Qing Ming Festival is this weekend in China which means that we have Monday and Tuesday off. Because of this holiday we received a lot of invitations to hang out with different Chinese friends and families that we know from school. Although we thought we would have nothing to do on our days off we ended up being very busy.
Qing Ming Festival is called "Tomb-Sweeping Festival" in English because it's a time when people remember their ancestors by visiting and cleaning their graves. Many Chinese bring along spirit money along with houses and cars made of paper which they burn in the cemetery to give their ancestors good fortune in the afterlife. I always ask my students if they celebrate this festival and get mixed responses. Some go home during the weekend to pay their respects while others said that their parents follow the traditions but that they don't go along.
(the Chinese cooking essentials from left to right: MSG, salt and pepper)On Sunday we spent the day with Meckell and London (both professors at our university) and their daughter. They spent the whole day teaching us how to cook some different dishes as well as how to make some different kinds of dumplings. Meckell and London are really interesting to talk with as they are from Xinjiang (far northwest of China where Daniel teaches). They told us that since they don't have any relatives in our city they called us over so they wouldn't be lonely. London, in particular, is a fabulous cook and the tastes were quite different as they made food from a different province. We also tried strawberries and some type of sweet water chestnut along with black tea from Yunnan province. Everything was delicious. The official translator to the mayor of Changzhou joined us along with his family. Now I understand why I had suddenly been asked to edit so many random documents - he was giving them to Meckell to give to me to check over. Had I known they were official Changzhou documents I might have paid a little more attention. . .
Every time I spend time with a Chinese family I notice different things. Meckell's apartment was really nice but it was freezing and I wore my jacket and vest the whole time. They had a whole assortment of slippers to choose from when we entered the house which kept our feet cozy and clean at least. I also noticed how much the Chinese parents talk about their children. We were informed what their ranking was in each of their middle school subjects and how much weight they needed to lose etc. In addition, the parents kept encouraging their children to talk and interact with the "foreigners". The children, not surprisingly, were less than thrilled to speak English with us. The conversation with the adults was really interesting and most of the time we talked about the differences in the education system between China and the U.S. The bonus of the night was that they gave us each a huge pot of dumplings to take home.
Today we spent the afternoon and evening with Steve, Spring and Michael. Spring greeted me at the door and promptly gave me a brand new pair of Adidas pants for no reason that I can understand. In any case, they are great and I'm wearing them right now. We spent a few hours cooking and making dumplings (you can never get enough dumplings) and then enjoyed a feast of squid, shrimp, veggies, tofu, fish, rice and pork dumplings. After that, all of us - Sean, Steve, Spring, Qin Chen, Michael and I - played poker. It was quite a game. Spring turned out to be a bold and dominating player - who knew? Qin Chen did really well too and is determined to join "Poker Night" next week. I lost everything, but that's ok because Spring left another two pots of dumplings for me to make and eat tomorrow. Happy Qing Ming Festival!
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