A Redheads Ramblings

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Cooking and Characters

Good afternoon!
This morning during my language class I learned the character for busy. Many Chinese characters are made up of two parts and the two parts that make up the character for busy mean heart death. It made me think of stress related heart attacks. Chinese is a very logical language.

Yesterday I spent some time in the kitchen and I thought I would show you what I did. One of my teachers gave me a jar of pickled vegetables, something that is common to eat here, and I had eaten all the vegetables out of it so I refilled my jar.


Brine the vegetables go in.


Cutting the veggies, I used carrots and radishes.

One of my friends taught me how to cook lotus root, a very common and delicious food here.


Lotus Root

Lotus root is cooked in oil with some spicy dried red peppers (I think chile peppers) and a spice called prickly ash in English which has a numbing effect on your mouth when you eat it.

Prickly Ash or numbing spice.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the food!

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Some randomness for your enjoyment...

Living in a foreign country there are many quirks to discover. I thought it might be fun to share some of them with you, enjoy!

I live on the 18th floor of an apartment building in the city but there are chickens on my roof, I hear the rooster crowing every morning. I like it.
I have a squatty toilet in my bathroom and my shower is almost directly above it so I almost fall into my toilet sometimes when I am showering.
I was told today that the Chinese language has about 90,000 characters...ai ya! I have my work cut out for me.
The word to brag in Chinese is made up of the words to blow and cow, so bragging is blowing a cow.
I was sitting drinking coffee with a friend today and she randomly asked me if I like hats. I said yes, I do. She then said that she had been thinking that I should wear a hat when I go to visit her grandparents since they nor (evidently) no one in their village had ever seen a foreigner and they would be staring at me. I then assured her that I was used to people staring and would be ok.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Living near the clouds...or thereabout

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I just experienced my first Christmas in the mainland. It was lovely. They have an interesting tradition here. At Christmas time many people buy inflatable bats and go to the park in the city center and hit each other with them. I have asked several friends why this is and none of them know why except that it is "funny". Who knows how it got started. I made sure to steer clear of the park over the holiday.

I now have my own apartment! It is on the 18th floor so I have an amazing view of the city. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment.