Proof

I was accused of just downloading photos of Beijing from flickr and making up this elaborate story. So, here's a bit of proof:



It would be a pretty elaborate ruse for me to Photoshop that up, wouldn't it? Of course, oversize printing is becoming cheaper all the time, so here's more of a shot with some scenery:



It's a little fuzzy, so maybe I'm still not convincing you. But: that's my tutor Zhang Li, and she's proof that it's a good idea to write ahead to your site director if you are doing a study abroad. I wrote to introduce myself, and low and behold, I have a graduate student in library science as my tutor for 3 hours per week. From what I was able to gather from our 2+ hour conversation, she wants to be a public library reference librarian. I finally had to put a stop to it because I thought my head was going to explode. It was the most intense review session I've had for as long as I have been studying. All sorts of words got pried loose from my memory as I fought to explain myself. I'm totally speaking Chinglish so far, but I think I was getting my point across. To her credit, she pretty well refused to speak English with me except to define specific words. Although her cell phone dictionary let her down when she was trying to explain that there are many different breeds of ATMs to choose from. Although breed works pretty well to describe different brands, so in the end she was also getting her point across.

I have a big list of words and phrases I need to learn before Zhang Li and I meet next on Thursday, so I'm not going to give you a blow-by-blow of today. Instead, let's talk about food.

Today they threw an opening day banquet for us, which was pretty amazing. Just like a Russian party, the dishes kept coming out. We started with 5 or 6 colds dishes, including some pickled melon chunks (although I suppose it could have been sweet potato), a cold sliced fish, preserved tomatoes (I think), tripe, and cabbage. That was followed by a ham and broccoli dish, roast duck (it might have been chicken, because the beak wasn't very long, but I think it was duck because the wings were too big for a chicken. Now that I'm thinking about it though, it must have been a chicken, because ducks have bills, not beaks, right?), another fish (sans head, but with fins and tail), a plate of mushrooms and snowpeas, and probably a few other things I'm not remembering.

Then came a big pot of duck soup (unless it was a goose, because this time the bill was HUGE)
that had the whole thing swimming in it and it was surrounded by jiaozi) and a pile of fried rice. Yum-bo.

I still wasn't very hungry after my tutoring session, so I wandered a bit and decided it was time to stretch my limits. So I stopped in one of the places on the main street near the compound. No foreign students here: I was the only non-Chinese speaker in the place. AND: still they had a picture menu, so it must not be all that far off the beaten path. It's in the area I described the other day as being a bit Blade Runner. If I had gotten a wider view, you'd probably see more easily what I mean:



No air conditioning here, so most folks were sitting outside. It was still about 85F and muggy, so I don't blame them. I went inside, thinking it would be a little quieter, but the Beijingers are chatty folk so it was rather cacophonous. I was still stuffed from the banquet, so just ordered one dish and some rice. For the second or third time since I arrived, the 服务 (waitress) asked what I thought was 'Do you want that hot?' On Sunday I thought the person was warning me that it was spicy--but what I got wasn't spicy at all. What I'm starting to think is that I'm not ordering well, and that I'm ordering only foods that will raise my body temperature. A well balanced Chinese meal is supposed to have both warming and cooling foods. And from what I gather, neither of these categories has anything to do with the temperature at which the food is served nor its Scoville rating. So, I'm going to have to ask around.

Two more observations about dinner. First, it seems like it's perfectly polite to point at someone with your middle finger extended, palm facing down. It's a little bit like flipping someone off, but the gesture is completely different. Second, what they say is true: just spit out the bones / shells / seeds. Right onto the table. Tonight I even saw a grandma do it without even bending over. The students last night at least picked up their plates and sort of pulled the shrimp shells out of their mouths with their chopsticks. Not granny: she shot out that hunk of cartilege like it was a watermelon seed at a Moose Lodge Labor Day picnic.

再见。