II

Alright! Sorry it’s been so long (almost two weeks already!) since the last update. Time flies when you’re having fun, so I hear.

And I am having a good time. Life has fallen into a pretty steady rhythm — classes during the week, Chinese in the mornings, lunch/hanging out/homework over lunch break, dinner/homework/time with family (mostly brother Yun) in the evenings, either rest (+family activity) or a group trip on the weekends.

I said I would say something about the food in my last update, so I suppose I’d better (lest I dissatisfy those of you hungry for more information… 😉 ). Within the first week or so, one of my classmates remarked that it seems we’ve tasted two dozen different spices, all of which is unique among the others and none of which we’ve ever had before. I think that’s a pretty great way of summing it up — every dish is interesting or unique, and it’s always different from what I eat in America.

Breakfast is probably my most American meal. My parents asked in the first few days what Americans eat for breakfast, and I mentioned bread, eggs, milk, (maybe cereal? I forget), fruit… so I’ve been eating a lot of bread and eggs (and there’s always milk available). This has been the case for most of my classmates as well — in our families’ eagerness to be great hosts, they have chosen familiar over cultural a few times. To my knowledge foods such as these (bread, eggs, certainly cereal) are much less common among Chinese breakfasts — this morning I had rice porridge for the first time (along with leftovers from last night), which was fine by me and I believe is closer to a standard ‘Chinese breakfast.’ (I likely haven’t been forceful enough, for breakfast, that I can and would like to eat what Chinese people do, but it’s been fine — and we never/rarely eat bread or eggs the rest of the time, so it’s nice to get those sometimes). They also have these interesting rice(?)-based-balls-what-have-peanut-butter-inside which are pretty delicious (although they were weird at first). (We’re pretty sure that they were all told Americans eat eggs and bread and peanut butter for breakfast, as that’s pretty much what they’ve been giving all of us. They definitely think Americans like peanut butter a lot. Pretty much everyone had a huge pack of Oreos waiting for them at home too, for us American sugar lovers 😉 ).

Lunch is done at school, and most of the time we eat at one of the restaurants (or food stands) nearby. Many people here eat out for lunch, so we’ve been glad to participate in this cultural aspect of China :). My (and, generally, group) favorites so far have been a jiaozi stand (fried dumplings) and a particular noodle shop (everyone/where has good noodles, but these ones are amazing). 10 dumplings or a big bowl of noodles (both fairly well-sized meals) for US$1 — hard to go wrong. I’m currently on day 9 or 10 of a noodle streak (eating noodles in at least one meal), and I’m not tired of them yet :). (Edit: that is now yesterday, and I think I broke the streak today… drat! Better start again tomorrow! 🙂 ) There are plenty of specific dishes at restaurants that many of us also enjoy (usually involving pork — garlic pork, twice-fried pork, “fish-tasting pork” that doesn’t really taste like fish, etc…).

Other lunch options include the school cafeteria (not bad, though it’s more expensive than outside and there are so many options it’s overwhelming, as well as very loud) and various more-sit-down-y restaurants (order a nice dish (dishes often involve pork — garlic pork, twice-fried pork, “fish-tasting pork” that doesn’t really taste like fish, etc…), share with your friends, eat a bunch of theirs). There’re also various malls in town for when people break down and need to find American fast food (McDonalds, Burger King, Dairy Queen, and KFC have all made their way to Nanchong).

Dinner is always cooked by my grandmother, always simple, and always delicious. It’s not the same kind of experience as lunch — the food doesn’t feel as flashy, as exciting — but it’s home-cooked, and more representative of China, and I love it. We always have rice (or rice porridge) in our own bowl, which is usually saved for the end, and then 3 or 4 (almost always 3) dishes shared in the middle of the table — generally a vegetable or non-meat of some sort (some sort of celery-looking-thing, or dou fu/tofu, or cabbage, etc), a mixed dish (meat and veggies, pork and potatoes or squash and beef ribs, etc — usually more soupy), and something either more meat- or wheat- centered (sausage, or duck, or dumplings, or baozi (like dumplings, but .. rounder and with mushrooms and other vegetables inside), or ‘pancakes’ (like really thick/heavier naan with spinach or some sort of meat (?) inside)). I’m getting lots of vegetables, Mom! (Except vegetable dishes are usually stir-fried in lots of oil — delicious but it might negate a few of the health benefits).

