Culture

I have experienced food from the Yunnan Province as I watched people enjoying a beautiful Dragon Boat Holiday at Lake Hou Hai.  (see pics in earlier blog post) The food was scrumptious! The teachers at BRS are so kindly taking me out to experience Beijing.

On Friday I rode the subway with Vivian, one of the English teachers at BRS, to her apartment. On our way we stopped off for some fresh, lovely looking cherries and ice cream. Using public transportation and shopping in Beijing is easy when you are with a native Chinese speaker.

Vivian and her husband Tiger took me out for dinner to a restaurant that specializes in food from Sichuan Province.  Tiger is from Sichuan. On our short jaunt to the restaurant I was put to a challenge...do I really like spicy food? Many of the folks around here find it odd and difficult to believe that an American, a foreigner from Minnesota, has any concept of spicy food. When we sat down at the restaurant to order I found out that Vivian and Tiger not only wanted to see if I knew spicy...
The menu, thankfully, was a pictorial display of the dishes. One of the delicacies from Sichuan is head of rabbit. Vivian and Tiger were really encouraging me to try it...I wanted to be polite, I only live once, but in the end the plain Minnesotan did not devour the head of a rabbit. I did, however, eat eel.

As you can see from the pics we had savory spread. The fish was brought to the table the first time flopping around in a bucket. The second time is was peacefully stretched out in a pool of bubbling spicy hot sauce.  I won the challenge. Vivian and Tiger now know that a Foreigner, an American from Minnesota, knows what spicy food is and loves to eat it!