南非

I have returned. Got on a plane and left China. For the winter break I am living in Burien, Wa, a few miles form Seattle.

Next Semester I will not be returning to Pomona. I am, instead, going to south Africa. I will be studying at the University of Cape Town. I will focus on environmental science, or at least I am supposed to. I will actually enroll until I arrive.

I leave Dec 31, 8 days from now. I will be in South Africa for around 6 months, maybe seven. Come to visit if you happen to be in that part of the world.

I need a new title for my blog. I am open to suggestions. I don’t think south Africa has great walls or giant pandas.

Cabbage!

My time in China begins to wind down. Only a week left and two Chinese tests. This weekend was spent split between writing an ethnography on some male college students I met here and their thoughts on love and marriage and going with my host parents to buy some clothes. My host parents insisted on taking me to buy clothes, which is fine, it is fun to go out with them and even more fun to observe them in society as opposed to sitting in front of the tv which is my common experience with them.

We first went to look into buying a suit. They have been insisting since I arrived in china that I should by a suit or two before returning home. We finally went out and did some suit shopping. I probably tried on 10+ of the damn things. They were all strange. The first one I tried on, I was unable to move my arms. The sleeves were sewn on in such a way so that they would appear all nice and straight when they hung down, but when I raised my arm the whole jacket came up with it, pushing the collar up around my ears. Great I found a nonfunctional piece of clothing. I tried explaining to the sales person and my host parents that something was wrong, in particular the cut and method of stitching for the arm. I was unsuccessful. The salesperson kept insisting I looked fabulous 挺好看 and that it was made that way to look good when I am standing. She also kept repeating that suits were not meant for activity and I should not wear a suit if I will be moving. Suits are not meant to be comfortable.

After the first shop I gave up on trying to explain that there was something wrong. I tried on many and they all fit the same, no arm movement allowed. In the course of suit shopping we walked through a women’s undergarment section of the shopping area…strange. There were some weird weird underwear styles…every type of compression/ shaping thing imaginable. And then there was the fur….weird.

My host father disappeared about two weeks ago. I asked my host mother where he went and she said business trip. I asked her when he might return and she said she didn’t know. About 10 days later he walked in the door one night. He had been on a business trip that just happened to go to his hometown. He brought back with him several things from his family including pictures and a few homemade treats.

The first homemade treat came out the first night, yam chips. Like potato chips but sweet and wonderful. The second homemade treat came out the next morning. Pickled carrots with chilies. Awful. Pungent with vinegar and hot beyond believe with chili. I was supposed to supplement my rice porridge with the pickled carrots instead of the common pickled veggies which are not hot or unbearable vinegary. The regular pickled veggies are actually really good. 酸菜. I couldn’t handle the carrots and neither could my host mother, she made a terrible face and spit them out when she ate them, I just swallowed and said that wasn’t a sort of flavor I like. My host father ate them by himself with a spoon. His tastebuds must be dead.

I am not a picky eater, you might know this, I eat just about everything and am up for just about any type of food eating dare as long as it involves someone else going one for one with me.

The third treat came out last night. It was an entire ginger root, pickled. Tasted kinda like the ginger you get with sushi, except this was still in root form and there was a lot of it. My host father gave me half the root and he took his back with him into the other room. The first bite was great, gingery and wonderful. The second bite was not good, it burned my tongue and mouth. The third bite was worse, my eyes began to water and my tongue throbbed. I wished I had not accepted half the damn root. Eating a little ginger between bites to clear your palate is fine. But eating half a damn root without anything else is hell, don’t try it. Or if you are like my host father, you will love it and will also have dead tastebuds.

Cabbage. There might be some miss perceptions about my views on cabbage, the current cabbage population in the household, or the frequency of cabbage consumption. Let me set it straight, hopefully once and for all. So about three weeks about my host mom came home with 100lbs of cabbage. That’s right 100lbs..that is about how much she weighs. 100lbs of cabbage translates into 11heads of cabbage. It took her at least three trips from the vegetable seller to the house to get it all back. The white heads of cabbage were placed outside the kitchen window to hang out. Since the arrival of the cabbage we have eaten cabbage at every meal. Until tonight it has been prepared the same. Fried/boiled with black fungus. 炒白菜 . Tonight there was a curve ball. Instead of black fungus there was chilies. My host father cooked the cabbage tonight, hence the chilies. He called it wandefu. 晚的副 which roughly translates as wonderful. It was a nice change in the three week regime of boiled cabbage. Don’t get me wrong I like cabbage and still like cabbage, I will not get tired of it in the next week either. There are other vegetables still, rice, and meat. It is just the cabbage is staying for the winter season. I asked today what number cabbage head we were eating. We are on number three….if you do some math that comes out to just under 10lbs of cabbage a week, or about 3lbs per person per week or about 1/2lb of cabbage per day per person We might call that LCPDPP, or CPPP for NOLS. I find the cabbage amusing. It would be better if they grew legs and invaded the house.