Oil reminds me, you don’t see obese people in China, despite the oil used in their food and, particularly, the huge amount of food they put away (they put us to shame! And they eat so fast! And food while it’s still so (temperature) hot (not to mention spicy)!) — whether this is largely due to genetics, or more walking, or a culture and education more focused on exercise, or eating far less sugar, or a difference in general staples (e.g. less processed food), or some other reason, I haven’t decided.

After dinner, my father or grandfather washes the dishes (I’ve tried to help, but they’ve always wanted to do it — and I haven’t pushed too hard for fear of being a poor guest. Perhaps that makes me a poor guest. Who knows?). Unless there’s oil involved, ‘washing’ pretty much means running the dish under some water and rubbing it with a dishcloth (no soap needed!). Kinda interesting to think about that with dishes (esp. chopsticks) at public restaurants, but it doesn’t bother me too much…

(Digressing now…)

Chinese class is wonderful so far. We have two teachers, one for MTW and the other RF. The first class is supposed to be more conversational, while the second focusing more on general language (reading, grammar, etc) — but they’ve essentially switched, as our MTW teacher can explain complicated grammatical things more easily, and our RF teacher gives us a lot of practice listening because he speaks almost entirely (80%?) in Mandarin. The former class is more practice with general language (pinyin, learning sentence structure, etc), while the latter class is more fine-tuning with a lot of random vocabulary and slides written mostly in characters. We were pretty proud of ourselves when we read an entire dialogue (talking mostly about what buildings are on campus) written in characters (it’d have been relatively easy in pinyin, the romanization/phoneticization (?) of the language, but characters make everything harder).

I would say I know (very roughly, we haven’t had any assessments and I’m not keeping strict track) maybe 200 words, can recognize/read 100-150 characters, and can draw/write 40-50 characters. Depending on who you are/what you know this may sound like very little for this stage, a lot for this stage, or you may have no idea. Even I’m not entirely sure whether I should be disappointed or glad, so… (Still, I’ll be able to look back and say “ah, that’s more or less where I was on September 23rd!” Because I do read these emails again after I sent them 😉 ).

Last weekend we visited Langzhong, an old city (old here means old, in this case nearly 2000 years old). We got to see some classical architecture and city-layout (we stayed in the part of the city that remains a historical and cultural site, rather than the new/modern city that has sprung up around it), stayed in a really cool hotel (see pictures), and visited a few historical sites (an ancient examination location — anyone could take an exam to become a civil servant, which could significantly increase your status in life — our guides heralded it as a major step towards a chance of a good life for anyone; a museum for Zhang Fei, an important general 1800ish years ago; an ancient watchtower looking over the old city). Langzhong is surrounded on three sides by water, a peninsula, (and to some degree all four sides by mountains) which apparently makes it an important place for Fengshui — an art that determines locations where qi energy (you might have heard of qi) pools (qi movement is blocked by water). You can see this to some degree in another of the photos (the darker, lower buildings on the left side are the old city). The shape of the river cutting through the landscape, and the landscape itself, actually forms what can be seen as a giant Yin/Yang, which is pretty cool. We also saw a really big Buddha (although not the really big one that China SSTers sometimes get to see) carved into stone.

This morning I (and our leaders, their daughters, and one of my classmates) visited a church — not a Chinese church, as one might expect, but a church of the Christian Fellowship from the local Medical School’s foreign student population. Students were almost all from Africa (I met some from Nigeria, Uganda, and Ghana) or India, and the service was much more exciting than I’m used to (reminded me of a few services I attended in Kenya) — excited welcomes, jumping and dancing at one point, hallelujahs and amens throughout, and particularly evident joy in the grace, love, and power of God. Us German/Swiss Mennonites could do to learn some about fostering that exuberant joy from some of our brothers and sisters, in my humble opinion.

Once again, I hope I’ll find more time to write — I really only talked about 4 things in this email (there’re a lot more, I didn’t even get to mention taiji, or our traditional music class, or the fascinating author we read and learned about, or some of the beauty of Nanchong, or… well, always feel free to ask me more, either now or upon my return, either in person or via the interwebs), but it feels pretty long so I’m going to send it off.

Also, while I love it when you reply with questions or comments or blessings or prayers or love or support or anything else, please just know that my responses will likely not be very timely (but I will try to respond!). They haven’t been (timely) thus far, at least. (Sorry, you folks!)

Just a reminder, you can find even more on my/my group’s life in China at goshen.edu/china/current-blog.

The grace and peace of Jesus Christ be with you all.