It’s Wednesday morning here and I’m experiencing something that’s a first for me. I went for a walk at 5:40 this morning and it was moist and overcast; there were large puddles on the ground from the rain last night. I came back “home” and, after cooling off for a while, took a shower. When I got out of the shower, I heard it start to rain – and that soon became a downpour, tropical style. Then the sky went dark, and I mean, dark as night. It is now 7:30 and still dark – so dark that I have to have the light on to see what I’m doing. Wow – this must be what a tropical storm is like – except that Beijing isn’t in the tropics. Maybe we are on the edge of a typhoon? When I find out, I’ll let you know.
Now to backtrack. When I got to Bethel on Saturday night, I met the delightful group of 20-somethings that are here. Two young Chinese men, Isaac and Jude, work for Bethel. They were playing cards with the volunteers: Chris and Miriam, who are getting married in October, and three Chinese-American girls from California: Theresa, Shuli, and Rosa. I sat and chatted with them for a while, then did my nesting thing – putting away clothing etc. It was comforting that my bed from last year was vacant, so I could slip into a familiar spot for my first snooze in China ’07.
Arriving at Bethel on Saturday night worked very well, since Sunday is very quiet around here. By the time I woke up, everyone had gone to church, so I continued to settle in and get organized. Later in the day, the girls and Jude asked if I wanted to come with them to eat a late lunch at a restaurant in Lang Fang. We were unable to talk the taxi driver into taking all 5 of us, so had to call another cab.
When we got to the restaurant, a discussion ensued regarding what everyone liked and didn’t like – I think the jargon for this is consensus-building. I was a happy observer of this process: “I like everything, except sea-urchin.” Eventually it was decided that we would have lian yu – some kind of white fish – with garlic, onions, yams, carrots, red pepper, all cooked together with a delectable sauce that had honey, ginger and a bunch of unknown but delicious ingredients.
All of this was placed in a pot with a glass lid and put on a burner in the middle of the table next to ours. When it was cooked, the waitress put it on the burner in the center of our table and turned the heating element to simmer. We each had our little bowl of steamed rice to compliment the rich flavor of the fish dish – YUM!
When we were finished with this round, the waitress came with a kettle full of beef stock, which she added to the pot to water down the sauce, which was now quite thick from having bubbled along as we ate. Next we threw in some slices of sweet potato and those long skinny-stemmed Japanese mushrooms with the tiny white caps. This combo bubbled along for about 10 minutes while we chatted and then it was time to toss in the spinach-type Chinese greens (not sure which kind). This round was just as delicious. I want to take Cindy back there and repeat this experience, but language skills are a problem. Maybe I can talk one of the Mandarin-speakers into doing a repeat.
This is a photo of Jude and Shuli enjoying the meal. The top photo shows two Theresas who are both teachers:)
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