Lots of Good Food, and Donkeys, Seperately.

Last night featured a local favorite, I'm told: the Hot Pot. Ours is pictured above. Basically you have pork boiling pork broth, mild seasonings on one side, and heavily chillied on the other side. I preferred the chillied side. What you do is put the meat, vegetables, mushrooms, tofu, whatever, into the boiling broth, wait just a little bit until they kind of boil up to the surface, them simply pluck 'em out onto your plate, which you've already prepared with a sort of sesame paste, more chilli, some preserved cilantro in this case, and some fermented red tofu sauce. It all mixes together quite well you're full quite quickly, even though you pick just one little bit at a time.

After that, Wei, her mom and I stopped off at the "exhibition center." This is a huge conference center, but also a huge mall. If you didn't know any better going in, you might wonder if you were back in the States, while getting further confused as you walk in and see a Christmas display. It looked a lot like any mall in the US, except that Jacky Chan seems to be everywhere. He has his own clothing store...

and even a ton of food products that we saw in the adjoining supermarket...

Wei tells me that the supermarket is actually a French company, considered to be very high-end here. Regardless of who owns the place, Wei considered this picture to be very typical Chinese supermarket. That's her mom on in the foreground.

A few other take-aways to note: 1) there are MANY kinds of sausage here,

some chickens have black skin under the feathers,

also liquid milk is a new thing and comes in little bags, and gum comes in what look like medicine bottles to Americans.

Today, Monday, I awoke to find a donkey taking a rest on the cold ground behind Wei's parents' complex. These folks make a living sorting the trash into recyclable and non-recyclable, hauling it away to get paid at a transfer station of sorts. I didn't wait long enough to see this particular cart in action, though I was curious whether the donkey helped to pull all the time, or only when the guy on the bike got tired, or whether the donkey just tagged along behind. Wei's parents, and Wei, thought it was funny that I took a picture of him, since of course they see this scene, this particular guy in fact, all the time.

For lunch we visited Wei's Great Aunt and Uncle. To Wei they're more like a Grandmother and Grandfather. We did the usual sitting around and visiting, lots of talking which of course I couldn't understand except for a word or two here and there. And of course every once in a while I'd hear my name and go "What?" like an idiot. At the all the important points, I think, Wei filled me in and sometimes I'd answer in Chinese by first asking Wei to whisper a phrase to me. The were all very kind to say that I speak Chinese very well, and when will I be learning more? As you can imagine, they wanted to be able to just talk directly to me instead of making Wei translate.

We gave them the gifts that we brought, chocolates and make-up mainly, which they liked very much. Anything American seems to be a treat for them, so we didn't tell them that Ferrero Roche isn't made in the US, just sold by the truck load in the US at Costco. They'd probably say "Costco who now?"

They also had some gifts for us, which was unexpected, at least by me. The highlight of which was a Chinese Watercolor painting that her Uncle did himself. He's very good at it, with several examples around the house. That's him and the gift with me in the picture below. I was really quite blown away. They brought out about six different scrolls, from which I got to choose. The one I liked the best was also the one they really wanted me to have because it was chosen to be featured in a little book of war veteran memoirs, for which her Uncle also wrote a short story in which he gave some detailed accounts of fighting in their Revolutionary War just after World War II. He also served in the Korean War, during which he was mostly stationed at Chinese headquarters in North Korea.

After more visiting and me taking pictures of most of their apartment, which they thought was funny, we brough out the dinner table that had been folded up against the wall. The apartment is a two bedroom, plus an office that I suppose could have been a dining room, but it seems that most people in this kind of house in China would have it set up this way, getting the dinner table out for special occasions, though I'll have to check with Wei on that. Anyway, the picture below shows our gracious hosts with the huge amounts of food that Wei's Aunt and Mom prepared. It should suffice to say that I've learned very well how to say "it's very tasty" in Chinese, of "hao che!"