im reich der mitte links unten - china through my eyes: 05/2009

celebrating my landlady's birthday

My landlady celebrated her birthday the other day - and bought a big cake to celebrate the occasion. I would describe Chinese cake as 30-40% sponge cake plus 70-60% whipped something. Egg-white and sugar, I assume. I like the decoration (animals,...) more than the taste.
Anyway, the bearded man is my landlord, the woman next to him another tenant, and the lady in the other picture is my landlady, trying to eat the sugary pig.

Jiaozi

Hanging out with the Dongbei People and watching them make tasty Jiaozi - dumplings with various fillings, to be frozen and lateron steamed when ordered.

Hainanese coffee to go

I remember getting myself a coffee to go while wandering the streets in Washington DC last year...and tried to do the same in Qionghai after an exhausting Chinese lesson. Well, I got my coffee (iced). In a huge something I would not call a cup but rather say it was a bowl for take-out. I didn't feel nearly as cool walking down the road as I might have with a more starbucky thing in my hand (and a size I could actually hold with only one hand), but the situation made me smile and take a picture once I was home.

A little something about Hainanese coffee. Hainanese coffee is dark. Like black. Black black black. No matter how much milk you add, it's still gonna be very black. It has a very distinct taste and I believe that it's low on caffeine. Thomas told me today that an Australian coffee farmer said that Hainanese coffee is so different from the one we are used to because it's being stored for about six months before being roasted, thus getting mouldy or dirty...(I really don't even wanna know all the details). Well, I believe it's still drinkable, and I use to get my iced cup of black coffee (black, coz if I say I want one with milk it's gonna be mixed with a ridiculous amount of condensed milk) in one of the local coffee shops that would be crowded with Hainanese men both in the mornings and afternoons.

US-American girls in town

Elizabeth introduced me to two guests who stayed at her Inn, two girls from the Midwest. I took them to have Chaobing and Chinese breakfast at the market. I think they really loved the Chaobing, but maybe were not so sure that Hainanese coffee, Baozi and Youtiao are a good way to start your day.

in Xiu Lan's village

As Xiu Lan and her (husband's) family have - just as many other families in the village - moved to new houses,

the older houses are either empty or in use as pigsties or storerooms.
There's one really old, huge tree in the village, many visitors come to pay their respect to the gods there.
I really liked walking around there, and it felt good to have a local with me... that made me feel a little less like a tourist i guess.
One picture features a group of really old women playing cards. I don't know if it's mainly a Hainanese thing or a Chinese thing in general: playing cards or Chinese chess, with a lot of money involved. It seemes to be an obsession, just like the lottery. Everybody talks about it, everybody does it.

impressions from a hainanese home

Xiu Lan (she works in the dongbei restaurant) took me to her home the other day to show me around and spoil me with fruit freshly picked in her yard. Xiu Lan lives in one of the villages close to bo'ao. here some impressions from her house.
i was shocked to see that even the youngest kids already get ranked in school (for instance, her son is third in his class).
to have a huge tv set with massive speakers is a very common thing here, no matter if a family is rich or rather poor.
take a close look at the one picture of pictures taken of a couple - can you see the traditional (alpine) costume the guy wears, and the mountainous background chosen? i think it's hilarious. but wouldn't we central europeans maybe choose palm trees?

thanks, walter!

the chinese have blocked my blog, or so at least i assume. that has happened in 2006, too, but back then i was at least able to edit the blog (though not able to actually read it, haha). anyway, apparently hainan province or the prc don't like blogger.com these days...
anyway, walter offered to upload my new posts as long as i can't access my blog. thanks!!!

Catching our dinner

I'd say it's a great snack: crunchy fried crabs with a lot of chilly and ginger.
the other day we set out to catch our dinner on the beach, equipped with a shovel, flashlights and a bucket. we would dig our dinner up, grab it and throw it into the bucket. my task was to hold the bucket, haha. later, the poor guys were fried and devoured :)

Lotus and the creature Ao

The garden around the temple was quite impressive and very well kept. Also, it featured a statue of the creature Ao, the second character of the town's name BoAo. Here's the story about it:

