From Grits to Chopsticks

One of the interesting things about living in a different culture is the opportunity to enjoy new foods.  There’s nothing quite like a plate of fried bamboo worms to start off a meal:

We actually ate them and they weren’t too bad.  We’re still not sure which end is the black part, but we hope it’s the head.  We also recently had our first experience eating unprocessed hawthorn, which is sticky and sweet:

And we still find it interesting when our nearby restaurant receives a side of beef, throws it on a table out front, and chops it up before cooking:

On a significant shift from our usual cheap restaurants, we were recently asked to attend the Provincial “Foreign Expert” dinner.  It was a very classy affair:

For those of you who don’t know, Susan’s analytical side often emerges at dinner time.  It’s typical to test duplicate items and rank according to preference.  This time, we had two tests, one for baked fish and another for baked beans:

We occasionally have the opportunity to visit a Starbucks coffee shop here in China. Unlike the Starbucks in America, the Chinese stores do not have powdered creamer.  Susan happened to have a packet of her own, prompting a comparison with local cream and milk:Since she likes her coffee scalding hot, I was not surprised when she preferred the “Coffee-mate” sample.

We recently celebrated the Chinese mid-Autumn festival and received quite a few moon cakes from the school and from friends.  Of course, we tested seven of them to identify our favorite:

We enjoyed the pineapple one the most (on the far left).  The worst was the second one from the left, which reminded us of moldy licorice.

In the interest of broadening world views, we brought back America’s answer to moon cakes and shared them with our students this year:

It’s nice to do our part to bridge the culture gap!