China: Huìzhōu

Luckily, we didn't actually start at 5:30, but rather 8:30, which gave me a lot of time to read, and watch both the sunrise and the nearby construction during breakfast. You may note the large number of Tower Cranes. I was informed that they are the national bird of China, and I believe it. Through extraordinary self control I managed to admire them only from a distance.

Official police vehicle.

After breakfast I was picked up and we headed out to the plant through the fleet of scooters (some of them had hats!), and the week started to fall into a routine.  Spend the morning working on the factory floor, head out to lunch, eat too much food, do more work in the afternoon, head out for an excessive dinner, and then send emails to my now-awake colleagues in the states before heading to bed relatively early.

So, what was the food like?
It was great! Besides basic Chinese food, we also had Korean, Indian, Thai, Japanese, and Pizza Hut. Each restaurant was surprisingly good.  The food was always brought out one dish at a time and placed on a Lazy Susan... then you had your own food bowl and a plate for any inedibles... of which there were quite a few.  Standard technique seems to be to grab an animal (for example, pick a fish out of the tanks up front), chop it up, cook everything, and serve! At no point worry about removing the bones or the fat. Actually, you just generally eat the fat along with the meat, which took some adjusting.  Another dining feature that took some getting used to was yelling at waitresses - which is how it's done. Waitresses yell at waitresses, cooks yell at waiters, waitresses yell back to the cooks, and when you're ready for service, you just wave and yell at one to come over.  Very different than the quiet and reserved manner of American restaurants. Anyways, just as soon as you think you've eaten all the food, they bring out another dish. Or two. And you have to try them, and they're great, so...

One of the most interesting meals was roast duck. Peking Duck is an ancient and beloved dish that is made by roasting a duck, removing all the bones, tendons, meat, etc, and serving duck skin with pancakes, scallions, and cucumber. I normally skip the skin on my fried chicken, but I had to admit, it was delicious.

#nofilter #groundskeepersSweptThemAllUp

As I adjusted to the schedule I began to go out in the evenings, either to the park along the river in front of the hotel, or to the nearby shops and shopping malls. The Chinese are excellent at shopping malls. Hundreds of shops and restaurants, usually a theater, all very clean and without the empty-shop-blight you tend to get in the states.  Oh, and an arcade! I didn't play anything, but watching a small Asian child hop as hard as they can was hysterical (this game, only with a 5-year-old having the time of his life).

On Saturday I finally had a bit of free time, and my host took me out for traditional breakfast before visiting the local market. So many turtles. Live fish. Live eels. Live snails. Live snakes. Even water snakes. All just chilling in buckets or cages.  We got to one stand that was selling parakeets. I had to verify that they were for pets. (They were, "for old people.")






After the market, we stopped by the local folk museum. It took a lot of later research and translation, but I think it was built in 1842? If you want to read about it... 黄氏书室 .  Basically, a stone dwelling  that looks about a thousand years old, filled with miscellaneous old stuff. Pretty cool. Finally we set out on our walk around Pinghu lake.  Very scenic, but I probably shouldn't have worn dress shoes for our several-mile hike.  We crossed "9 Bends bridge" (actually, more like 20?), climbed up the hill to the tower (built in 1930? and not open for climbing, unfortunately), walked the poets path, saw an actual 1000 year old temple (looked like everything else, really)... it was nice. We still had a bit of time to kill before my driver came, so we stopped to have tea!

I'll be honest, I thought it was going to be dumb. Not much of a tea drinker typically, but after having it with every meal I started to like it. It was very ritualistic, with too many cups and bowls saucers, and the the process seemed quite rigorous, especially when compared to my normal "drown a bag in a mug" technique. We tried a few different teas, so I became rather familiar with the process:

Boil water.
Rinse everything with boiling water.
Pick up the teacups with chopsticks, rinse them as well.
Place screen-funnel over teapot.
Place tea leaves on screen-funnel.
Pour hot water from kettle into miniature pitcher.
Slosh the pitcher around for 10 seconds to cool slightly.
Pour hot water over leaves, filling teapot.
Fill cups from teapot.
Dump out teapot, cups (using chopsticks).
Pour more boiling water into miniature pitcher.
Slosh this water around some.
Pour this over the leaves in the funnel again
Pour this tea into guests cups, then yours
Burn your lips on tea

She said my eyes were pretty, then laughed at my Chinese.