Eating Out in China

On the 10th, we had our third wedding anniversary.  Adam asked his translator, Vivian, for her opinion on a good restaurant to go to.  So Mr. Liu drove us there, and then a waitress took us to our table.  After that, we didn’t really know what to do.  We established with the waitress that we didn’t know very much Chinese when she asked us “Ji wei ren?”  And I had totally forgotten that “wei” is the polite counting word for people so I stared at her blankly until it came back to me.  She was just asking how many people there would be.  After I told her two, she served us tea and then never came back.  I think she didn’t know what to do with us.  We wondered why no one was bringing us a menu so we called Vivian and had her talk to the waitress.  It turns out it’s one of those places with a 3-D menu, where they have all the dishes on display in one corner of the restaurant.  We prefer that to a normal menu anyway.  So we picked our dishes and they were all freakin’ fantastic.

Tortilla-like things

Lamb and asparagus

Not sure what to call this but every time we’ve had it, it’s been amazing

Then this week, Kevin (Adam’s boss) came to Rui’an, so Mr. Yu (the general manager) took him, us, and a couple other people out to a seafood restaurant.  Being right by a river and the ocean, seafood is big in Rui’an.  Next to the bathrooms with no stall doors that we encountered in Xi Shuang Ban Na, this restaurant was probably the most “foreign” place we’ve been to yet.  It was out in the ghetto, so that was kind of scary.  But I knew Mr. Yu wasn’t going to take us somewhere sketchy so I wasn’t too worried.  This restaurant also had a 3-D menu, but about half of it was still alive.  The other half was laid out on ice. 

An assortment of fish and snails

No idea what these are

Scary fish heads and stingrays

We could not figure out what the bottom two were or what the stuff in the pink basket was.  The upper right bowl was full of chopped up fish and the upper left tray had eels.

Crabs

A fish head cross section next to some cuttlefish

The chopping block

 

Luckily, Mr. Yu didn’t order anything too weird, and the dinner was pretty good.  I also got to try yangmei jiu, which is wine made from that fruit I was raving about back in July.  It tasted a lot like red wine.

And then of course, there’s Do & Me, my favorite KFC knockoff chain.  Here’s the logo:

We eat there more than we should.

'Merica, I Miss You

About 7 months ago I did a blog about things I miss and things I don’t miss about good old ‘Merica.  Now, there’s not really anything new that I don’t miss.  I’m still happy without religion, snow, and not talking to people.  J  But here are a few more things I thought of that I can’t believe I’ve gone almost a whole year without now:

 

1. Reliable, high speed internet.  First of all, it seems like the only option over here is broadband, which is bad enough.  Top it off with the fact that you need a VPN in order to get to any decent websites.  Even if I didn’t use Facebook, Youtube, or Blogger, the Chinese government blocks the strangest things.  I’d be searching for design inspiration via Google Images and many of the images would be blocked.  WHY?  They’re not porn or anything.  Anyways, you need a VPN and we have two different ones because they are spotty and sometimes they just don’t work.  So yeah, I’m excited for when I don’t need to use one anymore.

 

2. Lean ground turkey.  It used to be a staple in our house!  Now our only option is between fatty ground pork, and even fattier ground pork.  We buy it anyways, though, because it’s one of the few meats that comes without bones in it.

 

3. Being able to blend in.  Ever get that feeling that someone is watching you?  Well you’re being paranoid.  Come to China and then you’ll know what being watched is like.  I can really turn some heads, if you know what I mean *raises eyebrows*.  But seriously, almost every time I pass a group of two or more people, I hear the word “laowai” being softly spoken amongst them.  That means “foreigner”.  And when I go to the grocery store, I feel like everyone is looking at the contents of my cart.  Oooooo what’s the foreigner buying?

 

Side note:  You know what’s crazy?  There’s a little convenience store right outside our apartment complex.  We drink a lot of Coke Zero so when we run out, sometimes we’ll go there instead of going to the grocery store.  The price was 3 RMB per bottle when we first got here but they’ve since raised it to 3.50 because they know we’re buying it!  Sneaky sneaky!!

 

4. Knitting, sewing, and other crafty hobbies.  I’m not sure these things even EXIST here.  Maybe sewing (I mean as a hobby, not a profession).  But knitting?  Scrapbooking?  I guarantee you scrapbooking doesn’t exist.  And if knitting does, I sure would like someone to point me in the direction of a yarn store!  I do miss my little projects.  I have a great idea for a scarf and I can’t do anything about it.

 

5. Dishwashers.  Our housekeeper used to wash our dishes.  Now she’s gone and I am so sick of hand washing everything.  We’ve also been going strong without a microwave. I just make sure to only make enough food for one meal so I don’t have to deal with reheating it.  But having to use a wok or pan (or both) every day does make for more dishes to wash.

 

6. Dill pickles and soft pretzels.  Just two of my favorite foods and they simply don’t exist in China.  Wah….

 

7. Not being woken up by roosters… ever.  Did you know…. roosters don’t crow at the break of dawn.  They start crowing before dawn, and they keep crowing well after the sun has risen.  They are dumb and deserve to be eaten.

 

I wrote that last one because someone in our building got married and the day of the wedding I woke up to a rooster, which is not a common occurrence.  When I took Smudgie outside, there were two decorative cages with six roosters in them sitting right outside the door.  They must have been for the wedding dinner.  Sorry, no interesting pictures.  Here is Smudgie being a cute snugglemuffin.