Wuhan Journal: Food For Thought
Ostensibly today was about lecturing to library school students at Wuhan Daxue about the DC Public Library. That was my big goal for the day, and I feel like I accomplished it with flying colors. I was unable to get through all of the slides that I had created, but I assumed that would happen. My best intentions were nowhere near reality. Plus also I was assuming I would have two days of lecture, but instead I had one day of 3 hours of lecture and another day with 2 hours of kind of conversation about library school with my colleague here at WuDa. So I had to cut short of talking about the job ladder and the hiring process and the library budget. But all of that information was in my slides and many of the students took me up on the offer of copying my slides. I think maybe 8 of the 25 or so copied the slides, and they'll probably share them with other people in the class and the students who didn't make it back from tomb sweeping day vacations.
But what ended up happening on top of the awesome lecture was a crash course on Chinese dining. I began the day with a fairly simple banana custard cake, kind of a slightly drier, but tastier twinkie type thing. I finished off my bottle of Jasmine tea and headed to class. Because I knew I would be lecturing for three hours I made sure to buy a drink. I couldn't decide which soda to buy, and figured I would go safe and get the grape flavor. However, I did not receive grape flavor from the vending machine, instead I got green apple flavor, which was awesome! It was like a Pucker soda. It didn't last me through the entirety of the class, but it got me 2/3rds of the way through.
After lecture my colleague took me and his TA's out to lunch and we went to a kickass little hot pot place. So, over top of the Up Market, which is a kind of mid-range grocery store, there are a series of restaurants and salons and a few little clothing stores. Among them was the hot pot place. We had three different pots going. One with a tomato stock, one with a mushroom stock and one with split MaLa spicy stock and a plain chicken stock. The toppings were a stack of different kinds of mushrooms, lamb, fish, spam, noodles, tofu, frozen tofu and some leafy greens. It was totally fucking delicious. And I have to say, Spam in a hot pot, is pretty great. Plus the whole thing is just an awesome experience.
After that I went down with my friend to a little coffee bar and got the most kickass black forest cake I've had in a while and a mocha. I have to learn how to describe other kinds of coffee, because MoCHA is easy to say but it's not really ever what I'm craving. In Japan I could say Soy Latte and it works just fine. Hell I could say Latte Tonyu iri and they would get it. But here, I'm lost. So I get MoCHA and deal. As I was sitting there feeling sated from my massive hot pot lunch and my tasty tasty cake and coffee, I began reading my Chinese phrasebook. And slowly I began drifting into the afternoon food coma. So I had to get up and walk around. It was kind of drizzling all day today so I wasn't really keen on wandering but I had a few hours to kill so I said what the hell and headed for Plastic Street.
Technically the name of the street is Luojiashan, which is the name of the hill the college sits atop. But that didn't matter in the moment, what mattered is that I had a whole street of housewares and time to kill. Among the many wares I found in Luojiashan were some funky fun underwear. I made sure the lady gave me a size that was within reason and she gave me a XXXL. I'm sure I'm not that big, but I was a little worried that I wouldn't fit into something that was sized for tiny Asian men. I also stopped into the little Xinhua Shudian here and wandered around. I actually kind of liked this state bookstore better than the one near the yellow crane tower. It was smaller but a lot cleaner and seemed to have a lot newer books. The fact that there is not a campus bookstore kind of mystifies me. But hey, it's China. A lot of things mystify me.
As I was making my way and winding back I popped into a little shop and bought some tissues, because I knew I would be running out soon and you never want to be caught in a Chinese bathroom and not have any tissues. While in there I ran into something that has been amusing me while in China: Ramen Hipster. It's obvious that this guy has no glass in his frames, and he's got that mustache look that is just screaming hipster at me. And it seems like there's only two poses. Ironic-serious pose, very propaganda style looking-toward-the-future look, and then zany comedy face. I go back and forth on which one I prefer, but I took the picture of zany comedy face. I may get serious pose another time.
After that I popped into another little shop to find a little snacky snack. I picked up something and asked if it was chocolate and she said it was DoSHA. I had no idea what that meant and bought it anyway. Turns out it was a red bean paste wrapped in a thin pastry. I think the best part though was the fact that the box they had it in was totally stapled shut. Ghetto fabulous. The cake, only kinda meh.
