In addition to the 6 hours of regular class we have during the day, there were three additional classes we could sign up for-calligraphy (Monday), pronunciation (Tuesday), and culture (Wednesday). I of course signed up for all three. I’ve only had the pronunciation and culture class since Monday was orientation and I’m going to guess of the three, I’ll like pronunciation the least. At least it’ll be helpful (hopefully).
Our first culture class dealt with food and I found several things worth mentioning. First, China is a big place and the different areas have different food preferences. For instance, rice is the staple in the south (the dividing line between north and south is Shanghai) while in the north its noodles. Northerners eat porridge; Southerners eat soup. This isn’t to say both things can’t be found in both places, only that certain places put more effort into different types of dishes. The Western parts of China like to eat sour dishes while the Eastern parts eat more sweet dishes (the southern island of Hainan makes for a good East West divider).
Chinese also think eating certain things is strange, but we’re told in Canton anything goes. It’s in Canton that you see the markets with skinned rats, snake pens, dog, and cat meat. Boiled pinkies (newborn rats and mice) are considered a delicacy and are eaten whole. There are also the equivalent of dog meat fondu places there. Our professors think a lot of the stuff eaten in Canton is just weird (like cat meat) and told us that 2004 SARS outbreak was partially because people in Canton were eating really strange and not entirely healthy creatures. But who knows.
Offal, which I believe is the internal organs of some creature, is considered good for the eyes and supposedly boosts intelligence so parents feed their kids lots of it. We couldn’t figure out what the teacher was calling it in English for a while and during the spelling game we asked her if she meant “awful”. We think offal might as well be spelled awful.
Literal translations of food can be funny too. For instance, “long xia” translates to dragon shrimp. We call it lobster. “Tianji” equals field chicken, also known as frog. And “jiweijiu” becomes roster tail alcohol or a cocktail (think Bloody Mary). Fun right?
Back in America, when we pose for pictures we say “cheese”. Chinese say “qiezi” (eggplant). Why do we say cheese again? It seems like a silly thing to say…
We also briefly touched on the health care system in China since it was in one of our lessons. Waiting rooms are ticket line style. If you’ve bought meat at a grocery store, it’s like that. Maybe also like waiting at the DMV. You’re given a ticket number and wait for a doctor to see you. According to our professors, it costs about 5-7 kuai to see the doctor. That’s 0.71-1 dollar. You then have to buy whatever medicine they recommend, but I can’t image it’s that expensive either. Let’s all look at our insurance co-pay and groan for a moment in comparison.
Tomorrow’s the Forth of July. Funny how out of context things like holidays lose all meaning. We might try to celebrate and buy some fireworks or something else, but we’ll see. If we can’t find fireworks, I’ll be convinced it’s cause they use them all during the week of the Chinese New Year. I’m told it sounds like World War III the night of and small to medium battles each night for a week before.
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