二月。新年快乐！ Happy New Year!

新年快乐！
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Feb. 13 - 14. 2010

It's the year of the Tiger and Chinese families are getting ready to celebrate the New Year! We went to the Food Mall today to get a few snacks for our New Year's Eve party..and this is what the mall looked like. No wonder the roads were empty-- 怪不的外面没有人！everyone is shopping to buy food to celebrate!

请进请进～ 1201 欢迎你！
Welcome to 1201's new year party (:
Since we had no special plans for the New Year and we thought it would be way to hectic to travel..we decided to have a little party at our apartment. We wanted to take advantage of our opportunity to celebrate the Chinese New Year in China, so we tried to get as Chinese as possible. Meaning, we bought a few decorations, hung as much red onto the walls as possible and had our own New Year's Eve dinner (nian ye fan- 年夜饭）

Similar to the West where we feast on Christmas Eve, the Chinese have a huge dinner on New Year's Eve. They typically have fish (鱼), chicken (鸡）, duck (鸭), and vegetables (蔬菜) as the main course and then rice cakes (nian gao- 年糕）as dessert.
As shown in the picture,, we clearly feasted well on delicious Chinese food :) We ate very well-- 我们吃了满满的饭



At every New Year's Eve dinner, Chinese families eat fish because it symbolizes a profitable year ahead. The word for "surplus" in Chinese is jie yu (结余）which sounds similar to the word for fish (yu - 鱼). -- 因为 “鱼” 的发音跟结余的 “余” 一样，“有鱼” 就成了 “有余”， 意思是希望在新的一年里大家生活得更好，家家都 ”有余“！！






Here is some more of the food we had-- don't worry..it wasn't just me and Min eating all this food! We had about 10 people to share all this food with (we still had about half left over!)















Here are all of our decorations--yes, we bought a plastic lantern to set the mood of our celebration. The 副 sign in the middle of our masterpiece means happiness. On Chinese New Year, people hang this 副 characters on doors, but they hang them upside down. They hang the 副 upside down to signify that happiness is coming.

Part II of our New Year's Eve! 第二部分

It is also tradition to 包饺子 (bao jiao zi) make dumplings on New Year's Eve. Luckily we had our Chinese roommate with us (and Min-- our 华侨－Native Chinese that lives overseas) to teach us the art of making dumplings! We made way too much and couldn't finish a fourth of what we ate, but it was fun making them! Our roommate told us that families typically make dumplings at midnight, but we started a little bit earlier at around 10 PM before we went out to see what the rest of 上海 Shanghai was up to!

As you can see, making dumplings is a very messy process! We first rolled out the dough into a long snake-like roll, so that we could cut the dough into small pieces. Then, we flattened the small pieces out with our hands by rolling and pushing down on the dough in circular rotations. After the dough looked like a flat circle, we put a little bit of filling (mushrooms + chai, pork+celery) onto the circle and folded it up! We had to make sure that it was tightly closed because if not, the filling would spill out while it cooked.
The steps:

Part III of our New Year's Eve! 第三部分

Another popular past time of New Years is...fire works!! 鞭炮！Although it's supposedly prohibited (禁止) in big cities, people still do it anyways. Fireworks works were going off continuously throughout the night and it really set the whole mood for New years. We could see people right outside of our building setting off fireworks (放鞭炮) and it was really exciting!





We were so close up to the fireworks it was amazing! All of us sat on the window ledge to look out the window~~

Part IV of our New Year's Eve! 第四部分

So, New Years is a time for celebration and fun! Have fun with your friends and family..and if you're in China, don't forget to make your 中国朋友 (Chinese Friends)

Part V of our New Year's Eve! 第五部分

and for all of you born during the year of the Tiger, don't forget to wear your red underwear for good luck! ;)

二月。吃饭! FOOD

What you've all been waiting for,,,

This entry will be dedicated to the kinds of food you can find in China--ranging from 2 kuai (30 cents) breakfast sandwiches, to fancy French restaurants at the Bund

#1 煎饼 (jianbing) - breakfast crepe/sandwich
This is the 煎饼 lady that a lot of us buy jianbings from. She's only there in the morning--we tried going in the afternoon once, but they don't serve jianbings after breakfast :( I haven't had a chance to talk to her very much, but I'm hoping to find out a little bit more about her..like where she's from, how long she has been making jianbings for..etc. Guess how much they cost? 2 kuai! which is equivalent to about 30 cents. A filling meal for less than 50 cents--only possible in China!













Here's how you make a jianbing!

#2 米饭 (mifan) - Rice









Here's a place we go to for lunch almost everyday because it's super fast and yummy! One plate ranges from around 8 - 15 kuai ($1.25 - $2.25) We usually order rice dishes with some kind of meat or vegetable on the side (like shown above~ (L) Beef & Rice (C) Tomato+Egg & Rice (R) The restaurant) It's a popular place for students because it's right across the street from our classroom building~ Whenever we go, we always have to remind the 服务员 (fuwuyuan- waitress) not to put 味精 (weijing- MSG) because it makes all of us sleepy! It probably also has some other negative side effects as well, I don't really know-all I know that it's not good for you :)

#3 普通中国菜 (putong zhongguo cai) - average Chinese food










Every week for Chinese class we have "中文桌子" (zhongwen zhuozi- Chinese table) we meet with the other Chinese level students (同学) and teachers (老师) to practice speaking Chinese and try typical Chinese dishes. We usually order stew/soup type dishes to share, as well as vegetables, meat, tofu, etc! I don't think I've tried a dish here that I haven't liked so far...probably because we don't order any strange dishes that foreigners wouldn't eat =P When I go out for Chinese food with friends (surprisingly not every meal) we usually go to restaurants that serve these types of dishes. The prices per dish range from about 15 - 40 kuai ($2.25 - $6) but when you're with a group, you can get a filling meal for about 20 kuai ($3). I think the majority of the restaurants around our dorm/Fudan are Sichuan style restaurants, so we've been getting plenty of spicy foods lately :)

#4 点心 (dian xin) DIM SUM!












