too small, so it was giving me a headache and kept slipping which pulled on the bandage and hurt even more. I took it off this morning, put on some good old Neosporin, and went to work. Everyone has been so interested and very helpful, they all tell me what I should do for it but none of them have ever had stitches and this is my 6th time! Next week I go back to get the sutures out. The hospital experience was VERY different. The gym will reimburse me, and I got to take my radiographs home with me!

Last night, while I was at a supermarket, a friend called and invited me to dinner with one of our bosses and a distinguished professor. I agreed to take a taxi there after I finished shopping. Little did I know I was in for a crazy ride. Dinner was at a restaurant on the lake inside People's Park, about a 25 minute walk from my apartment. I hailed a cab and told him which entrance of the park to drive to. This cabbie was funny, changing the route he wanted to take every few seconds. At the first traffic light we got into the right turn lane, but then he decided he wanted to turn left and drove out into the intersection, at which point he decided to turn right again, going further into the intersection, and finally he decided to go straight. Chinese drivers are so patient with crazy driving. We hit gridlock on the next block. The cabbie started asking me about where I wanted to go. He repeated "renmin gongyuan" (People's Park) and then opened his door, pointing out; he was asking me if I wanted to get out at the park. Eventually I called Chenyu, who talked with the cabbie for about five minutes, literally. I have no idea why it was such a long conversation. We were on a two lane road, one in each direction, with two parking lanes (where cars park and bicycles/motorcycles drive). It took FOREVER to get to the next intersection. The cabbie kept yelling out the window at cabbies going the opposite direction, asking about what was causing the traffic jam. I asked him if it was an accident, using my hands to simulate two cars colliding. He said I was right. We eventually got to the first intersection and turned left, squeaking between two buses before they crushed us. It wasn't long before we hit gridlock again. The cabbie decided to go around the traffic (a common practice here). So there we were driving down the parking lane on the wrong side of the road (along with other cars) only to get stuck again. Then he got out of the cab and walked off. Apparently he convinced the guy driving the van behind us to back up into the adjacent alley and turn around so we could do the same. We did so, hitting the curb once, and avoiding all of the oncoming bicycles. We turned right at the next intersection, which put us on our way back to where I got in the cab. By then traffic in both directions on this road was horrible. The cabbie started talking to me again and eventually I understood that he wanted me to call my friend again. He talked with Chenyu for a while then gave me back my phone. When we finally made it back to the first traffic light (where he had changed directions three times) he was yelling out my window (in Chinese taxis single riders usually sit in the front seat with the driver). He yelled at a few people before a guy on a motorcycle stopped and talked with him. I'd been in his cab for about 20 minutes at this point, traveling less than four blocks. After a bit of body language and signal interpretation I realized that he was telling me to get out of his cab and get on the other guy's motorcycle. I was a bit surprised and a little hesitant, but decided to go with it. I wondered if the cabbie would charge me, but then he signaled that I should pay. Luckily taxis in Nanning charge by distance and not time; the fare was only the initial amount of 7 yuan ($1) because we hadn't gone far enough for it to increase yet. I got out of the cab and hopped on the back of this perfect stranger's motorcycle wondering if the cabbie knew this guy or not. He didn't. There I was, the huge American wearing a green MASH t-shirt and bright red pants, sitting behind a small Chinese man in his 50s on his motorcycle, holding on to the bike behind me. Then my phone starts ringing. I worked it out of my pocket, it was Chenyu. His first words were, "are you on the motorcycle?" It was suddenly more legitimate because it was part of the "plan." I told Chenyu we were on our way and we hung up. On the motorcycle we could go around buses and cars, between backed up traffic, and actually move closer to the park. We didn't go very fast. When we were stopped at one of the intersections the guy handed me a tiny yellow helmet (Chinese helmets would never pass US safety requirements). Of course it was too small for my big caucasian head, but I adjusted it to the largest size and perched it on top, as it was not large enough to actually pull on properly. When the light turned green we turned left, coming very close to a few cars that were turning left next to us. Traffic on this road was bad too. My phone started ringing again while we were waiting behind a line of buses. Chenyu asked to talk with the driver so I handed him my phone. He immediately turned off the motorcycle engine and talked with Chenyu for a bit. A few guys on the sidewalk tried to sell me tickets to something during this phone call. We eventually got moving again, going between a bus and the curb where it was stopped, dodging the people stepping out of the bus. When we finally got out in the street (on the wrong side of the center line again) we drove through the narrow space between a car and bus, my long legs on short foot pegs stuck out pretty wide and barely fit through without touching either vehicle. Chenyu called again and wanted to talk with the driver but we were driving so he couldn't hold the phone. For the next minute or two I held the phone to his left ear while he drove us down the street. I was laughing out loud, wishing I could have a picture of what it all looked like. After talking with the driver Chenyu and I spoke. He said that he would meet me at the park entrance. I tried to verify that the driver knew where he was going and all I had to do was hold on. Chenyu misunderstood me the first few times I asked. Eventually I gave up the attempted verification. As we drove through the last traffic light a bus was coming toward us from across the intersection. We were, of course, on the wrong side of the center line again, headed straight for the bus. There were some construction barriers on the right that we were driving around. Right at the last second we passed the barriers and turned away from the bus. I got a really good look at that bus's headlight. We finally arrived at the gate to the park and Chenyu was there waiting for us. I gladly paid the motorcycle driver the 5 yuan he wanted and gave him back his tiny helmet. The 25 minute walk to the park had taken 45 minutes via taxi and motorcycle. People in China are generally good hearted and violent crimes are very rare. I was glad to have arrived safely and laughingly described the trip to Chenyu. Only in China....

