Dumpling day

We had our midterm exams this week, so now we’re moving on to the second half of the semester. The school year here starts a bit later in year in September and the winter break falls around the Chinese New Year, which his either in late January or early February, so naturally the spring semester ends later, too. American universities, meanwhile, are finishing the school year in the next several weeks.

A few weeks ago a new mall in Taicang opened. It has a KFC, the city’s second, and a huge supermarket. I went to the supermarket last Saturday and spent a long time wandering nearly every aisle on both floors. It was great to find certain hard-to-find foods such as cereal and baguettes. I came home with two boxes of cereal, fruit, a baguette, a jar of curry paste, yogurt, and milk (the first time I’ve found skim milk). I could have spent a lot more money there.
On Friday, after the midterm exams had been graded and returned to the students, we spent two class periods in the cafeteria making dumplings. The kitchen staff set out big pans of chopped vegetables mixed with ground pork, dough, and bowls of flour and water.

I often see teams of cooks preparing dumplings in restaurants but have never watched it up close. I also never realized how much work it takes and how difficult it is to make them look perfect. After everyone made a couple normal-looking dumplings, we got bored and sought more and more creative shapes, which lead to a contest for the most oddly shaped, most intricate, and largest dumplings. A couple boys found a bag of salt and stuffed one of the dumplings with spoonfuls of salt (dumplings stuffed with hot chilies is a long-running prank in China). As luck had it, one of them ended up with that dumpling at lunch. Despite the kid’s strong revulsion after taking one bite, the dumpling was passed around the table so everyone could take a bite and share in the self-inflicted pain. Teenage boys aren't always so smart.

I finally fixed my camera by getting a new shutter button at a camera store in Shanghai a few weeks ago, and got around to taking it along with me this week, so I snapped a few pictures.

They’re available at http://gallery.mac.com/sambrummitt

It has rained at least once during each of the last few weekends. I am in Changzhou for the weekend and it look like it is going to be warm and sunny. We played some American football on the soccer field Friday evening and then I had a turkey sandwich at a western deli/restaurant (my first turkey sandwich here... and it's been eight months as of today). So it was a good start to the weekend!