Food!

Dan and I are still recovering from last weekend in terms of food and alcohol. First, Sunday lunch we were invited to the house of a student I tutor. The family is a large close-knit peasant family who've worked themselves up through the communist bureaucracy into the upper middle class. However, they live in a large crowded apartment where there are old towels on the sofa, egg crates in the corner and random relatives running around. Nominally, I am there to tutor a 12 year old boy for his up-coming middle school entrance exam. However, whenever I come over (on the weekends), three cousins or so, several of his aunts, and his grandmother all mysteriously show up for the English lessons. And also like the typical extended Chinese family, they are ridiculously hospitable. From the minute I walk in the door, they stuff me with food to eat. On Saturday, they fed me a special sort of doughnut, strawberries, a tomato, a sweet potato, and then a 6 course dinner (not including rice and steamed bread). The next day, they invited me and Dan back for lunch. They are incredibly fastinated by Dan, especially because he is Jewish (they call him "Sylvester Stallone the Jew" but that's another story.), anyways, whenever I come over, they always ask why I don't bring my boyfriend along. For lunch, they went all out, preparing among other things a whole wild chicken, a fish, donkey meat, and something that might have been a bladder with black paste and rice inside. As the guest of honor, they made Dan eat a chicken foot, and also the chicken head. They also made us drink several glasses of beer (in Dan's cases it was several cans of beer). After we couldn't possibly eat any more, I gave the family an English lesson, and then we had to eat more sweet potato and water melon. After about 5 hours, we finally left the house in a food induced stupor. On our way home, a good friend called us up and asked if we could come to her birthday party that evening. So only about an hour and a half later, we found ourselves around the table at a fancy Chinese restaurant. There we had another banquet, this time with birthday cake (Qingdao's finest) and much more copious quantities of beer. The point of a Chinese host is to make the guests eat and drink as much as possible, and the more the host likes you, the more they make you eat and drink. All the dishes were incredibly delicious, and we ate for three more hours, all the while toasting eachother. On top of the other food, my friend also ate birthday noodles, because traditionally the noodles signified long life. Finally around 10:30, Dan and I finally went home, incredibly stuffed and bloated.