I don't know why but the formatting of my blog text is completely removed when it is published. I do actually write in paragraphs, I love paragraphs. Sorry for the huge chunks of text. Maybe I'll start using a symbol to show my paragraph breaks!

I listen to Chicago Public Radio over the internet everyday. The election coverage by US news and the BBC, as played on CPR, has been of interest to me. I voted two weeks ago and mailed my ballot back to Chicago, so I'm not really campaignable anymore. One thing that is mentioned over and over again is becoming really irritating to me though. Barack Obama may be the first black president. But wait a minute, he's only half black. His father is from Africa and his mother is a white American. So, that makes him half black and half white. Yet he's billeted as a black candidate. So he's just as white (genetically) as he is black. So if being half black makes you black, doesn't being half white make you white? If you were one quarter or one eighth black, would you be classified as black? If you were one quarter or one eighth white, would you be classified as white? Is it based on visual cues? If a one quarter black, three quarters white, person had no visual characteristics typical of black people, would that person be black? Maybe it's based on the vanilla theory, something I've noticed about vanilla ice cream. Many people don't consider vanilla a flavor, it's more of the base, or blank page, compared to other flavors. Are white people the blank page in American racial issues? Do we consider white to be the default when referring to race, resulting in the mention of someone's race only if they are not white? Does classifying races into two groups, people of color, and white people, indicate that white is not a color? Personally I think that vanilla is a flavor and that white is a color. Why can't Americans get over their fixation on race. I think focusing on it in some ways makes it worse. Only in America are black people called "black people." European society has either overcome, or never had, their fetish with race. In Europe people of any race are identified just as people, maybe along with their nation of citizenship. In America no one is just a person, we're a black person, an Asian person, a Pacific islander, a Native American, etc. etc. If we want to focus on race so much, let's start recognizing that Barack Obama is just as white as he is black, and while we're at it why not look into John McCain's genealogy to see if he has any amount of "color" in his genes. Enjoy your vanilla ice cream America.