Here is where Min and I had our first reunion dinner together :) We went to a Cantonese restaurant by our school and had delicious delicious dim sum！We ordered 虾饺 (hargau- shrimp dumplings) 叉烧包 (char siu bao- pork buns) 粥 (zhou - porridge) 肠粉 (cheong fun- rice noodle roll) 干炒牛河 (niu rou chow fun - dry beef noodles) Even though dim sum is not as common here as I thought it would be, all the restaurants we have gone to so far are pretty good. Before coming to China, I thought I would be eating dim sum everyday, but I guess it is not as typical in mainland China! The restaurant we went to was a little bit pricier than the restaurants we go to for lunch and dinner everyday during the week, but compared to Korea and the U.S. it was still pretty inexpensive. We had several dishes for about 70 kuai each, which is about $10! and of course with a delicious dinner, you have the option of having China's finest Tsingtao beer or the Great Wall wine (which tastes like diluted wine)
#5 外滩 (Wai tan) The Bund

This is where Min and I went on our unintentional "romantic date" Our original plan for the night was to go to Cloud 9 (which is the highest bar in the Shanghai, maybe the world?) to look at the night view, but we ended up at the wrong Hyatt Hotel. However, we were lucky and the Hyatt we wound up at had a nice bar on the 34th floor, where we got to see the Shanghai skyline. By the time we got to the bar, we were so hungry...but they only served small appetizer dishes at the bar, so we went out to look for a restaurant. We were directed to the 32nd floor, where they supposedly had a restaurant; we had no idea the restaurant we came across was a French restaurant until we sat down and looked through the menu. We ended up having a very fancy dinner together, spending more than we probably will ever have to for our next 3 months in Shanghai. I won't reveal the price, BUT I will tell you that the hotel restaurants aren't any cheaper in China :) the entire time we were there, we were laughing at how funny it was that we ended up at a French restaurant in Shanghai..only because Min doesn't eat French food and it's just really random that we ended up there.

Well, that's all for now :)
Hope you're not too hungry after this entry!

一月。买菜的地方: Where does our food come from?

Unfortunately I have not been taking pictures of the food that I eat here (weird huh..) and do not have enough photos to dedicate an entry to the food here (sorry kris!) BUT! I do have a lot of photos of the places I buy my food at..so, here's part I of my food segment :)

First off, say hello to China's 最好的朋友 (best friend) When Min and I went grocery shopping for the first time at Walmart, one of the items on our list of things to buy was oil. Okay, now finding the aisle with oil (it was an entire aisle of oil) was not difficult, but finding a normal size was. Chinese markets do not sell oil in small quantities-- you either buy a liter if you're trying to 保持健康 (maintain your health) or you get the gallon. In this picture they have small bottles, but we couldn't find any the first time we went!



In addition to the people's love for oil, Chinese people also love their snacks. This is the "first food mall" where you can find all kinds of goodies to eat. My friends and I often go here for 面(noodles) and 小笼包 (xiao long bao- Shanghai dumplings). I've also gotten Odeng (fishcakes) here a few times with Min-- they call it the "Japanese snack" You can also find a lot of imported desserts here, such as: Beard Papa's cream puffs, Mochicream, American candies, etc. We haven't had a problem finding something to eat here and I doubt we will ever have any trouble!!








On a healthier note, this is where Min and I buy our vegetables after we go to the gym. It's a huge vegetable/meat/fruit market right below our gym, which works out pretty well. You buy your fruits and vegetables here by the "斤" (jin- which is equivalent to 500g) The vegetables we buy here seem relatively clean and we have not had any problems yet, but we still try to be as careful as possible because you never know where they came from!




This is the fruit man that is now one of our Shanghai friends-- friend meaning that he remembers us every time we go and gives us free samples of different fruits. He always tries to get us to try the strawberries, but............he doesn't look like he has very clean hands. The first time he offered us strawberries he told us they were clean, but we told him we didn't need to try any..so he took a few outside and washed them with water and came back. I have no idea what kind of water he used, or where he washed them..so when he wasn't looking we put the strawberries back in the basket! Fruit in China are much cheaper than they are in the U.S. and they are equally as tasty! For example, the other day I bought 5 pears for about $2 and the apples we buy usually cost us around $5 max.


So, in China we get to eat 各种各样的菜 （all kinds of food) I know there's the stereotype of Chinese being rather unsanitary, but it's really a lot better than many people think. There definitely are places that you should avoid, but most of the time it's only because our bodies are not as accustomed to the kinds of food Chinese people eat. Umma, 别担心（don't worry) I don't eat street food ALL the time ;) hehe.


I guess they got tired of eating duck? :)