Off-line for Chinese New Year

Starting tomorrow, I will be off-line for 10 days or so, while accompanying Yanyan to her hometown Banguan, a small village in the hills South of Guilin, to celebrate New Year with her family. I spent last Chinese New Year there too, so also for me it will be a sort of home-coming. The winter is more severe than last year, and out there in the hills the temperatures are quite a bit lower than here in Nanning, 300 km to the South-West. There has been snow in Guilin, and reports of freezing rain, brrr.
I will bring my laptop, but won't have internet access. I guess it would have been possible using a 3G USB dongle, but I can do without for a while. I downloaded some movies to entertain myself and others. I only wish I had a book to read. There are no English books to be found in Nanning, except for some 19th century American and English classics in bilingual Chinese-English editions, aimed at students of the English language. I went to all larger bookstores and the big library, only to find detectives and science-fiction by best-seller authors Grisham and the like.
Chinese New Year in the countryside is mainly a time for eating and talking, so it will be an excellent opportunity to practice my Chinese. Most people in the village don't speak any English, so there's little chance for cheating.

Qingxiu Shan revisited

This weekend I visted Qingxiu Shan again, this time with Xiao An. The previous time I spent almost a whole day here by myself, right after my medical examination early September. Now it's winter, but the park looks even more colourful than in the summer. Many new trees have been planted, some sick trees are being treated with an infusion of tree medicine, and several healthier looking trees are in full bloom, despite the low temperatures this winter.
At Guanyin Temple construction workers are adding a whole new wing to the complex, while visitors are burning their incense sticks and wishing for more money next year. At the Phoenix Pagoda, a group of cos-players are doing a photo shoot in the style of 18th century China, with long-sleeved dresses and elaborate make-up.
We walked along a narrow stone path through the thick forest, admiring the rich vegetation and towering trees, circling back to the temple with the help of my GPS-enabled phone. It's easy to get lost here, you loose your sense of direction quickly on the twisting path, and no sun in the sky to guide you on this grey day.

End-of-semester dinner party

Last week already marked the end the semester for me and my classmates, but the Chinese students had to labour on for another week of exams. Many of them had their last exam today. Most students will leave this weekend to go home and celebrate Chinese New Year with their families. Some have to travel far, like Wen Xia (at far right above), who's from Xi'an, home of the famous terra-cotta army, two days by train. Most students can't afford to fly, even though it's just once a year that they visit their hometown.
I invited my Chinese student friends for a last dinner party at my place before everybody left for the 6-week vacation. It was again a feast of Chinese cooking, with several new dishes, like fish with pickled cabbage, and some old favourites. I prepared the liver soup which Xiao An taught me how to make. It turned out well, and I got a lot of praise for it.
The other people in this group all come from small towns or villages in Guangxi province, and are remarkably skillful cooks, with a lot of experience and knowledge of local products and how to prepare them. It's a joy to visit the market with these people. Their critical choices bring back the best what the market has to offer, and I learn a lot from just watching. The market vendors know me, of course, as one of the very few foreigners who buy here, and I can tell from their faces the curiosity as to who is accompanying me this time. Sometimes they already offer me the usual goods, but my expert helpers often lead me into new territory. Very exciting!

Laba porridge

The eighth day of the twelfth month of the Chinese lunar calendar marks the Laba Festival （臘八节）, traditionally a day when people eat Laba porridge.
My friend Xiao An taught me how to make it. There are many regional variations and personal styles, so this is just an example. basically, it consists of a mix of eight different grains (the ba in Laba means eight), cooked together to make a multi-flavoured porridge. Sometimes dried fruits are added. We went to the market to buy the ingredients, pictured above.
Top row, left to right: split mung beans （绿豆 - lǜdòu）, red beans （红豆 - hóngdòu）, wheat （小麦 - xiǎomài）.
Second row: red dates （红栆 hóngzǎo）, bamboo beans （竹豆 zhúdòu）, peanuts （花生 - huāshēng), black rice （黑米 - hēimǐ）.
Bottom row: palm sugar （红糖 - hóngtáng）, millet （小米 - xiǎomǐ）, pearl barley （薏仁米 - yìrénmǐ）.
The procedure is simple: just cook all ingredients together with plenty of water, for several hours, while stirring frequently. That last part went wrong, so my Laba burned, sadly. My thin stainless steel pot does not spread the heat well, and I didn't stir it enough. It's still edible, but the carbon smell is impossible to ignore, and spoils the distinguished flavour of my Laba porridge. A lesson learned, better luck next time.