Should I feel bad? My sister-in-law gave birth to their third boy!!! So exciting. I finally saw some photos on the blog of another sister-in-law. The feeling bad part comes into play because no one in my family told me about my nephew's birth until 9 days later, when my mother mentioned it in passing in an email. This used to happen quite frequently but hasn't happened in several years. Past examples are events like siblings moving to a new house, receiving mission calls, and a parent in the ICU after a late night ambulance ride. I'm not saying that anyone in my family does this deliberately because they don't, but should I feel bad for being forgotten? When have you been forgotten by loved ones because of physical proximity? What are the kinds of things you expect to be made aware of and/or would communicate to your family? Google translated "out of sight, out of mind" into 太棒了，记住了. When using Google translate I usually feed the Chinese back through to see what the English says. This one came out as "Great, keep in mind the." This helps me know when I need to revise my original English text. 你将被遗忘的人没有谁可以看到你 means: You will be forgotten by the people who cannot see you.

Several weeks ago a large portion of the block next to mine was vacated by all of the businesses and residents. It took a long time to remove all the windows, salvageable materials, and anything that might pose a risk, before they could finally raze the buildings. Now the block is very empty. An excavator with a long pole (possibly a bit jack-hammerish) slowly knocked down the buildings over the course of about three days. It was very dusty and loud (they stopped around 10PM). I was at the office late one night waiting for the elevator and looked out the window to see someone with a small fire in the piles of rubble, behind the “barrier.” The construction/demolition fence was funny. Initially it was the outer wall of the buildings that they left up after taking down the rest of them. Then it was a tarp like material, striped. The third incarnation was a row of used and broken furniture (need a free desk?). Workers sorted through the piles, stacking usable bricks, a pile of rebar, etc. etc. The final version of the construction fence was a brick wall they made with the left over bricks! It looks like it might fall over in some places. I’m curious to see what new development will be built here. The Chinese people can do AMAZING things with concrete.

20 October 2008 Office hours at the Hualan Group are 8:30 to noon, and 2:30 to 6:00. I was groggy this morning and virtually useless! I had lunch with Fu Zhaohua in our company cafeteria or “canteen” as people here call it. There were the usual foods, pig intestine, whole fish, cabbage, blood tofu, roast duck, bitter cucumber, cooked melon, omelets, noodles, string beans, broccoli, etc. etc. I went home and took my daily nap. When I got back to work people were eating candy. One of my favorite co-workers, Li Yana, brought a bunch of small coconut flavored hard candies to share. She wasn’t in the office this morning and I was wondering where she was. She was gone for her wedding but came back after lunch. Seriously. I congratulated her and took some pictures to celebrate. Chinese weddings typically have two parts, first the couple goes to a government office, our equivalent of the “Justice of the Peace” I guess, to become legally married. The marriage license costs 9 yuan, about $1.25, and then they’re married. The celebratory part of a marriage comes weeks or months later when the bride’s family hosts a huge banquet. I attended one recently and will post more on that later. I hear a variety of music in the office. One of my co-workers has “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” as her cell phone ring tone, and another has his set to “Oh Susanna.” This afternoon I heard music playing from the primary school across the street. It was the Enya song from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, played on the outdoor speakers at what I assume was the end of their recess at 4:30 (Chinese students go to school all day long). They also play the national anthem every morning. My work today was research for an article I’m writing to be published in an academic planning journal. It’s about how the different ownership and property rights laws in China and the US have shaped public and private urban spaces. It’s so much easier to focus and get a lot done after lunch. I took Chenyu to dinner. It’s the Chinese custom for one person to pay for dinner when you go out with friends, and the next time it’s someone else’s turn. Tonight was my turn. We went across the street to a popular restaurant that is owned by the sister of one of my co-worker’s wife. We originally sat at a table with a woman and her two-year-old son, but moved because I was scaring him!! We ate across from a kid who was maybe 10 years old. In Chinese restaurants it’s normal to share a table with strangers. The kid was the son of my co-worker’s wife’s sister, his nephew. His mother, aunts (possibly), and other employees were trying to get him to practice his English with me. All he said was, “hey hey,” “oh yea, oh yea, oh yea,” and “do you like dolls?” He brought out his English books (more like magazines really) and we looked through them. They don’t teach the most accurate English in China. I ended up singing several of the songs in his books there in the restaurant while we ate. There was happy birthday, the wheels on the bus, I can sing a rainbow, Old MacDonald, and head shoulders knees and toes. They were slightly different versions, but the same songs! After dinner I came home, put a load in the washing machine on the balcony, and decided to finally blog again. I need to buy more hangers.

