Today was the dreaded family visit! Feeling slightly queazy after the night before, we lined up outside LanHui to be assigned a family which we would spend the afternoon with.
We were assigned our family, a mother, a father and a son, a standard Chinese family, in a standard 4 room apartment just outside the city. The son, Jerry, was so funny. He was 5 years old, and fell asleep on Holly in the car on the way to the house. We went shopping together to a supermarket, which sound boring but really wasn’t! There was so many different fruits, the fish counter you get in England was replaced by a row of fish tanks with live fish and a slaughterer - you catch your fish, put it through this little hole in a window, like at the post office, and the angry looking Chinese woman kills it and skins it for you, ready to cook! The cooked meat section featured cooked chickens, complete with head and neck, and the frozen meat aisle included pigs heads and sword fish, like you get in those kung-fu video games. It would have been a great place for a fight! After that, we hit the cake shop,
When we got back, the lady had already started cooking, and together we all made dumplings. Ours didn’t start out well, but got much better after about 10 or 15 each, we made so many! The array of food was interesting, chicken, beef, tofu and tomato, more chicken, spring onions and onions (sounds weird but was my favourite), bean juice, and of course, our home made dumplings! Then for dessert, all the fruit we’d bought. Pears, oranges, apples, dragon fruit, watermelon, mango, and strawberries.
It was a really great experience, good for practising Chinese and interesting to learn about Chinese food, family life and family relations, and we’ve been invited back next weekend!
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