Exam results

This morning I received a message from my teacher with the results of last week's exams:
Speaking: 79
Listening: 77
Reading: 63.5 (ouch!)
Comprehensive Chinese: 83 (better than expected!)
Which averages to 75.6.
This still has to be weighted according to the 40/20/20/20 % ratios with the mid-term test result, class attendance and homework score for the overall semester result, which will lift it a bit, to around 80 I guess. So, not too bad at all, or as the Chinese would say: 不错 (bú cuò)!

Hotpot dinner party

To celebrate the end of the semester me and my classmates organized a small dinner party at my place, before each of us takes off for the Spring Festival holidays.
We went to the market to buy a large variety of vegetables, tofu, beef, pork, and chicken, and fruits. A lot of food! We kept the hotpot bubbling for hours, until it was time to return to campus, where we planned to surprise our Japanese classmate Taku in his own dormitory room, before he would come back from a dinner with his Japanese colleagues. The dorm's shushu (janitor) actually helped us by opening the door of his room, so we could enter and await Taku's return in the dark. He arrived shortly after, quite inebriated by too much baijiu (Chinese white spirit), and truly surprised by our action. Taku is leaving the next day, and won't come back, so a proper goodbye was in order. He took the opportunity to distribute some of his possessions among us before we had to leave him to sober up.
It will be getting quiet on GXU campus the next several weeks, as thousands of students will leave after their  exams to celebrate Chinese New Year with their families. I will be joining Yanyan to her hometown again, like last year, to spend a week or so with her family, and also want to go Hainan to visit my friend Xing Fang. If budget permits, I might even go for a little trip to Malaysia and Singapore after the New Year.

End of semester

Yesterday and today we had our end-of-semester exams, so as of now we are officially free! The next semester will begin in March, so that makes almost 7 weeks of vacation.
Yesterday we had speaking and listening exams, today reading comprehension and a long (2.5 hour) comprehensive Chinese test. The oral exam was a short one-to-one session with my teacher (10 minutes). It consisted of reading aloud words written in pinyin (easy), words written in Chinese (I had to skip a few), and some sentences in Chinese. Then answering written questions (the questions were very easy) and the most challenging part: a free 5 minutes of talking about a randomly chosen subject, by picking one of a dozen folded pieces of paper which had the subject printed on them. Almost like a tombola. I was lucky, since I picked the subject "introduce yourself" which was one of the first things we learned. I can babble away for hours in English (or Dutch), but in Chinese it's still a different story, so I was out of juice quite soon. But, in general it felt like I passed.
Yesterday afternoon was listening exam, consisting of two main parts: tone recognition and listening comprehension. I'm good at detecting the tones spoken by recorded voices (Chinese has 5 different  intonations of each syllable, which changes the meaning of the words dramatically). The second part was listening to recorded dialogues, and then answering written questions (multiple-choice, so not too hard).
Today's tests were considerably more difficult. In the morning the reading comprehension test. I have trouble remembering the more than 800 Chinese characters we learned, so I could sometimes not understand the text at all, or only small fragments of it. The questions were similarly hard to understand, let alone to answer properly. Fortunately, here too it was mostly a multiple-choice test, so by eliminating obvious no-no's, the probability of a lucky guess would increase. Still, I didn't feel too confident about the result.
The final test was a true ordeal. Given the environmental conditions of a unheated classroom barely above 5 degrees Celsius, and the 2 and half hour duration, I was almost ready to throw in the towel and go home for a hot shower. One of my classmates was done after one hour, but he is Japanese, and thus can read all Chinese characters without blinking. I needed the full 2.5 hours and could not even finish it completely, leaving the final question blank were I was supposed to write a 100-character text about myself. For the exams, only 10 people showed up, less than half of the number of people in my class. So even if I end up with the lowest score in this group, I still did better than most of my classmates.

