Mei you Mayo (mei you="don't have")

I look outside into what looks like the Swamps of Sadness from The Neverending Story, where the hero Atreyu meets Morla the Ancient One. The weather can't decide if it wants to rain or not. So we see an incredibly thick haze with heavy air and the occasional drop of rain. I walked to the nearby village with one of my colleagues, and we were constantly putting up our umbrellas, then putting them down. The air was so thick that it also felt warm, so we ended up carrying our warm clothes by the end of the trek.

In the village we ate a common Chaoshan delight, which we call "big noodle" for lack of a better term. The premise is that the dish is one big layer of soft dough. A scrambled egg is poured over the dough and then whole thing is cooked, either on a flat grill or in a kind of special oven with layers of jellyroll pans that pull out like drawers. They the whole thing is folded up with some green vegetables, and soy sauce and preserved vegetables are sprinkled on top. I prefer some peanut sauce too, but the place we went to today didn't have it.

We walked around the village for a bit. We didn't find anything that we needed. Many of the stores are still closed from whatever holiday just happened. I DID find some Hellman's mayo, though. It's has both the Hellman's and Knorr labels on it, but I don't know if it's the good stuff.

I had three choices: light blue label, dark blue label, and yellow label with pictures of pineapple on it. All of them had sugar, so I chose the dark blue label because of the resemblance to Hellman's and because of the pics of veggies on it, which suggested savory instead of sweet. Buying things in China is always an adventure.

-吴佩芙

Hot Hot Pot

There's hot, there's really hot, and in China, there's "I can't feel my face" hot. Tonight we went to have hotpot for the second time. We liked it so much the first time, and we got the hang of how to order more efficiently. I also remembered how to order broccoli, which was a nice addition to the variety of ingredients. This time we got the "ying-yan"-shaped pot, with non-spicy on one side and Uber-spicy on the other side. This served the purpose of keeping the spicy side vegetarian, while Mom and Dad had non-spicy with chicken.

Hotpot is from the Northern parts of China, and I usually describe it as "Chinese fondue." Choose your soup, choose your ingredients and cook while you eat. We (in the two times we have gone) are partial to the peanut dipping sauce. When you take the cooked food out of the soup, you dip it in the sauce just before you eat it. The peanut sauce is mild with just the right mix of salt, and it tastes good with the spicy soup as well.

When I say "I can't feel my face," it's because of a special spice called "prickly ash." We can get it sprinkled on top of mapo tofu, and mixed with spicy green beans at the Banyan Tree Restaurant. Biting a prickly ash releases a wave of numb buzzing over your mouth and sometimes to your chin and cheeks. Quite frightening when I first experienced it, I've learned to relax and enjoy the sensation.

We also fulfilled our code violation for the day (but it was worth the risk):


-吴佩芙

China Through the Backdoor

Today we took a short day trip to Chaozhou ("chow-joe" if you don't read pinyin). We took a bus to the Shantou TV tower, and then got a taxi to Chaozhou. I had written the characters for the Guangzi Bridge, where we planned to go first. The taxi driver knew where it was, so we were off down the road to Chaozhou, avoiding about 100 near-accidents on the way, with Dad in the front, and the girls in the back. The driver was from Sichuan province, and I had initially established myself as "someone who speaks Putonghua," so he asked a few questions, and I asked him some questions, but I didn't understand him most of the time. He dropped us off at the bridge, which happened to be right next to the old city wall. We walked around looking at the water and the wall, enjoying the bridge from the sidelines, since they charge admission.

After that it was time for lunch. I knew that there was a vegetarian restaurant near the temple. We have the sister restaurant near the waterfront in Shantou, where I have been once before. I asked if it was near the temple, and the petty cab drivers were eager to take us there for 10 kuai (just over $1) per cab. So we hopped on.


The vegetarian restaurant is the place where people eat before or visiting the temple. The food is vegetarian because strict Buddhists technically shouldn't eat meat, drink beer, or eat spicy food. I couldn't read the menu, but luckily they had set meals. Since the whole restaurant never serves meat, a set meal was a pretty safe option. They make food that tastes like meat, but it's actually texturized vegetable protein (TVP) and tofu. Our meal included winter melon soup, sweet and sour vegetable purses, seafood cutlets on skewers, and a few other mixed dishes with veggies and TVP meat. Most of the dishes were great, so it was another successful dining experience. (Check out my mom using chopsticks! That's not just for show--she's actually holding something in the pic and using them to eat.)


After the meal, we went to Kaiyuan Temple. The tourism websites say it's one of only four temples of the same style in China. It's a temple that is still in use, so the visitors navigate around the corridors amongst the people who are there burning incense and praying. Some parts are closed off to visitors, especially the monks' quarters, from which we could hear monks chanting this afternoon. There are the usual Buddhist statues and Arhats inside the various parts of the temple. There is also a portion dedicated to GuanYin, who is the Buddhist goddess of mercy. The carved statue of GuanYin inside the temple is about 20 feet high, and has 1,000 arms, 1,000 eyes (one painted on each hand), and a face on each of her four sides. Pictures can be taken outside the elaborately decorated temple that houses this statue, but not of the statue itself.


In the afternoon we got a cab back to the university. The cab driver was creative and took us on a dusty road, presumably to avoid traffic in the city. In the end, I think my parents liked Chaozhou, and everything went pretty smoothly, but they still aren't used to the traffic in China.

-吴佩芙