Ni hao!

Time for an update from the sporadically-posting Erica. Yesterday (Friday) my students invited me for a picnic/barbecue. They informed me that they were going to be cooking traditional Chinese meals. Now, I've never been one to pass up free food (who in their right mind does?), so I decided to go along with them. I want to know how to cook Chinese food so I can wow the lot of you when I get home from China. My freshmen were the ones who invited me. In China, students with the same majors spend an awful lot of time with one another. They have all the same classes. To promote their sense of unity, they also have scheduled activities. This was one of those activities. Most college students in my classes have no idea how to cook, for their parents did it for them at home, and there are plenty of fast-food joints around for them to eat at (far less expensive than in the U.S.). Coin, Jeff's co-teacher and the advisor to the freshmen, organized a jaunt out to a small farm near the main campus of Xiangtan University.

I accepted their invitation, and hopped on the bus when it arrived Friday morning. Jeff had classes, so he had resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn't be able to go. The students were divided up into four different groups. Each student was responsible for making at least one dish. I went around as they were preparing their meals, offering help and saying a few things in English to amuse them. It was all very traditional--which means they were cooking much like people cook when camping. They lit fires using bamboo as fuel, and cooked everything in large cast-iron woks. Woks are pretty much awesome. Vegetables were peeled by hand. They did have knives and cutting boards, but it still wasn't entirely sanitary. The water they cooked with came by sluice.

Though most had no cooking experience, their dishes were absolutely amazing! I watched, in awe, as they cut up vegetables. I'm too much of a scaredy-cat to cut the way they do. They seemed to instinctively know how much seasoning and salt to put in their food (though some were a bit on the salty side), and did a fantastic job with their rice, too. One group was a bit zealous in their love of fire, though. This is a picture of them holding their burned rice.

It took them two hours to prepare all their dishes. During that time, whenever they would finish something, they would give me some with chopsticks to try. It was good. But I don't recommend eating some things when they're fresh from the wok--very hot. By the time they were finishing most of their meals, Jeff was done teaching, so he came by taxi. My students then worked very hard to wow us with their dishes. And they did a good job. We went from group to group tasting their dishes. I was absolutely stuffed by the end, though they kept trying to feed me more. When you are in China, you will never go hungry if the Chinese have anything to say about it.

I loved seeing my students outside of the classroom. I only get to teach my freshmen on Mondays, so I don't see them as often as I do my sophomores. They're a fun bunch of students. They love to laugh and are very friendly toward one another (whereas my sophomores sometimes are having fights within the group). I rather inconspicuously took a video of them as they went about their preparations. Sadly, I wasn't able to record their reactions to discovering their burned rice...but still, it'll give you a glimpse into my life here in China.