Learning Chinese with my chopsticks

One of the delights of living in China is eating Chinese food. For someone who cannot handle her hot food, I have learned to tame the chili pepper. And as my concentration has shifted away from trying to control watery eyes and sneezing from the spiciness, I can now eat meals and listen to the words flowing around me.

The scene from last night: At a restaurant near the school is myself, my upstairs neighbors -- who I call big brother and big sister, my Chinese tutor Mr. Tang and his wife Mrs. Mo, and Ms. Huang and another Mr. Tang, a couple that teaches at my school.

We have a room to ourselves and the table is full. Our dinner: Lamb hotpot with rice noodles and spinach, Japanese-style tofu, eggplant and green beans, beef with hot peppers, pig stomach soup, spicy duck and river fish. Not to mention the three kinds of alcohol: Bai jiu (white rice wine), huang jiu (yellow rice wine) and tian jiu (sweet rice wine.) Yes, Chinese people love their rice so much that they eat and drink it.

My greatest Chinese lessons have come from such dinners. As I stuff my face, my ears stay open. What was once a gurgle of consonants in throats now carry meaning. The stock went up up up and then down down down ... My son is in Wuhan, on break from graduate school ... If you want your child to get better grades, you must tell the teacher to move him to the front of the classroom.

My dinner companions shift from putonghua -- standard Mandarin -- to a variety of dialects. I can't understand every word they say, but the idea is there. I know when they are talking about money or education or food. Usually the topic falls within those three categories. I can follow the string of conversation, from "Ms. Zhou's son has a fever," to, "Did you hear about so-and-so's husband dying of cancer," to "Drinking wine everyday is good for your health."

I only wish my Mandarin were good enough to put in my two cents. On the other hand, being the silent observer has its perks: My chopsticks are always moving.

My day as a country gal

My neighbor Zhou Jie -- Big Sister Zhou -- invited me to the countryside for a birthday bash. Her friend's mother was turning seventy. Zhou Jie said I probably had never seen the countryside here. I told her I had barely seen the countryside in America. She said the celebration would be very re nao -- lively.

Two of Zhou Jie's friends picked us up in the morning from downtown Lengshuijiang. As we drove, the road became one lane and then narrowed. I stared out the window at the small crop plots and the wooden houses built throughout the terraced green hills. The huge black SUV we rode in seemed out of place in this simple landscape.

We drove for an hour before we turned off the narrow road and pulled onto a winding dirt path until there was nowhere to go by car. Then we climbed a hill and followed a rock-strewn footpath toward the sound of a marching band. On an outdoor stage a dozen men and women in red military jackets and caps played their rusty trombones, trumpets, baritones and a booming bass drum.

We followed the path as it curved around a lily-covered pond and through a giant inflatable arch before reaching a two-story brick house. Along the way, the path was scattered with red paper -- firecrackers. The men unfurled and lit the firecrackers, then ran up the hill away from the smoking and popping.

On another outdoor stage closer to the house, women wore the traditional qi pao dress and waved bright red scarves. A man on a stool in front of the stage played the erhu, the quivering two-stringed instrument sometimes drowned out by the pop!pop!pop! of firecrackers.







Huge red and yellow banners with Chinese characters covered the front of the house. At the main door sat a woman accepting cash-filled red envelopes, birthday gifts. Surrounding her on the front porch were about ten small tables with people seated playing cards and eating sunflower seeds and peanuts.

We squeezed into the main room of the house, a large space with concrete floors and bare walls. An eight-tiered birthday cake was displayed at the back of the room and in front of it sat the 70-year-old mother surrounded by her great-grandchildren. Before we ate, the mother's eight daughters performed a song and dance with the erhu in the main room. Then each of her children's families bowed before her and wished her a happy birthday and good health.




Before the speeches ended, Zhou Jie, her friends and I sought out a table, knowing the food would be served soon. Tables and benches appeared in every room of the house. The 500 guests found seats on the front porch, in the house or in neighbors' homes. Then we feasted for two hours. First there was chicken, turtle, rabbit ears and pork. The pig was the family's own and had been slaughtered that morning. Later the pig's intestines were served with some celery-like vegetable. When we all said we were full, more food came. Shrimp, duck, fish. The food tasted real, from the earth. Nothing processed.

I spent a sleepy afternoon watching the women play mahjong while the rest of the guests watched a countryside singing and dancing troupe perform on the outdoor stage. The women played mahjong through the performance and until the sun went down. Then we ate again, more chicken, shrimp, fish, and also winter melon soup, a favorite of mine.

As we prepared to return to the city, we heard a boom overhead. I looked up as hundreds of yellow and red and purple lights burst and then fell toward the earth. We watched the fireworks from the car and then slowly went back the way we came on the darkened dirt path.

To Lengshuijiang

Aug. 23 – I arrived in Lengshuijiang last night. The city has about 200,000 people and the campus of Loudi Foreign Language School is one kilometer from downtown Lengshuijiang.

The apartment is on campus and has more than enough room for one person. There is a living room, office, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and a small back porch where clothes are hung to dry. The building is old but clean. Plus, I have air conditioning, a washing machine and Internet.



The drive from Changsha to Lengshuijiang is only three to four hours but I did not arrive until after 9 p.m. My school liaison and the vice-head master of the school picked me up from Changsha yesterday in the morning. They came with a private driver and took me out to a lunch and then a foot massage.

There is a city called Loudi about one hour’s drive from Lengshuijiang. Both cities are located in the county of Loudi.

We stopped in the city of Loudi for dinner. The roadside restaurant had individual rooms with round tables, rather than one large dining area. We ate a chicken that had been butchered earlier that afternoon, baby shrimp with chopped greens and egg soup.

“Mei you gan,” the vice-head master said, flipping over pieces of chicken with his chopsticks. There is no liver.

He called in the manager, who then flipped over pieces of chicken with chopsticks. It must be chopped up, she said. There’s definitely no liver, the driver said. How do you order a whole chicken with no liver, Mr. Pan said. (I am paraphrasing the conversation because it was all spoken in the local dialect.)

The manager then brought in a small plate with chicken liver, green onion and pepper.

“We just killed a chicken so you could have the liver,” she said.

I ate a piece of the liver that two chickens had to die for.

TOP PHOTO: Apartment building #16 located next to my apartment building. I am in building #15 on the fourth floor.