Foods continue to be an adventure for me. I was able to take some pics with my phone at a banquet, because it was very informal. The snake soup looks just like it did the first time. This time I actually tried to eat it but it is too much work, the only meat is a very thin layer between the ribs and the skin. I took one of the fried sparrows (that’s what Chenyu called it but I have no idea what kind of bird it was) from the bowl full of them. I went for the breast, thinking it would be the largest piece of meat. I couldn’t find any. It was all fried skin and bones. Just for scale, the plate the sparrow is on is about 4.5” in diameter. Corn, along with beans, can be made into so many different kinds of sweets. I tried some corn candy, and actually found corn ice cream!!! I wasn’t really corny, just creamy and rather plain. I don’t think I would have guessed it was corn ice cream if I had tasted it before knowing what it was. Long yuan (dragon eye) is a seasonal fruit similar to lychee, but long yuan is smaller and much easier to peel. I would buy a kilo or two once or twice a week and go to town on them in front of the TV. They come on branches and are called dragon eyes because after you peel it, they resemble an eyeball, with the red pit in the middle appearing to be the pupil. Very dragonlike. I had turtle for the first time and wasn’t really impressed, or grossed out. It was all chopped up very nicely. Anteater tastes like beef. One of my bosses claims that it was really pig breast (as in mammary glands not pectoral muscles). Anteater became illegal for human consumption during the SARS scare because they thought it was anteaters that passed SARS on to humans. Tiny apple-like fruits of varying red and green/yellow splotchiness are good. I actually enjoyed eating barbecue octopus! Each tentacle is about 4” long, skewered lengthwise, and cooked on a griddle with a big flat press pushing it down. The second to last photo is a dish I’ve seen twice. It’s slices of taro alternating with slices of pork. It is a good example of how Chinese people eat the fat and the skin of the animals. The skin is the dark crispy part on top followed by layers of fat and meat/connective tissue. Who knows? One more food, at WalMart they sell whole roasted chickens (Cornish hen size) for 9.90 each, about $1.40. The line is always huge and everyone walks around with small plastic bags full of steam and hot chickens. We ate them after we finished shopping. It was a lesson in chicken anatomy, I started with one leg and ended with the other. I tried my first fowl neck. Fried duck necks are a common food, as well as chicken feet. I tried asking about duck feet once, but no one understood me.

Traditional Chinese medicine is interesting. My friends keep telling me things to keep me healthy. Here are a few of their tips: 1) In the winter it is best to eat a salty breakfast and a sweet dinner. 2) Drinking cold water will make you sick. (When I hear this one I like to tell them that I have been drinking cold water all my life. I also like to tell them that if this was true that everyone in Europe and America would be dead.) 3) When you're sick you should eat duck soup. 4) Did you know that foods are categorized into hot and cold? Some foods make you hot and some foods make you cold. It's best to eat the cold foods during the summer because it cools you down, save the hot foods for winter. 5) Midday naps are essential to having a productive day. The hospital system is different here. Whenever you are sick you should go to the hospital. You don't need an appointment and there's no emergency room fee. People go for just about everything. Apparently there are scads of doctors waiting around in the hospitals to treat sick people. I don't usually take a lot of medicine for colds or things that I know my body just needs time to recover from. Maybe going to the hospital to get a couple bags of IV fluid put in your vein really does help you overcome a cold?

The Beijing Olympics are officially over.

