Hot Pot Friday

What you see: some workers fishing out trash from the local river near UNNC.
What you don't see: them yelling at me when they realized that I was taking pictures of them.


What you see: "Condiments Bar" with literally 30 condiments for guests to pick from for their Hot Pot, ranging from the absolute essential soy sauce to weird sauces (i.e. "Seafood sauce with meat and soy")
What you don't see: the immense amount of food my friends and I finished off, ranging from the absolute essential beefballs to the fabulous lamb. All for less than $10 CDN. =)


What you see: my friends and I after hot pot dinner.
What you don't see: We each tried to sing a song from our home country: my Chinese local friend sang a local Chinese song, and my Mexican friend sang a Spanish song from Mexico. The only Canadian song I knew was "O Canada". If you know of ANY other Canadian songs, please notify me.


What you see: The shopping mall 15 minutes bus away from campus with residential apartments behind and a river beside it.
What you don't see: During daytime, you can see that the water in this river is brown, filled with junk and smells horrid.

Currently listening: This Saturday, there were no clubs, bars, great dinners, outings, traveling, alcohol or parties. Just me, my readings, some tea and www.classicandjazz.net

還有，爲什麽隨便在大陸的超市冰櫃裏買一包 "ready made" 鮮肉粽，都好吃過漢記粽呢？

天降假期

Great News #1: Suddenly found out that I have an (almost) one week long break next week. Time for a much awaited vacation to soak up some beautiful weather, Chinese culture, great food and fun. Heading out to Shanghai this Saturday for Cheer's concert then I have until Thursday to vacation and travel.

Great News #2: I am officially hired for a summer internship this July in Hong Kong for a law firm. 終於可以試試做中環 OL 的滋味...like 同事三分親.

Great News #3: Canteen 早餐 menu 上的神秘"黑米粥", 原來就是我最喜歡吃的"黑糯米糖水"!　More motivation to wake up earlier in the mornings to head out to the canteen to catch breakfast．其實 canteen 的 open hours 都很不方便．Breakfast is served from 6:30-8:30 (救命，誰那麽早起床？), lunch is 11:30 - 1:30 and dinner is 4:30 - 6:30 (I don't know who eats dinner at 4:30). 三點三明明就是下午茶的時候，難道過了一個多小時又可以再吃嗎？ I asked my local friend why they served dinner so early and she said "我們跟你香港人不一樣, 沒有下午茶所以晚餐要吃早一點吧." And it wasn't until two weeks ago that I realized 寧波沒有茶樓. 原來"飲茶"真的是廣東人的專利. But Guangdong is only actually two provinces away. China is just too diverse.

Currently listening: 架勢堂

三件事

This weekend, three things made me really happy:


1. My "alcoholic" British friends and I at an Irish pub in 老外灘 (the Ningbo equivalent of 蘭桂芳 but smaller) for dinner on Friday night to curb our "white food" cravings with pizza and beer. They even had a hockey game going on the big plasma TV. I think it was Canada vs. China or something. (This photo is staged, they aren't actual alcoholics)


2. 陳綺貞演唱會飛...終於到手.

3. I now have somewhere to go on my Sunday mornings and I LOVE IT!

Currently Listening: Dancing Queen - ABBA (admit it, we all secretly love this song)

Americanism

I never thought that the words "splurge" and "MacDonald's" could possibly appear in the same sentence but this is exactly what happened today. I splurged on MacDonald's. My double-cheeseburger meal (with medium fries and medium pop) costed a total of 16.5RMB. Of course, this is absolutely nothing when converted to Canadian (comes to under $3 CDN) but when you consider that...

• 豬肉包 at the canteen during breakfast = 0.7RMB
• 珍珠奶茶 at the tea shop on campus = 2.5RMB
• 紅燒牛肉面 = 12RMB
• 8 packs of 康師傅即食面 = 10RMB
• a loaf of white bread = 5.5RMB
• 街邊小販炒麵　for 2 = 4RMB
• 寧波特色湯圓 = 5RMB
• average lunch at canteen = 6RMB
  

...then the cheeseburger, medium fries and medium Fanta was very expensive.

Eh. What could I do? I was having an intense craving for greasy, disgusting, American food even though I'm in the midst of this wonderful, fresh, delicious Chinese food.

Must've been my North American side revolting against all this Chinese-ness after 2 weeks. Thank God for globalization.

Currently listening: Paranoid Android (Live) - Brad Mehldau

還以爲離開了溫哥華，我的二月可以好過一點．．．

寧波諾汀漢大學校園　(the fake manmade river)

溫哥華的二月永遠都是最難挨的．endless rain and cold and nothing to look forward to. 原來寧波跟溫哥華都差不多. It has rarely been over 10C (not to mention that I did not bring a warm jacket of any kind and my umbrella is broken) and I haven't seen the sun in almost a week. Certainly this crappy weather is affecting my mood. I can't bring myself to eat (or maybe this is the consequence of eating too much few days ago...) or study or socialize with my dormies. All i want to do is nap but can never truly sleep at night.

