Chinglish cooking lesson number 1

Cooking and eating bacon, eggs and fried tomatoes with chopsticks.

Well, it is to be said that a Chinese kitchen is not what I am used to. Occasionally I had cooked bacon and eggs for Alex, along with some fried tomatoes. So he put in an order for me to do that for breakfast today. That’s all very well when you have the equipment, but not so easy when you don’t.

I had bought the frying pan in Xiamen. It was not big, so I knew I’d be doing a few batches. I’d also found the bacon, which is probably not available here in Putian.

In this kitchen, as with most Chinese kitchens there is one electric hot plate and everything gets cooked on that. They are very fast, a small kettle will boil on it in about two minutes. I guess they are designed for wok cooking.

The cooking utensils consisted of one metal small fish slice thing and chopsticks. I managed the cooking reasonably well, doing it in batches. But I was cooking for several people. There was Alex, and his wife, (they have a strange arrangement at the moment, it seems like she stays here for weekends only, so she was here last night), his father, his 5 year old niece from one flight up, and me. Oh, and his aunty from one flight up who came to check on things.

But then you have the problem of eating the stuff. The bacon is not too bad, you can pick it up with chopsticks and chew bits off. There are no knives and forks to break up the food. The egg is a bit messier, picking the whole thing up and taking bites off it as you go. But the fried tomatoes were really tricky. I suggest you have a go at picking up a slippery half of a fried tomato with chopsticks and eating it without dropping it all over the place and sploshing juice everywhere. They didn’t really know how to go about it, so it sort of got shovelled in the best way they could.

I cheated. Although there are no knives and forks there is one desert spoon and one teaspoon in the house. I got the desert spoon and sort of cut up the egg and tomato with that then ate it with the chopsticks.

Ah well, the dishes are done and they are off again to find her a wedding dress. She took one home that she didn’t like, a white one. He wants her to wear white and she wants to wear red. I wait to see the outcome and who wins this little battle.

My trip to China is getting close.

I am going to China for a holiday. Peter and I lived there for some time, teaching English, and absolutely loved it. We have been house sitting since I got back from China, finding it a bit hard to settle down after having a full-on really interesting life over there. And now, I am going back for six weeks holiday.

Peter will be staying here in Aussie, keeping the home fires burning, and staying on at this house sit. One of the down sides of house sitting long term is that you can't just pack up and take off whenever you feel like it, and especially if you have animals to care for, you can take day trips but need to be there every day for feeding and caring for the animals.

However, in this case, the trip is just for me. I am going especially for a wedding. At our first teaching job in China we met a couple of young men who had graduated and came to English Corner every Wednesday night to keep their English language skills up to date. One, Alex, we got to know very well, and over the past six years, we have become great friends. He is getting married, and offered to help me out with the cost of going over for his wedding. Isn't that lovely? When we were living in Longyan, Alex's mother died, and over the past years, I have become his Aussie mother.

Alex used to visit Peter and I regularly. His English was pretty good. He was working, so would come up in the evenings. He was 23 yeas old here, but he is 30 now. We would play cards. The Chinese are terrific card players, and Alex could remember every card that had been played and what was still to come. He won most of the games. I got a bit fed up with that, so taught him Scrabble.  Haha, I won most of those games. I did have an unfair language advantage, but all's fair in love and war...lol..

Alex now lives in a 'small' city called Putian. Population is about 3 million. If you click on the Putian link you will see a map of where it is, on the Chinese mainland about level with Taiwan.

The Chinese, generally, haven't figured out yet about advanced planning. Everything is left to the last minute, so although I knew the wedding would be on, and have known for over a year, they have only just sorted out the dates etc. Chinese weddings are different from western weddings, the whole system is different, but I will update this blog each day when I am there.

So I have my ticket, and now have my visa. Getting a visa for China is a funny thing. They have very strict rules about these things. I have never applied for a visa for any other country, so I guess they are all the same, but at the Chinese Consulate, (I went to the Brisbane one)  they specify exactly what paperwork is needed, and then when you get it, sometimes it is not needed at all...lol.

The visa office in Brisbane has moved, it is now closer to the train station which is handy. When I was checking online for flights I found several that suited, then went into the Flight Centre to make my booking.  I have found the Flight Centre to be excellent and have used them for almost all my overseas bookings. They have offices everywhere and in my experience, the service has always been very good.

Anyway, I was in the flight centre, making my booking when they told me a visa could only be got for 30 days. I was really worried then, because had booked and paid for a ticket for six weeks. So Peter and I went personally into town to put in the visa application, and I got a 60 day visa without any trouble.

So now, it is time to pack and sort out what to take. It will be winter time there, and I will visit some friends in Suzhou, where it can be 5 to 10 degrees below zero in the winter.

 One of the schools I taught at had some beautiful little Chinese gardens and in the winter the ponds were covered with six inches of ice. I'll tell you about this school tomorrow.

Putian won't be so cold, but even so, everyone wears woollen long johns, so it will be a huge change from the hot summer here in Brisbane.