The closing ceremonies were nice, not as long or impressive as the opening ceremonies, but they were still inspiring. I liked that they had all of the athletes run out into the stadium en masse instead of in country groups. Not only was it faster but it was more celebratory, like a party. It was interesting though that the footage of the procession of 204 flags never showed the American flag, and that the scores of shots of excited athletes blowing kisses, posing, and waving at the cameras, only once did I see an US athletes, and then only a couple.

Personally I think the Olympics have too much pomp and that China made even more of it. Chinese government officials need to take lessons in smiling. I only saw two of them smile. Hu Jin Tao was one but he always looks like he's in pain when he wears what he considers a smile.

The music was beautiful, including some lovely choral numbers. I think only two of the vocal performers all night actually sang their songs live, the rest were recordings with lip syncing.

The 2012 games in London put on a little show. The contrast from the Chinese spectacular and the little English show was very high. The Chinese celebrations were very classy and celebrated humanity and human accomplishment. The English festivities celebrated sexuality and celebrity. It seemed completely out of place and even irreverent in a culturally offensive way.

After the London hand-off it turned into more of a party with more Chinese singing stars lip syncing.

All in all it was very nice. Where did all of the grass go? It fascinates me how the entire field is grass one day and a huge stage the next (or a couple days later!).

I really liked when they sang the "I Love Beijing" song. Beijing, Beijing, I love Beijing, in Chinese: 北京北京我爱北京

Way to go China!

When I first walked into my Nanning apartment there was dust on the kitchen counter, a yellowish dust. I wiped it off.

Every few days there was more dust. I thought the wood putty covering the nails in the untreated cupboard doors was falling off.

There were also little circles of dust on my floor. The living room, den, bedroom, and kitchen all have wood flooring. When I looked closer there were tiny holes in the middle of these dust circles. The dust was actually sawdust!

I checked my bamboo cutting board, hanging near the sink, and there were tiny little holes in it too.

BUGS! They're eating my floor!

I took the cutting board down and ran superhot water over it for several minutes. Then I set it aside to check for sawdust over the next few days. No more!

Eventually I took the broom and a can of bug spray and saved my floor. I swept up the little circles of sawdust and sprayed the tiny holes. The interesting part was that they preferred certain pieces of wood. One of the slats in the floor by the door has dozens of tiny holes in it, while the slats all around it have zero.

So far so good, no more sawdust circles.

 My graduation present to myself was an electric bicycle! It's so fun. I named it Hong Ma, which means red horse, because there is a red horse on it.

Electric bicycles are so great. They're virtually silent, quite fast, have a headlight, horn, turn signals. Mine has three gear settings and a lot of space on the back for carrying things, including another person. I bought the model that's made for delivery people.

The huge piece on the front from the fork down to the foot platform, is the battery. Mine goes about 48km on one charge. The battery is very heavy but can be removed for charging. I just put my whole bike in my living room so I don't have to take the battery off. It's a pain getting in and out of the elevator (I'm on the 10th floor) and my apartment but I know it's safe and not getting rained on or baked in the subtropical sun.

I have no idea how much it would cost to ship to America, but that would be so great!

I heard about Galaxy Zoo on Chicago Public Radio the other day. (I love that I can listen to it online). It's a website that lets common people participate in astronomical research.

Basically space telescopes have collected trillions and trillions of images of very distant galaxies. They originally wrote computer programs to identify which type of galaxy each one is but the computer proved ineffective compared to people categorizing the galaxies.

You can make an account, go through the tutorial, pass the test, then you can start classifying actual galaxies!!!! It really is quite easy and fun to participate. I've already done nearly 600! You can also go back and look at the images of all of "your" galaxies. It's amazing. I've added an album of some of my favorites.

www.galaxyzoo.org

I just got home from Han Wenbing's apartment where I watched the opening ceremony for the olympics on live TV. It was about 4:15 so it was quite long, but the program was so amazing. I've never seen so many hundreds of people in such unison. It was beautiful. The only thing I could compare it to is watching a school of fish or a flock of birds as they remain together through direction changes. It was breathtaking.

