I'm no longer afraid of spiders...

...except the kinds that eat birds, which my distinguished colleague reminds me are prevalent in the mountains and hills of this area. However, I have a few jumping spiders in my apartment, whom I have asked to jump under something so that I can't see them anymore. So we live happily in this way. Sometimes I jump when I see one, but the jump is followed by the thought: It's just a spider! Thank goodness!

We have geckos here too, more than in Arizona, but I don't mind those either. If I see one scurrying across the floor, the same thought goes through my mind: It's just a gecko. And I call it "Baby bihu (house lizard, 壁虎)" and talk to it in Chinese. I usually pick it up and put it out on the front balcony.

In China, small harmless spiders are a small harmless worry when there are 2-inch roaches threatening to squeeze through the cracks and streak across the room when you turn on the lights. Roaches give me the heebie-jeebies (a word that I taught my students during a slang warm-up this semester). Even thinking about them makes me jump and have formications.

A few weeks ago, as I was walking to ACC to work out I saw a glitter of gold on the ground. This was the first day of sun after a few days of rain. I looked down to see a iridescent beetle, stuck on his back and flailing to flip over. I grabbed a leaf and turned him over. It was the most beautiful natural thing I had ever seen, mixed specks of gold on a background of emerald green that sparkled in the sun like a gem. I grabbed a piece of paper with the intent to wrap him up, go work out, and then take him home to take a picture. However, a slow and steady escape artist, he worked through the folds in a few minutes and flew away before I could put him back inside. I lamented that I wasn't able to take a picture, and would probably never see another more stunning insect ever again.

Today I went to exercise early, and on my way back, I saw the iridescent beetle again, on the ground. This time I wrapped him in a towel, but as I was arranging this, a man who swept the streets took an interest and came over to see. He picked up the beetle off my towel and started shaking it around. I thought he was going to crush it. "No, wo yao! Ack! No, no, no.." He said something like "Bu yao dinxin" and put it back on the towel. I have no idea what he said, maybe "You don't want to touch it," or "You don't want a beetle," or "You don't want to capture it." As I rewrapped it and started walking home, the sweeper laughed and shook his head: Crazy laowai!

Well, I did get my picture, and the beetle is still alive on the balcony, although I'm hoping he will fly away before the cleaners come today.

-吴佩芙

Toes

Some of my distinguished colleagues and I decided to go downtown yesterday. Some of us hadn't had a pedicure before, even at home. However, we were persuaded when we saw that one of our colleagues had some cute nails done at a nice and clean salon. She said that we could get fish painted on our toes, and she told us about some hideous design examples she had seen. (Well, maybe not "hideous" but a little too bright, a little too busy, and a little too China-fabulous.) We each got either fish or flowers, and it was a fun girl's day to celebrate the end of the year and the beginning of the rest of our lives. Can you guess which toes are mine?


I couldn't resist the fish, and I think the did a good job. My first pedicure, and maybe my last for a long time, was very fun and cute. Some of us also went to buy some gongfu tea sets, keeping in mind room in our suitcases and breakability of tea sets. I found a pattern I really like though, and a little yellow travel set in a zipper case (without a base) for under 2 USD.

We came home and got dressed for our year-end party. It was held at a nice hotel with a buffet dinner and then there were speeches and karaoke. It was also my first time singing any karaoke. I sang "I Just Called to Say 'I Love You'" by Stevie Wonder and "Top of the World" by the Carpenters (and was quite impressed that they actually had that one).

We took an extra hour to get to the hotel, though, because our fancy coach broke down right after we got out of the STU gate and onto the busy road. We got off the bus, and then they said it was fixed, so we got back on the bus. It wasn't fixed, so we got off the bus, (did the Hokey Pokey), and finally a new bus was called.

If you still haven't guessed, here is an extreme close-up of my toe painting:


-吴佩芙

Bucket

This week I have a special visitor, Bucket (as in: "Please-don't-kick-the-") or shui (bao) tong 水桶 in Chinese. He was found one month ago poking around a dumpster on a cold rainy day. He was tiny and skinny, and he wouldn't eat. He needed to be fed with a dropper every two hours, which meant that I would go visit and make sure he was ok, while my distinguished colleagues and neighbors were in class. Lately, he's been staying with Bi Fu Ayi (Aunt Beth) because my neighbors went away for the weekend, and now they have guests.

Bucket helps out around the house. Last night he was sitting on the floor and looking straight up at the curtains. A little tiny roach-type animal was resting there. I flicked it off and flailed around trying to kill it while it was flying, while Bucket still sat, staring calmly at the spot on the curtain where it had been.


