中国菜

Saturday my students invited me to a picnic. Guess what time they came to get me. Go ahead, guess.

8am! This time I wasn't surprised, I was even ready with my camera, umbrella, book, granola bars (just in case), toilet paper and hand sanitizer--the essentials. I had already been downstairs to the veggie market to buy some eggs and oranges from the local farmers. I was ready for those early-morning lovers when they called me! After I had impressed my bright-eyed students with my ability to say "good morning" in Chinese, we walked over to the North Gate to cram onto an old fixer-upper of a bus. Students were sitting on each others laps and standing it was so crowded, so it was a normal bus ride in China. One of my favorite students decided to dedicate a song to me on the way, to the delight of everyone. We crossed the river to a remote stream overlooked by towering cliffs, and everybody soon scattered out on the rocks. I got a roar of approval from the class when I skipped a rock all the way across the stream. Soon I was skipping rocks as fast as I could find them to keep the applause going. There was an abundance of smooth, flat roocks seemingly put there for just that purpose. A scream errupted from some of the boys wading in the water, and soon one of them emerged triumphantly brandishing a tiny little crab. Suddenly everyone was involved in the crab-catching business and we gathered a sack full of them. I was really suspicious that the crabs were going to be added to the menu of the day.

After skipping rocks and catching crabs got old, I went with some of the girls to wash our vegetables in the stream. In America, when you have a picnic you cook the food first, and then go to a pretty place to eat it. Here, you bring all the water, food, pans, spices, and dishes outside and cook them there. Hence the 8am start time. The Chinese method is undoubtedly more fun. We "washed" all the vegetables in the incredibly clean stream water and then attempted to build fires in the multiple stone fire pits we had set up. At first I was silently ridiculing the students for only feeding the fire with dried reeds instead of wood, thinking it created an awful lot of unnecessary work for them; but I took over one fire pit and tried it for myself only to discover that the wood simply wouldn't burn. So I resorted to an endless game of gathering dried reeds and stuffing them under the pan to try and keep it hot, just like everyone else. Eventually we got all seven dishes finished, although the first five were ice cold by the time the last two were finished, and we squatted around to eat. If there were a contest for the most fun day in China, Saturday would certainly have a strong chance at winning. We bravely set out after our meal, hoping to conquer the cliffs towering over us, but after a few minutes of crumbly, dangerous-even-for-China stairs we relinquished our hopes and settled for dangling our legs in the water and singing together until the bus showed up to take us home.

"It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy. Let's go exploring!"
– Calvin