The Legend of Boao
Long ago in Chinese legend, the youngest daughter of the Dragon King -- Ao Qin of the South China Sea, gave birth to a son named Ao. Although its birth was accompanied by a splendid chance for prosperity, Ao looked strange with a dragon's head, tortoise's back and kylin's tail.
This strange looking creature made the Dragon King angry and he wanted Ao and his mother to leave the island. The King blocked their return to the South China Sea by laying his jade belt across the entrance. This belt turned into the Jade Belt Beach that lies in front of Sofitel Boao today.
Having failed to persuade her father the Dragon King to accept Ao, the heartbroken daughter dragon changed herself into a mountain now called Longtan Ridge. Shocked at the loss of his mother, Ao was so angry that he busied himself by causing great hardship to the people living on Boao.
Hearing the news, the Goddess of Mercy, Guanyin, came to the island and after 72 battles subdued Ao, and transformed him into a dragon. Ao's original body, a turtle with a dragon's head, then became Dongyu Island, the site of Sofitel Boao. Aerial photographs of the island show it is shaped like a turtle. While it sounds like a tale from Middle Earth, whether true or not Boao is a remarkable yet sleepy corner of Hainan.
The monk of Tang Dynasty, Huai Ren said, "Who subdued Ao became a Saint, who obtained Ao became a wise man."
(Source: CRIENGLISH.com, copied from http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-04/07/content_7935684.htm)

view from the temple

mr. wang also took me to the temple. it was a great opportunity to get an idea of what the area around bo'ao looks like. in the picture with mr. wang you can see the famous jade belt (at the very back), the sofitel (where the boao forum for asia is being held once a year) and boao town.

Trip with Mr. Wang

I also got to meet his parents and his grandma drying peanuts in the sun. Later we went to a local restaurant to have lunch.

Trip with Mr. Wang

Mr. Wang, a Boao-ren (a local) showed me around in Bo'ao yesterday. First he took me to the famous Boao Jade Belt where I got to ride his dune buggy to his village.

my bus ride home

this time i hitched a bus on the expressway so that i don't have to go all the way back to sanya...

i got on a crammed bus, people were staring at the tv screen up front, and the guy next to me would keep talking to me in weird hainanese putonghua (mandarin) while chewing on his betel nuts. another hainanese experience :-)

Bye-bye Yalong

...with a Hilton towel in a Hilton chair. Life is spoiling us...

View from our hotel

Russia :-)

The 5 of us surfing :-)

Surfing in Sanya

The five of us also decided to try out surfing - and had so much fun! Here you can see my pathetic attempts to actually surf and not just try to get out there to find a wave...

Nightmarket with Chaobing :-)

One of the musts in Sanya: the night market. And the great thing about it: not they have good chaobing there, too! we couldn't help but go there two days in a row :-)

Excursus...

About the 麻烦-ness (inconvenience) of being left-handed in China

The concept of lefties seems to be totally foreign to Chinese. I had already realized that the first time I was in China, but spending so much time with Chinese now makes me have to deal with this issue (or, say, they make it seem like an issue) almost daily. The comments range from “Wow, look, she’s writing with her left hand!” with either an admiring or surprised connotation and an admiring “you must be smart”, to disbelief and thinking that I’m crazy. I tried to find out if people are aware of the fact that to some people it might simply come more easily to use the left hand for daily things, but so far everybody told me that there are no left handed people in this country. Does anybody of you know anything about that?
Anyway… Once I was advised to use my right hand in order to be able to write Chinese characters more easily. Apparently it’s my left handedness that makes Chinese so difficult for me!
Yesterday, at the post office, one of the customers told her friend to come closer to me and have a look at how I write. First, her friend stared at my writing hand from about a 20cm distance, and then she looked into my eyes and said something like "how on earth can you write with your left hand?" Not in the admiring way, though, but rather making it sound as if I was just in the process of committing a crime. I told her that that’s the way I was born. I think she thought that was rude, but what other way is there to explain why I don't write the way the 1.3+ billion Chinese (or the literate part of that) write?

Yalong Bay in Sanya

In Sanya we met up with Christine's friends who are studying with her in Beijing right now... Levin from Germany, Rebecca from Sweden and Mauricio from Mexico.

Besides seeing our group pictures you also find Levin posing like a Chinese (that's what he said at least), as well as a group picture with Chinese men in Sanya's favourite tourist clothing...