I've always loved the olympics, it's one of the handful of things that I have an unexplained spiritual and emotional connection to. I was the American who was crying during the opening ceremony in the small Chinese apartment.

I think they built the world's largest video screen (unreferenced). It was basically the length of the football field inside the running track. The center section of it opened and amazing things came out of it. Underneath the center doors, that slid outward, was additional video screen. The effect was large. They projected video footage onto the interior rim of the opening in the stadium. That stadium is amazing.

I hope you get to watch it later today. Hopefully you'll have an edited version so it won't be so long and you'll have English commentary throughout. There was a LOT of bad camera work.

The procession of athletes always seems to take too long. I know the games are theirs, but they don't have to walk so slowly. One of the cool things was a huge painting that dancers made with ink on their hands and feet, children colored, and all of the athletes walked across it after stepping on some colored pads. Their collective footprints made a rainbow across the huge canvas.

The central axis of the city had lots of fireworks as part of the show. It was a superb way to expand the ceremony beyond the stadium. One of the fireworks displays started at the Forbidden City and made its way to the stadium. They were footprint shaped fireworks as though some celestial giant were walking toward the stadium leaving footprints of light.

I didn't particularly like the torch lighting or the torch design. I always hate it that the athletes don't enter the stadium until after the show. They deserve to see it the most and they never get to. They didn't even get to sit down. They were all corralled into the center of the track, some having to stand for hours. I think some sat down but it looked like most didn't. It was kind of cool that they could all mingle with each other, but it seemed so inconvenient for them, especially since many of them have to compete tomorrow morning and the ceremony ended past midnight. They were literally the center of attention, but it was so hot and most of their costumes were not made for summer weather.

It's still completely inspiring. I just love it. I wish I would have had $2000 to go there myself. Oh well. I've given up, mostly, on going to any events. I'd have to put it on my credit card, and tickets are so expensive. The CEO of my company is thinking about taking me with him when he goes for a few days next week. That would be amazing. At least I have CCTV and can watch the olympics live, except for when I'm at work.

I'm getting to know Chinese culture better. The opening ceremony had a similar flavor.

Sorry I haven't posted in so long. I had to finish my thesis and was just sick of being at a computer after that.

I hope you catch the ceremony wherever you live. May the olympic spirit take you away in the next 16 days.

08-08-08 at 8:08pm = an EXTREMELY auspicious day and time. Many people got married today in China, and expecting mothers scheduled c-sections so their babies could be born today. 8 is the luckiest number in China.

Happy 8-8-8 to you!

I've rated these foods using five-star system. The blog site won't support the perfect little five-pointed stars  in one of the wingdings fonts, so big asterisks will have to do. There is a photo album of the foods that I could actually find photos of.
DUCK AND LOTUS SEED SOUP_*** it was my first duck but had a bit of a strange flavor, the lotus seeds were good but I wasn’t so excited about the dates or the vertebrae and other various bones.

FROG LEGS_** it didn’t taste bad it was just disturbing to see the spotted skin on the meat I was eating, and the meat bone ratio was very low, tiny little bones.

LOTUS ROOT_***** when cooked it has the crunchy texture of raw potatoes, it grows with a nice pattern of holes in it and comes in white and purple.

DRAGON FRUIT_***** it’s beautiful and easy to peel. The flesh is white with hundreds of tiny black seeds. It tastes like a mix between kiwi and jicama and goes through faster than corn.

JACK FRUIT_***** it’s easily confused with durian (which has a foul smell). It could easily be used as a weapon. After opening, you cut out the clusters of flesh, inside each one is a large seed.

MANGOSTEEN_***** who knew that mangoes came in teenages? Choose a firm one, break off the stem, crack it half, and scoop out the white flesh (it looks like citrus fruit).