Then I headed back to WuDa to meet up with my friends and we headed out to banquet dinner. This is my second banquet dinner since I've been here and it was a lot less formal. Given that it was all between friends and a couple of students it was ultra casual and super nice. We had a ton of food. There was some kind of leek filled pierogie, a very tasty but bony fish, a hot soup of some sort with lotus roots in it, some cold root vegetables, pork on the bone with some corn, and a half dozen other things I can't recall. It has been a little overwhelming dealing with the volume and the chaos of the food. Then again, most of my China experience has been about volume and chaos. The number of people. The cars and traffic patterns. The buses loaded with people for hours. I think that's how I can probably sum it up best: volume and chaos. But in a good way. :)
But what ended up happening on top of the awesome lecture was a crash course on Chinese dining. I began the day with a fairly simple banana custard cake, kind of a slightly drier, but tastier twinkie type thing. I finished off my bottle of Jasmine tea and headed to class. Because I knew I would be lecturing for three hours I made sure to buy a drink. I couldn't decide which soda to buy, and figured I would go safe and get the grape flavor. However, I did not receive grape flavor from the vending machine, instead I got green apple flavor, which was awesome! It was like a Pucker soda. It didn't last me through the entirety of the class, but it got me 2/3rds of the way through.
After lecture my colleague took me and his TA's out to lunch and we went to a kickass little hot pot place. So, over top of the Up Market, which is a kind of mid-range grocery store, there are a series of restaurants and salons and a few little clothing stores. Among them was the hot pot place. We had three different pots going. One with a tomato stock, one with a mushroom stock and one with split MaLa spicy stock and a plain chicken stock. The toppings were a stack of different kinds of mushrooms, lamb, fish, spam, noodles, tofu, frozen tofu and some leafy greens. It was totally fucking delicious. And I have to say, Spam in a hot pot, is pretty great. Plus the whole thing is just an awesome experience.
After that I went down with my friend to a little coffee bar and got the most kickass black forest cake I've had in a while and a mocha. I have to learn how to describe other kinds of coffee, because MoCHA is easy to say but it's not really ever what I'm craving. In Japan I could say Soy Latte and it works just fine. Hell I could say Latte Tonyu iri and they would get it. But here, I'm lost. So I get MoCHA and deal. As I was sitting there feeling sated from my massive hot pot lunch and my tasty tasty cake and coffee, I began reading my Chinese phrasebook. And slowly I began drifting into the afternoon food coma. So I had to get up and walk around. It was kind of drizzling all day today so I wasn't really keen on wandering but I had a few hours to kill so I said what the hell and headed for Plastic Street.
Technically the name of the street is Luojiashan, which is the name of the hill the college sits atop. But that didn't matter in the moment, what mattered is that I had a whole street of housewares and time to kill. Among the many wares I found in Luojiashan were some funky fun underwear. I made sure the lady gave me a size that was within reason and she gave me a XXXL. I'm sure I'm not that big, but I was a little worried that I wouldn't fit into something that was sized for tiny Asian men. I also stopped into the little Xinhua Shudian here and wandered around. I actually kind of liked this state bookstore better than the one near the yellow crane tower. It was smaller but a lot cleaner and seemed to have a lot newer books. The fact that there is not a campus bookstore kind of mystifies me. But hey, it's China. A lot of things mystify me.
As I was making my way and winding back I popped into a little shop and bought some tissues, because I knew I would be running out soon and you never want to be caught in a Chinese bathroom and not have any tissues. While in there I ran into something that has been amusing me while in China: Ramen Hipster. It's obvious that this guy has no glass in his frames, and he's got that mustache look that is just screaming hipster at me. And it seems like there's only two poses. Ironic-serious pose, very propaganda style looking-toward-the-future look, and then zany comedy face. I go back and forth on which one I prefer, but I took the picture of zany comedy face. I may get serious pose another time.
After that I popped into another little shop to find a little snacky snack. I picked up something and asked if it was chocolate and she said it was DoSHA. I had no idea what that meant and bought it anyway. Turns out it was a red bean paste wrapped in a thin pastry. I think the best part though was the fact that the box they had it in was totally stapled shut. Ghetto fabulous. The cake, only kinda meh.
Then I headed back to WuDa to meet up with my friends and we headed out to banquet dinner. This is my second banquet dinner since I've been here and it was a lot less formal. Given that it was all between friends and a couple of students it was ultra casual and super nice. We had a ton of food. There was some kind of leek filled pierogie, a very tasty but bony fish, a hot soup of some sort with lotus roots in it, some cold root vegetables, pork on the bone with some corn, and a half dozen other things I can't recall. It has been a little overwhelming dealing with the volume and the chaos of the food. Then again, most of my China experience has been about volume and chaos. The number of people. The cars and traffic patterns. The buses loaded with people for hours. I think that's how I can probably sum it up best: volume and chaos. But in a good way. :)