Alas, we will get the results within 2 days by a text message on our mobile phone. China clearly embraced the era of modern communication!
As a pain killer, the final exam will only count for 40% of the total semester score. The remaining 60% is divided in three equal parts representing the mid-term test (where I scored nicely), the accumulated homework (less than perfect), and class attendance (where I scored almost 100%, best of class, as publicly posted every month).
Whatever the result, I seriously consider not taking classes the next semester, but reviewing the material at my own pace, and spending more time on social activities, and practicing the language by speaking more Chinese with my Chinese friends, and to strangers, which is surprisingly easier, because they will in general not fall back to English and thus provide a much better practicing target. It also saves the 5250 RMB tuition fee.
I am also considering staying a second year, because one is clearly not enough, and I quite like it here!

Liver soup to cure my cold

I wouldn't have thought of using liver to make a soup, but my sweet friend Xiao An taught me how:
Get a nice chunk of fresh pig's liver from the market (bloody red!), a good bunch of shii-take mushrooms, a few heads of that green leafy vegetable with long pointy leaves, resembling endive, and some ginger and garlic.
Cut the liver in very thin slices (about 2mm) with a sharp knife, and marinate in a bowl with some soy sauce, some baijiu (Chinese white spirit), finely chopped ginger and garlic. Let it sit for at least half an hour.
In the mean time, wash the mushrooms and veggies, and break the leaves apart. Bring a pan of water to the boil, and throw in the marinated liver slices. Add some salt and a dash of peanut oil. When the water is boiling again, add the mushrooms. Let it boil for 10-15 minutes, or until the meat and the mushrooms are tender. Then add a handful of greens and let them wilt. Keep the remainder of the vegetables for a quick stir-fry with some garlic immediately after the soup is done.
Serve the soup and the side dish of stir-fried veggies with some steamed rice. The best cure for a cold!

No more cold nights

With temperatures down to 5 degrees at night in my unheated apartment, I desperately needed to buy a blanket. My summer-grade duvet does not do the job. So, I went shopping and came home with this very soft and heavy blanket which looks like a big rabbit skin, but of course is 100% synthetic. Nonetheless, it is very effective in keeping me warm, and it doesn't look too horrible. Most of the blankets on sale feature large flower patterns, or worse, are decorated with hearts and the word LOVE all over it, or scenes of white horses against a backdrop of a romantic sunset.

Premium Ghana

Yay!, I found a shop which sells decent chocolate. In the same shopping mall which has Walmart on the second floor, there is a small shop which sells mostly imported luxury food, such as chocolate, champagne, smoked salmon etc. It looks rather similar to what's usually on offer at international airports, aimed at the discerning traveler with cash to spend.
The chocolate section has two kinds of Lindt chocolate, including extra dark (78%), at European prices (39 RMB per slab). I decided to try the relatively inexpensive Lotte Premium Ghana Black, imported from South-Korea. At 16 RMB for 90 grams quite affordable, and according to the label it contains 55% cocoa, which is acceptable for dark chocolate.
I had finished Martine's shipment of premium European dark chocolate already before Christmas was over, so I had to spend year's end without. This Premium Ghana is actually quite tasty, a little sweet, but with a nice natural flavour. Far above the greasy light-brown substance which is normally sold as chocolate in China.
I would rank the different brands as follows:

1. Moser-Roth Pure Chocolade 85% (very delicate taste, well-balanced)
2. Swiss Extra Noir 78% (a little too dry)
3. Côte d'Or Noir Brut 86% (a bit sweet)
4. Lotte Premium Ghana Black 55% (dark, but not really black)

The Dolfin Chocolat Noir au Poivre Rose is not really in the same category, so hard to compare. I know this kind (and the many other Dolfin varieties) quite well, and really like them for the quirky flavours, but this particular specimen was over due for more than 3 months and severely oxidized, despite the sealed package. This of course does not do justice to the taste. But don't let this discourage you to send more!

