The Internet is Fixed

The internet is fixed, yet still moderately slow.

First things first, as per a few requests I will teach you how to pronounce Hangzhou. The hang is pronounced with the vowel sound of long, but with an H instead of an L. The zhou is pronounced like the name Joe. Hong-joe.

The first day of class was today, and it was fantastic. One of my teachers has a thick northern accent, which means that when he speaks it sounds like he is swallowing on his sentence. I don't have any good classroom stories. Yet.

I did, however, eat some awesome food in the last few days. I've been in charge of ordering food for the most part since my Chinese is the best in the circle of friends I go out to eat with. I have been searching for this green bean dish I used to eat all the time in Beijing, and though I have not had luck with finding it yet I have gotten very close. Tonight we ate 'mian', or basically a bowl of noodles in broth with meat and cilantro. I opted to eat the whole bowl and then drink the broth so I could take a picture of my accomplishment, and if I may recommend: don't drink all the broth. My stomach is battling me viciously right now. In any case, I found some excellent beer which translates best as "Redstone Beer". It was actually quite tasty, I bought it at a small store before we went into the restaurant and brought it in to drink with dinner. I offered some to my friend Bob, who upon drinking it demanded to know how much it cost because it was far too good to not be expensive. I told him it was 2.5 kuai (for conversion, divide that by 6.5 to get to dollars). Upon hearing how cheap it was, Bob accidentally broke the language pledge and yelled "No fucking way!" in a large, crowded Chinese restaurant. Now Chinese people in Hangzhou don't speak any English beyond what they learn in movies. This means they can say "Hello", "Goodbye", and the F word. Thus they heard one of the key words of English they knew being yelled from a table of foreigners, and thus we got some fantastic attention.

I am fairly certain Chinese people go crazy after 10pm, or at least my roommate does. He is extremely spastic right now. He will slap at mosquitoes in a very animated fashion, or rub his face vigorously while making "oooh woo woo" noises, or rummage in his desk while making "waa waa waa" noises with his mouth, and he just finished eating what he insists is a peach in a pace that was far too fast and crazed to be safe. He offered me this 'peach', and I ate, but I am not certain what it is. For one thing it is green, and starting to turn red on parts, so I don't even know if it is ripe. My experience with peaches and their colors tells me that this is not a peach, and the taste is unlike any peach or any fruit I've ever eaten. The weirdest yet is that he just came at me asking if I want to go eat 'ye xiao', or the local night food. The stuff is fantastic to eat, but I don't want to go at 11 when I have class early in the morning. After I said no, he said it was too bad and ran around the room yelling "YE XIAO YE XIAO YE XIAO, WO AI YE XIAO" (I LOVE YE XIAO). I don't know if it is the radio or the peach or if this is just how he gets on monday nights, but I am a little bit nervous right now.

To elaborate on the ye xiao, the translation is 'late night snack' or 'midnight snack', and the stuff is fantastic. They have all sorts of things. There are all sorts of omelette type concoctions, all sorts of odd sandwiches, dumplings, stir fried bean sprouts or rice, and kabob style food. The trick is that it is all made the moment you order it right in front of you. The ingredients are all laid out, and you point to what you want or don't want added and watch as it all comes together. One example is this fantastic sandwich type thing this one man makes. He ladles what looks like pancake batter onto a hot flat circular grill top. He thins it out and it quickly becomes what is best described as bread, it has the consistency of thin noodles or dumpling wrappers. He then starts adding things, asking if you want them along the way. He throws out a handful of green onions, followed by sweet sauce, then a spicy one, then he peels the bread off the grill and folds it over once. Next he adds another sauce, some wafer like substance, bean sprouts, and then folds it again and again. He cuts it in half and puts it in a little plastic bag for you. It tastes fantastic. They also can and do put everything they can onto a stick and grill out. I love the lamb meat that is grilled on the street, but they also have green beans, peppers, bananas, and even octopus, and a host of other things on skewers that you can ask to have grilled. All the things I've listed I've tried and taken pictures of the eating process, and there are some things I've eaten that I don't to this day know what they were. It is fantastic though, if it can be put on a skewer you can find it to get grilled Chinese style.

All this food talk is making me hungry. Perhaps I will go for some ye xiao after all...