好久不见

I just got on and noticed that in my e-mail inbox I have a message that is about 3 or 4 days old. The message states that the most likely cause of all the students getting diarrhea has been all of the back alley local restaurants, mainly the smaller ones that may not be properly keeping meat. I think all of the Americans in the program have or are just getting over the Chinese version of Montezuma's revenge, which is interesting to me since I have been suspiciously immune. Don't think it is because I am careful, from the inordinate amount of peppers, vinegar, and other potentially havoc wreaking food items I put into my body at every meal you'd think I was in a race with to get acid reflux by age 25. Additionally, I have definitely been eating at those small local restaurants at least once a day for the last week and I will definitely not stop just because a few white people can't handle their spicy foods. Damned white people.

On the topic of food, I finally found - in one of those local restaurants ironically enough - the green bean dish I've been searching forever for. After leaving Beijing I last year I began a 6 month quest to find it in America that did not have the success I hoped for, and up until 3 days ago all the attempts at finding the delicious 干扁四季豆 (ganbiansijidou - aka ganbiandoujiao 干扁豆角) have been for naught. I finally found it though, and I have subsequently eaten it every day for the past 3 days. The man who runs the restaurant is a Chinese version of my Uncle Bubba because of the manner in which he takes control and makes sure everything is hospitable and perfect. Each time I go to this restaurant (probably 5 times in all so far) I bring new people, and each time he goes out of his way to come over and takes over the ordering and paying process. The new people always struggle with figuring out the menu or ordering at the front, so he lumbers out of the kitchen, shoos away the kitchen, and breaks the whole process down. He finds out what you want, and by god he is going to make sure you get it. That is how I've gotten to eat the green bean dish I like, this chicken and pepper dish I like, and a host of other things that aren't on the menu. The food here is out of control happiness in a bowl.

Opted not to travel this weekend, instead we went for massages and movies. The massage was the equivalent of $10 US for 75 minutes, and instantly recharged me so that I could continue to dominate the gym like the American bear that I am. I think the exact quote Bob used to describe me was, "The guys at the gym like Chris because he is big like a bear, I swear I am putting on 30 more pounds of muscle before I come back to China next time." In any case, the more important part of those two m's was the movie. We originally went intending to see Hancock, but Hancock cost 4 times more than any of the other movies at the theater and for some reason at this theater had no English audio. Thus we opted to instead go and see Red Cliff (赤壁 chibi), a movie I didn't know much about outside of a bad quality preview my teacher excitedly showed us in Chinese class last year. It - was - awesome. It was as if Hero, the 300, and a train filled with halberd wielding bad asses had collided on screen. I did not know this (JJ and Bob did), but the movie was basically the plot line of a series of popular games called Dynasty Warriors released in the US. The general idea is that it is the time of the 3 Warring States period, and there are a bunch of heroes leading armies to battle each other. With the exclusion of Jet Li and Jackie Chan, who at this point are pretty much American movie stars, I think every major Chinese action movie star was in this movie. The two guys from House of Flying Daggers, the emperor from Hero, the Japanese/Korean/Chinese/? guy from Fearless (with the excellent scowl), and a whole set of others. Every time a new person was revealed - which happened to be about every 5 or 10 minutes - the entire crowd would erupt into ooh's aah's and "No way him too!"'s. It was overwhelming, I was like a child in a medieval war shop. Or whatever. I cannot stress how awesome this movie was, and I guarantee it will come to America in some form or another.

Oh dear, the gym crew just walked in. It is time to go destroy. As a note for Dan, yesterday we mixed NOXplode and Black Powder. Casualties were high.