Chapters 16-18 Food

Chapter 16

Cooking

No, I did not learn how to cook Chinese food. I love eating Chinese food. You make it and I will eat it. In my defense, I cannot cook American food so how could I cook Chinese food? A lot of Chinese people like spicy food, I can eat food that is a little spicy. A lot of my friends really liked spicy food because they grew up with that. I did not and that may make the difference.

Being I am not a cook, I want to say that it looks like Chinese food is more difficult to cook than American food and part of that is because of the preparation time because Chinese food is cut up into small pieces so you can use chopsticks to eat with, but then again what do I know? I can't cook either American or Chinese food so I am not a good person to compare the two.

Chapter 17

Making Dumplings

I am not sure but I think you have to be Chinese to make dumplings. I was asked many times to help with making dumplings. My friends would make the ingredients, either meat or vegetables, and the wrappers that the ingredients went into. We used chopsticks to pick up the ingredients and put them into the wrapper and then use your fingers to squeeze the wrapper together around the ingredients.

In the first picture, you can see me trying to do that. You can laugh if you wish. My excuse for not doing a good job was that my fingers are too big and when I would squeeze the wrapper it would kind of stretch and the ingredients wouldn’t stay inside very well. I actually had one friend tell me that I could sit down and watch since I was doing so badly. I had told her that I was not good at it and after she saw how bad I was doing she decided I was right and had me stop.

I told her that I was only good at eating them. If you look closely at the last picture and see the dumplings on the plate, the really bad ones are mine-the foreigner’s.

Dumplings are very delicious. You have to be careful not to eat too many. You can eat 10-20 of them and they go right down but later you kind of realize that you ate too many and your stomach is really full. Too full.

Here I am, the foreigner, trying to make dumplings. You can see why I had a hard time. Look at the size of the dumpling and the size of my hands, my hands are way too big to be working with those. Foreigners should not be making dumplings.

We did this in my friend’s dorm room. This is Celia (Lv Ming) and Wu Qian. In the bowl, you can see the ingredients. It is chopped up vegetables. Put that in the little wrapper and then squeeze the wrapper together. I would put too much of the ingredients in the wrapper, squeeze it to close it and that’s when the problems would begin. The ingredients inside the wrapper would come out. I tried many times both in the US and in China but I did not do well.

Here’s the assembly line. The girls would make the wrappers from the dough and then we would put the ingredients in the wrappers.

You can see the girl put the ingredients in that small wrapper. How do you expect it to stay inside when you squeeze it? It helps to have small hands.

The finished product. The ugly ones are mine.

Cooking the dumplings

Finally getting to eat them. So much work. They go so quickly. All of the people in these pictures teach English at the Henan University of Science and Technology.

Chapter 18

Eating Out

Eating out is a big thing in China. It may be the number one social time for Chinese people to get together with others. It is kind of like a celebration. They are very happy to see their friends and they are excited and they get really loud and noisy in restaurants.

In the US, when people eat out they are happy to see their friends also but it is usually quieter. Although over the years, our restaurants have become noisier too. I could really tell how that changed here when I came back from China. It used to be when I was in China, I was used to the restaurants being noisy. When I came back here they would be quiet, but not anymore. It is hard to find a quiet place to eat at here. I know certain places that I can go to that are quieter.

The restaurants there are like our bars here, as far as noise goes. Our bars are loud, that is how the restaurants are there. Not all restaurants are noisy of course. There were some that were really quiet, like what ours used to be.

As a foreigner, when I would go into a restaurant with others I would stand out of course. There were people that would sit at their table and watch me eat and others that would turn their chairs and watch me.

One time when my friend Xiao Dan and I went to a restaurant, we had been sitting there for a little while and a Chinese man at another table actually brought his chair and sat down at the end of the table next to us and watched me. Once he sat there, neither of us spoke again until he left. We just ignored him. Some people want to hear a foreigner talk, even if they can’t understand the language, some want to watch the foreigner’s actions and how he does things and some want to see if the foreigner can use chopsticks.

Another time when Ms. Wei and I went to a western food restaurant called Ke Xiang Lai. It is western food cooked the Chinese way like how Chinese food is cooked the Western way here in the US. We were sitting there eating and talking and all of a sudden we heard someone knock on the window. The window was one of those that was very big so people could see in as they walked by. We looked and there were a bunch of elementary students going home at noon to eat and they stopped to look through the window to see the foreigner eating. I just waved at them and went back to eating. After that incident, I made sure I didn’t sit next to a window again.

Sometimes when I went out with friends, we would have a private room to eat in. It could have been for a birthday, some occasion or the people just wanted to be in a room where it was quiet. Those were always nice. I was always happy when we ate in a private room. Although, there were times when I was in a private room with others and if I was sitting facing the door and someone walked by and saw me sitting there, they would back up and look at me and then go again. I learned not to sit facing the door where I could be seen by people walking by.

One time I went to eat with Mr. Zhai, Emily and their families. We had a private room. There were maybe eighteen of us. We had gotten into the room, just standing around waiting for others to come. I turned around and here was this really cute waitress smiling at me. She looked like she was sixteen. Later I had someone take a picture of us. We stood together and she took my hand and held it. That was surprising to me.

Another time Mary and I were invited to eat with Mr. Bai and some teachers from his school. There were fifteen of us in a private room. There was one main waitress that was in our room and when others brought food to the door, she would put it on the table. When we were done eating and ready to leave, she asked Mr. Bai if she could have a picture with the foreigners. There were five of us. This was the first time that the girl had met foreigners.

Once when I was out with Celia and her parents. The girl that was our waitress was the tallest girl that I had seen in China at that time. She was just a little taller than I am. I am 5’10”, she was maybe six feet.

It was always nice going out with friends and eating the great food in China. I am not into spicy food. I can eat food with a little spice. I really miss the food there. 

I got so I really like eating rice. I missed not having it here so I bought a rice cooker and now and then I will have some. There is a little tray in the rice cooker above where the rice would cook and I can steam food there. I usually put baby carrots and cut up an onion in the tray. Nothing special, I am not a cook so it is very simple but I really like it. I have found a couple of restaurants in La Crosse that are close to the taste of Chinese food in China so I go there now and then.