二月，我求求你快點離開．

currently listening: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (Feat. Joss Stone) - Al Green

哇...怎麽我今天去了那麽多地方....

"千古功臣" 張學良第一幽禁地




"四名第一山" 雪竇寺 (there was a 50+ metres tall buddha but we didn't go in because it'd cost another 60 RMB)



蔣介石故居 - 妙高臺 (the rock that I'm sitting on was, according to the guide, Chiang Kai Shek's favourite rock)




千仗巗: really tall waterfall with it's name written on the rocks besides it in red (if you look carefully, you can see it in this picture) +　王安石紀念碑



蔣介石母親的墳墓 (聽説這個位置的風水是超好的)




同學家經營的農莊: people rent this place to take vacations or even get married (hence the "wedding carriage" that I'm sitting in in the picture). At the ranch, there was a man-made river that you can canoe in, tons of chickens and ducks (even peacocks and turkeys), vegetable farms and greenhouse strawberries to be picked (the strawberry grower commanded us that we must eat the strawberries without washing them - they were REALLY sweet.)



We ended the day by having TWO dinners - an outdoor barbecue followed by a traditional Chinese farmer's feast. Don't let the word "farmer" mislead you because it was NOT meager or just simply veggies. There were at least 20 dishes (I kid you not) ranging from pig's trottle, turtles, seaweed, more 湯圓 and grass. All cooked by one woman. For more than 20 people. Pretty crazy stuff I say.


Happy Birthday, Jasper!
祝你每一天都是健康，快樂，笑著過.
Thank you for planning this wonderful trip for us today.

currently listening: 太美麗 - 陶喆

寧波....好好吃!

A local friend finally took me to try some authentic Ningbo local food today. Tried a number of things including an, apparently, very famous local ingredient known as 小黃魚 (literal translation: little yellow fish). It was in soup and the soup tasted very delicious. The only bad thing was that the 小黃魚 had little tiny bones in it that kept getting stuck in my teeth. On top of that we had other dishes like eel slices (pictured below) which, as gross as it sounds, had a very good texture and was great with plain rice. Not pictured are the funny-looking clams (cooked with onion and ginger), 糖醋排骨 (really good tasting sweet and sour pork), and this really stinky dish called 臭冬瓜 (there were also 豆干 in it too). Trust me, it seriously stank so badly that I could not eat it.


Afterwards, we went to, as my friend explained it, the 旺角 of 寧波, 鼓樓. Basically, the "shopping district" is a few alley ways behind a gate. It was a funny looking gatebecause, as you can see in the photo, it is a Chinese-styled building (taken straight out of a 古裝劇) but on top is a Western-style clocktower. Inside the architecture is still very Chinese-y. Unfortunately, it was really cold and wet today, hence most of the merchants were closed.


Lastly, 去寧波, 怎麽可以不吃湯圓呢? Surprisingly, it took quite a bit of work before we found "real" 湯圓. My friend tells me that lots of restaurants tend to buy frozen ones and just simply reheat them for their customers. In the end, we found a 大排擋 place with real handmade 湯圓. There were 3 types to choose from (my friend made sure I tried all three). Two were 酒釀小丸子 (one with eggs and the other with black bean) and one 豬油湯圓 with 黑芝麻 filling and 桂花 on top which made the whole thing very very fragrant (unfortunately, I did not realize there was 豬油 inside until I finished the 3rd one). 這些湯圓跟超級市場買的當然有很大的分別. The filling is very smooth (I think it's the 豬油 that makes it that smooth) and the rice flour around it is very sticky and soft. Even though I'm not a big 湯圓 fan, I still ate more than what I would usually eat. The 湯圓 was very big but, according to my friend, they used to be even bigger and a bowl could only hold 3 湯圓 at one time because they were that big!


And just to round it off, I thought I'd share the most Chinese-y McDonald's I've seen in my life:


currently listening: 林民龍 (At17 Mix) - 麥浚龍

my perfect Sunday brunch

Street vendor selling sweet potatoes at a street corner. My breakfast for the morning. Only 4 RMB for a few mouthfuls of absolute yummy-ess, sweetness, warmth and carbs. 這個熱的烤番薯 absolutely warmed me up on this freezing February Ningbo day.

Another reason to hate Translink - even Ningbo buses have LIVE tv. AND it only costs 1 RMB (less than 20cents) to ride on the bus.

有些本地的同學帶我去吃東北菜．我覺得好像韓國菜 (they have kimchi too and little tin bowls for their rice). In the picture, I'm eating this huge piece of pig bone with chunks of meat and fat stuck on it (and yes, you're suppose to attack it with your hands but they give you disposable gloves too). The coolest part is, they give you little straws to literally suck out the bone marrow (yum yum!). I told my mom afterwards who told me that marrow is extremely fattening and that I shouldn't be surprised if I have diarrhea tonight. Hasn't happened yet. muahahahaha

Tomorrow is officially the first day of classes. Hopefully I'll be able to successfully find my classes =\

Currently listening： 好天氣 - at17 (any 少爺占廣播劇 fans out there???)