Delicious foods of China

I really enjoyed our unique lunch where we got to walk independently through a market thats over a thousand years old and bought food for ourselves. I saw lots of dishes which I have never seen before and we bought a lot of different snacks, such as black ice cream, mochi, ananas rice, dumplings, jelly balls, ice powder, spice chicken with noodles, giant fruit bows, and a lot more. I think we could say that we stopped in all the shops.

My friend Mar who started learning Chinese this year, taught me to count in chinese from one to ten. While I was practicing counting a warm-hearted Chinese old mama joined in the experience. The language immersion helped make the Chinese learning experience fun and create a memory I’ll remember forever.

By Marieke

Casey (our rustic pathways tour guide) really wants us to talk about the similarities and differences in our cultures and Chinese culture. The thing is I would describe my culture as plantation Japanese, with heavy Chinese influence. So with many of the experiences (especially food wise) I have experienced something similar. This is another example of that. I grew up eating shabu shabu which is the Japanese hot pot. It had the same tools, the same bowls, and the same technique. Often times with the same meats, vegetables, and specialties. The main difference is the spices and flavorings. Although this meal was pretty familiar to me, I did get to try something new and exciting, frog. The meat itself tasted fine, it had a similar texture to some sort of shellfish and tasted kind of like squid. The skin on the other hand, I found quite ..unique.

The experience was one of comfort and experimentation, and a lot of laughter too. I have no idea why but I feel like hot pot/shabu shabu always makes people more open. We we're surprised and delighted that even the members of the group who have previously been cautious or picky eaters found themselves enjoying themselves. I’ve never seen so many people dying of laughter, with full on puffy eyes and everything over a simple meal.

By Sara