Yellow Dragon Town




Today we went on a field trip! We went to Yellow Dragon River Town, an ancient city about an hour outside of Chengdu. (Actually, I was informed that although the town is ancient, the buildings are new. I have yet to truly understand how that makes this place qualify as ancient.)

Although I enjoyed the visit, it came with its own stresses. Our program director, Wentao, found Chinese families for all of us to spend the day with. For those of us who knew even minimal Chinese, she assigned us the families that spoke little to no English. My family consisted of five people – a husband and wife and their daughter, and another mother and daughter. Unfortunately, I can’t remember anyone’s name except for one of the little ones, who was called Yueyue.

Well, let me tell you – this highlighted just how much essential vocabulary is missing from my Chinese education. It was good to spend time with the family and talk to them in Chinese, but most of the time I had no idea what they were saying. The zenith came when we were riding in the car to Yellow Dragon Town and they were trying to solve riddles and asked me for help. I didn’t even know what the riddle was asking, let alone be able to solve it in Chinese!

Despite the lack of coherent conversation, we did eat a fabulous lunch. I got the dad to write down the names (in Chinese) of my two favorite dishes, which were really phenomenal. The first was sweet and sour cabbage, and the second was fish-flavored eggplant. Now, I know that latter sounds absolutely bizarre, but the eggplant doesn’t actually taste like fish – it’s just cooked in the same spices they use to prepare meat.

Before my family left to go back to Chengdu, one of the moms gave me a little flower hat (which you can see a picture of). About half the flowers were actually fresh, and the plum blossoms smelled wonderful. I felt like I should be performing in a Shakespeare play!

Another highlight (of which I am also including a picture) was grinding soybeans into tofu (again, in my awesome hat). My family explained to me (in what I could understand) that this is how tofu was made a long time ago. It was hard work! It was a bit of an awkward contraption and it kept getting stuck at inopportune angles.

In other news, I’m done with my first week of classes! I really like my Chinese class – my teacher really knows what she’s talking about. Tai Chi is pretty fun too, although I need to work on some of my moves this weekend. I have yet to actually have the cooking class, so I don’t know how good it’s going to be. Calligraphy was pretty dull this week, but we’re going to buy brushes and ink tomorrow morning, so hopefully it’ll get more interesting.

I think that’s all for now. Over and out from the other side of the world!