Home cooking

Winter is now definitely here. After a short cold spell a few weeks ago, the temperature rose again to the twenties, but this week it won't get above 10 degrees. Making a nice soup is then a welcome diversion.
I went to the market today to pick up some vegetables and some meat with bone. I really like to buy directly from these farmers, who bring their goods to town every day, and offer the vegetables and fresh fish both under the ram-shackle sheet-metal roof of the market, as well as right on the sidewalk.

My local market is slowly falling apart in the shadow of a new building which has been erected in the past months. Every time I visit the market, a small part has gone, and the basement of the new building is slowly transforming into its new location. Today I noticed the electrical wiring and even lamps are all in place, the week before the tiling of all the concrete counters was done. The speed of construction in China is mind-blowing. In a matter of months buildings rise and open to host new business.
I went home with corn, mushrooms, green chillies, tomatoes, and some meat. The soup I made was a new invention, loosely based on observing my Chinese friends cooking in my kitchen, with some improvisation from my side, based on what I still had in my fridge. It turned out to be very tasty, and good-looking too!
Since today is a cold and grey day, and tomorrow I have class again, I guess I will spend the rest of the day doing some homework. The New Year weekend is officially over.

2011

The Gregorian calendar turned another page. I didn't expect the Chinese to celebrate New Year twice, but there is actually a official 3-day holiday.
I spent New Year's eve with some new friends. One of them being a couchsurfer from Beijing, who contacted me last week through that amazingly useful social network. She did not end up on my couch, but I invited her to join a small gathering with local friends and have a BBQ dinner near South Lake, the biggest lake in town, and a good place to stroll and enjoy a spectacular fireworks display I suspected would take place there.
Upon arrival at the lakeside, fireworks were already lighting up the sky, but from another location more East. The view from the traditional arched bridge over the lake was good though. We watched the fireworks until the cold wind forced us to leave the spot high above the lake. I had been to Ali Mama's BBQ garden before with my dentist friends from nearby Guangxi Medical University, and one of them joined us this evening with his now ex-girlfriend (his mother didn't approve of her, that's how things work in China). They managed to keep up a good friendship though, and I count both of them among my closest friends in Nanning.
My new friend from Beijing also brought two people, so it was a truly social networking affair. After licking our fingers clean, we strolled around the lake to a short strip of bars, to greet the turn of the decade with a bottle of Jack Daniels and various snacks. Gregorian New Year is not such a big deal in China, the bars were not nearly full, but the atmosphere was good.

The rest of the weekend was also quite eventful, socially. I had made a new friend on campus last week, a cute student of French, whom I had helped with practicing French pronunciation while lying on in the grass on campus the past sunny week, in preparation of her oral French exam. You can often find me lying on the grass with my books on those sunny afternoons, it's also a great way to make new friends.
So, while Yanyan was out for a daytime picnic with her class on New Year's day, me and my new friend went to Renmin Park downtown, and took a crazy ride in one of those stomach-turning spinning wheels which make 3-D lissajous figures high above ground. Afterward we went to a cinema in the luxurious Admiral City shopping mall in the Eastern Lang Dong district, where LED-decorated high-rises dominate the skyline.
The Chinese film about an older guy and a beautiful young lady on a 'trial-marriage' trip to a romantic resort on Hainan was both humourous and touching, and had both Chinese and English subtitles, so good practice material as well.
We finished off the evening with some tasty local food at the famous Zhong Shan Lu night market, which is soon to be demolished and replaced by something more glamourous. On the corner a 218m tall building is already under construction, which will look like a 1:2 scale model of the International Finance Center in Hong Kong (415m), judging from the artist's impression of the finished building depicted on a giant billboard.
The pace at which Nanning is growing is staggering. Everywhere new high-rises are being erected, and the increase in traffic is more than the city can adequately handle. Like in the bigger cities in the East, this will surely take its toll soon.