SAND WORMS_** they didn’t taste bad but the texture and just knowing that it was a worm was enough for me. I only ate two. They’re only found in Beihai, southern Guangxi.

HALF-COOKED SHRIMP_** picture large whole shrimp skewered through the tail up to the head, dipped in boiling porridge for about 1.5 minutes, and served hot. I bit the head off.

GOOSE LIVER_* I just don’t like liver. The texture is horrible and pasty almost and the flavor is just not for me. I took one bite and watched the others eat whole pieces.

MUSHROOM STEAK_*** it came on a plate covered in gravy looking like a nice thick cut of pork. It was rubbery and flavorless but the gravy helped.

APPLE VINEGAR_**** I choose apple “juice” over milk. It was so tangy and flavorful with a rich aftertaste, it seemed concentrated. When I was told it was vinegar that was all I could taste.

CHICKEN FOOT_** “it tastes like chicken” runs true. It’s just a cooked foot that you eat the skin off of. I had one toe. I kept thinking of that chicken standing in its own poop all its life.

SNAKE_** it was served as a three-inch section with the abdominal cavity emptied in a bowl of broth, I took a couple bites but didn’t want to eat the skin and there were so many bones.

CORN JUICE_***** two pitchers of OJ turned out to be a hot thick creamy corn drink (yeah for colorblindness). Tastes just like corn on the cob but in a smooth hot beverage.

 

CORN CANDY_***** it’s a chewy yellow candy shaped into little corn cobs and it tastes like corn. Corn syrup is used to sweeten so many things, why not corn candy?

PIG EAR_* sliced into thin sections you could see the layers of skin and other tissue. It tasted like pork but was way too tough and chewy and practically all skin.

LYCHEE_***** easily peeled it is a translucent fruit with a pretty red shiny pit in the middle. The flesh has a zippy flavor and liquid/solid/gelatin texture that reminds me of the purple grapes in my parents’ yard.

 

Chinese table manners are much more lax than those in America. It’s perfectly acceptable to reach all the way across the table and grab a piece of something with your chopsticks. When eating meat it’s normal to put the whole chunk in your mouth, work the meat from it, then spit the bones out right on the table or bowl or plate. Slurping is ubiquitous. Slurping soup, sucking noodles, and sucking the meat from bones happens in every meal.

One of my friends from work, Li Ning, had a bunch of us from the office over for the evening last night. We barely fit around the table and the food dishes barely fit on the table so most of us just held our rice bowl and picked what we wanted with our chopsticks. In this case, it was perfectly acceptable to spit or put your bones directly on the wood tabletop, forming neat piles. So the Chinese are much more flexible and accepting of how you choose to consume your food. Practicality trumps high society dining in this country, and it’s a refreshing change!

In general the food in China is always served hot. I never realized it but I associate hot meals with dinner or more formal occasions and associate cold foods with lunch and breakfast. Every meal here is served hot so it feels rather formal to me. I sometimes wonder if eating hot food is a sign of wealth or prosperity because it represents controlling fire, having cookware, having a sheltered place to cook, and being able to afford or raise your own meat.

Chinese food doesn’t waste any part of the animal. Almost every dish I’ve had with meat in it contains the bones. They seem to just chop up the animal and cook it instead of carefully removing the meat from the bones before cooking. Chen Yu told me that meat without bones is just very boring. They also eat all of the skin and fat along with the meat. Some dishes are nothing but chunks of fat. Intestines, ears, feet, liver, heart, head, are all eaten, I’ve even been told that penis is very good.

A bowl of rice accompanies just about every meal as well as a bowl of “soup.” I would call it broth because it’s a very light meat stock usually with nothing in it but the broth. This is the beverage that is served with the meal. Sometimes tea is the primary beverage in the nicer restaurants or is just a supplemental one.