If I'm lying on my back, he will knead his paws on my stomach and purr. He's very sweet.

-吴佩芙

Di San Xian Three Fresh Earth Vegetables

One of the dishes we love at the Banyan Tree restaurant is called Di San Xian (literally "Earth Three Fresh"). The three fresh Earth vegetables are potatoes, eggplant, and green peppers. My distinguished colleagues went to the restaurant earlier this semester to have a "cooking class" to write down some of our favorite recipes.


Di San Xian is one of my most favorite Chinese dishes, and I didn't try it until I came to China. When I made it at home, I didn't have all of the ingredients. The basic seasoning is from fresh ginger, garlic, salt, soy sauce, and sesame seed oil. I almost forgot about the cooking oil, lots and lots of cooking oil. It's good as a treat. My pic looks quite similar to the restaurant, although without corn starch, the flavor soaked into the vegetables instead of making a sauce.

-吴佩芙

Zongzi Party: Part Two

In the evening, when the zongzi were finished, the students brought about eight or nine rice cookers and pots, all filled with soup, to the student cafeteria. In the afternoon, my student had asked me what kind of soup I liked. I said that if there was meat in the soup, of course, I probably didn't want to eat it, especially if it was pork or chicken. I suggested fish, but she said the smell of fish soup would not be very good. I agree with that, but if there must be something dead in the soup, fish is the most tolerable. So eventually there was a solution to make one pot of vegetarian soup.


About five of my students were there, so they talked to me and wanted to tell me the story of Duan Wu Jie. It was the first time my student had ever made vegetarian soup, and the first time many of them had every tasted vegetarian soup. They seemed surprised that it worked and had a good flavor.


The three vegetarian zongzi that were tied together were found, after a brief period of frantic worry. I had only put rice and split mung beans inside, but they were good.

-吴佩芙

Zhongzi Party: Part One

My students in the Law School organized a party to make zongzi (English: "rice packets") for the Dragon Boat Festival, and they invited me to join them for making zongzi in the afternoon and to eat them, along with soup, in the evening.

I've made zongzi before with Dan's parents two years ago in SF, and I was quite touched by the story of the holiday. It is said that a poet, who was loyal to the ancient Chu state, was banished for opposing an alliance between Chu and the state of Qin. After 28 years, Qin took over the Chu capital. Because he had been against the alliance, and because he loved his country, he committed suicide by drowning himself in the river. The local people, who loved him, threw zongzi into the river, so that the fish would eat the food, instead of his body. The dragon boat races are said to originate from the idea that the people went out in boats in order to retrieve the body.


I'm amazed at how these parties happen. There is always too much food or too many extra ingredients, or some ingenious substitutions. Today we had too much filling for the amount of leaves we had. We ran out of stems needed to tie the zongzi together, so we ended up using regular string. We were set up under the awning outside the student cafeteria. The students had arranged for one of the cafeteria booths to cook them when we finished making them.


One of the boys was the expert, and he showed me how to make the triangle zongzi. When the leaves would rip, or tying them seemed impossible, the girls passed the zongzi to him to fix or tie. Because different provinces and different families make different types and shapes, we ended up with many creative shapes and sizes. Mine were the smallest ones.

The three I made were vegetarian. My student looped them together with string, so we would know which ones they were because I don't want meat, and nobody will want my meatless ones.

-吴佩芙

Chop chop

On Wednesday I went back to the art shop to pick up my new chop. I took a distinguished colleague along, and she ordered four chops for friends and relatives. The laoban served tea and gave us tea packets to take home. He said that I already have a chop, but it has my old Chinese name on it. I wanted to get a new Chinese name because my old Chinese name (wu pei fu, 吴佩芙) has the same sound, although different characters, as a Chinese warlord （吴佩孚） who was the enemy of the Chinese Communist Party, in the early part of the 20th Century. When people heard my name, I suppose their reactions were similar to a Chinese student telling us their English name is "Benedict Arnold," although I haven't heard of a student with that name...yet. I was not too broken up about it, but I asked my Chinese teacher for a new name last semester.

The new name (wu bi fu, 吴碧芙） is much more effective. It means "Emerald Lotus." I put it on my school email signature, and a number of Chinese people whom I have emailed, have replied and then written "PS- Your Chinese name is very beautiful." The new chop I got was big, and so the artist added the character yin, which means "stamp" or "chop."


The only problem with my new name is that it sounds like "beef" in English. I'll just continue to use whichever one is more convenient at the time.

-吴佩芙