Julia's Adventures in China: Wednesday, May 30

A silly Julia getting ready for school this morning

Many mornings start out with races! (The little girl is the birthday girl from last week)

Julia and Alex love to race!

I discussed the idea of a ‘field trip’ for the 3s and 4s with Maggie—we will take a walk from the school to the beach (about 15 minutes along the boardwalk), play in the sand, have a snack, and walk back in time for lunch. Maggie proposed that the school bus take and pick up the children, as Chinese children aren’t big on walking!! She also suggested that we might do it twice in the month of June; woo woo! That will be a nice way to pass a pretty summer day.

As we passed a restaurant this morning, in the school van, Maggie mentioned that her family had eaten there recently. I mulled that over all morning and decided that it counted as a health check/restaurant review. So Maggie provided me with a written order—dumplings, rice, steamed vegetable, beer, and Sprite—and the Chinese and pinyin of the restaurant name and street name. And we were off!

Alex and Maggie on the school van

First, after school, the van dropped us in front of Carrefour, and Maggie pointed out the Japanese bakery run by the mother of a student in my class. We popped right in there to see if there was any good bread to be had. It was primarily a cheesecake bakery! With the dearest little 6 inch birthday cake that we pre-ordered to pick up next week for Julia to take to a class celebration. The mother came out from the kitchen and recognized me, which was kind, took our order, sold us yummy chocolate chip muffins, and gave Julia two butter/nut cookies in sweet little envelopes as a treat. What a great discovery right in our shopping circuit; we will return for sure. We had received a treat of rolls, on Tuesday, from another Japanese bakery about which we have heard tons of praise; they fully lived up to our expectations—crusty, full of raisins, and/or chocolate chips; yummy. But apparently this bakery is far away and hard to get to. So we will appreciate the gift and stop in at McDull’s mother’s cake bakery for butter cookies and slices of chocolate chip cheesecake—not a bad trade!

We walked all over Carrefour looking for the tortillas we had been told were available there—none to be found. We managed to forget to get oatmeal, in the meantime, so don’t know what breakfast will be (oh, yeah, muffins!!). Maybe we can stop at RT Mart tomorrow! We failed on the Nutella as well, and may have to buy it at the expensive grocery store. However, notice that at Carrefour, one can buy Pea Popsicles! Not one but two varieties!

Aren't these funny, to American eyes?

These seem to be pea-flavored creamsicles!

While Carrefour has been described as crowded and noisy, I enjoy it. It is bustling, and the fish section is enough to put me off food for a week, but it feels real and it puts us right in the middle of regular life. One helpful thing has been that grasping the money is very easy. I can generally identify the cost of something, all the cash registers are electronic, and the total is in a ‘language’ that I understand and can compute. Even at my neighborhood vegetable stand, the saleswoman has a calculator and she simply shows me the total. While she doesn’t post prices and could be ripping me off daily, the prices are in a range that I don’t mind paying, so we are both happy with whatever the arrangement is.

We walked from Carrefour to the restaurant, about 4 blocks in the beautiful early evening. If I had known it was going to be so clear, I might have planned to go up the Tower—I love the idea of a great view! There were more enormous tankers in the bay this afternoon, including two which docked right over by the lighthouse. The water was choppy, and the tide more apparent today—the sea is such an alive thing.

Here are some images from our walk:

I knew I had a 50/50 chance that I had remembered the right spot for the restaurant. As we approached spot 1, I got out my slip of paper and asked the small crowd of waiters by the door if I was at the right spot. Eager as they were for customers (it was early, at 5:30), they took the high road and pointed me up the street to the correct address—I was impressed. We had a brief moment of tension at the restaurant when, having taken my written order slip, the waitress tried to explain to me something about the dumplings. While I felt confident to say ‘whatever; just bring out the other thing’ the waitress could not go forward without making it perfectly clear what she couldn’t do. So I took the easy route and called Maggie, as she had urged me to do if needed, and Maggie and the waitress figured out the best order (one kind of dumpling substituted for another).

We found the restaurant!

Julia is happily awaiting some dinner, with the requisite pot full of tea already delivered

We felt really in the middle of an adventure, since we weren’t sure what would happen next—was being in a restaurant in China going to coincide with procedures in American restaurants? We were brought a pot of tea right away, and tea was poured into the china cups on the table on a white plate; there were also black chopsticks. The tea was green, I believe; a bit sharp but tasty. Our Sprite and beer arrived—Tsingdao beer for me—room temperature; neither of us complained. Then a big plate of snow peas came; glistening in who knows what—a bit of oil, and perhaps some broth. They were crunchy and tasty in a simple way, just what the vegan needed. Next, a huge plate of dumplings was put down—I’ll bet there were 25-30! Julia did her best to master chopsticks to eat these slippery things with—it was a struggle, compounded by her left-handness. We asked for some soy sauce and got a dish of medium brown sauce that had a vinegar flavor to it (part of the northern cooking style) which didn’t particularly appeal to Julia.

Our tasty dumplings and crisp snap peas

A very satisfied dumpling eater!

Julia had relative success manipulating the chopsticks

There was a placard on the table, where the waitress attached some slips of paper; these turned out to be what we had ordered. As each item arrived, it was checked off of the slips. There were a lot of waiters/waitresses around, but the atmosphere had more of a feel of a buffet, with the wait staff doing the monitoring. While it looked like a formal restaurant, the food was not presented with any special flourish. The rice came last, after we had finished everything else; I don’t know if that was typical or if it had slipped by the monitoring. There wasn’t really any formal conclusion to the meal—again, this may be in part the way we ordered.

These are the slips which recorded our food items

A view of the rest of the restaurant and some of the yellow-uniformed waitstaff

A smiling waitress in her uniform

Julia ate about 5 dumplings, which left a good 20 to mama. They were very good; handmade, fresh, lightly boiled. So I devoured the peas and dumplings, and Julia ate the classic bowl of white sticky rice. As we ate, we ogled the food coming to the rapidly filling tables around us—lots of small shellfish, plates of noodles with vegetables, thin sliced meats, bright orange something or other! There were a number of large tables, and they were receiving 6 and 8 dishes each, with bottles or pitchers of beer. I think I would have eaten a lot of what I saw, if I had known how to order it. My only limitation would be ‘too spicy.’ I hope we can try again, with a varied order. The aides told me of two other dumpling places to try, one right next to our community gate, and the other a good ‘fish dumpling’ restaurant.

We headed up the street, a new route for us, in the direction of the main road where we ride the bus regularly. The street turned out to be something of a restaurant row; most of the shops we passed were food shops. While there were many regular restaurants, there were also a lot of on-the-street cooking and eating places that are permanent but pretty darn basic! I took a number of photos of the food displayed for grilling—lots and lots of fish, some of it still alive! The set-up is pretty primitive, although as you can see here, there is an effort at sanitariness. This huge urn is an oven—I peeked inside, and kabobs lined the interior, cooking over some coals. The street had a gritty, urban feel; bustling, cars constantly pressing through the evening traffic, kids playing in side street courtyards, vendors still pushing fruit and vegetables, and even a traditional board game being played by older men right in the middle of the whole complex throng! It was quite an atmosphere, and we were happy to have this new visual and pedestrian experience.