 During my first hour in Nanning Chen Yu and Shao Lu took me to lunch at a nicer sit down restaurant with waitresses. I had been traveling for 25 solid hours and it was super humid and in the 90s F, the last thing I wanted to drink was hot tea or soup. I asked for a glass of water through Chen Yu. The waitress brought me a glass of nearly boiling water. Chen Yu was shocked that Americans don’t drink hot water, even in the winter! I finally got a bottle of cold water. I was so thirsty. Now I take a nalgene bottle full of water with me. It’s hard to get cold water but room temp is much better than hot.

You may notice a small little piece of paper with some Chinese characters on it stuck to the edge of your noodle or soup bowl. Did someone go crazy with stickers in the kitchen? No. Make sure your bowls have these little stickers, it means that they have been cleaned. Clean is good.

Last night was my first party at someone’s apartment. Li Ning is one of the women on my floor and she invited several of us to her apartment for dinner. She lives in a huge apartment complex (lots of buildings but not tall buildings), on the opposite side of Nanning from me. I took a taxi with Dr. Han (Han Wenbing) and Fu Chaohua. After we got there we had to go buy a watermelon to bring, there were lots of little stores in the apartment complex though, good urban planning!

Li Ning’s apartment was on the 6^th floor of a seven-story building, no elevator. There were about 10 of us overall. I went up to the roof deck with a few people while the others cooked. Li Ning has a 5-year-old son whose name I can’t remember, Zhou something. He was so fun. I chased him, growled, and tickled him. He was quite fascinated with me and was very rambunctious. Li Yan Ping brought a folding card table and mahjong set out to the deck. Dr. Han and Li Yan Ping taught me mahjong! It took about an hour, but they were able to explain all the rules to me in English. Wow. Zhou was playing for a while, playing with the tiles, not playing the game. We played until the sun set and it was too dark to see the tiles. We actually played for quite a while using our cell phones as lights! I won my first mahjong game!!! It’s nothing like the mahjong computer games I’ve played in the US.

After the darkness drove us inside we found Zhou playing with colored wooden blocks with a couple of people. They looked perfect for Jenga so I told them about it and we played a round. It was fun but I forgot that when you remove a block you have to put it on top.

We all gathered around the table and ate dinner. There was rice, pork fat soup, broccoli, cucumbers with vinegar, some sort of chive-looking green that wasn’t chives or onion, stir fried chunk of duck, stir fried chunk of pork, stir fried chunk of duck, Coke, Sprite, beer, and OJ. They served me first as the guest and gave me an extra helping of fat from the soup (it’s the best part right?!). I gave it all to Fu Chaohua. The broth had the signature Nanning smell/taste to it. I downed it quickly to get it out of my bowl and eat something else. The meats were barbecued and quite good. I only ate a drumstick of the duck and chicken. I figure that when being served meat I should only eat what looks familiar! Most of the chicken’s organs were on the plate with the meat. Zhou had to sit by me and only spilled barbecue sauce on me once; I caught the drumstick before it landed on my lap.

Afterwards we went into the living room and sat on wooden sofas and talked. Someone brought the card table down and we played mahjong for a while. I won a few more times! Watermelon was served as dessert and was very good.

I asked if we could take photos before we left so we took a couple using the timer and then a few of my co-workers wanted a photo with them and me. They also had me take a couple photos with Zhou. He is so cute. It was so fun to play with a little boy. I love my nieces but little boys are different. I rarely see any of my nephews and they’re not that old yet.

It was very interesting to observe Zhou and how everyone treated him. The adults were all so patient with him, letting him do whatever he wanted (within reason) even though it was inconvenient for them. He could count to at least 20 in English and of course his Chinese was much better than mine. He loved to smile and had the child haircut of shaving the head but leaving a rounded patch in the very front. I got the impression that Chinese people revere their children and are very patient with them, even if they’re not theirs or doing something they shouldn’t be. I wonder if that’s because they are only allowed to have one child per couple. I can see how that would affect how people treated children, they are more of a rare gift than American children, so many of whom are from unwanted pregnancies. Li Ning had him calling me “uncle Bu,” for Bushman.