Food and Fireworks
It is now the 4th day of the year of the pig. I love the fact that at this time of year people here seem to work only on the lunar calendar and lose track completely of the Gregorian calendar. So if you ask someone when their restaurant will open again after the holiday, and say "will you be open by February 20?" or even "by next Tuesday?", they will really have to think about it and maybe consult a calendar before they figure it out, but they will tell you right off the bat: "we open again on chu ba" (the 8th day of the year).
We decided not to go travelling over the holiday, despite giving serious consideration to a trip to Cambodia and various options inside China. Then we thought we might go ski-ing at the nearest ski mountain, or even just to the wildlife park for the day. But the weather is too warm for much snow and we heard that half the animals at the park recently died.... Plus we decided that everything would be too crowded and too tiring so we ended up staying at home. This may sound unadventurous but it has actually been a very pleasant few days, in which the main attractions have been the food and the fireworks.
On New Year's Eve we went with a big group of friends to a restaurant just outside the city owned by our friend Yong. She bought the place in a scenic area of villages and countryside about 20 minutes drive south of here. The area has been restored and developed as a tourist attraction, with teahouses, artificial lakes, nursery plantations, cute village houses painted all over with giant flowers and other attractions. It is actually quite attractive, although nothing like any genuine village: not enough mud or garbage. We toured the area in a crawling convoy of vehicles, riding with friends who work at the US Consulate in their gigantic Ford 4WD, a vehicle so enormous that we could have driven comfortably right over the top of the entire scenic area without feeling a bump.
We reached the restaurant at around 6, in time for drinks and dinner, which included spit-roast lamb, but that was just a preliminary to the main attraction: noise! As soon as dusk fell the entire village exploded in a firework frenzy. This started with someone accidentally setting off a bunch of fireworks right in the courtyard of the restaurant, causing everyone to jump out of their skins and most of the kids to jump into their parent's arms. After that we nervously settled down to watch a massive display of noise and light that seemed to be coming from the house next door. Our friend Jonny went off to check and reported that this was in fact the case: some guy was lighting them out of his back door and he had 12 more boxes lined up to go.
It was a spectacular display, similar to what you see in New York on July 4th, only right above your head instead of miles away over the Hudson River. But it was too much for Sam, who quivered on my lap, wide-eyed with astonishment. Then people started handing out strings of tiny firecrackers to all the kids and encouraging them to swing them around their heads as they went off! Isaac preferred to hold his gingerly at arms's length, until a man helpfully came along and vigorously swung his arm for him, which ended in tears when a spark caught him on the arm. Sam was also yelping with alarm as the noise-level escalated, so we decided it was time to retreat. As we headed for the car, a small sweet-faced girl of about 7 was purposefully handing out firecrackers to everyone from a huge box.
The children were fine as soon as the noise was on the other side of a window instead of right in their faces. On the way home our friends Cindy and Dave told us that they had been sleeping in the basement of their house all week because of the noise of fireworks right outside their window until 2 every morning. The noise has not been so bad where we live luckily, because we don't have a basement we could retreat to if it was. But that night it was fairly constant, and at midnight the whole city seemed to explode! It's been a similar story ever since; from time to time we run to the windows to catch the latest spectacular display, but we have become blase as the days wear on.
In addition to enjoying the fireworks and hanging out with the children, we have been ordering Chinese take-out this week. This may seem obvious but it is not something we have ever done before here. We either eat at home, western food that I cook, or we go out, usually to eat Chinese food in one of the gazillion restaurants around town, but often to one of the western places. Both Ethan and I were a bit fed up of the western food on offer and hankering for some really good Chinese, but not really wanting to deal with Sam wriggling on our laps and crawling around the greasy floor of a restaurant. So on Tuesday Ethan went out on his bike and came home with a feast. This is what we ate:
- Chilli chicken with peanuts, an old favorite from our student days, hard to beat when it's done properly, although in Sichuan you have to manouevre your way among the Sichuan peppercorns
- chicken soup with gingko nuts, mmmmm, did you know the ginko tree is one of the oldest on the planet and the only surviving one of its genus?
- another chicken dish with mushrooms soaked in tea, sounds wierd but tasted fantastic
- dry-cooked grean beans, another old stand-by, hard to beat
- delicous crunchy green vegetables
It was all so good we decided that we have to make the most of being here and be more adventurous in trying new restaurants and dishes every week. So we did it again tonight, not quite as successfully as the duck was suffering from terminal Sichuan chilli pepper poisoning, but still mostly good! I am going to start a kitchen scrapbook of the best places and dishes we find.
