A challenge

I decided this morning that I'd cook Sha a traditional Chinese dish. Rather stupidly I chose Luóhàn zhāi. This is a dish that calls for a huge number of ingredients although 18 is traditional to represent the 18 Buddhas. I managed only six ingredients :(

So ... a challenge. Can anyone do better? A complete list of the required ingredients is available here. Instead of starting the cooking (by wetting the wood ear) I spent a happy 30 minutes trying work out what Red jujubes are and whether I had any or not. At the end I discovered that I'd have to go looking for a prickly tree in Pakistan and so decided it was unlikely that the local supermarket would stock it.

The instructions that I found also lead to interesting problems. "Cut the tofu into cubes" ... okay, that's straightforward. "Lightly brown the tofu pieces on both sides". err.

Whilst we were eating we chatted with Sha's mum in Beijing and Sha has given my attempt at cooking 9.5/10 so I'm very happy!! :)

Yesterday afternoon we went to watch the new version of the Karate Kid at the cinema. It was fun. Much of the filming was from Sha's local area in Beijing and I kept having to stop her becoming too enthusiastic as the camera panned around. It was fun to see various roads etc. that we'd walked down together!!

This blog entry is all about food. I have to record the wonderful pork in preserved vegetables that Sha cooked last night!!!

A fun day

Sha and I bought tickets to New Zealand today. We just have to hope that we can get a VISA for her in time! We're going to see some snowy mountains!

We had fun around China town and the botanical gardens today. Sha got attacked by a da bei niao. I was crazy enough to buy the Journey to the West which comes in three huge volumes. This book was apparently first published in the 1590s (during the Ming dynasty).

Last night was interesting. I sat on a small Dash-8 in front of two huge, tough military guys. They spent the entire flight discussing the best way to shoot people. I listened in to their conversation on the best way to shoot people going up a hill, down a hill, standing still, running fast etc. etc. Apparently the US military is full of rednecks who don't know what they're doing, but the British are very good. They discussed the best ways to practice being a sniper, which seemed to entail shooting zombies on some computer game. I then had to help them find the gate for their next flight :)

Being with 莎莎

莎莎 was very sweet this morning. She woke up and chatted to me for ages in Chinese before realising that I didn't have a clue what she was talking about. We then sat outside on the side of the road with two guinea pigs on our lap getting funny looks from the people passing by. We're about to eat preserved bean curd, something that involves setting up the steamers in an incredible tower and some unidentifiable bit of preserved pork. Tonight it is likely that I'll continue to boil my feet in Sichuan pepper and rub some ginger on my head. I feel as if my life has changed a bit -- in a wonderful direction!

I've just bought a book on Chinese wildlife. All Chinese wildlife books seem to imply that the best place to see the animals of China is in the supermarket, Chinese medicine shop or in a restaurant! However, 莎 is going to take me to see the snub-nosed monkeys in Sichuan and the bamboo forests of Anhui.

I'm so jealous. 莎's cousin, 璐, drove to Sichuan and met two baby snow leopards crossing the road!

We've just been watching a Chinese "edition" of the Japanese animation Howl's moving castle. It was a tad confusing. Here are the English "subtitles" given near the start of the movie when a young girl is being accosted by some soldiers:

Okay, you get the kits. We'll make some noise You're a son of a bitch. You know that? Let's go (child crying) (speaks Serbo-Croatian) Come on. come on. I won't hurt you Come on. hurry. Let's move Let's go. Get them out of here. Come on, let's go (girl whining) Hey! Hey! Drop her! Drop her! Get in the truck! Let me go!

This didn't make much sense given the action (I love the "speaks Serbo-Croatian bit") and, as I was feeling a bit lost in the movie, we went out and bought a non-Chinese version of the DVD.

In our new "legal" version, the exact same part of the movie has been translated as:

gasps Hey. Looks like a little mouse lost its way Oh, no, I'm not lost. This little mouse looks thirsty. We should take her for a cup of tea No thanks, my sister's expecting me She's pretty cute for a mouse How old are you? You live around here? Leave me alone. You see? Your moustache scares all the girls. So? She's even cuter when she's scared

I need to stop now to stop the guinea pigs attacking the crocodile!

我爱莎莎


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Sha Sha must stand out to prove something, the reason why we use the pepper water to sink jiaozi,s feet is that he got excema, and apparelly this traditional method helps him a lot then we decided to gp ahead! another thing, I have to mention here is that the ginger thing, according traditional method ginger can help bald people grow hair, and all the medicine you can buy from market to cure the problem must contain ginger. Due to economic problem and the organic preference, we decided to put it on jiaozi's head straightway, it got GREAT result, he is more confident in front of the mirror!