Fourth day in China

[aadler]

In the morning, the Yins took us to breakfast at yet another restaurant. As usual, the variety of the food was overwhelming, the flavor beyond description. (I’ll still eat at Chinese restaurants when I get home, but I won’t deceive myself that this is Chinese food; just something I enjoy for itself, till my next chance to experience the real thing.) After that we went to a grocery megastore to pick up the few things we’d missed from yesterday.

Back at the Yins’ apartment, they fixed us a small lunch. (Good thing it was small, since breakfast had been so big.) Then Mei-li took us out for a walk in the park next to the apartment building. Nice enough. She’s actually been sick with something since before we arrived, and Kevin will probably wait to do an unambiguous proposal till she feels better. May it be soon. (Valentine’s Day, perhaps?)

The actual preparation of food for the New Year’s dinner was fairly straightforward. Mei-li’s folks had already done most of what they were going to do, so it was basically the three of us while Mei-li’s mother finished up some things. Susan made fruit salad and a small chocolate cake (the latter carefully subdued, since our sugar tolerance is so high that stuff we can barely taste registers with most mainland Chinese as ‘too sweet’); Kevin made banana bread; and I did that old American standby, green bean casserole (only, we hadn’t been able to find French fried onions at either market, so I’ll be able to serve them the authentic dish when they come to visit us in America).

During the dinner itself, I learned something: Chinese home cooking is nowhere near at the level of Chinese restaurant cooking. Nothing was bad — most of it was good — but nothing was at the near-transcendent level of the food we’d been eating. Also, Mei-li’s father again broke out the liquor, though this time it wasn’t restricted to just the two of us. We had beer, then the rest of the baijiu we’d started two nights ago, then he broke out a new bottle of higher-quality baijiu. I drank less than the first night (I think), but felt it more, and wound up falling asleep in front of their television while they watched festival coverage and special events. (Susan told me Celine Dion sang something in Chinese at one point. Kind of sorry I missed that.)

Again back to Kevin’s apartment, again directly to bed.

Next Day

Comments

[velvetwhip.livejournal.com]

I imagine the difference between real Chinese food and the kind of Chinese you get here in the USA is rather like what I discovered about crepes when I visited France.