We decided not to go travelling over the holiday, despite giving serious consideration to a trip to Cambodia and various options inside China. Then we thought we might go ski-ing at the nearest ski mountain, or even just to the wildlife park for the day. But the weather is too warm for much snow and we heard that half the animals at the park recently died.... Plus we decided that everything would be too crowded and too tiring so we ended up staying at home. This may sound unadventurous but it has actually been a very pleasant few days, in which the main attractions have been the food and the fireworks.
On New Year's Eve we went with a big group of friends to a restaurant just outside the city owned by our friend Yong. She bought the place in a scenic area of villages and countryside about 20 minutes drive south of here. The area has been restored and developed as a tourist attraction, with teahouses, artificial lakes, nursery plantations, cute village houses painted all over with giant flowers and other attractions. It is actually quite attractive, although nothing like any genuine village: not enough mud or garbage. We toured the area in a crawling convoy of vehicles, riding with friends who work at the US Consulate in their gigantic Ford 4WD, a vehicle so enormous that we could have driven comfortably right over the top of the entire scenic area without feeling a bump.
We reached the restaurant at around 6, in time for drinks and dinner, which included spit-roast lamb, but that was just a preliminary to the main attraction: noise! As soon as dusk fell the entire village exploded in a firework frenzy. This started with someone accidentally setting off a bunch of fireworks right in the courtyard of the restaurant, causing everyone to jump out of their skins and most of the kids to jump into their parent's arms. After that we nervously settled down to watch a massive display of noise and light that seemed to be coming from the house next door. Our friend Jonny went off to check and reported that this was in fact the case: some guy was lighting them out of his back door and he had 12 more boxes lined up to go.
It was a spectacular display, similar to what you see in New York on July 4th, only right above your head instead of miles away over the Hudson River. But it was too much for Sam, who quivered on my lap, wide-eyed with astonishment. Then people started handing out strings of tiny firecrackers to all the kids and encouraging them to swing them around their heads as they went off! Isaac preferred to hold his gingerly at arms's length, until a man helpfully came along and vigorously swung his arm for him, which ended in tears when a spark caught him on the arm. Sam was also yelping with alarm as the noise-level escalated, so we decided it was time to retreat. As we headed for the car, a small sweet-faced girl of about 7 was purposefully handing out firecrackers to everyone from a huge box.
The children were fine as soon as the noise was on the other side of a window instead of right in their faces. On the way home our friends Cindy and Dave told us that they had been sleeping in the basement of their house all week because of the noise of fireworks right outside their window until 2 every morning. The noise has not been so bad where we live luckily, because we don't have a basement we could retreat to if it was. But that night it was fairly constant, and at midnight the whole city seemed to explode! It's been a similar story ever since; from time to time we run to the windows to catch the latest spectacular display, but we have become blase as the days wear on.
In addition to enjoying the fireworks and hanging out with the children, we have been ordering Chinese take-out this week. This may seem obvious but it is not something we have ever done before here. We either eat at home, western food that I cook, or we go out, usually to eat Chinese food in one of the gazillion restaurants around town, but often to one of the western places. Both Ethan and I were a bit fed up of the western food on offer and hankering for some really good Chinese, but not really wanting to deal with Sam wriggling on our laps and crawling around the greasy floor of a restaurant. So on Tuesday Ethan went out on his bike and came home with a feast. This is what we ate:
- Chilli chicken with peanuts, an old favorite from our student days, hard to beat when it's done properly, although in Sichuan you have to manouevre your way among the Sichuan peppercorns
- chicken soup with gingko nuts, mmmmm, did you know the ginko tree is one of the oldest on the planet and the only surviving one of its genus?
- another chicken dish with mushrooms soaked in tea, sounds wierd but tasted fantastic
- dry-cooked grean beans, another old stand-by, hard to beat
- delicous crunchy green vegetables
It was all so good we decided that we have to make the most of being here and be more adventurous in trying new restaurants and dishes every week. So we did it again tonight, not quite as successfully as the duck was suffering from terminal Sichuan chilli pepper poisoning, but still mostly good! I am going to start a kitchen scrapbook of the best places and dishes we find.
posted by Cat Platt at 10:43 pm
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